Christianity in North America

The Little Things: Ingrates

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Magnifying glassThere's a medium-sized river birch tree in our backyard with a lovely shape and exotic, silvery bark that gleams in the sun. This year, the bark is hard to miss because the tree is leafless, stone dead.

This same time last year all the leaves turned yellow and fell off long before all the other trees on our property surrendered theirs up. Spring came and nothing green appeared on our tree with the metallic-looking bark. A few weeks ago, that bark split and startled me with a bizarre revelation: some plant had grown up under the birch's bark, encircled the delicate living part of the trunk, and strangled the life out of the tree.

I know of parasitic plants from the tropics that will girdle a tree, but I'm at a loss to explain this.

However, I'm not at a loss to explain what strangles the life out of Christians in America. In our materially wealthy country, more than one Christian walk has been girdled by thanklessness.

I'm not going to win any friends by saying this, but I'm going to say it right off—many people in America are ingrates, and that goes for American Christians, too.

Yes, we are the country famed for our one day a year in which we are thankful. Increasingly, I hear that day referred to as "Turkey Day" and not "Thanksgiving Day." One year, the well-known retail computer company I worked for jumped the Christmas stuff grab by opening for a half day on Thanksgiving Day. I still can't get over that one.

Regardless of whether or not there's a holiday set aside for Americans to give thanks, we live as ungrateful wretches most of the year. I believe that part of this is due to the fact we have so much money that we never have to truly rely on God for our daily existence.

For a few people, though, life is marked by losing rather than accumulating. My wife and I have been married for nine years and through much of that time we have been assaulted by loss. We take refuge in something and find it taken away as soon as we acknowledge how much it has helped us. Blink and it's gone.

What this has taught me is that the Lord alone is our daily portion. But it was only through loss that I learned this. Oh sure, if pressed plenty of people say they're thankful, but it's lip service. Take too many things away and they'll gripe like there's no tomorrow.

The other part of being thankless is that the blinders go on. We stop noticing how we are provided for by God. We stop noticing that other people are desperately lacking in the basics. Meanwhile, we moan because our kid got shut out of the exclusive Montessori school that all the VIPs send their kids to. We cry about the fact that we don't have the latest electronic gadget while the couple sitting next to us in church is facing foreclosure on their home because they cannot pay for their medical bills after a prolonged—and expensive—illness struck unexpectedly.

Thankful people, on the other hand, have their eyes made wide by God. They see what God has provided in the natural world and give thanks for it. "Isn't that butterfly gorgeous! Wow, look at the spiral web of that garden spider. Isn't God's world amazing?" They see other people's needs and they meet them. "I hear the Yoders' crops got burned up in this drought, hon. Let's call the electric company and offer to pay their utility bills for the rest of the year." They see hurt and they bring joy into the pain. "That old widow lady who lives alone, Mrs. Samms, had a stroke. Let's go to the hospital and sit with her for a few hours."

The ingrate says, "Look at what I have accomplished by my own effort! Look at all the things I have!" The thankful person says, "God, all I have is yours, even the hours of the day, and I am only the steward of your good provision."

We know about the root of bitterness from the Scripture. But I also wonder if there is not a root of ungratefulness that strangles just as well. Perhaps the two are the same wicked plant.

When we are filled with thanklessness, we

  • Cannot forgive others because we are not thankful that we have been forgiven
  • Cannot live in humility because it requires the death of the bragging self that takes credit away from God
  • Cannot praise God because praise is the essence of thanksgiving
  • Cannot pray because we have become self-sufficient and have no need of God
  • Cannot love because love means acknowledging others, even when they have nothing they can give us.

In short, ingrates cannot know Christ, no matter how much they protest that they do.

The lesson of thankfulness is one I learned through suffering and fear of loss. I always thought I was thankful, but it wasn't until I understood that I could actually lose everything that I made every prayer I prayed afterwards begin with, "Lord, how thankful I am to You…." This is how I've taught my son to pray, too. Sadly, he does not get too many opportunities to have this truth reinforced by others around him. He once wanted to know why we are the only family that prays for our meals when we eat out in public. That's an especially difficult question to answer when you live in what many consider the very heart of "Jesusland."

There are times I believe that thanklessness is the number one reason that the Church in America has reached a plateau and can go no further. I believe that living in ungratefulness has stymied more blessings than nearly any other failure we can bring down upon our heads. Thanklessness is the very act of robbing God, and God does not suffer thieves who want to plunder what is rightfully His—even when they pretend to come in His name.

Thankfulness may indeed be a little thing, but the lack of it can choke the life out of us.

The Little Things: The Zodiac Blogger

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God's been bringing these Little Things to my mind more and more. These posts were supposed to be occasional, but I can't stop noticing them of late. This post is about one little thing that makes my heart sink when I see it.

I'm sometimes clumsy when I confront people, so I hope that I'm not accusatory in this post. Think of this as a challenge to purity of conviction then. We've become inured to the whole issue, and anything we're inured to is for all intentions invisible. Magnifying glassThe diabolical part about this particular Little Thing is that it's astonishingly prevalent. I want to believe it's just because it's so ingrained in American culture that we don't think about it at all.

It's being a Zodiac Blogger.

It may seem like a little thing, but my informal poll of people who listed "Christianity" or "Jesus" as a topic of interest in their Blogger profile shows that two-thirds of them have their zodiac sign listed.

God says this:

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
—Deuteronomy 4:19 ESV

And also this:

…but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.
—1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 ESV

Horoscopes and astrology fail the test of the above passages. The Father desires that we have no other gods before Him.

This look at Little Things is about just that: the little things that keep us from walking in fullness of life. They may not seem like much, but they still speak to our allegiances. I don't want to show the world I have any allegiances to worldviews that are against the worldview of Jesus Christ. Honestly, I wish I had no idea what my astrological sign was. But this I do know: I definitely won't be putting it out there for others to see. I don't want anything to disqualify my witness for Christ, so I just avoid anything astrological altogether.

If you have a Blogger profile that includes your zodiac sign, consider removing that sign. It may not seem like all that much, but I think God would be pleased if we eliminated those things that might hold us back or divide our hearts.

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
—Philippians 3:13-16 ESV

Update: I've been told—I assume the sources to be good here—that Blogger automatically puts up your zodiac sign if you fill in your birthdate in your Blogger profile. I did not know this. Still, it's a product of the times that these things are assumed as being desirable to know. If I were in the position of displaying that sign, I'd still consider removing my birthdate if all it's doing is generating a zodiac sign.

Some of the commenters here have said that this may be too little a thing to be part of this series, but I don't feel that way. I'm a big advocate of grace and grace will cover these things if we are ignorant of them. But I believe we still need to think about them because too many things like this add up to us being held back by the world.

I've long been convicted of the narrative in Joshua 7 that found the army of Israel being routed in their battles against the Amorites. When Joshua fell on his face before God and asked why, God told him that someone in the camp had taken as plunder of war items that were dedicated to the Canaanite gods, items that God had said must be destroyed (after a previous military victory.) That man, Achan, had hidden these in his tent. Joshua took Achan, his entire family, and all his animals, and stoned them to death. Then he burned everything that had been associated with Achan.

God takes these things seriously. Thankfully, we don't have to suffer stoning for what we've done. I know that I'd be under a pile of stones for the things I've done in my life. But it doesn't mean we should tolerate those things, either, especially when we consider their source.

This last year the Lord has been showing me what I need to purge from my life, more things than ever before. I think what has changed is that I no longer desire anything that will hold me back from being all that He can make me, so now He can get down to work. I'm sharing some of those issues in this series and Cerulean Sanctum, in general. I'm simply hoping my comments on this will help others out there. Whether people can accept these things or not, I understand.

Have a blessed day, all of you.

The Little Things: Unkept Prayer Promises

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It is one of the small scourges of American Christendom, but it occurs thousands of times a week across the country. This is how it usually plays out:

    Greg: "I just found out today that I'll be losing my job in a month. My company's outsourcing my entire department to Malaysia. I really need prayer."Steve: "That's terrible. I'll pray for that, Greg."

    Greg: "Hey, thanks! That means a lot to me."

    Steve: "Well, see ya later!"

And we all know what happens: Steve goes home and promptly forgets to pray for Greg—ever.

Magnifying GlassI used to be like Steve. After about the thousandth time of having a promise to pray for someone vanish into the ether that is my mind, I decided that I was dishonoring God and all the people who requested prayer from me. What's worse, there were times that my promise to pray was the equivalent of saying, "Fine!" whenever anyone asked me how I was doing. It was something to say, even if I didn't truly mean it.

There is a silver lining to the cloud, at least for me. I changed. I stopped telling people I would pray for them after the fact.

"But, Dan," you say, "what kind of barbaric response is that? What a heathen you are!"

Say what you will. I just told people that I knew myself too well and that I had a better idea: I'd drop everything I was doing and pray with them right then and there.

So that's what I do now.

See, there's one thing people who need help and request prayer want to know in their heart of hearts, and that's the reassurance that you actually did pray for them. By dropping everything I'm doing in the moment to pray with someone, I accomplish three things:

  • They see, and therefore know, that they have been prayed for.
  • Both of us enjoy the face-to-face relational aspect that prayer builds in both the one receiving prayer and the one praying.
  • God is honored in that faithfulness to pray and hears that prayer.

For me, I know that I have never failed to forget to pray for someone who asked me to pray for them—because I did it right then. Do I remember to pray a second time or more after that initial prayer? Sure. But even if I do fail to remember to continue to pray, I know that I did at least once, and so does the person I prayed for. That makes them more likely to come to me for prayer in the future, as well.

I don't claim to do everything right, but this one I learned the hard way.

This is such a little thing, but it makes all the difference. If we honestly believe God moves through prayer, then it is my prayer that we all consider keeping prayer promises to people by just sitting down with them and praying right off. Anything that happens later is a bonus.

Now if I could just remember to get back with people I prayed for to see what the results of that prayer were! (That's just as important, but I'll have to leave that little thing for a later post.)

Have a great week.