Dr. John Maxwell spoke at my church, Christ Fellowship in West Palm Beach, tonight. He is a teaching pastor on staff, and often offers to preach the weekend after Thanksgiving in order to give our pastors a much-needed break! Tonight he spoke about developing a grateful heart. Here are some highlights.
Developing an Attitude of Gratitude
Parable of the ten lepers: Jesus healed ten lepers while they were on the way to see the priest. Some observations:
1. 10 Lepers asked for help.
2. 10 Lepers received help.
3. Only one expressed gratitude. By the way, gratitude is not based on the blessings we have received, otherwise the other nine would have returned, too.
4. Jesus was amazed. The other nine did not return.
How to Grow your Gratitude
1. Express gratitude as a discipline, independent of feelings.
True gratitude involves the heart as well as the lips. But sometimes when our hearts are cold, our words can be sparks that kindle us again.
“Let every detail in your lives, words, actions, whatever, be done in
the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the
way.” Col. 3:17
Other people may attend your pity party, but they leave quickly. Whiners want to feel good before they do the right thing. Winners do the right thing, and then they feel good.
2. Express gratitude for the small and ordinary things.
“If you learn to appreciate more f what you already have, you will find yourself having more to appreciate.” Michael Angier
In other words, hat you appreciate, appreciates. What you depreciate, depreciates. As you begin expressing gratitude, you will see more things that you have to appreciate. On the other hand, the more you complain, the less you’ll obtain.
“Stay alert, with your eyes wide open in gratitude.” Col 4:2
Lucado wrote, “The devil doesn’t have to steal anything from you, all he
has to do is make you take it for granted.”
3. Express gratitude especially in the midst of adversity.
God doesn’t ask us to be thankful for the sorrows that come our way, but he does want us to demonstrate trust in His care by thanking Him in spite of them. Paul told us to be thankful IN all circumstances, not FOR all circumstances. Our trust in God is greater than the circumstance that we are going through. Allow him to bring you through the valley, WHILE YOU ARE IN IT.
When we are grateful, fear disappears and faith appears.
John told the story of Charlton Heston. In 2002 he had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. A friend of his was visibly glum over this, when Heston told him not to feel bad for him. “I got to be Charlton Heston for more than 80 years. That’s more than fair.”
Turn our attention from your problems to God’s priorities in your life. How?
Go from what’s happening to me, to what is God doing in me. God does his greatest work during times of adversity.
A. Look beyond yourself and see the big picture.
B. Surrender yourself and acknowledge your dependence on God.
C. Forget yourself and care for others. There is always someone near by who is in a worse place than you are. Reach out to them, minister to them, and be grateful.
4. Express graitude toward others in tangible ways.
Creativity is a slippery creature. If you look too hard at it, the creativity skitters around the corner out of sight. And just at the moment you despair of ever thinking another creative thought, your mind floods with new ideas. It’s a perverse master, creativity.
A good friend of mine is in graphic design school for her frst semester this year. A whiz with computerized graphic design, she’s finding this first semester involves a lot of hand drawing, pen and ink, pencils, markers. In addition, the assignments come fast and furious, requiring at least 40 hours a week of homework time in addition to her classroom time. And those assignments astound us: 300 thumbnails exhibiting elements of both an Indian tribe and a Baltimore Oriole. Create gift packaging that can also be used as a toy…and incorporate your Native American theme. Pick a design and develop an entire alphabet around it, while not repeating the exact design anywhere. She has learned to work within amazing constraints during this first semester, which we hae nicknamed her “analog phase” due to the low tech nature of her materials so far.
But we have noticed something over time.
Creativity seems to blossom within those constraints laid on the assignments. When her back is up against a wall, creativity breaks through and results in a project she could never have imagined when she sat down to draw. As much as she rails against the strict guidelines for each assignment, in the end her work has taken leaps forward because of the direction and inspiration the guidelines provide.
This got me wondering, this week. Will we all be the same as we walk through the tightened economic environment that is surely coming? Will strict guidelines (ie: a budget) force us to greater creativity, and result in an end product we might not have thought of before? I believe it will. I believe we are coming into a creative renaissance, both in our personal lives and in our communities. Churches are going to be creative; non-profits are going to get creative; even retailers will get creative. Could it be that “cookie cutter solutions” are going to fade out of style? Here’s hoping!
It’s a line from one of my favorite stories of all time, the poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore. As a little girl I would reach for my picture book copy of this poem over and over, and not just at Christmas. Several years ago I was thrilled to find a reprint of my original book, and it now sits on my coffee table at this time of year.
I’m thinking about this story because of a line I read a quote in the book Community by Peter Block.
We need to distinguish between stories that give meaning to our lives and help us find our voice, and those that limit our possibility.
The stories that are useful and fulfilling are the ones that are metaphors, signposts, parables, and inspiration for the fullest expression of our humanity. … Theater, movies, song, literature and art are storytelling of the highest order. These are the mediums for building an individual sense of what it means to be a human being and a community.
The stories that we tell ourselves and others matter. They matter more than we might imagine! I learned today, for example, that Clement C. Moore’s little poem is actually responsible for shaping the way our nation views Santa Clause and Christmas. Before this poem Santa never traveled with a pack of reindeer. Imagine a world without Dasher and Dancer! (I’m sure you realize that Rudolph was an add on…a delightful one, however).In addition, Moore was so shy and unassuming that a family friend actually sent the poem into the newspaper in 1823 in order to get it published. Moore didn’t think his little poem was a story worth telling, but it has put sugarplum sparkles in children’s eyes for 175 years.
What about your story?
This time of year we tell ourselves our personal stories over and over, even when we don’t realize it. We build expectations built on our childhood Christmases. We bake Grandma’s special recipe; we put the same kinds of items in our Christmas stockings; we avoid the same fruitcakes, and we bake the same dishes for our Christmas table.
Some of us don’t like the story of Christmas in our lives. I’m not speaking about THE Christmas story, of course, but the story we have written about our own Christmas holiday. Or any holidays. We have accumulated the pain of past tragedies and circumstances and attached them to our present holidays. Ouch.
The beauty is that we can send the book back to the Author and request a new book, a new story, at any time. That’s what faith can do for us if we allow it. We can turn a fresh page and begin again. New books are written one experience, one holiday, one Christmas candle at a time.
This Christmas I am going to thank God for the beautiful memories he has allowed me to write in my book of history. But I am also going to work hard at providing and creating some transformational memories for people I care about, people who are bound by limiting stories. This is a simple gift that we can give the people around us. Here are some of the possibilities I have thought about this year.
A carol sing and cookie party for some of the older folks I know who miss those old songs of their past.
A commitment to watch out for people whose current holidays are not playing out the way they would dream.
I’d love to pull off some inexpensive random acts of kindness this season. Last year I tipped the woman cleaning the tables in the mall food court — a thankless job if there ever was one. I got a hug in return. Not a bad return on investment.
At least one portion of my day on Christmas is going to be open to any and all to come and fellowship. There are so many friends who are adrift on this family holiday. I want to make sure we are family for them.
Not life changing, these ideas, and not extensive. They are just a start at helping a friend write a new story.
I should be writing a Thanksgiving post. I should tell you how wonderful our family and friends are, how the meal was amazing and how thankful I am for each of them. And then I should tell you, my readers and facebook friends and cyber friends, how thankful I am for you. I know that is what I should do.
But instead, I think I’ll grab a nice cup of the last of the Aged Sumatra, put my feet up and sit on the porch enjoying the cool South Florida evening with the remaining friends lounging about.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I am thankful for you, even if I’m not writing a post about it tonight!
I’ve been thinking lately. Something seems to be afoot. It’s something unfamiliar to us, yet strangely exhilarating. It feels like a call, a challenge, a movement back to where we need to be. At times I am impatient for it to arrive, thinking that this is the moment for which our generation was created. This is our time to make a difference, to remember that Christianity is a verb, not a noun. This is our time to finally walk boldly into our communities and neighborhoods putting into practice what we have learned in the gloated years now in the past. It’s time to use what we have.
Uncertain times historically create a surge in spiritual longings. When money gets scarce, prayer becomes common! Nearly every biblical story is set against a backdrop just like the news stories of today. Cataclysmic changes overturn the status quo, and people demand answers. Think about it: biblical cities are destroyed, kings are deposed, floods ravage or people are enslaved. In all these, God moves in a fresh direction. It is the same for us now.
There will be, if the times continue as they are, a drastic cutback of the march into consumerism that has built the church in the last decades. Expensive programs will have to give way to the reality of the weekly offering. Rather than being a curse, God can use this as a blessing if we commit to being intentional during this season of history. We need to learn and teach the spiritual disciplines that have guided the church for centuries. We can walk out of the church and become the church. We can stop eating, and start giving.
The days ahead will require a healthy dose of creativity, something at which this generation excels. We can look back a generation or two and examine what practices worked before, then adapt them to this new time. No money for the traditional Christmas festival at church? Spend time planning as a church how individuals could open their homes — yes, the place they actually live – and celebrate Christmas in a new way. Don’t just leave this to chance: teach it! Recovery ministry in jeopardy of a budget cut? Have a cup of coffee with a struggling addict, and be willing to answer your phone when he calls late at night. Go to an AA meeting with him, and you may find your impact growing. Train a whole church to take that step of faith.
At home you will surely be facing the same constraints that will transform the church ministry offerings, as well. Take a lesson from your grandparents: adapt and don’t complain. Focus on what you do have, and use it for the kingdom. Invite someone over to supper! Do life together, rather than sit side by side in a pew. And while you are at it, look across the fence at your neighbor and invite them, too. Learn to share the resources you have already to connect with people you may previously have passed on the way to the mall. Share. Be willing to pour your life out, give yourself away. The Robbie Seay Band has a lyric in one of their songs that calls us to this action. It says, “Rise, rise people of love, rise. Give yourself away.” Hungry people, lonely people, scared people are far more likely to allow you to give yourself to them than self-sufficient satisfied ones. This is a new day in our neighborhoods, and it’s exciting.
Finally, this is the time to prepare. Think ahead. Evaluate your resources and begin to strategically think how you can maximize them for the kingdom. Pretend a hurricane is coming, if you must, and store up extra supplies. Open your home and be willing to tolerate the messiness that comes with sharing your life. Learn the art of intentional hospitality in all areas of your life. It’s time to stop talking about being missional, and take the first step out of the front door.
I am sitting in the lobby of Christ Fellowship Royal Palm. This campus is completely different still from either CityPlace campus or our main Gardens campus. Come to Royal Palm and I feel like I am in an overgrown Starbucks that happens to have a church inside it. From the day this campus opened it had a different feel, a different volunteer ethic, a different sense of community. In the lobby moms are chasing kids, people are drinking coffee and “accidental” meetings are leading to new minister ideas. As I write this, I am listening to a surgeon connect to an organization where he can donate his services. Earlier I heard a business plan for creating jobs for handicapped and homeless.
I think it should be a new catch phrase in the planning industries, both ministerial and architectural: life happens in the lobby.
Thanksgiving is all about family: the family you are born with and the family you choose to gather around you. In these days that run up to Thanksgiving, i’m going to focus on how families can be used to foster wider community and reach people in the kingdom. In that spirit, I wanted to share this quote from Leroy Barber in his book New Neighbor. I have savored this book. That’s the only word to use. I read a page every day or so, not rushing through like I want to but doling it out in bits like Christmas chocoloates.
The influence of a family, though, is seen in more than just the programs and ministries they do together. Our best moments in life and ministry are when life and ministry are one. When you can’t tell if this is ministry or just life. When I sit on the sofa watching football and some teens from the neighborhood stop by and join me. When my kids and the neighbor kids are playing in the yard and making too much noise and I tell everyone to be quiet. My wife, Donna, likes to cook on Thanksgiving. She naturally includes any kids who want to help. Our house is always open and there are always people there. This means they se the good and the bad. They see how our family relates to one another in positive ways and sometimes through the conflict. I don’t know if that’s ministry or just life at this point, but one thing I do know is that we are a family trying to live out our values. We want to be more than just people doing the task of ministry. We want to be good neighbors by sharing our lives with the people around us.
I don’t think I could have captured our family vision better than with that paragraph. Doing life as a ministry is a little harder to quantify and measure. I can’t count souls reached. There are certainly no offerings to gauge faithfulness. But I know that someday we will see the rewards of our commitment to living transparently in communion. Someday one of my extra “girls” is going to be throwing their doors open to some neighborhood kids and their mind is going to wander back to their days in our home. When that day happens — and if they happen to send me a facebook about it — I’m going to do a little happy dance as I listen to God say “Well done.”
In the meantime…there are decorations to put up, recipes to gather and rooms to clean up for the celebrations ahead!
A good book has to have an authentic voice, a narrator or author who is secure in who they are, and allows that security to permeate their work. Starbucks has an uncanny ability to find authentic voices, and distribute them in their book selections. The House at Sugar Beach, by Helene Copper, is one of the most authentic books I have read in years.
The book details the dramatic life of Helene Cooper, now a United States journalist, but also a little girl who grew up in Liberia. Until the age of 14 she lived a privileged, elite life in this African country founded by former slaves from the United States. In a true confession, I’d barely heard of Liberia before this book. I’m probably not alone in that: Americans are notorious at ignoring most of the world past our borders. But an authentic voice can cut past that apathy and make us care about a place that was a 60 second blip on the news of yesterday. I care about the house at Sugar Beach. I care about Helene and her family. And caring about them makes me more likely to care about someone else.
If there is one thing that an authentic voice can teach us, it’s that everyone has a story. Everyone. Most of them are fascinating. And generally speaking, the “odder” the character, the more likely the depth of the story. Reading Helene’s story has made me appreciate the African immigrants who started over in the United States, as Helene and most of her family eventually did. It has made me appreciate my country where a family can start over and create a new life. It has made me appreciate all the unsung people of the world, whose lives are lived out in places that I will never visit and probably rarely think about.
Jeremy, our fave Starbucks barista, is leading a Gardens Mall book club discussion about this book both online and in his store, December 14 at 4 PM. I’m looking forward to hearing about what others think! The video below is an interview with Helene Cooper, the author.
In 1732, Johann Sebastian Bach turned a humorous poem by Picander into what’s become known as the Coffee Cantata. It’s original title was “Be Quiet, Don’t Chatter.”
Did you all know that turkey puts you to sleep? I’m sure you did…we’ve all heard about the tryptophan in turkey that helps bring on sleep. In fact, i give a vitamin to my daughter that has a small amount of tryptophan in it to combat her insomnia. Well yesterday our turkey knocked me out cold. By the time the Student Ministries staff left the house I was beginning to see double. I was asleep before their cars hit the road at the end of our driveway. Only the persistence of a teenage girl who needed a new dress managed to pull me from sleep. Looking back on our previous holidays, we always use an organic turkey. I’m wondering if our normal organic turkeys have less tryptophan?
So today was spent in, essentially, a hangover. I shuffled from one spot to another, never fully engaging in my day. My last stop was at “The Office”, or my local Barnes and Noble. I sipped a coffee and read a new book and essentially began to wake up: at 2:30 pm.
In that haze, however, I discovered something about myself and the God I serve. I felt guilty sitting there sipping and reading. This is NOT the season for sitting. This is the season for doing, right? Holidays are stressful, right? We run from one thing to the next. There are hurting people who find themselves adrift during the holidays. Any well-adjusted kingdom dweller should be up and about the Father’s business. My mind was flitting from one need to another, all needs I knew of and knew I could help with.
Then God tapped me on the shoulder. “Would you mind just sitting here with me for a bit?”
Wow. It came over me all at once how seldom I’ve allowed myself to just sit and enjoy the kingdom recently. My soul has missed that stillness, and I think my God has missed that companionship. Oddly, I was reading a book about the “divine hours” that Benedictine Monks keep, a schedule that works in time for sleep, prayer, work and community. All of it fits in a day.
As I head into this next season I need to remind myself that all of the work for me to do is laid in front of me by the King of the kingdom. He alone knows what I can do for him, and he doesn’t want me to work myself out of balance. Health, sleep, study, reading…these are important to my overall being. If I can’t have those things, I can’t be who he created me to be. That’s so true especially when it comes to the reading. If I am on the run 24/7 and don’t take time to read (how indulgent, I reason, to read when people need my physical help), then I can’t be who he made me to be. I wither without that connection to God’s creative mind.
Guess what? I made it through the rest of my day. Dinner got made for my elderly mom, my daughter got driven to worship night, I visited with my neighbor on the back porch for a few moments. It all got done. And it got done by a girl whose soul was nurtured by those few moments of companionship at a table for one in Barnes and Noble.
