How Is Your Spiritual Walk?

Have you ever noticed that we modern Christians have invented all sorts of language for describing spiritual things?  We talk about things like "accepting Jesus into your heart" and ask each other "How is your spiritual walk?"  I wonder sometimes about the meaning of these phrases.  When you ask someone about their spiritual walk, you're probably expecting to hear "It's going fine, but I am a week behind on My Utmost for His Highest and missed my quiet time the last two mornings."  What?  What does that have to do with anything?

I'd rather people asked me "How are you following Christ lately?"  That is a lot more directed.  I believe that God is more interested in how our daily lives look than whether or not we're current on our devotional schedule.  I'd like to ask someone how they are following Christ and hear "I'm having a hard time.  Things are good, but my wife and I spent $450 last month at restaurants and I know that's not how Christ wants me to live."  I'd like to hear, "Christ is leading me overall, but last week my boss asked me to do something I feel uneasy about, and I'm not sure what to do."  Then they'd ask me, and I'd say "I'm struggling with following Jesus' lead in my apartment complex, where I stop short of developing real relationships with people I talk to more than weekly."

Let's broaden our conception of "the spiritual walk."  Sure, things like our devotional lives and going to church are important.  But I am convinced that our relationships with our neighbors, how we handle our finances, and our behavior in our workplaces is just as much a part of our spiritual lives as prayer is.  Our sermons like to dwell on doctrine, beliefs, and Scripture.  Those things are good.  But we hesitate to really get into behaviors and attitudes.  I was wondering this week in my readings through Paul whether our attempt to side with Paul on faith vs. works has led us to avoid works too strongly.  Are we misreading him?  Paul's letters are right alongside James' letter that says, "Faith without works is dead," and I don't think the two would disagree in a conversation.

How are are you following Christ lately?

So You're Unhappy....

I was inspired by a conversation with my wife last night to write a response to the popular current post, "Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy."  If you haven't read that original post, go read it now and then come back.

There's a lot in this author's writing that is really true, and that's why it's got over 750K social networking hits right now.  It really hits a chord with a lot of my generation, us millennials as I like to call us.  There's no doubt that we've been told that "You can do anything you set your mind to," which has some nugget of truth in it.  There's no doubt that we've been told that "You're special," which also has a nugget of truth in it.  The truth is, we have been handed every imaginable opportunity, including wealth, education, the Internet, English, lots of free time, and more.  We want to change the world, and there's little doubt that we could if we wanted to.

Where I shrink back from this inspiring article, however, is right at the outset.  I have a hard time defining happiness as reality minus expectations.  The author accepts this as true and bases the rest of his article on it.  We have a problem as a generation if this is how we will define happiness.  How often will reality actually meet up with our expectations?  You might say that I lived this article my first couple years out of college.  Maybe it was doing what appeared to be menial tasks at work, or maybe it was only clearing $1000 per month on a full-time job with college degree, but somewhere in there I heard the message that I wasn't good enough, or qualified enough, for valuable work.  I fell into a year and a half of depression that I needed professional counseling to recover from.  My reality was definitely nowhere near my expectations, and it did hurt.  I was unhappy.

But I learned a few things.  One, that my happiness should have a lot less to do with expectations like this author is suggesting.  I now believe that my happiness should have a lot more to do with enjoying and making the most of each moment that comes my way, and that I should be making a lot fewer expectations.  Life will rarely live up to our expectations if we allow our expectations to run out of control.  Once Lucy books the plane tickets for a vacation, she will spend the next two months dreaming about how wonderful it will be.  No vacation can live up to two months' worth of dreaming.  The author is right that many people base their happiness on this equation, reality minus expectations, but offers no way out of this trap.  That's not an equation that will ever result in real happiness, only temporary excitement whenever we are surprised.

Two, I learned to take a long-term perspective on my life.  I wanted to change the world now, but I realized I couldn't.  Now I still want to change the world, but I have no misconceptions about doing that before I'm in my fifties.  I'm 28 years old, which in the career world is very young.  I'm just starting out.  It's a rare person who changes the world in their 20s or 30s, and it seems like most of them end up like shooting stars who don't last long.  Our generation's danger is that we will achieve greatness in our 20s or 30s, but lack the character to hold on to it and use it for the right things.  Jim Collins famously wrote about the enduring greatness of a Level Five leader in his book Good to Great.  Few reach it, but his hard-to-notice caveat is on the next page: to truly achieve it, you must have mastered each of the four levels below it.  Nobody reads the book and shortly becomes a Level Five leader - it takes a career to get there.

In short, there is a great deal that I agree with in Wait But Why's post about unhappiness.  Yet I think by the end of his post, his three recommendations are a bit shallow.  He fails to resolve one of the major challenges facing Lucy - she can't decide what to do.  I have plenty of friends in dead-end jobs, or no jobs, partly because they just can't decide what their "truest calling" of their heart is, to use Wait But Why's lingo.  His three suggestions are definitely valuable, but more helpful would have been these:

1. Stop basing your happiness on reality vs. expectations.  Happiness is a choice, an emotion that you can decide each morning to put on.  Don't worry so much about the future, or the past, but focus on the present.  How can you make the most of your right now?  And stop forming so many expectations about others, yourself, and the future.  It's a sure ticket to a letdown.
2. Take a long-term perspective.  Not to contradict the last point, but think about how you can use your right now to build your future.  Think about your résumé, and about how your experiences and education can set you up for enduring greatness and a legacy later in life.  Plan to change the world...when you have the foundation of twenty years' worth of career, continuing education, and life's wisdom under you.  And be sure not to miss the wealth of many mentors along the way.
3. Don't be afraid to make a choice.  There are a world of opportunities out there, but for most of the situations that you will face, doing something is better than doing nothing.  You will frequently find choices that seem challenging, but underneath are really choices between multiple good options.  You can find value in any circumstance, so stick your neck out there and make a decision, then make the best of it.  Don't look back, hesitate, or wish you had made a different choice.

Humility Before God and Man

One of the things I began processing through in the last couple weeks of our summer adventure in Peru is the idea of humility before God and man.  It's no secret that Katie and I were surprised by the summer and what it ended up looking like.  We had very different ideas going in, and different hopes, and we ended up doing a lot of things that weren't much fun to say the least.  However, one of our goals going in had been to serve Inca Link's long-range goals in whatever way was best for them, and so as we got going that goal had to take precedence over the others.  We had been asked to work hard toward the physical completion of the children's home.  If that was how we were going to serve Inca Link, that's what we needed to do.

It goes beyond our goals of serving, however.  Regardless of our thoughts or preferences toward our job descriptions, we felt like serving to the full extent of our capacity was our sacred duty.  The Bible speaks about authority, and gives examples: even Jesus submitted to His parents (Luke 2:51).  After speaking with a centurion about authority, Jesus commends his great faith at recognizing Jesus' authority (Matthew 8).  The Bible also talks about humility, namely that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34 and 1 Peter 5:5).  Finally, Colossians 3:23 and Galatians 1:10 ties it all together for us to make it clear that we do our work for the Lord, not for men.  To do our daily manual labor on the children's home was service not just to our director, but to our Lord.

This past summer was challenging in many ways.  We had some conflicts and differences of values with the organization.  However, we came to learn that conflicts and disagreements don't necessarily reflect that anyone is wrong, merely that they are different.  Therefore, it was our duty before God to work as hard as we could, as well as we could, for our directors at Inca Link as if it were for the Lord directly.  It's a good life lesson for all of us.  Our labor is not for men, or for ourselves - it's for God, and He demands it all.  When you're working for the Lord, there's no room for laziness, low-quality work, or not finishing well.  I hope that Katie's and my work ethic over the summer - whether it was painting, ministering to the teams, ministering to the interns, or just sweeping the floor and doing dishes - was a reflection of how we felt about serving the Lord directly.  Let's all pray today that our labor looks to others as if we believe we are serving the living God Himself!

Final Week

We wanted to write one more time as we come into our final week here in South America.  Amazing that time is passing so quickly - in no time we'll be on that plane back home!  We're writing this from the border of Peru and Ecuador, a town called Huaquillas.  We passed through here a couple times before on the long bus trip.  We were sad to say goodbye to so many new friends yesterday in Trujillo as we left for the bus.  Most of the other interns left the night before, as they wanted a few more adventures in Ecuador, but Katie and I were leading one final mission team so we are now making the trek on our own.  This border exchange has been eventful, including a taxi driver who seemed to lie to us twice and wandered into a situation where he (meaning we) had to pay a bribe, but we found a bus for tonight and a cheap hotel for the afternoon to sleep and shower.

Leading the team last week, from a Chinese Alliance church in Winnipeg, Canada, was really awesome for me (John).  I'd been looking forward to the opportunity to lead a team all summer, though I'd been contributing some leadership to all the teams all summer.  I felt in my element as much as ever all summer, and formed some great bonds with the team.  They were really blessed by their experiences, and certainly blessed us interns and the albergue.  We've left the albergue a lot closer to being done than it was when we arrived, especially with all the painting.  It's exciting to see all the work that was done, but we still know there is plenty left to do to reach the point when it can open to children.  As of when we left, there's still another team coming before the season of mission teams ends, then it's just up to the various missionaries and hired workers.

Before we left, we got to say our final goodbyes to people and do an exit interview with our director.  It was good to reflect over the summer.  It's certainly been challenging, but we do feel like we rose to the situation and overcame successfully.  While our time didn't look like what we had hoped, I think we found fulfillment in serving God through serving our earthly bosses.  We both feel strongly about Colossians 3:23, which speaks about serving the Lord rather than men, and we both threw ourselves fully into the tasks that were asked of us.  With constancy and dedication, we did what we were called to do and accomplished a lot.  The mission field is often a changing world, with different demands and little steady job descriptions.  Whether this is due to God's design or man's shortcomings is irrelevant, but it is an opportunity to practice obedience and submission to authority.  One of our goals this summer was to serve the long-term interests of Inca Link, and we hope that we have done that through the tasks we accomplished!

Update from Peru

It's hard to believe that we're rapidly coming to the end of our summer here in South America with Inca Link.  Time is beginning to really fly.  Our thoughts are turning now toward finishing well with our internship.  With any project, it's easy to start strongly, and even to work consistently.  It's rare, however, to find someone who always finishes well.  It can be as true with a summer internship as with life.  As we prepare to finish our time in Trujillo in less than two weeks, it's important to us to make sure that we're pressing forward with our work projects and goals.  We've just finished the interior paint in the large multi-purpose building, and before we leave we hope to have the exterior paint done on the three main buildings.  I (John) just finished up the majority of my creative project, and Katie's is finished as well.  We'll post pictures soon!

We've just had another group finish up their time here in Trujillo.  We thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with them.  It was our second adult team, with two married couples and a younger lady.  The two husbands were a supervisor at a nuclear facility and a personal injury lawyer, and the three ladies were all teachers.  They had all sorts of different testimonies and great stories.   They worked hard too, and with some real quality, and we got a lot done.  Next Saturday, the next team comes.  This will be the team that Marion and I are leading, and Katie along with me.  It's actually two teams overlapping - the first this Saturday, then the second a few days after that.  Unfortunately, I think we will be leaving Trujillo for our intern debrief before either departs.  I'm really looking forward to taking some direct leadership with this team.

Katie and I have enjoyed taking a lot of leadership and initiative around the albergue too.  Our director, Ignacio, has been under a lot of stress lately, and at the moment has been very preoccupied with his wife's visa application in Lima.  In his absence, Katie and I have been able to step into the gap a bit.  In addition to continuing to step up our leadership with the interns, something that Ignacio has really recognized and expressed appreciation for, we've started giving some direction to specifically the painting part of the construction.  Katie is picking out most of the colors for the entire albergue, and we're putting together a master document with color guidance for each room and the psychology behind each color.   We figured out a trick to paint a perfect line between two colors, but now we're having trouble getting the paint to stick to the primer and not come back up with the tape.

Thanks for your continued prayers!  They are blessing us and it's wonderful to know that we have so much support back home.  Our thoughts are with you all frequently and we can't wait to see you in just under three weeks to share more stories and settle back into life, somehow changed by our experiences!

Limitations

Katie and I have been thinking about the subject of limitations recently.  We've both found ourselves very limited in our work at various points during this summer.  First it was washing out of the Amazing Race because we couldn't keep up.  Then I (John) sprained both of my ankles in the span of a couple of weeks.  I came down with a brief cold, then I found myself incapable of concrete work because of my nerve damage in my neck and shoulders.  Then Katie came down with the flu, and then I was totally drained by some major diahhrea.  We're both well from our illnesses now, but the staff here says it's an epidemic all over Trujillo because of the climate change (it's winter, we go nearly a week between seeing the sun, which means it stays pretty cold).  We've passed seven weeks, past the half-way mark through our summer adventure, and clearly God is trying to say something to us.

Having so many limitations is very challenging when we're volunteering with an organization that really puts a lot of focus on manual labor and physical exertion.  We've both struggled through feelings of inadequacy and feeling like we don't fit in here.  Other than when we're in bed sick, we're pretty much finding good ways to pitch in and be part of the team as much as possible, but I think God is saying something to us.  Whether we're here or back home in our jobs, every team needs a variety of skills and strengths.  If we were all a team of manual laborers, we'd probably get a lot of work done, but we might really fail at ministering to teams that pass through.  Back home in our workplaces, we need a variety of gifts to accomplish the missions of each of our organizations.  It's way too easy for us as humans to get focused on our own gifts and compare others to ourselves, getting frustrated at them when they don't measure up.

It's a good message especially for me.  Anyone who knows me back home knows that I'm a high-capacity, full-speed worker.  I work hard all day, then go home and work hard all evening whether it's managing the home, doing school, or volunteering for some organization.  I go 100%, and then some, constantly.  Sometimes I'm arrogant with others about that, and put a lot of pressure on others to work up to the measure that God has granted me.  Translated into this context, I'd be a construction foreman pushing everyone to go, go, go, and not let up.  I'd have little compassion on those with different gifts, or those limited in some way in their labor.  Learning this lesson here in Trujillo doesn't necessarily mean that I need to go home and drop a lot of my activities (although there may be a message about sabbath in there for me too), but it does mean that I need to have more compassion and encourage others in their own giftedness, not try to conform them to my own.

Creativity and Adaptation

This summer, Katie and I are getting to utilize a bit of creativity and adaptation as we settle into our short-term roles here with Inca Link in Peru.  We came in with what we thought were very few expectations, but quickly realized that we had more expectations than we thought.  We both have a bit of missions experience, and a lot of ministry experience, and that led us to start making some plans and ideas before we got here.  However, we're adapting into our new adventure.  All the construction has been an interesting change for us.  It took us a while to change gears into it, but manual labor is not new territory for me (John) and as I've switched my mindset from one of doing ministry all summer into one of doing manual labor all summer with ministry on the side, I'm enjoying seeing the work progress.  Katie is of course adapting into new experiences of living in a developing country, and she's enjoying seeing life lived in a different style than in Texas.

We also are developing what we call our creative projects for the summer.  Creativity is one of Inca Link's core values, so all the interns come up with some initiative that they can do in the handful of weeks we are here to further the ministry from behind the scenes.  Making meals and serving the other interns has become part of mine.  I'm meeting with one of the other interns once to twice a week for discipleship and that's great too.  I've also begun an experiment in composting.  I call it an experiment because this is an unusual attempt, in the midst of a children's home, in the desert, in a colder climate.  Humidity isn't a challenge, but heat is in the winter, and it's dug underground which limits air, and often people throw grass clippings in and there's no grass here.  Regardless, if we can generate some compost, it would help to start some gardening here for the kids.  The final part of my creative project is to do some home improvement on our living quarters, which will become the room for the children's caretaker in this building.  Shelves, towel bar, toilet paper holder, paint, etc.

Katie has been finding ways to serve using her gifts creatively.  In addition to leading worship for our team of interns, she's been leading worship for the mission groups that come through.  She has been investing a lot of time in improving her skills on acoustic guitar, learning songs, and writing out song lyrics on large posterboard for people who need the words.  She hopes to create a whole book of songs, chords, and lyrics for long-term use here at the children's home.  In addition, she is helping Marion with the sewing and baking ministry to the women in the community around here.  They're developing recipes to leave behind and hoping to develop a new leader to take over after September when Marion leaves.  When mission teams are coming through, they're also making baked goods (banana bread recently) to sell to the North Americans, the profits of which will go toward shelves and equipment for the women's ministry.

A large team of 33 Canadians, mostly high schoolers, mostly girls, just left this morning.  The Superintendent of the C&MA Canada was here with them, and one of the former Inca Link directors, Jeff, is here leading them.  It's kind of a groundbreaking moment for Inca Link here in a variety of ways, one of which was a young adult gathering Saturday night where Inca Link was the focus of the evening.  Inca Link hasn't been widely featured at this large church before, and the leaders here are hoping that the church will become a strong supporter of the ministry and outreach.  Jeff, who grew up in Bolivia, is preached at all 5 church services there on Sunday and we believe that we'll see a lot of fruit from that.

Blessings to you all, and we hope you are feeling strong in the Lord and encouraged by each new day in His service and leadership!  May you be spurred today to think creatively about how you can use your gifts to serve Him this week, and strengthened to adapt yourself to new and stretching situations regularly!