Naked Lobster

Ever thought about how a lobster grows?  Because of its rigid shell, the larger it gets, the more uncomfortable the lobster becomes.  Eventually, it has to shed its old shell in order to grow a new, roomier model.  This process is repeated multiple times (as many as 25 times over the first 5-7 years of its life) until it reaches its maximum size.

During the 48 hours or so that the lobster is shell-less, it’s in grave danger.  One hungry tourist with a cup of melted butter….  Or…the lobster could be eaten by any of its other natural predators.  For the lobster, there is no growth without risk.

I see two lessons for us in the story of the naked lobster:

·        You won’t grow without taking some risks.
·        You won’t grow without leaving something familiar behind.

But where the lobster operates on instinct to shed his shell, we have to operate on courage.  Unfortunately, many of us struggle to face up to hard changes.  It’s difficult to leave our comfort zone for the scary unknown.  Success is not assured.  Failure is likely.  Why would we want to leave what’s been working for us for so long?

And the truth is, we don’t always have to.  Sometimes, business as usual (BAU) will get us by.  But that’s all it usually does.  If we want to grow…  If we want to do great things for God… We are going to have to leave the familiar for something better.  We can’t continue to stay in our cramped, little shell convincing ourselves that it isn’t so uncomfortable after all.  We’ve got to feel the pinch and make the move.

Like a Thief in the Night

In the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., Sardis was the capital city in the kingdom of Lydia (now Turkey).  It was the convergence of five trade routes and incredibly wealthy as a result.  Legend had it that King Midas washed himself in the Pactolus River that flowed next to the city in order to rid himself of the golden touch that plagued him.  As a result, the river was said to run with gold and bring riches to the people of Sardis.

The city protected its wealth in a citadel on an acropolis atop a fortified hill that rose one thousand feet above the plain.  Steep cliffs surrounded the city on three sides, and there was only one point of access, a narrow neck of land to the south.  Because of its natural defensibility, the city was called, “Sardis, the Impregnable.”

The king and the people believed that they were invulnerable while within the citadel.  They had turned away many would-be conquerors who tried to lay siege to the wealthy city over the years.  But twice, the city was conquered, and ironically, both overthrows occurred in exactly the same way.

Cyrus of Persia was the first to successfully overcome the stronghold in 547 B.C.  Fourteen days after laying siege to Sardis, Cyrus instructed his officers to tell all the soldiers that the first man to scale the wall would earn a reward.  Many men rushed to make it up the wall, but none succeeded.  Then, a soldier named Hyroeades remembered that he had witnessed one of the Lydians accidentally drop his helmet over the side of the wall the previous day.  Thinking he was unobserved, the soldier had come down the wall at the point that had seemed most dangerous and inaccessible to the Persians.

Because of the tremendous height of the cliffs at this point of the wall, the Lydians posted no guard above it.  Gathering his courage, Hyroeades retraced the soldier’s path and ascended the steep cliff.  Once the Persians realized it was possible, many more followed and joined Hyroeades in sacking the city.

Three hundred years later, in 214 B.C., Sardis was captured again in the exact same way by the army of Antiochus the Great of Syria.  His men scaled the wall at the steepest point and found it unguarded at the top.

While the people slept securely and unaware inside their fortress, Sardis was twice conquered by armies who came like a thief in the night.  The kings and the people assumed that no one would attack them where it was obvious that they were strong.  They became complacent in their vigilance and only invested their soldiers in their weaker areas.

Like Sardis, we become vulnerable when we make the mistake of thinking we no longer need to post a guard against temptation.  When we believe that we have mastered a particular temptation, we are in for a surprise.  We can’t stop “building our walls and guarding our gates.” It’s a lifelong process. When Satan sees that we took our guard down, he’ll tempt us in that very area.

I distinctly remember a men’s group meeting where a brother in Christ confessed to an affair he had been having. Convicted by that evening’s study, he trembled as he unburdened his heart before us. He asked for our prayers to help him end the affair and tell his wife.

Afterward, a few of us met with him to discuss what needed to happen next. At one point, he referred to another member of our group, who had confessed to an affair approximately six months earlier. My friend said, “When I heard him talk about his affair, I said to myself, ‘That will never happen to me.’” Only a few weeks after thinking that thought, my friend was deep into sin and deception as he cheated on his wife.

An unguarded strength is our greatest weakness.

How Do Your Walls Look?

If you have accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, you (like the Jews who had lived their lives in the foreign land of Egypt) have been freed from the captivity of the Enemy.  Specifically, I’m talking about being free from the slavery of Satan’s temptations here on earth and from hell and eternal darkness in eternity.  Your temple (your heart) has been rebuilt – made new!

 

And yet, many of us still have little to no defenses against the attacks of the Enemy.  We are like the Jews during the time of Nehemiah.  They had a new temple, but there were no walls around the city to protect it.  Likewise, our spiritual walls, which represent our relationship with Christ, are broken down, and our gates (ears and eyes) are open for whatever the Enemy brings our way.  He assaults us with images and sounds, which we shouldn’t let into our minds, but we are weak without our walls.  He can walk freely through our minds, because we have no way to keep him out.

 

God intended for us to be a light to all we meet.  He intended for us to reflect His glory.  But instead of shining, we’ve been sinning.  Because of what we’ve allowed into our minds, they are full of darkness.  Our mouth gates don’t send out wisdom; they send out perversity.  We laugh at all kinds of sinfulness.  We celebrate it along with all the unsaved people around us.  They can’t tell that we are God’s people, because we look just like them.

 

If we are truly saved, this should cause us as great a distress as Nehemiah experienced when he first heard about the broken walls of Jerusalem. We will never rebuild our spiritual walls until we first weep over the ruins.  In other words, we need to reach a place of repentance for the mess we have made of what God gave us.  God warns that if we continue to be unfaithful, He will give us over to our sins just as he scattered the Jews to the nations.  But if we return and obey, He will restore us to relationship with Him.  Even those of us who have gone to the farthest reaches of sin.  Even those of us who think we’ve gone far beyond what God will forgive.  He will bring us back.

20, er….21

I just realized that I hit my 20 21-year sobriety date a few months ago.  21 years!  It’s hard to believe.  My counselor, Jeff, would have even a harder time believing it.  He told me at my one-year anniversary that he didn’t think i would ever make it to one year.

I got into drugs during my Freshman year in high school, got busted during the summer following my Sophomore year and went to drug rehab for 30 days in the hospital.  As far as I know, I was the only one of my peers who made it out.  I know that at least one is dead, but I didn’t keep up with the rest.

I’ve thought for some time that the reason why I made it when so many didn’t was because I never saw myself as a drug user.  I always thought I was a person who used drugs, but I didn’t believe I was a “druggie.”  Because of the training I received from my mom, I knew I was better than the way I was acting.  That was key. My WHO was greater than my DO.

I hope this is a word of encouragement to all you parents out there.  Make sure that your kids know exactly who they are and who they are not.  Their behaviors may deviate for a time, but they will eventually align with how they see themselves.

* This article was originally named, “20,” but my wife pointed out to me that I have poor math skills.  I actually hit 20 years LAST year!  Kinda anti-climactic now.

Trust Walk

At summer camp each year, we end our week with the kids with an activity called a “Trust Walk,” where we blindfold them and lead them by the hand around the camp, providing an example of how Jesus leads us through life when we put our trust in Him. My first year, I led my two campers in and out of trees, up a hill and finally to a place where they could sit. After removing their blindfolds, I pointed out the obstacles that we had come through. Then, it was their turn to lead me.

My entire face covered with handkerchiefs and a child holding each hand, I worried just a little bit about what I might have done to an unsuspecting adult guide had I been the eight-year-old boy in this situation on the last day of camp . . . I think they led me over about three-quarters of the camp before telling me that I could sit down. I felt around the ground until I found a rock to sit on, and then I pulled off my blindfold and looked around. My kids had led me to a six-foot, brown wooden cross in the wooded area of the camp.

My first thought was, “Yes! They got it!” Somehow, they had silently agreed that this was the spot where they would lead me. They recognized that the cross was important, even if they didn’t know exactly how important. I had decided earlier in the week to just let the Holy Spirit do His work in His time, and I felt incredibly blessed just to witness the planting of seeds in their hearts.

Immediately on top of that thought, the Holy Spirit showed me that all week, I had been spending time with these children, loving them and praying for them, hoping to lead them to the Cross. And although I didn’t realize it until just that moment, at the same time, God had been with me and loving me, and He was using these children to lead me closer to the Cross. As I sat on a rock at the bottom of that tall, wooden cross, I knew Jesus in a way that I had never know Him before. He touched my heart through two beautiful children and showed me the joy of joining God where He is working. That’s living!

Epic Battle

My oldest son and I went to see an action movie the other day. In one of the early scenes, a group of half-dressed women get off a bus. It was a sexually provocative scene, and I wondered whether or not it was registering on my fourteen-year-old’s mind.

After the movie, we were doing our regular debriefing of action scenes and comparisons of this movie to others in the genre when my son brought up the bus scene.

“You know, they don’t have to dress women like that.”

“Yeah, I know. Seemed so unnecessary, didn’t it?”

“Yes, and they don’t have to show so much. It’s hard for a kid who’s going through puberty.”

“Did it make you uncomfortable?”

“Yes, I had to have a fight with mind and say to myself, ‘I don’t want to look at that…Yes, I want to look….No, I don’t….’”

“I know, Son. That’s a battle you’re going to have to fight for the rest of your life, I’m afraid.”

“And they really didn’t have to do it in slow motion.”

Can I get an “Amen?”

He Equips the Called

You might have heard the statement, “God doesn’t call the equipped; He equips the called.” It’s true. What use has God for someone who already knows all the answers? What use has He for someone who doesn’t need His help? What glory does He get when we do it in our own power?

God wants us in our weakness, not our strength. He wants to do something through us that we can’t do on our own. When He does, He gets the glory.

“But God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before Him.”

(1 Corinthians 1:27-29)

His power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). If you’re in a spot where you never need to rely on God, it might be time for a move. You’re playing it safe, doing things inside your comfort zone. God wants you a little nervous. He wants you to feel ill-equipped. When you do, you know that He’ll have to show up if the job is going to get done. Perfect!

Think about Moses arguing about his public speaking ability with a burning bush or Isaiah worrying about his lips. Think about Mary, who had not yet been with a man, or Gideon needing reassurance about the battle before him. In their weakness, God showed His strength. The most powerful examples of God working through men and women come from the ill-equipped.

Peter’s life provides a good contrast. In the years of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Peter always had all the answers. He was proud and impulsive. I think God loved Peter’s impulsiveness, but He had to mold it so that it could be used. Peter’s ministry began only after he had been broken. When all his boasting came to naught, Peter had to admit that he wasn’t the Lord’s reliable defender. Ironically, out of Peter’s brokenness, God made him what he so wanted to be but couldn’t achieve in his own power.

If you want the Potter to use your clay, don’t take Him a finished product. What’s He going to do with that? It’s not moldable. It is rigid. Instead, take Him your misshapen lump. Let the Potter make of the lump what He wants to make. It may be what you’ve always hoped for, but it may be something entirely better.

The Value of the Valley

In my last post, I talked about the valley that follows our mountain-top experiences. The valley is valuable to us in our walk with God. And not just valuable, essential. If your entire life was made up of mountain-tops, they wouldn’t be mountain-tops; they would be one, long plateau.

We learn our greatest lessons in the valley. A number of years ago, the Center for Creative Leadership did a study of CEOs leading Fortune 100 companies. They asked them, “•What experiences have you had that taught you something you use today as a leader?” The results were interesting.

When they analyzed all the experiences, they found that they could be grouped into four types: Hardships, Challenging Assignments, Relationship Events and Other Events.

• Hardships involved demotions, terminations, difficult employee problems, personal traumas, failures, and serious negative feedback. In other words, valley experiences that ended badly.
• Challenging Assignments involved turn-around jobs, start-up operations, and huge increases in scope and scale. In other words, valley experiences that ended with success.
• Relationship Events involved contact with mentors, role-models, coaches and other influential people.
• Other Events involved early job experiences, personal events, parenting and other miscellaneous experiences.

The majority (61%) of the useful leadership lessons these CEO’s had learned in their lives came from difficult experiences. Some turned out well and others didn’t, but both made lasting impressions on the CEO’s and taught them important things that they were still using at the time of the survey.

But that’s just a business example. Think about your life and where the most useful lessons have come from, and you will probably find that they weren’t learned on top of the mountain; they were learned in the valleys of your life.

Or consider the heroes of Scripture.

• Abraham learned to wait on the Lord during the 25 years between God’s promise to make him the father of a nation and the birth of Isaac.
• Joseph learned how to administrate during his years as a slave and in prison.
• David learned how to lead as he led his mighty men through the wilderness with King Saul at their heals.
• Daniel learned to trust in God in a foreign land while he served several pagan kings.
• Peter learned to submit to God’s plan and timing only after he failed to live up to his boasts and denied his Lord three times.

These heroes became heroes because God used the difficult times in their lives to mold and shape them.  He uses our difficult times in the same way.  There’s value in the valley.

After the Mountain-top

I’m just returning from summer camp this year. Every year for the past ten years, I’ve gone to Texas in either June or July to participate in a camp for abused and neglected children. It’s always a mountain-top experience for me. I feel more focused, more attuned with God during the days and weeks leading up to camp and during the week of camp. My quiet times are great. I don’t struggle as much with sin. I hear God speaking to my heart clearly and unmistakably.

But after camp, I typically experience a letdown, a spiritual time of randomness. I may go for days or even weeks without spending quality time with the Lord. I fall into sinful patterns that I thought I had licked. I feel guilty and unfocused – spiritually lethargic. Why does this happen?

I think it has much to do with not having a specific goal on which to attach my spiritual disciplines. Before camp, everything is focused on getting my heart ready to minister to the kids. After camp, I lose my motivation. It’s not that I believe the spiritual disciplines are only worth doing in preparation for an event, but I just find it easier to do them when I’ve got my eyes on a goal. I have more energy to do them. I have more delight in doing them.

Another reason coming off the mountain is so difficult is because I put every ounce of energy into the mountaintop. When it’s over, I am physically, mentally and emotionally drained. I think my spirit is still full of energy, but it gets trumped by my lack of resources in other areas. After camp, I go into a bit of a walking coma until my resources are replenished.

I think this pattern is mirrored in Scripture:

• Moses spent a month and a half communing with God on Mount Sinai and getting the ten commandments on stone tablets, but when he descended the mountain to rejoin the Israelites, he found that his brother had opened an idol-worshiping night club.

• Elijah showed up the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah in an old-fashioned show-down on top of Mount Carmel.  Then, he accurately predicted the weather (the greatest miracle in all the Bible), but he didn’t get much time to celebrate.  Jezebel took out a contract on his life, and Elijah became so discouraged that he prayed God would end his meteorologist career.

• Jesus peeled back His humanity to reveal a glimpse of His glory to Peter, James and John on a mountain.  They had to be stoked coming back down.  They had been arguing with the others about who was the greatest, and now it looked like Jesus had tipped His hat in their direction.  But when they reached the bottom, everything was chaos.  The disciples had been trying unsuccessfully to cast a demon out of a boy, and Jesus had to step in to clean up their mess.  Goodbye spiritual high.  Hello real world!

The time on the mountain is a blessing.  God allows us to participate in His work, and He teaches us many things while we are with Him there.  It’s easy to completely spend ourselves in the experience, but it’s unwise, because when we are done on the mountain, we have to return to the valley.  God teaches us on top of the mountain and then tests us in the valley.  He wants to know if we can use what we’ve learned.

In the valley, God’s tests move what He’s taught us from our heads to our hearts.  When the lessons are only in our heads, the Enemy will come and try to snatch them away (like the bird in the Parable of the Sower).  But through the testing, God can plant them deeply in our hearts, where they will grow and produce an abundant harvest.  If we anticipate the Enemy’s attempt to steal our seeds and save some fight for this test, we will be much better prepared to leave the mountain-top.

The Amazing Chinese Bamboo Plant

The Chinese Bamboo plant starts from a tiny seed. You plant the seed in the dirt, and you water the seed. Very little seems to happen the first year. Despite your efforts, only a tiny shoot pokes out of the ground.

So…..the second year you water and fertilize and protect the seed…..Nothing happens.

So…..the third year you water and fertilize and protect the seed…..Nothing happens.

So…..the fourth year you water and fertilize and protect the seed…..Nothing happens.

So…..the fifth year you water and fertilize and protect the seed.….Finally, during the fifth year, the Chinese Bamboo plant begins to grow. In fact, it grows 90 feet tall in just 6 weeks!

The question is, did it grow 90 feet in six weeks or in five years? The answer, of course, is that it grew 90 feet in five years. It took five years to grow the root system that would one day support a 90-foot plant.

People are often like the Chinese Bamboo plant. We invest hours and hours trying to develop ourselves or others, and nothing happens.  We spend years discipling our children to follow the Lord, but…..nothing happens.   We hold countless meetings with our staff members to coach them in the development of their strengths and developmental areas, but…….nothing happens. We redouble our efforts to help a friend make better decisions, but…….nothing happens.

If you’re like most people, you will be tempted to give up. Don’t do it! If you give up, the seeds you planted will die. But if you continue to care for the seeds, one day (when you least expect it) the results of your labor will seem to magically appear overnight!

If the Chinese Bamboo plant immediately shot up 90 feet in the first year, one strong wind would blow it down. By growing deep before it grows tall, it gains the strength it needs to withstand the force of heavy winds. Similarly, lasting growth starts on the inside of people. It’s difficult to see that change is taking place, but this is a necessary process. The growing they do on the inside creates strength of character and conviction.

Don’t give up hope! Your efforts will be rewarded!  Once the root system is established, your growth or the growth of those you are coaching will spring up seemingly overnight!