The Power of Parental Presence

"...in your presence there is fullness of joy" --Psalm 16:11

Last Sunday my daughter did not want to do her homework. She is usually a very diligent student who generally makes good grades, but on Sunday she was just one big whiny mess. Her brother had finished his homework in twenty minutes. But she refused to buckle down and get hers done.

My daughter learns in Hungarian. That basically means I can be of little help to her when it comes to homework -- a situation she is always all to eager to point out. But on Sunday she just kept whining: "It's hard. I can't do it... wah, wah, wah." I am sure all parents know the schpeel.

Finally, I just sat down on the couch next to her. I had her read the assignment aloud to me. I could not understand but a couple words in the reading comprehension exercise. I just sat there and listened. I directed her to the first question. And she readily answered it. And then the next and the next.

Before we knew it we were done and on to Hungarian grammar. Here I could be of even less help. But I sat beside her as she worked. Within fifteen minutes it was all done.

And then she hugged me.

As I thought back on the day's events I pondered what had happened. My daughter did not need me to give her the answers. She really did not even need much direction. All she needed was a parent's presence. And that simple presence was enough. That made me wonder if there wasn't something uniquely powerful in a parent's presence.

Perhaps I disregard the value in just sitting next to my kids while they do what they need to do and I don't really realize the importance of it.

And perhaps it's not so different with our Heavenly Father's presence too. Just as my daughter thought she could not do what was placed before her, we often whine and complain to God. We want Him to waltz in and give us the answers. We want Him to change things. But what we want and what we need are two different things.

He has prepared us for today's homework. He has equipped us for the task. And what we really need is quite simply to sit in His presence as we get the job done that He's called us to do.

Unlike me, He fully understands the power of His parental presence. The problem is I too often disregard the value of His presence or deny the fact that He is present at all if He fails the act in the way I think He should.  But His presence is not proven by His miraculous intervention or His succinct answers. It is proven by what He did and where He has chosen to dwell. Christian recording artist Michael Card put it well in his song Could It Be?:

Could it be, You make Your presence known so often by Your absence?
Could it be that questions tell us more than answers ever do?
Could it be you'd really rather die than live without us?
Could it be the only answer that means anything is You?

Maybe it's time to stop whining about the answers and start realizing His lack of action is not really an indication of His absence at all. It is an opportunity for us to experience His presence for what it really is: to simply enjoy a good hug from Him after doing exactly what He's equipped us to do. And there is great power in experiencing His presence in that simple way.

The Fallacy of the "Love God"

Valentine's Day, the day of LOVE recently passed once again.

To tell you the truth, I largely missed it this year. My husband, being the amazing man he is, remembered it in all its glory.  But I was so caught up in day-to-day challenges that until he whipped out the candy and cards, I forgot all about it.

I think Valentine's day is overrated. It plays into the tendency of our modern age to deify human attraction, romance, in a nutshell the secular idea of love. It is a god, that which we believe will make us complete, fulfilled, satisfied and happy. And unfortunately, it is a false god much like that which is discussed in the first of the ten commandments.

Wait a minute! Some may say. God is love, right? So what's wrong with deifying love.

The problem is that which we are de-ifying is not really love. It may be affection. It may be lust. It may be codependency. But love it is not.

So to be cliche, I must ask, "What is love?" I mean the way God sees it and puts it into human terms.

There is a famous biblical discussion about love between Jesus and Peter in John 21. In this interlude, the risen Christ keeps asking Peter "Do you love me?"  The first two times he uses the word "agape" which means to love something in a way that does not depend on reciprocation or innate worthiness. Peter answers that he does love Christ, but he does not use "agape" he uses "phileo" which is brotherly love or affection. Peter's denials of Christ on that fateful night of the crucifixion testify all too loudly in his conscience for him to use any other word for love.

Finally the third time, Christ simply asks Peter, "Do you love (phileo) me?" And Peter is grieved. Peter came face to face with his own inability to love properly -- to love well.  After all, if you cannot love Christ well, then who can you love?

But this is a moment of great significance -- a moment Christ has painstakingly engineered over the course of Peter's discipleship.  Christ brought Peter to this point that Peter might understand his own inadequacy in the area of love.

Because that's the very place where true love can begin.

We are all so willing label things "love" that are not love and then build our own alters to it, pretending that we worship God.

God is love, indeed. But He is real love, the kind of love that is ignited in us only when we first are brought to understand our own inability to accomplish it. For we, like Peter, will only ever learn to love well, to agape love, when we allow our hearts to be grieved by the reality of our own inadequacy and therefore rely on our Lord's ability love through us.

God-Blindness

"You shall have no other gods before me."--Exodus 20:3

This first commandment seems kind of antiquated.  Western society today likes to laugh at any concept of God, categorizing such as silly superstition, uneducated, and certainly unscientific. So the point of this commandment is moot, right?

Ironically, as averse as society is to God, we are all to eager to build gods for ourselves: the primary god being the self.

We seek ... no, we demand instant gratification!  That is the most important thing. We want all our pleasures satisfied and will worship at the alter of that which satisfies the quickest, though certainly not the completest. And so we ardently pursue cheap imitations of God.

There are those who believe God has no interest in our pleasures -- that he is the totalitarian disciplinarian, marching around with the proverbial hickory stick in hand ready injure those who pursue such vain endeavors.  CS Lewis argued quite the opposite, however.  He suggested that perhaps our problem is not that we seek our own pleasure, but that we are too easily satisfied. "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea," he wrote.

Our pursuit of pleasure is perhaps not the problem as much as the fact that our perspective is askew. We do not see things as they are and therefore seek to satisfy our desires with things that can never satisfy. We therefore make gods for ourselves out of worthless imitations.

That which we make out to be the gods of our lives become the lenses through which we perceive the world around us. Those lenses skew reality so we fail to see what is really important. That's why a mother can abandon her child for the god of drugs or alcohol, or sometimes even the "love" of a man who will only throw her away.  That's why a father can abandon his family in pursuit of "happiness" with another woman.

Idols blind us.  Regardless of whether it comes in the form of money, sex, success, ambition, or even ministry and service to God, idols blind us.  And ANYTHING, no matter how good the thing, that takes our attention away from our relationship with the true God is an idol and will skew our perspective -- render us blind.

"If your power to see has been blinded, don't look back on your own experiences but look to God." Oswald Chambers exhorts. "It is God you need.Go beyond yourself and away from the faces of your idols and away from everything else that has been blinding your thinking."

.

Brats of Grace

"But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on His law he meditates day and night." Psalm 1:2.

The law. It's gotten a bum wrap in our day and age. Modern western society tends to see it as oppressive, authoritarian, an enemy of true freedom.  And, unfortunately, the sentiment has seeped into how we understand faith and God as well as how we raise our children.

Granted, both nations and religions have abused "law" in many ways over the human history which fuels the case against it.  Legalistic churches condemning the down and out portrays a stark contrast of what Christ called the church to be.  And so we ridicule "law" and champion "grace" to such an extent that we have cheapened what grace truly is.

The psalmist rhapsodizes over and over again about his love for the law of the Lord. He has a passion for it. It is precious to him.

We tend to turn up our noses at it, commenting "Well, I'm glad I live the age of grace."

But in doing so we miss the point!  The law is our friend, precisely because it condemns us.  Without it, we would be clueless as to how bad off we really are.  Without it, we could pretend that we are good enough.  We could evaluate ourselves according to our own deeds and feel quite smug and self-righteous.  And we are prone to these very attitudes.

We need the law because without it, we CANNOT understand grace.

I believe there is a reason so much of the Bible is Old Testament -- life under the law.  Law is the very foundation to understanding grace. Without the law there is no grace.

But the modern Christian era tends to want to ignore law in the name of grace and this paradigm impacts all areas of our life, especially how we parent.  The trend in past generations was toward authoritarian parenting and there was plenty of baggage that came with with that.  In reaction to that, we've thrown out strong adherence to rules in exchange for a kinder, gentler style of parenting.  Today, parents do not say "no" to their children.  There are not absolute rules, and misbehavior does not have consequences.  Children are free to question their parents with the ugliest attitudes imaginable. Backtalk is accepted even at the earliest ages and respect has gone the way of eight-track tapes and celluloid films.

We may think we are teaching our children about grace with our unconditional acceptance of their bad behavior, but I would argue that we actually may be creating barriers to their very salvation.

Think about it.

The child who has a clear cut set of reasonable rules that when broken incur consistent consequences (punishment) understands earlier and more clearly that sin has consequences or that "the wages of sin is death."

But the child who faces no rules and/or no consequences for misbehavior has no frame of reference for this foundational concept of faith.  How can he grasp the idea that Jesus took on the consequence of our sin when he has never experienced that sin or bad actions have consequences?

In my years of teaching in Hungarian public schools as well as doing kids ministry, I've witnessed the trend toward permissiveness and in Christian circles it is often framed in terms of teaching loving grace.

But in truth we are doing our children no favors if we try to teach them grace without first laying a clear foundation of law.  By this I am not talking about the authoritarian parenting of generations past, but rather clear-cut reasonable rules that we can enforce with consistency.  Rules that establish the principle that sin has its consequences which cannot be escaped.

Because then and only then can we truly begin to teach our children of the spectacular mysterious gift of God's grace.

The Psalmist had it right. The law is not our enemy. It should be our delight because it brings us into the fullness of His magnificent grace. And that is worth meditating on, both day and night.

How Evil Could You Be?

"...deliver us from evil" --Matt 6:13


What does the face of evil look like? Does it bear the rectangular mustache of Hitler or does it hide behind the long, bristly beard of Bin Laden?

Or can evil lurk in that image we see each morning in the bathroom mirror?

How evil might each one of us be -- given the right circumstances?

In describing Hitler and Stalin, the great evils of his time, CS Lewis insightfully wrote: "You and I are not, at bottom, so different than these ghastly creatures." Could that be true? It is worth pondering.

We live in an age where a great deal of evil is minimized by our social customs and even  excused under the auspices of psychology and medicine.

For example, if a child is rude and disrespectful to you and is forced to apologize, what are you supposed to say?

"Oh, that's okay."  Or "It's alright."  Or "no problem, don't worry about it."

What are we teaching kids?  It's not alright to treat others poorly.  The apology does not make the behavior okay.  Treating others badly is a problem.

Perhaps a more appropriate response would be "I forgive you."

We downplay wrongdoing even on the adult level, but we have found more sophisticated ways to make evil behavior palatable and void of responsibility.

In 1991 in Virginia, a 41 year old woman was acquitted of drunk driving after claiming "diminished responsibility" due to her PMS. In England, a barmaid who murdered her co-worker in a fit a rage was convicted on the lower crime of "manslaughter" after claiming severe PMS diminished her responsibility.

Yes, I understand the whole chemical imbalance and hormone thing. Yes, I've experienced a bit of it myself.  But is that an excuse for sin? Does it make sin okay?

A few weeks ago I visited a friend who struggles with a bipolar disorder. She is very open about it. And I have to say  she manages it extremely well. Still the disorder impacts every aspect of her life. But she has not used it as an excuse for sin.

She has taken responsibility which in her case means meeting with a therapist each weak who adjusts medication regularly. She has to make conscious choices when everything inside of her is driving her to run away.  When all feelings tell her to do things that would destroy her life, marriage, and family, she must choose to fight and avoid situations that might even lead to temptation. And she does it. She fights a hard battle each and every day, tirelessly. She does it because she knows what is at stake.  Her prayer of "deliver us from evil" is a very real and tangible one.

Humbled by how she lives her life, I had to re-evaluate how I respond to my own mood swings which are just a result of being female. How often do I allow the fact that I feel edgy and miserable inside to become some sort of license to snap at my husband or children.

 The fact that  I feel bad does not give me a right to treat others badly. (Yes, I know the blog will come back to bite me, but that does not make it any less true.)

And men are not off the hook.  How often do we let things like stress (whether we brought it on ourselves or it was thrust upon us) to be our excuse to treat others badly?

Do I really think that because I feel overwhelmed and stressed that it's okay to yell at my kids, be rude to my spouse, slap the dog ...etc.?

It sounds ridiculous, and yet we've bought into it. So how far are we willing to take it?

Hitler had a troubled childhood, does that somehow atone for his sins?  What was in Bin Ladin's chemical makeup and childhood upbringing that crafted him into the image of evil that he became?  Do those things invalidate his countless murders?

Considering how bad we are at taking responsibility for how we treat others, if we found ourselves in either Hitler's or Bin Ladin's same circumstances, would we really be so different than they?  It's a chilling thought.

And with that thought, we can properly look at this line of the Lord's prayer: "Deliver us from evil."

Indeed we are capable of all kinds of evil and we can thank God that he has preserved us in so many ways.  Still we allow evil to creep into our lives and even embrace it.  We've allowed certain sins to become familiar friends, so much so that we hardly even think about asking forgiveness for them anymore.

No wonder Christ taught us to cry out, "Deliver us from evil."

Let's rekindle the desperation of this plea and recognize how we've given evil a foothold in our lives.  Let's stop giving ourselves a license to sin in the name of stress and pms and start crying out forgiveness and help. For God wants to help us bear those firey emotions -- that we may not to leave those we love most as scorched victims of our wounding words and deeds.

The Worst Thing That Could Have Happened

"Lead us not into temptation ..." --Matt 6:13


It was the worst thing that could have happened.  For a major in the US Army to be passed over three times for promotion to Lt. Colonel, stung with a bitterness that was not unlike death.  Yes, it was a death, the death mark to a military career that had otherwise appeared quite successful. Everyone who knew him and had worked with him were aghast. If ever there was a major who deserved promotion, it was Major Russell J. Chun.

What no one knew at the time was all that hung in the balance of that promotion. Had he become Lt. Col. Chun, Russell would indeed likely have received the accolades he deserved and completed all the accomplishments he'd planned. But countless lives would have also been left in bleak darkness.

Because he did not make this promotion, he became involved with GoodSports International and began working with orphans in Hungary. As a result I met him, leading to our marriage and the birth of our daughter and the adoption of two children out of the Hungarian orphanage system. But that is only the beginning. His retirement in 2005 led to a consistent presence in the Miskolc orphanage where the children regularly hear and experience the love of Christ. Beyond that, at least four or five other adoptions can be traced directly to Russell's involvement with GoodSports and the Miskolc orphanage.  Still more, thanks to Russell's failure to make Lt. Col, one orphanage boy grew up to work with GoodSports where he met his American wife. Her family has so embraced him that he has discovered what family is all about.  Moreover, another boy who grew up in the orphanage now attends Bible college in Hungary.  And these are just a few of the stories where we've had the privilege to see the outcome. How many more do we not even know about!

Yes, at the time it seemed like the worse thing that could happen to a successful major in the US Army. But in God's economy, it was the best thing that could have happened for countless souls.

When we think about temptation, we think about the lure to sin.  But often we limit our scope to sins like adultery, fornication, lying, stealing and cheating. And granted, we need to pray that we are not lured into such sin.  By praying this, we acknowledge our weakness. We realize and remind ourselves that we are frail creatures prone to failure in our spiritual walk and we desperately need to cleave to our Lord to make it through the temptation.

But temptation can take many forms -- forms that we are all too comfortable with.  And subtle sins can become familiar friends in the landscape of our lives, so much so that if we really understood what we were asking God, our human nature might hesitate to pray this prayer.

CS Lewis explained it well when he said, "'Lead us not into temptation' often means, among other things, 'Deny me those gratifying invitations, those highly interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire.'"

The prayer "Lead me not into tempation" may well mean, in practical terms, "Deny me success in my career because that success would make me smug and self-satisfied." It could mean, "Deny me marriage, because that relationship would become more important to me than my First Love."  It might mean, "Deny me a house or car because having those things would make me materialistic."

In a nutshell, these five simple words can have long-reaching ramifications.  It can mean, "Deny me all things that I long for and value most if they, in any way, would draw me into sin"

Because at the end of the day, when all is said and done, God is more interested in our character than our career.  His deeper concern is for our holiness more than our happiness.

And so Jesus urged us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation..." So if we are brave enough, if we have faith enough, let's obey and pray it. But let's do so with open eyes, understanding all that it might mean.  Because we may well be asking God to allow that which we think is "the worst thing" to actually happen to us.

But we also may well discover, like Russell Chun, that the thing we deemed "worst" by the standard of our frail and fallen desires may actually end up being a better plan with effects far greater than we could have ever dreamed.

The Supernatural Act of Forgiveness

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors...” Matt 6:12

I was mad.

More than mad. If aggravation, disappointment, and outright anger could be seen as steam blowing out my ears, I could have powered a steam engine at full speed. A church I greatly respect had removed two pastors for superficial theological differences. That alone was bad enough, but those were the only two pastors the orphans I worked worth had ever known. These men and their wives had shown love to these kids and now with little to no notice, these ministers were going back to the states.

What message was that sending my kids at the orphanage? To have these people leave with hardly a chance to say goodbye would be yet another slap of rejection in the face of an unwanted child. To know a church was the cause would form their impression of what “church” meant.

As I walked through the streets of Budapest running the account of what had happened through my head, I was ready to burst with rage. And who should I stumble upon but the pastor of my church. He was not singularly the force behind the denomination's decision, but he was part the authority structure that carried it out.

“Hey Trudy!” he greeted me pleasantly. “How's it goin'?”

I held my chin high as I looked him in the eye and answered, “As well as I could, given the circumstances.”

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?” he asked kindly, in that pastor/counselor tone that shows sympathy and care.

Now he had asked for it and was ready to give it to him! With words that were on the surface polite and diplomatic, but underneath seethed with prickle and sting, I launched into a diatribe about how this church claims to “major on the majors and minor and minors” in points of theology but in reality had shown that is not the case. I told him how little I cared about their denomination's policies and politics, but I did care about the orphans. And those orphans are the greatest casualties of the decision. But I know they did not factor this into the equation when the denomination came down with its ruling. “...After all, they are only orphans.” I quipped with fire in my heart.

The man, perhaps wise beyond his years, met my prickles and stings with gentle tones as he expressed how painful this had been for him. And he promised the children would not be forgotten, and in the end, he asked, “Will you forgive me?”

Will you forgive me? Those powerful words all too often go unstated. I was caught off guard and mumbled something about how I was not sure it was an issue of forgiveness. I don't necessarily think it was a sin, but it on some level it was wrong. And I was all muddled inside.

As we look at this passage of scripture, it is interesting that it has been translated into English a number of ways. One version says, “forgive us our debts....” Another states, “Forgive us our trespasses....” Still another translates it, “Forgive us our sins ….”

The reason for the variation is that no one English word fully encapsulates the meaning. The original language uses a word here that encapsulates all these concepts.

So often, we take this part of the prayer to simply mean sin, as in clear-cut, breaking-the-ten-commandments-style sin. And we allow animosity that stems from less-clear offenses fester. Let's look at the different shades of meaning.

Debts: Financial debts are the first that come to mind, but it might also include a debt of deed. For example, we often say, “I owe you one” or “he really owes me for the help I gave him.” It may also include property debt, as when someone borrows and breaks something.

Trespasses: This word puts me in mind of the rickety signs that would hang from rusty metal gates in rural Texas. “No Trespassing” the signs read. It means don't come in here. It sets a boundary in no uncertain terms. To trespass represents a violation of person or property. Trespasses could include abuse, stealing, misuse of property among other things. But it also includes much simpler things like when people presume upon your time and you get forced into doing things you really never wanted to do. It can include those times when people take your stuff without asking or say something that is really inappropriate or hurtful – whether they mean it that way or not. It includes a host of minor offenses that serve to irritate, aggravate, and alienate us from those around us.

Sins: This one is most obvious. Sin is breaking the law of God. The clear cut disobedience to the ways and Word of God.

By looking at these three different words, our scope on this verse expands to a fuller understanding of this element of The Lord's Prayer.

By imploring God, our Father, to Forgive us our debts, trespasses, sins. We acknowledge:

1. Our debt: all that we owe that we could never repay, beginning with salvation and continuing to every aspect of our life.
2. Our trespasses: all the ways in which we go beyond the boundaries God has laid out for us. All the ways in which we presume upon his nature, power, goodness despite our inability to understand his ways. All the times in which we accuse Him when things don't turn out the way we think they should. All the ways in which we misuse and abuse the blessings He has given us.
3. Our sins: all the ways we disobey His Word.

By understanding this, the scope and spectrum of forgiveness expands requiring serious attitude adjustment in common daily interactions besides the obvious difficulty in forgiving blatant sins that have been committed against us.

This verse would be meaty enough if it just stopped there. But Jesus doesn't stop there. He takes it one very uncomfortable step further when he adds, “as we forgive our debtors” or “those who trespass/sin against us.”

Linked to the first part of the equation comes that small but brutal word “as.” And by making this link Jesus underscores how important forgiveness is to the Christian life.

So not only do we need to consider our need to be forgiven for this spectrum of offenses, we also need to forgive in like manner.

Why is it so hard to do?

There is an array of reasons why it is hard to forgive, especially if the offense is some heinous act, a truly unforgivable deed that violated us to the core.

We don't want to forgive because:

1. Fear – the false belief that forgiveness means you have to open yourself up to repeated abuse by the perpetrator. But forgiveness does not mean becoming someone's doormat. Forgiveness is where you are in your heart and if the offender shows no indication of changed behavior you are under no obligation to return to a bad/dangerous situation.
2. Justice – the perpetrator does not deserve forgiveness. Many times those who sinned/trespassed against us really are not sorry, making forgiving them all the more difficult. We might relaize we can't and don't have to trust this person anymore, but how do we let ourselves trust anyone else? This opens a whole new can of worms.

When we face these kinds of situations, it almost makes us wonder why God would even give us free will if we only use it hurt one another? We all too often use it to turn our back on Him as well. Would it not be better if we had no choice. Wouldn't we all be safer and the world be a better place?

I pondered this issue for years. And it wasn't until I attended a lecture in Budapest some years ago that I finally understood. There a  man spoke about Adam and Eve and the garden and free will. To give these first human creations the gift of free will was a remarkable risk. It risked turning all of the exquisite creation into a tailspin of disaster. Why would God, especially a God who is sovereign, take such a risk?

The man explained that it was an issue of love at its very definition. We all know that God is love, right? The whole point of creation is rooted in love and relationship. That's what he wanted out of us. That's why he created us. But love by its very essence requires free will.

“It is the free will that gives love value,” the man said.

There could be no real love without the risk. And so as we face a cruel and hurtful world, we too must choose to take the risk if we are ever to experience that which we are created to experience: love and relationship with Him and others.

Forgiveness is central to both love and relationship. And therefore it is a critical ingredient in the Christian life.

Nobody ever said forgiveness is easy. Some may argue that in certain circumstances it is unrealistic and unnatural. But maybe that's the point. To forgive is such an antithesis to our nature that each act suggests something supernatural in the spirit has occurred. And if it is supernatural then it is something we need not embark upon alone. We can place our frail, weak hand into the palm of God and ask him to walk us through it.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, tells how one of the early church fathers explained this passage: “He says it's a bit like teaching a child to do something. The parent does it carefully a few times, then steps back and says, 'now you show me.' God forgives and then steps back and says, 'now you show me how to forgive.'”