Long post title.  Heh.

So, a few days ago, you read here that I was convicted about begging God for money all the time.  Yesterday on my morning prayer/dog walk I prayed that God would use me that day at work.  Lo and behold, a conversation about the Al-Qaeda issuing a statement likening President-elect Obama to a “House Negro” twisted into a brief discussion about racism in Arabic cultures, and from thence to a discussion about whether or not all religions are based on punishment avoidance.

This gave us a fantastic jumping off point to talk about the difference between a a capricious god who demands “submission”, and a loving God who sacrificed his Son to restore us to our proper relationship with him as his children.  It gave me a chance to teach about a heavenly father who loves us and gave us the freedom to choose to love or not love him, knowing the pain that it would cause him when we do not choose him.  But more than that, loving even those who hate him so much that he will ultimately give them what they want, even though he knows that they will not like it.  Like the Israelites crying out to God for a king, even after God explained that they would not like the choice, many in this world scream at God, “Go away”, not understanding what that really means.  I explained that hell is a place where God is not - that’s what makes it hell.  And when you die, God isn’t “punishing you” by sending you to hell, he is, in love, allowing you to choose eternal separation from him.  He loves you so much he will not force you to be with him if you spent your life wanting to be away from him.

They (my two atheist friends) still at the end did not grasp this difference - they still viewed separation from God as a punishment inflicted on them for not choosing God.  But I can’t change their hearts - only God can.  They can think about that and I can pray that they realize how childish that view is - though it is systemic of our political systems these days - that you can make a poor choice, but not suffer the consequences because a “loving” government would protect you from your own stuidity and obstinacy.  Apparently, they apply that same understanding to God - that he should allow us to indulge and then when we face the consequences, protect us from them.  He does do this, but he only gives us one life to come to him, and choose to repent.

But what I got out of the conversation was when one of them challenged me with the question, “what happens if you’re wrong?  You will have missed out on all the fun you could have had in this life.”  I said to him, “What will I have missed?”  The things that I have given up for Christ are sin - and I challenged him to find one sin in the Bible that does not either hurt myself or others around me.  He tried to some up with something but the best he could do was suggest that sins that only affect yourself are ok.  And I just said, “Why would it be fun to hurt myself?  I don’t feel I am missing that at all.”  Perhaps that part of the conversation was the most important part.  I really feel blessed to serve Jesus today because of that conversation.  I have given up nothing to serve Jesus.  What fun is it to hurt myself or others?

If, at the end of my life, I find out this is all a fallacy (I know it isn’t, but hey, we’ll pretend there is an outside chance), I will not feel like I missed a thing, because I know that I will have spent my life doing good for people and myself.  There will not be a moment of regret that I didn’t cause someone else pain for my own momentary pleasure.  And it is sad that my friends are so lost that they still see someone else’s pain as their gain.

Man, it just seemed like nothing went right yesterday.

I thought I was on top of things in the moment I got up.  Lots of time.  Daylight Savings and all.  I head downstairs at about 6:30am, take care of a few things, and “Waaah!”  Baby is awake (he usually sleeps in until 8am or so).

Spend the next half hour cleaning him up, changing his outfit, apply cream for the nasty rash he has right now, and attempting to feed him.  Then the other boys all get up.  I still manage to get out the door to take the dog for a walk, with 25 minutes to spare and the baby stapped to my back (Mommy was into her bathroom prep time).  I get back, and lo and behold, the boys are not ready.  Rush rush, cram them all in the van, get to church with about 1 minute to spare.

(First prayer skipped - breakfast)

Church goes fine actually.   Everything that happened at church was smooth.  My Discover Hope class went well, good discussion (with only one or two brain cramps).  The sermon was fun - Adam had the unenviable task of explaining Daniel chapter 7.

We leave church and the kids are hungry, but Cheryl wants to take them shopping.  Not my favourite activity, but shopping must be done from time to time.  We hit the Talize for some slightly used pants for the boys, then Wal-Mart for some nice shirts for them.  I figure we can do a cheap lunch at McD’s as I wasn’t hungry.  I tried to use McD’s as an incentive for behaviour, but Aydan is defiant, or forgetful, and by the time we get done with shopping, he has lost his drink, his fries and his sandwich.  When we sit down to eat and he realizes that nothing is for him, I finally see him react.  He gets it.  He goes very quiet and sad.  After a few minutes, I decide that he’s been remorseful, so I share my fries and drink with him.

(skipped prayer at lunch, too)

By the time shopping is over, I am getting edgy and I don’t know why.  What my subconcious knew that my concious didn’t was that we had a ton of stuff planned for Awana, but hadn’t prepared at all.  The list went on and on - November Newsletter, coffee and milk, cups, treats, all needed to be prepared in addition to the normal setup routine.   We had no indication as to how many children to expect to our “bring a friend” night.

By the time we got home, I was focused on the newsletter, but at the same time there was much else to do.  Housecleaning, making supper, picking games (because I was covering for our games director who was away) were all burdening me.  I managed to churn it out then I realized I would have to leave early to get it printed at the church office.  Then I get a call from one of our leaders, who couldn’t make it.  That’s two down.

I attempt to get out the door early but I wind up loading the gear for my wife as well.  We feed the boys pizza pockets, and I head out the door after some less than pleasant words with Cheryl, over codifying the points we give out for Awana clubbers as an incentive.  I was thinking it should be an easy task to delegate, but she felt totally unprepared to come up with anything.  We were both wrong, which is what happens 90% of the time we butt heads.

I get to the club and start setting up on time miraculously - I am there at 5:30.  I fix tape in the gym, then I notice that nobody is here but Shane.  5:45, still nobody.  Not even my wife.  Ed and his family show.  That’s good.  Mitchell is around - I guess he always was but I didn’t see him.  Adam and Susie show up.  It’s 5:52 when I finally see most of my leaders, and my wife pulls up with the gear.

Prayer before starting Awana skipped.  We should have loaded the kids into their seats in the sanctuary ten minutes ago.

I survey the land - we have two cubbies (normally our largest club).  Our T&T’ers, who I expected to bring the most friends - not a single new clubber.  No new parents at all.  Wow.

At the flag ceremony I don’t even bring up the lack of friends, and hence, no bonus rewards for clubbers.  But I am still way off my game.  I start the Awana song before we even do O Canada.  The kids call me on it.  I give a lecture on rewards and get some Awana bucks into the hands of the T&T Director. The Sparks director rolls in about 3/4 of the way through the flag ceremony.  Though I feel on the edge of snapping, I decide to err on the side of grace, since the guy had a migraine all day, despite all the lateness shown by pretty much everybody around me.  I can’t really be that upset - though I am on time this week, I have been tardy myself a fair amount and haven’t set a good example.

Relieved, I slink out to the foyer, where I start working up a points structure so we can actually figure out which team is winning.  By the time that is done, I have about 20 minutes to pick games.  I start flipping through the book, looking for games without beanbags as ours went missing about 3 weeks ago and haven’t turned up.  Every single game involves either food or beanbags!  Gah!  I finally find 3 games and with all of 3 minutes to spare, I head into the gym.

Short staffed, short patience, short wits.  Short of peace, short of fruit.  But the victory was I got through the day in one piece, and learned once again the importance of prayer.

Some mornings, events conspire against you to bring you to God.

Every morning, at 4:45am I walk my dog.  I actually appreciate this time because it gives me a chance to pray and talk with God.  Usually it’s a one-way thanks and praise session and I wonder sometimes that I don’t have a chance to listen to what he has to say.  But maybe he is enjoying what I have to say.

Anyways, today, I was rushed so I didn’t do a full walk with the dog.  Late night with my lady, enjoying some tickets that were given to us to the Vancouver Theatresports League.  I determined to listent to a little Praise 106.5 and pray while driving.  (Useful tip: if you pray while driving, DON’T close your eyes!)

Well, on the local Christian radio station in between songs they start saying, “Well, It’s Hallowe’en today, but it’s Reformation Day to me because today is the anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg chapel and starting the Reformation.  Today we’re going to be talking about alternatives to Hallowe’en - Harvest Festivals, or whatever terms you use.”

I listened to this, and I started trying to pray.  I would get to “O God” and then my mind would get twisted back to Hallowe’en, and the fact that this Sunday night is our first “Bring a Friend” night.  Then God starts pointing things out to me.

“Hey, you’ve never really reached out to your neighbourhood here.”

“But God, I live so far away from church!  Nobody around here will want to come that far.”

“How do you know?  You do.”

“Well yeah, but…”

“Why don’t you hand out Awana invitation cards to all the kids tonight when they come to your door?”

“I guess I could, but they won’t come.  The cards will just get thrown away.”

“How do you know that?  Why don’t you try it?”

“But God…”

“Look.  Last year you had more than 200 kids come to your door.  At least a few of them, their parents may be looking for something more wholesome to send their kids to for an activity.  You don’t know.  This is the one night a year when you can walk up to people’s doors and knock and ask them for stuff and people don’t think you’re crazy.  It’s one night a year that children take candy (and anything else) from strangers.  Why are you wasting it?  You want to hear from me, here I am talking to you.  Now get to it.”

So I get to work and I mention this to a Christian friend of mine at work.  I tell him that it seems like a colossal waste that Christians withdraw from our culture on Hallowe’en because of its roots as a pagan holiday.  He agrees.  He says, “You should give them some candy for coming too!”  I was like, “Well, we were going to for the bring a friend kids anyway, but you’re right!  I should stick an Avery label on each card saying, more candy for new kids who attend!”

So now I have a plan of action for tonight.  And this weekend.  200 invitations, directly distributed only to families with kids in the ages we serve.  How easy is this?  And to think, Christians don’t like Hallowe’en.  I wonder how many of them consider the lengths the early church went to, to “take over” pagan holidays?  I mean, look at Christmas, Easter.  They are both in origin pagan holidays, co-opted by the early Christians.  I am not saying we need to do the same for Hallowe’en, but there are elements of Hallowe’en that provide fantastic openings for us as Christians who wish to share our faith.  Why not take advantage of them, instead of shaking our collective fingers at secular society, “tsk, tsk”ing the whole time about witches and dead things?

I went to work and sat at my desk for nine hours today, in an effort to make up for how badly sales have gone this month.

I made seven dollars.

Was it worth it?  I asked myself as I drove home, was the fact that I was at work an expression of a lack of faith that God would provide?

Then I remembered that I had a ten minute conversation with my co-worker, a lapsed Catholic, about what it means to follow Christ.  We talked about the question, “Isn’t it enough that I am a nice guy, I mind my own business, and I don’t do anything to hurt anyone else?”

That’s why I was there today.  Not to make money, because God will provide in his own way.  But because someone needed to hear about God today.

While out at iGo, the speaker, Mark Cahill, challenged us like I had never been challenged before about personal evangelism. I was definitely affected by his speaking, though some of the people I was with weren’t as enthusiastic. At first blush, it felt like he was proposing the “Way of the Master” type challenge evangelism. And to a certain extent, I believe he was. He does believe that it is important to explain what sin is when shearing the gospel now. That term, correctly defined, is no longer part of our cultural vernacular. Relativism, once a concept of physics, has now been applied so thoroughly to everything that the concept of sin is distant at best from people’s minds.

Now, I don’t subscribe to “confrontational” evangelism as illustrated in most “Way of the Master” type videos. And even many of Mark’s examples could be characterized this way. But I believe that it is possible to start spiritual conversations and have them lead to a presentation of the gospel. I believe this even though I have not practiced it.

But I want to and I plan to.

I finished reading Cahill’s “One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven”, and I am more convinced than ever that this is something I have to do. And this is something that all Christians should be capable of, no matter their own personality or limitations. Because everyone does communicate differently, and everyone has their own story. It is a willingness to be used by God that must characterize us as Christians. Even if we think “I’m not a talker” or something else, maybe you will wind up talking to someone else who is “not a talker”. It doesn’t matter.

What I came away with is a conviction that even if I have relationships that will not bear the strain of me walking up to them with a “let me tell you about my saviour” type conversation, what I need to do is make clear to those around me that I want them to ask me, that I welcome their questions about my faith, and that I am there for them whenever they have a spiritual question. Maybe in the simple act of communicating this it will open up a door. Who knows? But I want to be ready, in season and out of season.

Leading up to the big Awana meetin’ tonight, I was burning some cel phone minutes last night letting all my people know about the location and time of the meeting.  I wound up talking to the father of one of my leaders.  We both have been handed quite substantial responsibilites this fall, and are both being challenged by them.  But it was interesting to realize that we both share a couple other things.  We both feel that God is leading us to full-time ministry, perhaps even in a few years.  Yet, we both recognize that we have weaknesses that we need to address in our own eyes.  Not Achilles’ Heel type weaknesses, but just an absence of skill or practice in certain areas that are kind of important to do what we want to do.

Namely, like I was talking about yesterday, evangelism.

I’m banging that drum here so much, it might even be getting repetitive.  But all I wanted to say today about it is that it is good to share this struggle with someone, because we can then lift each other up and pray for each other in this area.  It is one thing to have a mentor encouraging you, but it is good to have an iron sharpening iron type guy with the same aims.

My business cards came in yesterday.  I set them up through a company that provides free cards (just the cost of shipping) for 250 cards.  They are matte finish, and aren’t the most attractive card in the universe, but they do feature my contact information, a Bible verse, and a quick sentence reinforcement of my faith in Jesus.  It also has a website url to the story of how I came to faith in Jesus.

I envisioned using the card as something to hand to people if I do get into a spiritual conversation, so that if they want to continue it, they can contact me.  It seemed to me to be a useful thing to have, more versatile than a tract.

Of course, now I need to actually use them.

I am still thinking tracts could be handy to give to people to keep them thinking after the conversation is over.  I don’t like the idea of just handing them out willy nilly - a piece of cardstock is not a loving way to share the good news with someone.  However, as something to consider after a conversation has run its course, I see a role.

Heh.  Looking at the above, I sound so considered and experienced.  But all I really want to do is figure out how to share my faith with others so that they receive it in the spirit it is intended.  I know it won’t happen 100% of the time the way I’d like, but I’d like to shoot for 80%.

Of course, I won’t even get that until I give it a shot.  A batting average cannot be calculated until you start to take swings.

Lots of good articles in my RSS reader this morning.  If you don’t have an RSS feed reader (even if you’re not a big blog fan) I recommend it heartily.  It condenses hours of blog surfing down to minutes.  If you ever came across websites or blogs that you thought you’d like to read more regularly but forget their address, or don’t get around to it often, RSS is for you.

I just got on the bandwagon, even though I’d surf by their sites frequently before.  But here are two three excellent links to links with good stuff from my RSS feeds:

• Church Planting Novice found a great article at Subtext with excellent tips for conversationally bringing up the Gospel.  No “Did you know you’re going to hell?” type transitions here.
• The Pyromaniacs took a break from picking fights to link to the Jollyblogger’s cautious thoughts about the nature of marital problems in general.  He contends that it would be better for Christian spouses to treat each other as enemies! How’s that for controversial?  Read it - he makes more sense than you think!
• Mark Driscoll’s blog talks this morning about the spiritual discipline of studying.  I was shocked by the reference to 2 Peter 2:15, as it is the lead verse for Awana (stands for “approved workmen who are not ashamed”).  This will definitely be a talking point for my next team meeting.  More specifically, I have a leader who is worried about whether he is capable of studying the Bible.  I need to meet with him individually I think, encourage him and see if we can overcome this concern.

Hope you find these as interesting as I did!

Some quick bullets for ya.

• Today’s our 10th Anniversary!  Happy anniversary to my wife, who has staggered my imagination by her dedication to me and our life together for ten whole years.  Thank you for everything you have done and ever will do - I love you.
• Good news on the graduating essay front.  My faculty advisor (who also happens to be the program director, so I didn’t really have anyone to complain to) has finally started returning my emails.  I have been granted an extension on my project.  Now, to get it done!
• Check out Rodney Olsen’s thought-provoking piece on Christians who ignore their families.  I think some of the commenters thought he was talking about their spouse and children, but I think he was talking about extended family - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, grandchildren.  It’s easy to keep connected with them when they share your faith, but harder when they don’t.  Where’s the balance? 

  The irony is this exact issue is staring me in the face on Labour Day weekend.  Which to choose: sticking around and helping three church families move, or travelling up to Vernon to visit my grandparents, who aren’t getting any younger, and whom I haven’t seen in a year?

• We’ve got the big Awana Basic Training coming up this weekend.  I need to rustle up my leaders and make sure as many as possible are going.  I think phone calls are in order tonight.  Pray for our leaders that they would make this a priority.
• I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to more effectively share my faith.  I’ll let you know how they work out.
• Hey God, could use some blessing at work.  Anytime now.  Thanks in advance!

So I was out with two of my oldest friends last night. Though I chat with Greg on the net regularly, I hadn’t seen him “in the flesh” in a good 9 years. Trevor I haven’t actually spoken to in probably 6 or 7 years - since Cal’s wedding.

It was great seeing them and reminiscing, without making it too boring for their wife/girlfriend (respectively). I was about to explain the qualitative difference between BC NDP and Alberta NDP (political parties in case you’re not from Canada), when one of my friends blew this whistle - “Hey hey hey. No politics, no religion, no sex.”

Of course, they went on to break the sex rule of conversations themselves a few times over the rest of the night, but I let that slide. I found it strangely constraining - I haven’t lived with rules for my conversation in a long time. I just find it more honest to be able to talk about anything with anyone. Even at work, where my desk neighbours two staunch atheist liberals, we never draw boundaries in our conversation, which is actually freeing. I have been able to talk about various aspects of my faith with them over time and have it received civilly. I didn’t know what to do about this rule, that I had heard and been familiar with, but let fall into disuse years ago.

Perhaps it was an illustration about how far our paths have diverged since I moved away from Edmonton 10 years ago.

Or it could be an early flag that I need to know a way around this roadblock, if I hope to start a church in Alberta.

What do you think? How would you have gotten around such a conversation killer?