Shampa Rice at Redeemer Feb. 28-29

Shampa Rice will be at Redeemer this month.

Tuesday, Feb. 28 - 7 PM - worship with Holly Benner. Shampa speaks.

Wednesday - "A Taste of India with Shampa Rice." This is a fund-raising event for Shampa's orphanage in India.

Here are the details.

Ticket sales begin this Sunday at Redeemer after the service in the lobby for "A Taste of India with Shampa Rice." This is an Indian dinner to benefit the Wanderlust Foundation who is joining with Shampa Rice to build a home for orphaned/abandoned girls in Calcutta, India.

Ticket prices are $15 for adults and $8 for children 12 and under.

The dinner will take place Wednesday, February 29 in the Redeemer Fellowship Church Sanctuary.

The doors open at 6:00pm and dinner will start at 6:30pm.

Shampa will give a talk after dinner, and we will have an Artisans Market with goods and textiles from India, the pottery of Gary Wilson, jewelry by Abigail Heche, and many more.

Proceeds from the sale of goods in the Artisans Market will go to Wanderlust Foundation for the building of girls home in India. We are only able to take cash and check for dinner tickets as well as the sale of Artisans Market goods.

**If you cannot afford a ticket(s), we still want you to come!! Please see Pastor John to reserve your seat(s).

For dinner we will be having:

• Stir fry vegetables and Naan appetizer
• Tandoori Chicken
• Vegetable Rice Biriyani
• Raita Yogurt Salad
• Mango ice cream for dessert

Those outside of Redeemer can reserve tickets by calling Redeemer Fellowship Church at 734.242.5277. Leave a message with your full name and the number of seats in your party in the mailbox for the dinner.

Wanderlust Foundation and your Michigan Wanderlust team thank you for your support for this truly life saving project.

For more information, questions, or to volunteer to help with the dinner, please contact Holly Holladay 517.392.2079, Angie Hudkins 734.755.3492, or Julie DeSloover 724.915.1557.

Help Needed for the dinner:
--We need gas grills! If you a gas grill you could lend for grilling the Tandoori Chicken, please let us know ASAP.
--We need some guys who are good grillers to grill bone-in chicken to perfection the Wednesday afternoon of the dinner.
--We need people to serve food, clean-up after the dinner, help with sales at the Artisans Market during and after the dinner.
--4 people to help Shampa cook and do dishes the day and evening of the dinner.

We are asking adult volunteers to donate to the Wanderlust Foundation in an amount of their choosing in lieu of paying the ticket price. (Since this is a fundraiser.)

Thanks again!

Redeemer Fellowship Church
5305 Evergreen
Monroe, MI
48162
734-242-5277

Dealing with Anger in Marriage and Relationships

(Monroe sunrise)

In every good marriage, and in every good friendship, there are feelings of anger between persons. I once had a friend tell me, “I never get angry.” My thought was this: here is a person out of touch with what’s going on inside of him. Even God feels anger. Even Jesus felt anger.

When angry, what can a person do?

You can evaluate your anger. Here's how to do this. 

1. Recognize your anger. “Anger” is the emotion a person feels when one of their expectations has not been met. For example, if I drive across town expecting every light to turn green when I approach, I am going to be an angry person. Because this expectation will not be met. Therefore...

2. Identify your unmet expectation. Fill in the blank: "I am angry because my expectation ________
was not met."

3. Evaluate your unmet expectation. Is it either: a) godly, reasonable, good, fair; or 2) ungodly, unreasonable, bad, unfair. In my "driving" example above, my expectation was irrational.

4. Reject any ungodly or irrational expectations. If, for example, you expect people to clearly understand every word that comes out of your mouth, you are now free to reject this as an irrational expectation. Or, if you have the expectation that other people should never make mistakes when it comes to you, I now free you from that ungodly, irrational expectation.

5. If the unmet expectation is godly/fair, then ask: Have I communicated this to the person I am angry with? If not, then communicate it. For example, my expectation that persons should take off their shoes before entering our living room may be both rational and of God. But if I have not communicated this to others, my anger at the unfulfilled expectation is still real. But my expectation that people should know such a thing without being told is unfair.

6. If you have communicated it clearly to the person you are angry with, then communicate your anger this way: Say “I feel angry because my unmet expectation is __________________.

Communicate this in your own way of saying things. But in the midst of interpersonal conflict use “I” words rather than “You” words. That is, begin your sentence with “I feel angry…” rather than “You make me feel angry…” Doing it this way asserts with aggressing. For the person who hears it, this does not feel like an attack that causes them to rise up in defense.

Get rid of irrational or ungodly expectations. As you get free of these things you’ll find yourself less angry.

Remember that from the Christian POV, “anger” is not sin. Ephesians 4:26 says, “In your anger do not sin.” We are not told never to feel anger. There is a righteous anger, and that is not only appropriate but necessary. But when we feel the emotion of anger we are never to sin. In all relationships we are never to be harsh, demeaning, vindictive, or abusive. But in every close relationship there is anger. The anger-free relationship is a myth, and probably is a sign of unhealth when claimed.

Finally, the second part of Ephesians 4:26 says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.” Which means: deal with anger quickly, and in a loving and truthful way. The goal is always restoration of relationship and reconciliation. Regarding this idea, I am thankful that only two, maybe three times in our 38 1/2 years of marriage, have Linda I fallen asleep angry with each other. The reason for this is not that we’re some special, exceptionally compatible couple. We are this way because we were taught to do this by godly people who spoke into our lives. We were sufficiently warned about the cancerous bitterness that arises when anger is “swept under the carpet.”

Pray In Lonely Places

This deer greeted me as I recently went to Sterling State Park to pray.

In Luke 5:15-16 we read: ¹⁵ Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. ¹⁶ But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

From this verse (and others) we see that Jesus had a pattern of going away from people and getting alone with the Father in prayer. This pattern became a model for Christian spirituality through the ages.

I follow this model in my Spiritual Formation classes. This week, I know of 150 Jesus-followers who are praying one hour a day, 5 days a week. They are students from Payne Theological Seminary, Redeemer, and my on-line SF class. My recommendation to them all is: find a place to pray that is apart from home, workplace, and car. Why? Here are some reasons.

• There are too many possible distractions when we pray at home or office.
• The experience of prayer is different when we are not surrounded by things that beg to define us.
• The experience of God-dependency is increased in a "lonely place" uncreated by us.
• In the history of Christian spirituality serious, love-relationship praying mostly happened in one-on-one situations along with God. (In monasteries there was a back-and-forth movement between solitude and community.)
• Jesus did.

Can we pray in our homes, offices, and cars? Of course! And we should. If you are doing one of these prayer-classes with me and cannot get away from home to pray, then create a space at home that minimizes distractions. Turn your phone off (people don't need you as much as you think they do). Turn you computer off. Do not multitask! If possible, sit before a window that looks out on the world. Let your family know that you'd like to spend this hour without interruptions.

Meet with God.

Prayer Is Wasting Time With God

Santa Monica, CA

I remember, in 1981, when God called me to a deeper prayer life. I needed it so badly. I was doing, doing, doing, and the inner fire was waning. God told me to take Tuesday afternoons and pray. The entire afternoon. Tend the fire within. This was a new beginning for me, a time when my doing began to emerge from by being in God. In the spiritual life being precedes doing.

That first Tuesday afternoon was spent sitting on a rusty tractor in a field in a forest preserve north of Lansing, Michigan. I remember sitting there, trying to pray, while my mind kept asking "Just what the heck am I doing here, anyway? What am I accomplishing?" The answer seemed to be: "nothing." I wasn't xeroxing anything. I was producing (I mistakenly thought) nothing. No empirical "product" was coming forth from my being on this old tractor.

That day was one of the most singular important events of my life. I was getting attached to the Vine. I had been detached. That's not good. This was the beginning of good things; of Christ, living in me.

The writings of Henri Nouwen have influenced me as much as any have. I can only handle a few sentences, maybe a paragraph, of Nouwen at a time. In every Nouwen-sentence there is wisdom from on high. Leadership is influence; therefore Henri Nouwen was a leader.

How did Nouwen become such a great leader? The answer is: he wasted a lot of time praying. "Prayer," wrote Nouwen, "is wasting time with God." (Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit, pp. 19-20) "The world says, “If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless.” Jesus says: “Come spend some useless time with me.”"

Nouwen: "If we think about prayer in terms of its usefulness to us—what prayer will do for us, what spiritual benefits we will gain, what insights we will gain, what divine presence we may feel—God cannot easily speak to us. But if we can detach ourselves from the idea of the usefulness of prayer and the results of prayer, we become free to “waste” a precious hour with God in prayer. Gradually, we may find, our “useless” time will transform us, and everything around us will be different."

For reasons such as this I assign my Spiritual Formation students to pray. A lot. Prayer is active engagement in the mutual love relationship between the self and God. Praying is the perfect way to abide in Christ and "just be" with God. We were made for this. It is our destiny. This is why it feels so fulfilling and influences so much. 

Nouwen writes: "Prayer is being unbusy with God instead of being busy with other things. Prayer is primarily to do nothing useful or productive in the presence of God. To not be useful is to remind myself that if anything important or fruitful happens through prayer, it is God who achieves the result. So when I go into the day, I go with the conviction that God is the one who brings forth fruit in my work, and I do not have to act as though I am in control of things. I have to work hard; I have to do my task; I have to offer my best. But I can let go of the illusion of control and be detached from the result. At the end of each day I can prayerfully say that if something good has happened, God be praised." (Ib.)

This to be real prayer. Real prayer mono-tasks. It has no agenda other than to be with our Creator. To the world this looks like "doing nothing." To us it provides the reason for all we are called to do. Our "doing" gets relevant as it emerges out of the God-relationship.

Good Grief

Ben Witherington has posted 7 times on grief, at the loss of his daughter.

One more posting is to come.

Anyone now grieving will do well to read his reflections.

World Record: World's Fastest Guitar Player (600 BPM)

This... is incredible.

Watch the entire thing.

Meditation as Grinding on God's Word

Fish, at an open market in Istanbul

Henri Nouwen explains the biblical idea of "meditation" as he writes:

"In and through silence the Word of God descends from the mind into the heart, where we can ruminate on it, masticate it, digest it, and let it become flesh and blood in us. This is the meaning of meditation. Without silence the Word cannot become our inner guide; without meditation it cannot build its home in our hearts and speak from there." (Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit)

"Masticate" - a strange sounding word meaning "to chew." It has the sense of teeth crushing or grinding food.

To meditate on Scripture is to crush God's words into the meaningful nutrition of God's heart-desires so that these God-thoughts become more than theories as they get assimilated into one's own being. As Nouwen says, God's Word builds its home in our heart. Only then can God's Word "speak from there." The fruit of Spirit-led meditation is that God's Word becomes "our inner guide."

Grind on God's Word today.

Spiritual Formation Class - My Audio Presentation

Last night at Redeemer 100 people attended Session 1 of my Spiritual Formation class.

I have 20-30 online students.

You can listen to my 45-minute presentation on Spiritual Formation: How God Shapes the Human Heart here. It should also be available soon on iTunes.

Feel free to download it and pass it on as you like.

The Dream, the Revelation, and The Rescue

I rented a car two weeks ago to drive south to teach for the week at Payne Theological Seminary. It was a black Ford Fusion - I loved driving this car!

When I pulled into the seminary I was pleased to see all the cars. There were 27 M.Div. students in my Spiritual Formation class. I was looking forward to meeting and being with them for four days.

It was hard to find a parking space. I saw a slot between a car and the building wall. I did not see a metal grate covering a 5-foot hole. As the left wheel of the Fusion drove over the grate I felt something shift beneath me. When I got out of the car I saw that the grate had moved. Things now looked like this:

See the upper right corner of the grate? It's hanging by an inch or less. Had it moved slightly more, I suspect a bad thing might have happened to my rental car. As for me, I breathed relief. I felt I had been rescued!

I've been rescued many times by God. I am certain more rescues have occurred than I am aware of. Here's one I am aware of.

This is my 20th year at Redeemer. I am so thankful to be here! But my first year was a challenge. I was a newcomer-pastor, and there were people who were not immediately accepting of me. One Sunday morning, in my first month there, a man came up to me at the service's end. He was openly weeping as he embraced me. With heartfelt sincerity he said, "I don't care what other people are saying about you; I think you are a great pastor!" With eyes wide open I thanked him for this.

Months passed.

Then I had THE DREAM.

I dreamed I was driving a bus filled with people in the Smoky Mountains. The roads were twisty and turning. I was having trouble steering. Finally, the bus came to a cliff that dropped off into nothing. And I woke up. This felt like a nightmare.

I didn't tell Linda my dream. She knew I was struggling with some things, and bought a card for me. This card now sits in my office where I see it often. On the cover of the card there are mountains that look like the Smoky Mountains, with a road that twists and turns and finally comes to a cliff that drops off into nothing. Inside the caption read: "Sometimes the road of life looks like this."

I was stunned. I wondered - is God trying to tell me something? That, of course, is an understatement, for even I am not that dense. God was trying to tell me something! What was it?

During my prayer times I was devotionally reading Francis Frangipane's The Three Battlegrounds. That afternoon Frangipane cited James 4:6 - God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. I stopped reading at that point. It was as if God took a highlighter and emphasized it. Surely, I thought, this verse has something to do with my dream.

Later that day I arrived at my sons' school early, went into the gym, and walked round and round the gym saying James 4:6 over and over - God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble; God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble; God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. While doing this I felt I was supposed to fast from food until God revealed the meaning of the dream to me.

My fast lasted four days. I was driving to an Elder's meeting at our church building, still fasting, still inquiring of God. Then, from heaven, came Proverbs 16:18 -  Pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall.

And I knew. God was telling me, "John, if you don't get rid of this pride in your heart you will take this church for a fall." This was THE REVELATION.

I was glad when the Lord said this to me. I felt joy. I am certain I was smiling. I hurried into the Elder's meeting and said, "I need to tell you something." I told them of THE DREAM, the card from Linda, the quote from Frangipane, James 4:6, the call to fast, and THE REVELATION. And my conclusion: "God just told me that if I don't get rid of pride in my heart I will take our church for a fall." None of the Elders disagreed with me about this.

This was THE RESCUE! By an inch, I think. Not only for me, but for the people I have come to love.

Escaping Melancholia

Henri Nouwen writes:

"We need to begin with a careful look at the way we think, speak, feel, and act from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, and year to year, in order to become more fully aware of our hunger for the Spirit. As long as we have only a vague inner feeling of discontent with our present way of living, and only an indefinite desire for “things spiritual,” our lives will continue to stagnate in a generalized melancholy. We often say, “I am not very happy. I am not content with the way my life is going. I am not really joyful or peaceful. But I don’t know how things can be different, and I guess I have to be realistic and accept my life as it is.” It is this mood of resignation that prevents us from actively naming our reality, articulating our experience, and moving more deeply into the life of the Spirit."
(Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit)

Melancholia comes like a runaway planet, threatening to destroy us. It causes us to sit passively, immobilized, shutting us down. But deep within there is a hunger and thirst that will not go away. Obey this thirst. Be discontent to live in the shadow of the stagnant planet. This is an active discontentment that rejects spiritual acedia and pursues the Spirit.

Yes, BTW, I did see "Melancholia." The final scene, which to me represented the failure of religion in the face of a Russellian "Nature," stayed with me for days.