Everyone is somewhere on their spiritual journey. You may be at a place where you are beginning to consider the place Christ might have in your life. You haven’t taken the step of faith yet – but you are thinking about it. Or, you may be at a place where you have already asked Christ to come into your life. You have moved past some of the skepticism and questions that were constantly there before you took your step of faith, but you are just beginning to understand what it means to follow Him. There is still a dividing line between your beliefs and your lifestyle. Or, you may have come to a place where you are deeply invested in your faith. Without hesitation, you identify yourself as a Christian. There is a greater consistency in your beliefs, attitudes and practices. At the same time, there may still be some inner battles between two sets of values – the secular values that define success and happiness in our world and the spiritual values of selfless love that characterized the life of Jesus. Or, you may have come to a place of “surrender” where you have relinquished those secular values and worldly aspirations and yielded that control to Christ. While you still need to grow, you feel free to respond to the call of God.
Again, everyone is somewhere on their spiritual journey. But at least as important as where you are on your journey is whether you are moving on your journey. It’s possible to get stalled anywhere along the way. There is never a time in this life when we can claim to have “arrived.” Spiritual health always requires growth. That’s why we are going to be talking this fall about “Taking the Next Step.” We’ll be introducing the concept in our morning services on Sunday, September 11. On the evening of September 11 at 6:00 p.m. we will be holding a Prayer Gathering to ask that God will guide us as we take the next steps in our personal spiritual journeys as well as in our journey together as a congregation. We will also use this time to pray for our community and our nation. There can be no spiritual growth without prayer. I hope you will join us.
In our Sunday morning services for the rest of September and October, we will talk about taking the next step in a different part of our lives. For example, we will talk about taking the next step in worship, in compassion, in holiness and several other areas. It will be challenging. But if you’ve felt stalled, I’m praying that there will be a renewed sense of movement in your walk with God.
We will also be offering a variety of Sunday School and small group experiences this fall. Some will have a focus that is unique to the group. But all of them will be places where individuals can explore what it means to move forward under the direction of Scripture and with the support and encouragement of other followers of Jesus.
These are also times in which we are prayerfully considering our next steps as a congregation. So please pray that God will give us wisdom in that process.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the next steps will be in my own life and to hearing what God is doing in yours.
As I write, the temperature is climbing toward one hundred degrees. The weather forecast doesn’t hold out hope for a break in the pattern for several more days. Ah, the “Dog Days of Summer” in Southern Maryland! Things move more slowly. Energy fades more quickly. The sun beats down and even the shade heats up. When we hear that it is “one hundred degrees in the shade,” we know that there is no escape from the heat.
It seems that life has its “Dog Days” as well. There are seasons in which things heat up. It may be a prolonged illness or the loss of a job that results in financial uncertainty or a relationship that suddenly takes an unexpected and painful turn. We see little hope for a break in the pattern. We can’t stand the heat, but we can’t find a way out of the kitchen.
The Psalms are filled with evidence of “Dog Days” – particularly in the life of David. David spent years in which he had to run for his life. In the middle of that season, David wrote, “Strangers are attacking me; ruthless men seek my life – men without regard for God” (Psalm 54:3). In another place he says, “My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death assail me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me” (Psalm 55:4-5). Things were not going well and David wanted to escape – “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest – I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm” (Psalm 55:6-8).
But David had no such wings. There was no way for him to escape the pressures that surrounded him. So what did he do? What do we do when we can’t run from the heat that has built to unbearable levels in our lives? We run toward God. We draw closer to Him. David could not eliminate his enemies. As much as he wanted to, he could not get away from his circumstances. But he had found a place of refuge in the middle of the heat of the battle. “But I call to God, and the Lord saves me. Evening, morning, and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice . . . Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall . . . As for me, I trust in you” (Psalm 55:16, 17, 22, 23).
Just as we cannot escape the Dog Days, there may be no escape from our situations. But there is still an answer to the Dog Days. It is called “fall.” The heat won’t last forever. And neither will the Dog Days of our lives. In the meantime, we are invited to “fall” into the arms of a loving God. He will sustain us in the heat and He will bring us out the other side.
For many years I have tried to practice a discipline that it is hard to name. All of us have times when we are upset emotionally. It may be that something has angered us. It can happen when we are frightened by circumstances. Change can create a situation in which we are suddenly uncertain about the future. Our impulse in these times is to do something! We feel we have to respond. We may feel that the person who has angered us must be set straight immediately. Or we may feel that if we don’t do something right away about the situation that has frightened us, disaster will result. If we don’t react to the change we have experienced now, our world will fall apart.
However, our best decisions are not usually made in the middle of these emotions. Instead, it is better to wait for our spirit to settle. By that I mean that we should most often wait for the balance to return. In a storm or a flood, the rivers rise or the wind pushes the waves. The result is that the water moves to places that are usually dry. But it doesn’t stay there forever. It eventually returns to its usual boundaries. The same is true of our emotions. While they sometimes “spill over” in times of crisis or stress, they will eventually return to their normal channels.
When we make decisions or react to circumstances at the times when our emotions are high, we tend to do or say things that we later regret because, once the situation returns to normal, they no longer apply. But if we wait for our spirit to settle, our responses are much more likely to stand up over time. A settled spirit brings clarity to our understanding of the situation that is not possible in the heat of the moment.
Many of the Proverbs make this point:
“A man of knowledge uses words with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered” (Proverbs 17:27).
“He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity” (Proverbs 21:23).
“Do you see a man who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for him. . . . An angry man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered one commits many sins” (Proverbs 29:20, 22).
The question is not whether we experience anger. Anger, like every other emotion, is a part of life. We cannot avoid it. Likewise, there will be times of crisis when we are tempted to panic and respond out of our anxiety. But we can determine that we will exercise discipline in those times. We will wait for our spirit to settle before making lasting decisions or before speaking in counterproductive ways.
This does not mean that we will avoid confronting unhealthy situations or hurtful words forever. It simply means that we will avoid responding out of our own anger or fear or hurt and so make the situation worse. When our spirits settle, we will usually have ample opportunity to confront the situation, but we are now able to do so with the benefit of a more balanced perspective.
The church year seems to build naturally to Easter. We prepare for the coming and celebrate the birth of Jesus at Advent. We reflect on His life and ministry through Lent. During Holy Week, we trace His steps toward the cross. We gather to proclaim His death on Good Friday. Then we shout together on Easter Sunday, “He is risen!” But what happens after that? Throughout the years I have spent in church leadership, I’ve noticed that Christians often struggle with what to do next.
In that respect, we are in good company. When we read the New Testament, we find that Jesus’ disciples also struggled to know what to do after Easter. They knew that Jesus was alive, but they did not yet know what this meant for them. They drifted between joy and fear; between amazement and confusion; between enthusiasm and listlessness.
Fortunately, Jesus did not leave them to figure things out by themselves. John tells us that on one day soon after the risen Christ had first appeared to them, Peter and a few of the other disciples were together. They were apparently just sitting around. There seems to be little purpose or direction in John’s description. Suddenly, Peter announced that he was going fishing and, having nothing better to do, the others went along.
Following a night in which the fish treated their nets like Cowboys fans invited to a Redskins’ pep rally, Jesus appeared on the shore and told them to throw their nets on the other side of the boat. Immediately, the nets were so full that those burly fishermen couldn’t haul them in. In the conversation that followed, Jesus told Peter again what he was to do with his life. The interesting thing is that Jesus’ instructions now following His resurrection were the same as His command when the disciples had first responded to Jesus years earlier. Then Jesus had said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Now Jesus explains to Peter the direction his life was going to take and says, “Follow me!” Before Easter, the challenge was to follow Jesus. After Easter, the call was the same.
So, we may ask, did Easter make no difference? It made all the difference! The difference, however, was not in the disciples’ mission and purpose. That did not change. The difference was in the resources out of which they could now pursue their mission. The events leading up to Easter had shown that they were incapable of following Jesus in their own strength. But now the same power that raised Jesus from the dead was available to empower them to do what had previously been impossible.
So what do we do after Easter? Easter has not changed the direction of our lives. We too are called to follow Jesus. But now we do it with the knowledge of Easter. We cannot follow Jesus in our own strength. But because Jesus is alive, we have everything we need. With the apostle Paul we say, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11). Because of Easter, that is our purpose – and that is our potential.
