“If being in the moment is hard, then being in the moment in a positive way is harder.”

- A.J Jacobs, from article in Real Simple magazine, September 2009

I sat in a cabin for two full days.  I read a book entitled, Mad Church Disease, detailing how leading in a church context can work against one’s health and spiritual vitality.  I read Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and all the Major Prophets.  I journaled and did some self-assessment.  I read a magazine article from Real Simple magazine that challenged me to the core.  And I made some commitments to make some changes in my life before the end of 2009.  One of those changes spiked the traffic on this blog and comments on my Facebook – I gave up my Blackberry for a regular phone.  Not sure for how long, but definitely going to be a minimum two month fast.

The second big theme I felt during this retreat was that I need to be engaged fully.  Getting rid of my Blackberry goes a long way in helping with this.  I have a friend who will look me in the face when I am distracted and LOUDLY call me out, “Be present, Scott!”  She cracks me up.

But, in all honestly, I have been shortchanging people.  Some have not had my full attention and focus.  And because of this, they have not been getting all of me, the best of me.  Some friends have been getting the dregs, the leftovers.  This is a hard pill to swallow.  But I felt the weight of this necessary movement in that cabin, writing in my Moleskine.  Dallas Willard once said, “The first act of love is giving attention.”  I am deciding to focus my attention for a purpose.  I am making moves and choices to become present

But not even just being present; rather, being present in a way that actually contributes something.  I say I love people, but that statement must be actualized into an action of real presence and attention.  If I really love people and if I am going to be present in a positive way, then it must be something larger than just a physical way.  More than just paying attention.  I have to be ready to offer myself, the best of myself.

So, this is my public commitment to a renewal in my presence and engagement where I am living.

Did you identify with my experience?  Do you struggle to be present?  If so, what gets in the way of being present in a positive way?  What can you do to change this?

Yes I did. And yes the title of this blog was a real text I received this morning. After posting my action to my Twitter feed and Facebook status last night, let’s just say the responses ranged from disbelief to skepticism to old-fashioned ribbing from long-time close friends.

This isn’t a stunt and it wasn’t a knee-jerk decision. It’s been percolating in me for a long time. But the final moment of clarity came almost a month ago when I was on a personal retreat. And this realization (I needed to give up my Blackberry for an extended period of time) was one of several moments of clarity. I hope to share others throughout the rest of the week here on the blog.

Dani had been pushing me to create better boundaries with my phone for some time. My blackberry use had been impeding my ability to be present with the people I cared about the most. Don’t get me wrong; it is an incredible tool, one that I greatly appreciated. It helped me stay connected to my volunteer teams and college students in greater ways. I endured enjoyed some weddings and other social events with the help of my ESPN app.  But, at the end of the day, the way I was using the great tool was just not working for me.

Also, Dani and I continue to make progress in our pursuit of freedom from credit card debt.  This choice, along with taking advantage of a discount on family plans through her job, will save us about $50/month, which has already been re-allocated to increase our credit card payments.

Today was the first day of this season of “fasting” in my life.  I am using a “normal” phone again (thanks to the generosity of a friend).  Yes, it has been tough.  Yes, it will create a need for adjustment.  However, I am confident that the discipline in this area will produce results and experiences that could be known no other way.

P.S. – I have a hunch that I am not alone in my addiction to my smart phone, nor my struggle to follow God in what He leads me to do.

Is there a place in your life where God is calling you to surrender something that has gotten in the way of relating to Him and others in the manner you know you need to?

Enjoyed talking last night during Week 2 of our Resurrecting Chrismas series. Definitely was not comfortable in the room, WAY too hot which made communication difficult to say the least. The challenge of having one department of bible studies and three worship services in the same building within 8 hours and everyone having their own preferences. But, something we hope to have remedied when we return to the Chapel for Crash on December 20th.

Gonna throw down a few of my concepts from last night (as always, the podcast is on iTunes and at rhinocrash.org):
-”I wonder if he (the driver who cut me off) if just lost his job and is really depressed. Awesome! This thinking has now moved from a magazine to my marriage. Yes!”
-”We are often aware of the crisis we are living, but we struggle to accept and come to terms with possibility of a crisis that someone else is experiencing.”
-”God does the best of things in the worst of times in and through us.”
-”Mary and Joseph may exhibit faith by the time they get to the manger in Bethlehem, but their story begins amidst great fear. The destination of the story may be faith, but its origin and journey is through fear.”
-”Crisis is a great opportunity. It can be good or bad. It can be the place where God produces the change that can come no other way.”
-”I just finished reading the Bible from cover to cover in 90 days. And from my view, it almost seems like your life has to be crisis to get included in the story.”
-”Mary’s pregnancy and Jesus’ trial and death produced a great crisis for his followers and those connected to him. But these two crisis produced the Incarnation (God taking human flesh) and the Resurrection – two events that changed EVERYTHING about the way we live our lives today.”
-”Following Jesus means we accept that the desire of our hearts – a real, meaningful, transcendent, undeniable experience of God’s presence and purpose in our lives – may be fulfilled in a situation or crisis that we did not expect or plan for. The present of God’s presence and purpose in our lives may come wrapped in a package that we did not expect.”

You can view previous posts in this series – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

8. The church should talk about families, but only in the context that ours are just as jacked up as anyone elses.  And this has been true from the very beginning.  Just read Genesis.  (stats about divorce) I read recently that evangelicals have the highest rate of divorce of any religious group in America at 56%.  That would be higher than mainline Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, etc.  And we find evangelicals holding the banner of “the sanctity of marriage” in the political arena.  We should humble ourselves friends and admit that marriage and family are difficult and messy things that many of us have not done well.  Genesis is a great example of how men and women can follow God and make a mess of their families.  Abraham calls his wife Sarah his “sister” twice and almost allows her to have sex with other men.  Isaac and Rebekah play favorites with their kids and one helps one son trick the father with incredible deception.  Jacob is too drunk on his wedding night to tell who he is consummating his marriage to and ends up married to two sisters whose relationship ends up boiling down to how fruitful their wombs are (or aren’t).  Yeah, lots of lessons on family life here, but from the view of what NOT to do.

9. If you are struggling with the desire to read the Bible, get some friends together and do B90X.  It CAN (no guarantees) help you find new places to read and study that intrigue you and capture your attention. B90X exposed me to so much of the Scriptures that I had not read in sometime, that I now have a long list of areas that I want to go back and read at a slower pace so I can soak up the good stuff.  The list includes Job, Lamentations, Amos, Micah, Malachi, Acts, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and James.

10. Even after earning two degrees related to Biblical Studies, I find that there is so much in the book that I have not engaged, understood, or mastered. So, the hope for all of us is that the Scriptures are not a well we can exhaust or master.  And frankly our focus should be allowing the Scriptures to master us, not striving to master the Scriptures.  I find that after being a follower of Jesus for almost 20 years, I still have far more room to grow than I realize.  I have more to learn, more to accept, more to let go of, and more to put my trust in.  I have studied the Bible in Hebrew and Greek at length.  I have taken classes in Biblical interpretation.  I have taken two semesters of classes on every section of the Scriptures.  And yet, I still feel like I understand so little.  But, as I told an elder of mine a few months ago when he asked me how I apply the Bible when I don’t completely understand it, “I do it everyday.”  Don’t let lack of understanding get in the way of your obedience to God.  Obey what you know and understand and commit to keep learning and growing.

To see the previous posts in this series, click here and here.

4. If made into a feature film, the Bible would be rated “R” or “NC-17″ or its makers would not submit it to the MPAA and it would be “NR-Not Rated”. I am not exaggerating here.  Most of the Scriptures is the Old Testament and most of that is scandalous.  I have lots of friends who carry the flag of “pick a book of the Bible and preach it verse by verse” as the only way to do it.  But preach verse by verse through Ezekiel 16 and the families in your church will have some crazy post-church discussions in the mini-van.  God describes Israel as the WORST PROSTITUTE EVER because she pays other people to let her have sex with them.  Ezekiel, speaking for God, says, “I will throw your skirt over your face and expose you to the world.” Yeah, do a VBS lesson on Ezekiel 23:14-21!  I won’t even go down the violence road or when God gets fired up at another king who gives God the finger and goes and does his own thing, thinking he can presume upon God.  I think we tame the Scriptures a great deal and skip the crazy stuff because it bothers and scares us.

5. Faith and doubt are not separate things – they occur together.  Similar with fear and courage, despair and hope. Most figures in the Bible are not nearly as faithful, courageous or hopeful as we think they are.  Gideon has a ton of fear.  David despairs about his son’s hostile takeover of the throne. Every disciple has incredible doubt about Jesus.  And yet, Gideon leads 300 men with courage and conquers tens of thousands.  David has hope, even when a wicked king is trying to kill him.  And the disciples’ faith is played out in most of the New Testament writings and in their leadership under great persecution.  Every person is a mix of faith and doubt, fear and courage, despair and hope.  I learn this in the stories I read.

6. The verse markings take away from the narrative in sections, confusing us about how we should read the Scriptures. I read the Old Testament without verse markings and I re-discovered the fact that most of these books are stories, not textbooks.  I read the letters of Paul and Peter from the message and remembered that they are like emails I get from friends – they don’t have verse and chapter markings.  If you are going to read the Bible at length, then consider using a translation that doesnt have verse markings.  It will be a refreshing experience.  Verses make us think “academic study”, long flowing paragraphs make us think “story”.

7. When reading the Bible, it is more important that the Bible reads you than you read the Bible. Because I fell behind twice, I ended up reading even faster than the pace marked out in B90x in certain spots.  And I realized that even though I was reading every word, sometimes I wasn’t letting it read me.  So, I would stop and write down a verse every chapter or observations of every book.  A friend who slowed down about midway through the Old Testament told me, “I feel like I am missing so much here.”  And I think what we missed out on, at times, was not important facts, data, or information.  I think what we missed out on were opportunities for the Scriptures to reveal the truth of our lives from God’s perspective – the good and the bad.  If I could back and change one thing, it would be this – that I got caught up in reading rather than being read.

You can read part 1 of this series here.

I learned the following over the last 90 days…

1. The majority of people in the Scriptures lived amidst great crisis. From Genesis to Maps, almost every single person is in crisis.  Nehemiah is leading a broken people to accomplish an impossible task. Job is trying to figure out why his life went in the toilet in one day. Solomon is trying to come to terms with life’s meaningless despite his wisdom, women, and wealth. David’s family is a mess. God asks Isaiah and Jeremiah to preach to people who won’t listen by doing things that will absolutely embarrass them.  And that’s just the Old Testament.  The disciples are all under Roman occupation following a man who is undermining and reshaping their entire worldview and every New Testament writer after this is writing to a persecuted church who would never be able to pledge allegiance to a flag or want to set off fireworks on the day set aside for national pride.  It almost seems that your life has to be in massive crisis to make it in the Scriptures.  The application for us? God does some of his best work (maybe even the majority of his work) when we are in crisis.

2. Any study or teaching of the Scriptures that neglects the Old Testament is JACKED UP! I cannot tell you how many pastors and teachers I know who major almost solely on the New Testament, especially the writings of Paul.  They never get to the Old Testament and that’s a crying shame.  I spent over 2/3 of my 90 days reading the Old Testament because its over 2/3 of the ENTIRE BIBLE!  If you don’t engage the OT, you are missing out and your view of God is jacked up.  Yes, Ezekiel 16 is CRAZY sexual, laws in Leviticus can be boring, Numbers has a lot of long lists and big numbers you will struggle to understand.  But man, if you don’t mine the first 39 books of the Bible for spiritual insight, wisdom, and direction, your relationship with God is not what it could be.

3. God is full of grace, long-suffering and incredibly compassionate – in the Old Testament and the New Testament. One of the first “heretics” in the early church was a man named Marcion.  He believed the God of the Old Testament was a different God than Jesus, a God not worthy of worship.  So, he rejected all the Old Testament content related to that God and any of the Gospel writings, letters of Paul and the General Epistles that seemed to reflect that God.  A very bad thing.  However, ultimately, a good thing emerges because it forced the early church to begin a 200 year conversation about what should be in the canon of Scripture (what you know today as the Bible – although Catholics and Protestants still debate the Apocrypha, but that’s another blog).  God is the same God in the Old and New Testament.  I read the Old Testament, every page, every word.  God is full of grace, patience, and love in the entire book, from cover-to-cover. He is long-suffering, he does not give people what they deserve, and he does everything he can to help people see their need for repentance and reconciliation.

On September 1st, 9 or 10 of my buddies and I started a crazy journey called B90x.  It was this insane thing I had seen on Twitter. A pastor in North Carolina challenged his people to take 90 days to radically alter their spiritual lives like the workout program P90x alters one’s body.  The challenge was to read the Bible (hence the B) in 90 days.  You can find the reading plan here.

I finished on day 90, this past Sunday, November 29th, along with a buddy of mine.  I know several guys dropped out early on, which is not a big deal at all.  The pace of B90X is incredibly fast and some guys fell behind and knew they didnt have the life space to catch up.  Others felt the pace was enabling them to miss too much and so they slowed down.  Some others will finish in longer than 90 days.  I had to play catch up two separate times.  One time, I read a massive amount of the Old Testament over 3 days at a friend’s cabin.  Regardless of how we all did, it has led to a ton of conversations between us that were not happening and for that I am extremely grateful and believe we achieved much between September 1 and November 29.

Over the next 3 days, I want to share with you 10 things I learned from reading the Bible in 90 days.  Just because someone will ask, I used this bible to read the Old Testament. I borrowed a copy of The Books of The Bible from Maxie Burch.  Its a TNIV version without verse markings, which made the Old Testament SO MUCH easier.  For the New Testament, I read a combination of The Books of the Bible, The Voice, NLT, NIV, and the Message.  I also used my YouVersion app on my Blackberry as well.

I will be posting part 2 later today, part 3 on Friday and part 4 on Saturday.

“Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg.”

-Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus