When you have trouble keeping your mind on your Bible reading, praying, or on a sermon (never happens at Shandon – right?), here are a few tips:

1) Don’t expect too much of yourself.  When you do, in any field of endeavor -including time with God – it leads to short-term trying harder and a long-term sense of failure frequently followed by quitting.  There are parts of Scripture that are fascinating.  There are prayer needs that are riveting.  There are others that are common and everyday but still important.  Set a level of focus that is fairly normal, and if you fall below that normal level of focus, make yourself go back and start again as a discipline. 

 2) Tell yourself you’re going to have to pass a pop quiz on this passage and make yourself pay attention to the details.  While you pay attention to the details, you may be surprised at the inspiration that pops out of the page at you. 

3)  When your mind wanders during prayer, just stop.  Say, “Lord, excuse me for just a moment.”  Pick up a paper and pen or pencil and write out the distraction you have.  Then you won’t forget it and you’ll be able to go back to it and deal with it when you’re through with prayer.  As soon as you’re finished jotting down a note, just start talking with God again when you were interrupted.

4) Ask yourself, “Why am I bored with this passage of Scripture or this prayer need?”  Maybe you need to eliminate that prayer for a time.  That’s ok to do.  With Scripture, maybe you don’t have any idea why it was written in the first place.  (For example: law, genealogies.)  You can also find out from a Bible dictionary why that Scripture was written such as Nelson’s New Bible Dictionary (the best one-volume, Bible dictionary I know of at this point).  That has helped me, at times, to make difficult passages more interesting.  Also, I’ve been really rewarded by puzzling over something that is in Scripture for years (like genealogies) and finally getting it.  As one man said to me, “I wouldn’t spoil your search to understand the genealogies by telling you why they were written for anything.”  Twenty-five years later, I’m glad Dr. Nelson didn’t give me a quick and easy answer, and I’m glad the Lord made me puzzle about it.  I’m not going to tell you why either.

           Before I tell you about these anchors and how they look, let me make sure you don’t think these keep you anchored to God.  He anchors Himself to you and the anchor line cannot be broken.  These are the things you do because they deepen your sense of being anchored but do not create it.  This past Saturday I gave Patty 12 red roses because I love her like no one else on earth and because she is my wife.  The gift did not cause me to be either married to her nor to be more married to her.  They did enhance my joy in a marriage we already had.  These disciplines will do that for your commitment to God, and that is all they are designed to do.

 Help 1 - A BROKEN-IN BIBLE 

You must become a Bible reader.  It is God’s Word to anyone who reads it.  Your Bible should be a broken-in, well-used book with the feel of something used regularly.  Problems I hear people have that prevent them from having a well-read Bible are:

1.   I don’t understand it.
2. My mind wanders.
3. I don’t see the point of parts of it.

             ANSWERS:

1.  I don’t understand it all either, but I understand it much better as I read it than I do when not understanding it is my excuse for not reading it.
2.  My mind wanders when I fish, watch a movie, talk with Patty, or talk to myself.  So what?  I still go fishing because a wandering mind doesn’t stop the enjoyment of fishing. The same goes for Bible reading. 
3.  I don’t see the point of roses, but Patty does, so I give her roses.  I don’t see the point of genealogies, but African ancestor worshippers who are brought to Christ are more blessed by the genealogies in the Old Testament than by any other part of the Book.  Since when does anything have to mean something to me to be worth my time or money?  Read in faith that it’s in there for a reason and keep at it.  You need to learn to do that about a lot of things – might as well start with Scripture.

Next Time: CALLOUSED KNEES

Every Christian is meant to experience God.  The book of 1 John speaks to ways we experience Him.  In my last two blogs, we saw that one way we experience Him is that we have a new relationship with sin.  In chapter two we see we achieve stability as a ship at anchor is stabilized.  John doesn’t use the term “anchor” in 1 John 2, but the Christian life is certainly described here as anchored.

             Notice all the affirmative statements in 2:12-14.  “Your sins are forgiven.”  “You know Him.”  “You have already overcome the evil one.”  “You are strong.”  “The Word of God abides in you.”  Anchored, solid, and stable.  What a contrast to the hyper spirituality of the heresy of Gnosticism which said you need to know more and more and be more and more pure but could never tell them how much more of either.  For them the carrot of God’s love and approval was always within reach but never in the mule’s mouth.  For the Christian, God in His grace hands the carrot to His people.

             The promise of stability is a wonderful promise in a world as unstable as ours.  I hope you are growing in being anchored, but I warn you.  Unless you get anchored rightly, when things in your world get better, the anchor of Christ can start to feel like a ball and chain.  Remember, rightly anchored doesn’t mean just staying in the same place all the time.  It means you are willingly connected to Christ by faith and surrender and are being drawn to Him by the work of the Holy Spirit.  If this is not the nature of your anchoring, it may not feel like a blessing to you the way it should.

 Anchored Rightly…and NOT

             The worst possible way to be anchored is when you are rowing like crazy in another direction.  When we are dishonest, immoral, or drugged, yet we have honestly accepted Christ as our Savior, His Spirit, Word, and church are annoyances to us.  They’re more like a dog barking when we’re trying to sleep.  The problem for you is God is always right.  If you ever get right with God, you’ll be glad He didn’t say, “Oh, it’s ok.  You go ahead.  I understand.” 

             Another unhelpful way to be anchored is when Christ is like a heavy weight on the bottom that keeps you from going anywhere.  This keeps you from harm but also keeps you from growing and having any Christian dynamic about your life.  This, unfortunately, is what too often passes for Biblical Christianity.  It feels stable to us but looks stuck to others and to God.  The old song, “I Will Not Be Moved” meant I will not be shifting constantly.  It did not mean I will not change as God leads me.

             Christ, our anchor, functions in our lives like the ancient anchor post.  These were found at the ends of piers in the ancient world.  A rope passing through the anchor post was fastened to a ship so that it both kept the ship from danger and thereby made it stable but also drew it home, changing its position.  Our lives are designed to be both stable and changing.  What a reassuring and excitingly dynamic relationship with the Lord this proves to be.  In the next blog please look for anchors that are available to us that produce both stability and dynamic.

2.   Foundational work is best.  All three of these Scripture passages talked about      the importance of building a relationship with God over time.  In the second message we looked at the passage in Matthew (Matthew 7:24 – 27) about building your house upon the rock.  By that Jesus meant you need to go to the trouble to  build a strong foundation with God.  You must not quit because it’s a struggle.      Who wouldn’t rather dig in sand than pound on a rock with a primitive hammer and chisel.  The Lord is telling us that doing foundational work with God will not       always be easy.  Reading through the Bible is not just reading Psalms or John. 

      It’s also reading Deuteronomy, but there’s a reason God put that in the Book.  So be willing to have some bloody knuckles so when the battle with temptation  comes, you will be ready.

      This is not something you can do by relying on Sunday school, church, or your small Bible study group only.  It requires effort on your part.  I can’t urge enough the importance of reading the Word of God daily, talking to God daily, journaling when you reach a sticking point, and practicing spiritual disciplines like fasting, charity work, and accountability.  In short, make as much of an effort in your relationship with God as you do with anything else.  Make more effort if you really haven’t been that much into effort in your life.

  3.  A changed nature is the only way.  All three of the solutions offered in this Scripture passage assume you need a nature that is receptive to God.  This is not    man’s normal nature.  That’s why in Romans 12:2 Paul said, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  The renewed mind is the mind made receptive by your working at spiritual growth.

      One way to look at what transformation involves is that before we are born again we’re like a radio that is neither turned on nor tuned in to God’s broadcast frequency.  When we are born again God turns on our ability to receive His message and tunes us in to His channel.  This means we become naturally   receptive to Him, but it does not mean that it requires no effort on our part.  The business of transformation, like the business of presenting our bodies to the Lord, is something we must do on a regular basis.

       As we grow in grace, our ability to hear and understand His Word becomes more and more natural, our desire to do His will more and more natural, and our willingness to yield to temptation more and more unnatural.

       I don’t know how much you are working in your life at dealing with temptation early rather than late, at doing the foundational work necessary to be able to do that without a lot of struggle, and to grow in changing your nature, but these are by far the best ways to handle temptation successfully.

James 1:14 uses a word that describes the word to first get a fish out of his safe place before trying to get him to bite on the lure.  The point for us is we can build safe places and learn to love them to the degree that they are more appealing than the offer temptation always brings.

             One man told me of his battle with cigarettes, which he admitted he never really liked very much.  He had, with the help of nicotine gum, successfully stopped smoking but still wanted a cigarette more often than he liked even though it had been more than a year since he had smoked a single cigarette.  He knew his attraction was no longer a physical habit because the junk had been out of his system for too long, and he wondered why he still wanted something he didn’t want to do.

             He began praying, “Lord, show me where this urge comes from and how to get rid of it.”  The Lord did.  What He said to him was, “Cigarettes are your safe place. They are a dangerous safe place, and you need a new one.  What do you like about them and why and what can you learn to love and construct that will make them unappealing and make the alternative more appealing?” 

             He realized a decision he had made when he was young that cigarettes made him tough, independent, manly, and were associated with certain manly outdoor activities had become a big part of his self-image.  He began to call these ideas what they were:  silly, immature, unrealistic, the cause of bad breath, bad health, and unnecessary expense.  Then he began to build a picture of long life, a life pleasing to God, smelling good, feeling good, and not setting a bad example for his children.  Soon he began to wonder why he ever started smoking and no longer felt the former attraction to his old habit. 

             Unfortunately for us, we are often building places where we feel comfortable but are in danger.  Many of these places (like his “Marlboro man” place) expose us rather than protect us.  Do you have an image of your family that is Biblical and God-pleasing?  How much do you love it?  How about yourself and the work you do?  Do you have a picture of yourself as hardworking, successful, and pleasing to your boss or do you have a more self-serving image of yourself as a worker?  If you have developed and nurtured good desire, then the flash of temptation will have much less magnetism because you’ll say, “I love it right where I am.”  Building a safe place is the best and most positive way we can handle temptation.  I hope you are working at building some new safe places and some new parts of your self-image so that when temptation comes to you, you’ll say, “You don’t have anything to offer me.”

The important thing is to BEGIN.  Today is the perfect time to start reading through the Bible. 

Here is a link to the guide:

http://www.shandon.org/get-involved/connecting-to-god/

 Systematic theology has been something I’ve had a love/hate relationship with since seminary.  I love all theology because it is about eternal truth.  There are three types of theology which I love in this order:  Biblical theology, historical theology, and systematic theology. 

             Biblical theology asks the question, “What does the Bible say?” As straightforwardly as possible it lists what the Scripture says.  It does its best not to impose logic, tradition, preference, or the personal into the expression of theology.  It prefers Biblical words to non-Biblical words.  Historical theology is simply a study of the record of what the church and churches have said about God, church, man, etc., down through the ages.  Systematic theology is an attempt to create a structure for theology that does not exist in Scripture and is too much the product of human organization of thought.

 I’ve heard people say the Bible is a systematic book, but it is evident that if it were, they wouldn’t have to make that defense.  The Bible is a relational book and has some of the loose ends all relationships do, even being an infallible, inerrant book.  It demonstrates God’s love for the world through story, law, poetry, gospel, letters, etc., but in no part does it resemble a systematic theology for long.  Therefore, it is by design not systematic. 

 You may be a person who isn’t interested in this and may see it as a preacher argument, but I assure you most of the wrong turns the church has taken have been done in the name of systematic theology.  Most of the corrections have been through a return to Biblical theology.  This is a caution and an interesting point (I hope) for those of you who are students of our faith.

             If I were reading this blog and I had never done that, I’d be thinking, “It’s easy for you.  You’re a preacher.  This seems kind of braggy to me.”  So let me help you understand it is not.  It is designed to be an encouragement, not just to read through the Bible in a year but to make reading the Bible in a regular way a habit for you that you miss when you don’t do it. 

The first three times I tried to read the Bible through in a year, I failed.  I laugh about my good intentions being shipwrecked on the rocks of Leviticus, but that’s pretty much what happened three years in a row.  Then I went to a conference led by Francis and Edith Schaeffer.  At that conference Mrs. Schaeffer talked about her struggle with reading the Bible through in a year and how she had gone about doing it by dividing it up beginning at Genesis 1, Psalm 1, and Matthew 1.  I did that and it worked for me.  I now have been using the method that we hand out in the church for the last five times I’ve read through it, and it is by far my favorite method.  It is not for everyone.  My wife does not like it.  She prefers a Bible that is set up to help you read it through in a year.  It doesn’t matter at all what plan you use. 

When I read it through the first time, I felt like I had finished a difficult job.  Now when I pick the Bible up in the morning and read my assignment, I feel like I’ve come back to a wonderful and dear old friend.  It took me a number of times through to get to the point where it was that way.  But we need to recognize everything in life that is worthwhile is cultivated. Nothing comes to us wonderful and new.  I think that’s why old shoes and old pants and an old hat are so good for us to put on.  The Bible needs to feel like that to you – something you miss when you don’t read it and something that you rejoice in being with when you do. 

Make the effort with me again this next year to read through the Bible.  We’ll be handing out the Bible reading plan, but the plan won’t do anything for you if you don’t sincerely desire to utilize it.

Rule 3:  PRAYER AND SCRIPTURE MATTER MOST.  Prayer and the reading of the Word of God appear to be the two most consistently essential items in quality walks with God.  They are for me.  There are certainly other things you can do.  You may fast.  There are many books that will teach you how.  You may give sacrificially to God’s causes.  You may minister to or give to people anonymously.  All these spiritual disciplines will help you have a walk with God.  But the two that seem to be the most consistent for people is (1) praying – that is talking with God, listening to God, confessing your sins, praying for others and (2) spending time reading the Bible for the purpose of learning of His character and will for us.