randalevan's blog

Going After What You Really Want

What do you want? I mean, what do you REALLY want? The difference I make between wanting something and REALLY wanting something is like when you would like to lose weight but you would also like to eat a bag of tortilla chips when you get home from work...which also happens to be about thirty minutes before dinner...and eating the chips is what you end up doing. Believe me: I know of what I speak! (*On a side note: doesn't it seem like bags of tortilla chips are smaller these days and easier to consume a full bag in one, half-hour sitting while mindlessly watching CNN's Newsroom?)

Thinking about what I really want made me think about Donald Miller's book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Frankly, part of what makes the book so powerful is that by uncovering some of his own weaknesses and shortcomings, Miller turns the lights on some of the excuses we have been feeding ourselves...perhaps for years.

"You can't do that."

 

When was the last time somebody told you, "You can't do that"? I have certainly heard it a time or two! I was reading the foreword of a book on Saturday morning and it got me thinking. It describes some of the obstacles the author had to overcome in order to get her book published. She received multiple letters of rejection from a variety of publishers. Here is one of the comments she received: "Lady Di could be cycling nude down the street giving this book away, nobody would read it."

In spite of all the opposition, she felt like the book had something to say, so she tried one more time...and the rest is history.

The book I am referring to is Feel the Fear...and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers and I have a copy of the 20th Anniversary Edition. The publisher who said "Yes, you can!" has sold over 2 million copies so far.

I guess all the other publishers were wrong...and they probably kicked themselves when they saw how successful the book has been!

Jeffers isn't alone. People are telling us all the time, "You can't do that." Let me share with you just a few examples.

Overcoming conflict (More on "A Million Miles...")

Donald Miller is a master story teller. He can make you laugh (check out the story about the girl he notices and wants to impress so he tells her he is going to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu - Kindle location 1276), and, he can make you cry (for example, the story about his friend Jim who lost his wife of twenty-seven years to cancer - 2382.) In each, Miller hits home the definition of a story worth telling: "A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it." (670.)

I can relate to overcoming conflict. For the past five or six years, I have been asking myself, my friends, family, and God Himself for wisdom about how to live the only life I have to live. I have this sense that I am going to continue to be a pastor, but, that it will look very different than it has looked over the past twenty some-odd years. But what will it look like? That's where my conflict comes in.

Is there more to life than owning a Volvo?

Jacquie & I have some of the greatest kids on the planet. Last year for my birthday, our son Nathan & his wife Meredith (aka: tmbdilitw), sent me an amazon.com gift card so I could purchase Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life for my Kindle. They knew that I had been thinking a lot about my life and how best to live it and thought this book might help. Well, in two words: It did.

I am not sure how many posts I will do, nor how long it will take me, but I have a few ideas from the book that I would like to share with you. Maybe they will help you. Maybe you will start asking yourself some questions. Maybe it will provide some answers for your questions. I hope so.

Christmas all year round?

Do you know what "Epiphany" means? I had some idea, but decided to look up the definition on dictionary.com. Here is part of what I found:

e·piph·a·ny

/ɪˈpɪfəni/ Show Spelled[ih-pif-uh-nee]

1. (initial capital letter) a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi;

2. an appearance or manifestation, esp. of a deity.

So, Epiphany the holiday happens today. (*And if you have never lived in Spain or any other country that celebrates El Día de los Reyes, you don't know what you are missing. In our kid's experience, living in Spain meant you received gifts on December 25th AND January 6th!)

But epiphany the manifestation of a deity (*in this case, Jesus) can happen any day. Jesus can breakthrough and come to life in the midst of the thick and thin of daily living. But..., how can that be?

How to have an abundance of God

This quote gets me every Christmas season: "No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God - for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God. Emmanuel. God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God." (Oscar Romero, a Salvadoran Archbishop who was assassinated while celebrating Mass...murdered, because the day before he had cried out on behalf of justice for the poor.) Taken from Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent & Christmas, p. 141 & 142.

You are my Beloved - Part II

Here's the second half of the Nouwen quote from the other day...

“I am putting this so directly and so simply because, though the experience of being the Beloved has never been completely absent from my life, I never claimed it as my core truth. I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. It was as if I kept refusing to hear the voice that speaks from the very depth of my being and says: “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.” That voice has always been there, but it seems that I was much more eager to listen to the other, louder voices saying: “Prove that you are worth something; do something relevant, spectacular, or powerful, and then you will earn the love you so desire.” Meanwhile, the soft, gentle voice that speaks in the silence and solitude of my heart remained unheard or, at least, unconvincing."

You are my Beloved

Someone I care about very much was going through a rough time recently. Because I love them, I wanted to comfort them. As I thought about what to say, I remembered a quote from a book by Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest and prolific author who passed away several years ago. In his book, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living In a Secular World, he writes:

"Ever since you asked me to write for you and your friends about the spiritual life, I have been wondering if there might be one word I would most want you to remember when you finished reading all I wish to say. Over the past year, that special word has gradually emerged from the depths of my own heart. It is the word "Beloved," and I am convinced that it has been given to me for the sake of you and your friends.

no church without the reign of god

i started reading volf's after our likeness: the church as an image of the trinity this week. for any of us who have been actively involved in a local church, we know how hard it is to stay actively involved! in this brief quote, volf reminds us of the identity of the church, and as amazingly impossible as it sounds, how it is the vehicle (paul the apostle would say "body") that god has chosen both to reveal himself to the world and get his work done.

Bonhoeffer on Community, part II.

Here are some other quotes from Bonhoeffer's Life Together, chapter 1:

"One is a brother to another only through Jesus Christ. I am a brother to another person through what Jesus Christ did for me and to me; the other person has become a brother to me through what Jesus Christ did for him.  This fact that we are brethren only through Jesus Christ is of immeasurable significance. Not only the other person who is earnest and devout, who comes to me seeking brotherhood, must I deal with in fellowship. My brother is rather that other person who has been redeemed by Christ, delivered from sin, and called to faith and eternal life. Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were to be added to our community; it remains so for all the future and to all eternity." (p.25.)