Lessons from our marriage

My wife and I celebrated 10 years of marriage this week. After I was discharged from the military, she and I moved to Colorado with a little PT Cruiser full of stuff so she could work as a flight attendant while I studied for my degree to teach science. We joked that if we could make it though that period of time, we could make it through anything. Well we encountered plenty of other interesting things over the years, some were wonderful some were tough. I feel like we've learned a lot and hope that sharing these will help others.

Some of these lessons were learned over a long time, others have been with us through from the beginning. Nothing here is unique, there are books and people filled with great advice, and all of these can be found in the Bible in some way. These are some of the lessons that have seen us through thus far. Obvious disclaimer (especially if you know me): I am not a perfect husband by any stretch, I have plenty of stuff to work though and I can only thank God for my wife's patience.

• Divorce is not an option - It's become too accepted, and if you agree to never allow the "D" word to come up in conversation, at least you know there will always be light at the end of the tunnel.
• Do not let the Sun go down on your anger - (Ephesians 4:26) This was given to us on our wedding day and it is hard to not hold onto your anger but starting a day with a fresh start is a great way to go.
• Your marriage has enemies - Satan, pride, and ego. You have to realize it first then you won't see you wife as your enemy. Overcome these by standing strong in Christ. Don't be so intent on getting your way, it's not worth it. I've found the only way to overcome my pride is to serve my wife like crazy (Ephesians 5:25). What that looks like for my wife is different for yours.
• Before you think about your partner's faults, think about all of yours they're putting up with.
• Be grateful when she teaches you something that can be improved about yourself. Luther said, "Marriage is a school for character" and God will use your partner to conform you to His image.
• If you find yourself having a huge fight about something silly (in our case it was the ripeness of a banana). Take a step back, and laugh. Then work out the real problems as a team.

Paradigm Spirituality and an Apps Script that helps me stay focused on what matters

Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. --Francis Bacon

I am not prone to journaling or even taking notes. So when my Pastor told us to go write down our 4 Ps, this was not easy or natural for me. How many of us go through life with a detailed specific statement of what we believe and how we live it out?

The 4 "P"s I was referring to above come from the book we are going through in my discipleship class called Conformed to His Image by Ken Boa. They are:

• Presuppositions
• Perspectives
• Priorities
• Practices

These are in an order implying that your presuppositions influence your perspectives, your perspectives drive your priorities, and your priorities should shape your practices. As my pastor says, "You may say you want to be really good at something, but you really don't if you are not prioritizing it and putting it into practice.

You can read more about it on Ken Boa's website or an audio series on Bible.org but I really can't recommend the book highly enough. It covers many aspects of the Christian life, not just "perspective spirituality" and it's one of those books where every page will be filled with notes and highlights (and I don't typically highlight books).

On a slightly related topic, I wanted to share a tool I made to help me stay disciplined about my prayer life and to make sure my 4Ps stay up to date and remain prominent in my life. Praying has always been a struggle for me. I often find it difficult to know what to say. That is to say I pray, but I'm constantly fearful that I am asking God for too much and turning Him into someone I go to ask things from instead of having a relationship based on more than just requests.

I set reminders for myself throughout the day to pray and step away from work for a few minutes and refocus on God. I think this is a wise idea for anyone. I've written a Google Apps Script (?) that sends me a daily reminder of my prayer requests and a weekly reminder of my 4Ps. It also provides an easy form for me to submit my prayer requests throughout the day.

Faith Assistant Spreadsheet

To use the sheet (these steps assume you have a Google account):
1) Click the link above. It will make a copy into your drive folder (thanks Alice Keeler for the &newcopy trick).
2) Change the permissions on the spreadsheet to give yourself edit access.
3) Go to the menu and click Additional Functions --> Run this first. This will check your configurations (set on the Config tab in the spreadsheet) and set everything up.

4) Authorize the script (this allows the script to send you and email and calendar invites, it should look something like the image on the right)





After this you should get an email with a link to a Google Form, save and bookmark this form as you can use it over and over to save prayer requests (I have it bookmarked on my phone as well).

Each day you should get an email/calendar reminder with your prayer requests as well as a prayer from the common prayers tab. Feel free to change the time you receive it in the Config tab. I hope this helps you. If you have any suggestions for the script or issues leave a comment.

I've left many of my 4Ps in there in case it helps you understand each P's purpose but you should delete them and discover your own. There's a tab of common prayers and affirmations I have used in the past, and you should feel free to add your own tabs as you need. In my own version, I have a daily reminder to "Count the Words" because I am prone to talk a lot and needed something to help me track how much I am talking. I've also added a tab for quotes I'd like to keep track of and I've articulated my testimony.

Why God's Gymnasium?

God's plan is for each of us who call ourselves Christians to follow Jesus and live as He did (Luke 6:40, 9:23, John 13:15, 1 John 1:7). However I when I became a new believer, my spiritual growth was kept stagnate and full of frustration for years by a misinterpretation of how God carries out this plan to transform us to be more like Christ.

When I first became a Christian, I would often hear verses about the new life in Christ that described how God would work in my life to transform me. Verses like 1 Corinthians 5:17, Philippians 4:13, 2 Corinthians 12:9. Without a doubt these verses are full of truth, power, and encouragement. However I believe these verses taken out of context could give the wrong impression that God will instantly and independently remove any trace of sin, the desire to sin, and going forward you will live exactly as Jesus did. I struggled to understand why I still would commit the same sins as before and why wouldn't God save me from it when I cried out to Him?

While God does give us a new heart (Psalm 51:10) and we begin to love Jesus more and more each day (Matthew 6:33, John 4:13-14, 21:15). We will sin however (1 John 1:8) and if/when we sin, we wonder where God was to rescue us from it. Worse yet, we could be deceived into thinking we are not really saved (Matthew 13:19).

God initiated our relationship with Him when we could not (Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:5) and He made it possible for us to love Him and be in a relationship with Him (John 17:20-26). However, we are wrong to think that just as we were unable to save ourselves from sin, we are in the same way helpless with regards to sin after we follow Christ and that God will need to rescue us from every temptation. Our redemption will not be complete until we see Jesus, but in the mean time, we have been given the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:19-20, 1 Timothy 1:7), the Word (Psalm 119:105), and the Church (Hebrews 10:24) so we could be empowered to live as Christ did (Romans 6:11-14).

We have years of training and practice in loving the world and obeying its desires which manifests itself when we encounter temptation (Romans 7:21-23, James 1:14-15) and this must be worked out/overcome (Philippians 2:12-13). As God reveals aspects of our lives that are contrary to His will and His plan, we must choose to hand these over to Him. This is why Jesus tells us to pray that God's will be done, as it is in Heaven (Matthew 6:10).

So what is the process by which this happens? In an humbling aspect of God's nature, He wants us to willingly love Him and requires us to work together with Him to grow into everything He has prepared for us in Christ (John 15:1-16, Ephesians 2:21-22). This demands effort from both God and ourselves because throughout this process we will hold on to various aspects of our old self and in many ways want to continue to live as we did (1 John 2:15-16). You will find yourself being challenged daily by the Spirit to submit more and more areas of your life to Christ (Luke 9:23). The pendulum can swing to the other side and after a while you may start to feel pride that you have become a good person and have removed any trace of sin from your life, when suddenly we encounter a new discovery about ourselves that shows how deeply sin has permeated our lives. Don't believe me? Try fasting for a day or so and see how your disposition changes.

Just as you would not walk onto the track for a marathon without preparation, so we must prepare and train by practicing the disciplines of the Spirit. Hebrews 12 is the inspiration for this blog, where the author tells us to train. The spiritual training being advocated for uses the metaphor of an Olympic athlete and the word used for train in the Greek is gymnadzo which is where our modern word and idea of a gymnasium. So the Christian life is a lifelong membership to God's Gymansium where we exercise the entire person, not just the muscles of our body. I quote Dallas Willard from the Renovation of Heart who made the point far better than I could:

I will not be able "on the spot" to do the good thing if my inner being is filled with all the thoughts, feelings, and habits that characterize the ruined soul and its world. Rather, if I intend to obey Jesus Christ, I must intend and decide to become the kind of person who would obey.

If we do not prepare to stand strong against temptation, then we should not have any reason to expect that we will be able to stand against it when it comes. At the start of this post, I stated that it is wrong to think that God will do all of the work to bring change in your life. He could but He won't because that would not produce a Church full of dignity and character (Ephesians 1:18). However, I am also not advocating a legalistic life where we are each left to ourselves and God is simply observing. Here is another quote from Willard which he considers the key point of his book:

Spiritual transformation only happens at each essential dimension of the human being (Spirit, Soul, Body, Mind) when it is transformed to Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will interacting with constant overtures of grace from God. Such transformation is not the result of mere human effort and cannot be accomplished by putting pressure on the will alone.

I hope that this blog will equip you with tools, resources, and encouragement so you may be strong in the Lord (Ephesians 6:10) and serve Him completely (Mark 12:30).

Blessings from a Broken Radio Part 1

A few months ago the radio on my car stopped working. Ok, it might be more correct to say, it didn't fully retract when I was getting a car wash. With a commute of an hour each way, I knew I would go crazy if I couldn't find something to do. Thankfully, in the Bible study group I attended at our church in San Jose, we were given the task of memorizing scripture (specifically Romans 12). This was something I had done years ago when I worked the night shift in the Navy but sadly had neglected for years (among other parts of my faith).

Is memorizing scripture really for every believer?

Think about how many songs you know the lyrics to. You may be surprised that it is easily over 100. This means that up to this point you have memorized enough lyrics to equal two books of the Bible. I have yet to meet someone who was incapable of remembering a song (even toddlers can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star). In addition to the lyrics, think of all of the names, email addresses, stories, and more that we remember as part of our daily lives.

We take for granted that we can read the Bible but prior to the printing press, believers were required to remember what scripture they heard. In Jesus' day everyone who was able had memorized many parts of the Torah as a child and those who were to become disciples of great Rabbis had memorized the entire Torah (approximately 5888 verses)!

Keeping scripture in our minds, and on our hears was never intended only for some believers (Proverbs 4:21, Deuteronomy 11:18, Hebrews 10:16). Just as Jesus and the Apostles used scripture to overcome sin (Matthew 4:10), share the good news (John 3:16), encourage and rebuke (Matthew 21:16, 21:42), pray (Matthew 27:46). Scripture is valuable for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16), standing against sin (Psalm 119:11) and the forces of evil in the world (Ephesians 6:11), encouraging one another (Hebrews 10:24), and sharing what God has done in our lives (1 Peter 3:15)

So if it is possible for each of us to remember large amounts of text and each of us are to do it then is there something mystical about it? In many ways no. Memorizing scripture is in practice no different and can rely upon many of the common memory tricks and tactics that worked in school. The important thing to take note of is this is a skill and even if we are all capable to some degree, it requires effort in order to do it and to become better at it.

Be encouraged by the fact that, no matter what you might think you are capable of memorizing, God will bless your efforts. I can't begin to tell you how much it has impacted my relationship with God. It gives the Holy Spirit words to share with you and it will deepen your ability to follow Christ.

Getting started

While everyone is different, here are some tips I've learned from myself and my education background:

1. Make a plan. It's not enough to want to do it. You have to set yourself up to succeed. We find time for what we consider important and you would be surprised at how you can find a few minutes here and there. For me it was the traffic in the morning or the night watch shift in the Navy. Instead of wandering around aimlessly on the Internet when standing in line bored, why not practice and mediate on your verses? It helps pass the time and you'll finish with a much better attitude and refreshed spirit.
   
   Like any skill it takes time for this to become a habit but it will become easier over time. You wouldn't expect to learn a new language or build muscle without repetition, practice, and time and so it is the same with memorizing scripture.
   
   This should go without saying but find verses that fit your needs and that you love. Everyone has a different walk and personal relationship and while there are many verses that would benefit everyone, memorization is most satisfying and enjoyable when you discover them for yourself. If you are looking for a good place to start, here are the most popular verses searched for on Bible Gateway.


2. Get the right tools and know the tricks. I used to carry a large stack of flashcards I made from index cards cut in half. Nowadays there are great apps for smartphones as well. I use Remember Me and I know a few people who use Remember Anything for iOS. The Bible was meant to be remembered so use the time tested methods (TED Video, Wikipedia). Some of the most helpful for me are to look for patterns (e.g. the alphabetical order of the gifts in Romans 12:6-8 prophecy, serving, teaching...encourage, giving, leading, mercy) and chunking (useful for 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and Galatians 5:22-23). Try and visualize the situation written about or at least the words in your mind. This is especially useful for the Gospels and is exactly the reason that Jesus talked in parables so many would remember them.
   
   If you can give it a rhythm you'll find they'll stick with you more easily. This has been the approach of the Cantor, the Church hymn writers and even the Psalmists of the Bible took this approach to ensure the words would be remembered.

For those who need a more formal plan and guide, this is a great resource that has helped many memorize verses and even entire entire books: An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture.


3. Don't become mechanical. If you're a reader of the BrokenAirplane blog you know I'm not a big fan of memorization for learning sake unless it is applied. These are the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God and for it to have an effect it must be meditated on (Psalm 1:2) and applied (James 1:22) You can have a lot of knowledge but not be putting it into practice which is even worse because we will each stand before God and answer for how we used our talents. There are times when I get focused on the memorization and forget to slow down and reflect and appreciate what it is saying.

I wish you well as your practicing the discipline of memorizing and mediating on the Word of God. I pray that you will never find yourself bored in traffic again and that you will find strength and wisdom in the Word. Let this and everything you do be all for His glory.