Confessions of an Amateur Believer

Have you ever wondered if being a Christian meant you had to stop using your God-given brain and blindly follow something you didn’t understand without questioning? Have you come to consider thoughtful self examination of your beliefs something to be avoided? Think it is something you shouldn’t want to do? Is it somehow a sin to have doubts about matters of faith? Have I got a book recommendation for you! Check out Confessions of an Amateur Believer by Patty Kirk and see that you're not alone.

Patty Kirk gives us some revealing insight into her life from which we can all benefit. She grew up in the faith and had that beautiful child-like complete trust that there is indeed a God and that God is good. Then because of family problems and some traumatic experiences she came to leave the faith and doubt the existence of God. After years of persuing more and more education and life overseas, she came home and found her faith again. Even those of us who never left the faith of our childhood can still glean insight into the bumps in the road which may have driven our friends, family, or co-workers away from belief in God.

The book is basically a collection of essays about her doubts and how that God dealt with her doubts through the people around her and her experiences in life. Most of the time, a Bible verse (maybe even one she’d read many times before) struck a nerve. The Holy Spirit spoke to her and and put a bright spotlight on a particular passage and related it to some event or worry or hurt.

In one chapter entitled “On Barns” she tells of how the she and her husband have six barns on their farm in Oklahoma but they don’t really farm much any more. When beef prices fell in the 90’s he became a CPA and she became an English teacher. They were “barn rich and money poor.” While reading the parable in Luke 12 about the prosperous farmer who contemplates tearing down his barns to build bigger ones so he can store up enough to stop working and life the easy life, she took hard the fact that God chose that time to say “You fool! This very night you will die!” He hadn’t actually torn a barn down yet. He was making plans for his own future to be self sufficient without needing God anymore.

“I got to thinking about the fact that this rich guy hadn’t even carried out his plans yet when God told him he was about to die that very night. He was just thinking about it. And it occurred to me, suddenly, that this parable was not about storing wealth but about making plans and to-do lists, about living in the future tense instead of now.....

My barns, I got to thinking, are unpublished books, further academic degrees, things to write in future resumes or please for salary increases, courses yet to come, a clean house, a pretty yard, a place to rest. And my sin is not these things, many of which I already enjoy, but thinking about them, my secret yearning

for more job security and professional acclaim and some sort of future leisure in which to garden, read novels, and throw big dinner parties.

I have thought the rich guy’s thoughts....I work long hours, pour my energy and enthusiasm into my students and writing, and then snap at my husband and children when I get home and dream about a future in which this isn’t so.

Today I wish to consider the barns I am tearing down; my marriage, my two children, my faith in God to take care of my wants and desires. Jesus began his parable with a strange statement. He says: “The ground of certain rich man produced a good crop.” The story is about the certain rich man, his schemes and impending death, but the subject of the opening sentence is not the man but the ground – the land, the earth, the very dirt of which the man himself was made.....

Planning to build bigger barns is cherishing the future of our own creation rather than the good barns full of what we’ve already been given.”

She has this to say about the story in which Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat when a horrible storm comes up and the Disciples are terrified. They wake Jesus up as if to say “Why are you doing nothing to help us? We’re all going to drown!”

“Where is your faith?” He asked them, and suddenly I realized that shrieking to Jesus to help me and having faith that He would help take care of me were not the same thing. Faith, that elusive gift that I could not earn, did nevertheless require doing something, something very specific. I had to calm myself with the certainty that I was loved and would be taken care of. ‘Like a weaned child with its mother,’ I had to calm myself enough to let my Master sleep.

“Calm down,” I used to tell my little daughters when they were unreasonably upset or over tired. I reminded them that I was in charge but that I knew they had the power to calm themselves. I made them sit in my lap and take deep breaths. I stroked their hair. After a while, their tight little rebellious bodies would soften and lean into me.

Think of it! Jesus slept in that little boat while the dangerous storm raged. Giving my problems to Jesus is to let him sleep – and to sleep myself.

The Psalmist knew this: it is in vain that we ‘rise early and stay up late,’ he tells us in Psalms 127, “toiling for food to eat” – for the Lord “grants sleep to those he loves.”

There is a similarly wonderful chapter on that perpetual brunt of all kinds of jokes – the mother-in-law. Only this hits hard deep inside because it is based on scripture. Patty Kirk describes how she felt a sense of resentment against her mother-in-law despite all the free baby sitting, meals, and cars she let them buy from her at below market prices. She resented her because she wanted a more independent life for her and her husband and her mother-in-law’s constant “help” was a constant reminder of how interconnected they were.

“Eating a Mamaw’s meant surrendering one of my most precious retreats from the difficulties of life, my escape and solitude, my self-made and hard won identity as the provider of food for my family.”

Then she read the story of Naomi and Ruth with fresh eyes. Ruth’s words to Naomi:

Wherever you go, I shall go.
Wherever you live, I shall live.
Your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God, too.

Today regarding her mother-in-law:

“Hers is the fiber from which whole cloth is made, an inspiration for any would-be Ruth or striving Christian, a model of selfless love of herself, others, and life itself. As I get older and more sure of the choices Ihave made, for better or worse, I begin to see how one might come to cling to such a pillar in time of need. I already cling to her, in fact. More and more, when time is short and stressful, I seek her ease, her meals, her love for my children and attention to their demands.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I received a free review copy of this book in the hopes that I would say something nice about the book. My first reaction was selfish I admit. I was glad that a real book marketing professional thought my humble blog would make good publicity for the book and that some of you might take my recommendation and pick up your own copy.

In hindsight, I must say that I was the one blessed in this process and I’m sure glad that I was given this opportunity because I’m not one to go to bookstores and pickup books from authors I’d never heard of before. But I have my own aspirations of writing a Christian book some day and I hope I can write something that will touch your soul down deep inside like this one touched me – and I exercised my God-given brain, too! I encourage you to go pick up your own copy of Confessions of an Amateur Believer by Patty Kirk.

Words of Encouragement

God placed a new person in my path recently to encourage me and bless me. A good Sunday School friend of mine invited a young pastor named Brian (the pastor of another church nearby) I had never met to say a few words at my Sunday School class party. From my Sunday School friend I learned that this young man once had a promising career in business but walked away from it all when he felt God's call into the ministry.

When Brian got up to speak, he read some of his own inspirational Christian writing. My antenna started twitching because I realized "here is another person right here in my neighbor hood who takes his Christian writing seriously!" After Brian spoke, I was able to find out that he was once a management consultant in the healthcare industry. Now I am a consultant myself as well (I help corporations design their business software and websites) so we even had that in common.

I also learned that Brian had been writing the really wonderful Christian poetry and weekly email newsletters to his congregation and friends and had been doing this for a while. He told me he probably had 140 or more Microsoft Word documents of his own inspirational writing that he had been distributing by email. I told him he should start posting some of his writing in a blog for the whole world to see (and find via Google and other search engines)!

I encourage all my readers to visit Brian Johnson's new Blog Words of Encouragement. I just read his most recent post "$2 worth of gas" in which he tells a story of rushing off to do ministry at a prison without any cash or his debit card and desperately running out of gas. He stopped at the first gas station he came to after his visit to the prison and found they did not take checks. When he tried to buy $1.14 worth of gas he scrounged out of his ashtray, the lady behind the cash register offerred to let him have $5 if he'd pay her back. His pride kept him from accepting her generosity (she had no way to know if she'd ever see him again) but later he began to wonder if he should have accepted her offer. Had he selfishly stolen her opportunity to do a good deed? Was refusing her gift like refusing God's grace in some way. Its a great story. You won't be disappointed.

Copyright © 2006 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The Grace Shown by Ted Haggard's Wife

I was not planning to post anything about the sad and tragic fall of the Rev. Ted Haggard. Frankly, I did not know too much about him, his background, or his ministry and I didn’t want to add to the media buzz over the situation.

I changed my mind, however, when I read words attributed to his wife that absolutely floored me in the way they exhibit the ability to show grace in the toughest of times... and grace is of course what my blog is all about.

If you check out this Fox News story “Evangelist Admits to Sexual Immorality” you will find these words about a letter from Haggard's wife that was shared with his congregation:

“In a separate letter, Haggard's wife prompted laughter when she promised to remain with her husband and said church members no longer had to worry about her marriage being so perfect she couldn't relate to them.”

Yes, you read correctly, the words of Ted Haggard’s wife Gayle prompted laughter. I think the congregation laughed in joy that she could at this time of pain make light of the perception (or is it wishful thinking?) that preachers and their wives have perfect marriages that should be envied and serve as some kind of role mode to the rest of us. (Those of us who are preacher's kids know better.) To me, these words speak volumes about her and how powerfully she has allowed God to work in her life at this time.

While I’m on the topic, I would also like to point my readers to another bit of insight on this sad situation. See Gordon MacDonald’s leadership blog “Out of Ur” and his post “The Haggard Truth: Gordon MacDonald on lies all-too-easily believed” for some insight on the dangers of fame for Christian leaders and the impact when a Christian leaders falls.

“It seems to me that when people become leaders of outsized organizations and movements, when they become famous and their opinions are constantly sought by the media, we ought to begin to become cautious. The very drive that propels some leaders toward extraordinary levels of achievement is a drive that often keeps expanding even after reasonable goals and objectives have been achieved. Like a river that breaks its levy, that drive often strays into areas of excitement and risk that can be dangerous and destructive. Sometimes the drive appears to be unstoppable. This seems to have been the experience of the Older Testament David and his wandering eyes, Uzziah in his boredom, and Solomon with his insatiable hunger for wealth, wives and horses. They seem to have been questing—addictively?—for more thrills or trying to meet deeper personal needs, and the normal ways that satisfy most people became inadequate for them.”

.....

“More than once we’ve seen the truth of a person’s life come out, not all at once, but in a series of disclosures, each an admission of further culpability which had been denied just a day or two before. Perhaps inability to tell the full truth is a sign that one is actually lying to himself and cannot face the full truth of the behavior in his own soul.

But then all sin begins with lies told to oneself. The cardinal lies of a failed leader? I give and give and give in this position; I deserve special privileges—perhaps even the privilege of living above the rules. Or, I have enough charm and enough smooth words that I can talk anything (even my innocence) into reality. Or, so much of my life is lived above the line of holiness that I can be excused this one little faux pas. Or, I have done so much for these people; now it’s their time to do something for me—like forgiving me and giving a second chance."

The Devil must be celebrating big time over his ability to bring down a big-name Christian leader. Speaking of that, I highly recommend everyone read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis for a chilling insight into temptation. My reaction upon reading it was “If I was the Devil, that is exactly what I would do!” It really is worth reading!

The Screwtape Letters

C. S. Lewis

Best Price $3.33
or Buy New $9.56

On yet another related topic. Do you believe that the Rev Ted Haggard was a "bad apple" his entire pastorial career? Or.. do you believe that he was at one time living an upright life and being used by God? I don't know any of the people involved but my first reaction is to believe that he was a good man who was not vigilant and was undermined by the temptation of the Devil... just like in The Screwtape Letters. See a previous post of mine "Like a Roaring Lion... Er Shark".

Copyright © 2006 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

Prayers from the Depths

When we are in prosperity, our prayers come from our lips. But when we are in the depths, our prayers come from our heart. Those that are farthest cast down are not farthest from God but are nearest to Him.

Archibald Simpson, Puritan Preacher

Psalm 130:1-5 New American Standard Bible

Hope in the LORD'S Forgiving Love.

A Song of Ascents.

1Out of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD.
2Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications.
3If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
4But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared.
5I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, And in His word do I hope.

The culture war's biggest casualties may be Christian joy and hope

The article below is worth your time.....

ALWAYS IN PARABLES Furrowed Brows Inc. The culture war's biggest casualties may be Christian joy and hope. By Andy Crouch

Forgiveness - Key to a Loving Heart

The key that opens the door to the locked rooms of our hearts is forgiveness. It is only when we have experienced forgiveness, (.. I mean being overwhelmed by the reality of forgiveness, being able to touch, tast, and smell its results) that we find the locks are sprung, the doors flung open, the windows tossed high, the rooms inhabited, the fires lighted on the hearths. It is then we discover that our hearts are finally free to love. They have become what the Creator intended them to be, places with immense capacity to embrace.

Karen Mains, The Key to a Loving Heart

Adding to Our Prayer List

Things We Usually Pray for

• for forgiveness of our sin
• to help us stop sinning more
• to help someone else stop sinning more
• to remove or minimize the consequences of our sin or bad decisions previously made (likely decisions made without seeking God’s will first)
• to remove or minimize the consequences of someone else’s sin on our lives
• that our family & friends come to know Jesus as their Savior
• for the future good health, happiness, and general well being of ourselves, family, & friends
• for help in dealing with a difficult person in our lives
• to remove a difficult situation in our lives
• to take away our desire to repeat a difficult sin
• for financial blessings or for success in life
• for success in and God’s blessing upon the plans we have made for the future
• for relief from financial distress or burdens
• for His provision of a job so that we can support our families
• to help us be a better parent to our children
• to change our spouse so that he or she becomes more like the person we need them to be
• to heal someone close to us already suffering from an illness or injury
• for His protection from accidents and anyone who might intentionally harm us or our family & friends
• to bless and lead our church leaders and other spiritual leaders who minister to us.
• to bless and lead the executive, legislative, and judicial governmental leaders in the decisions they make which affect all of us.
• to bless and protect from harm those who willingly risk their lives to protect us such as our policeman, firefighters, and military.
• that doctors and nurses who try to make us or our family well again have the skill and wisdom they need to provide the proper medical care.

Food for thought... Should We Add Some Prayers More More Like These?

• Seek God’s will in a difficult decision we must make before we make the decision
• “I thank You and praise You God for Your grace in forgiving me of the sins I’ve committed in the past and for forgiving me in advance for sins I will no doubt commit in the future. Help me accept Your gift of grace. Help me stop feeling guilty about the past and help me instead to get about the business of glorifying and serving You to the best of my ability both now and in the future.”
• Ask God to show us where He is already actively working around us and reveal to us how we should alter our plans and join Him
• Help us to be able to forgive someone who has sinned against us because we are having trouble forgiving them
• Ask God to reveal what He wants us to learn from a difficult situation when He chooses not to make it go away. (see I Peter 1:6-8)
• To change us so that we become the person our spouse needs us to be.
• That we be able to rejoice in the difficult circumstances we face if is because God is “pruning” us to bear even more fruit for Him in the future. (see John 15:1-8)
• That the Holy Spirit lead us so that we always glorify God in what we think, say, and do... and that our lives be a positive influence on all those around us.
• Ask God to reveal His purpose for our life, how He wants to use us to serve His purpose, and for the Holy Spirit to lead us and equip us for those tasks.
• Ask God to reveal to us His plan for our “outreach” to those outside the church who do not yet believe.
• Ask God to reveal to us His plan for our “inreach” to serve our fellow believers
• For help in accepting a “no” or “wait” answer from God to one of our prayers for His help
• For strength to persevere in times of adversity when God chooses not to relieve us from difficult circumstances or consequences
• That God use the Holy Spirit to prepare the heart of someone who does not believe in Jesus to be ready to hear God’s truth and accept Jesus
• That God use us in some way to help someone who does not believe to come to know Jesus as their Savior
• That God use us today in some way to plant a spiritual “seed” in someone’s life, water a seed someone else has already planted in their life, or otherwise care for any spiritual “plant” which may be growing in someone’s life.
• For the words to say to or the actions to take towards someone that God puts in our path today
• That today God would place someone in our path that we are to influence in some way for God’s glory.
• The ability to discern whose heart the Holy Spirit has already prepared and that God would prepare us to be ready to help that person find Christ in their life, or at least help them get started.
• How we should respond as a Christian when someone around us is involved in some sin such as adultery, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography, drugs, theft, dishonesty, etc.
• Identify what we do now or have now that God would have us give up so that we might more time/energy/resources to serve Him better
• Help us identify the right balance of our time/energy/resources across our jobs, marriage, children, church, service to others, personal enjoyment, and personal growth.
• Unity among Christians in the face of dissention and disagreement in the Church
• That God give us joy when we submit to and obey God
• That God give us the ability to lovingly confront believers who are giving in to sin.
• That God give us the ability to discern between His truth and false teachings
• That God give us the ability to discern between godly spiritual leaders and false ones
• That God help us to submit to the godly leaders God puts over us.
• That we have a hunger to know more about God and be have a closer personal relationship with God

Copyright © 2005 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

Resentment, the Cocaine of Emotions

I call resentment the cocaine of the emotions. It calls our blood to pump, our energy level to rise. Also like cocaine, resentment requires increasingly larger and more frequent dosages. There is a dangerous point at which our anger ceases to be an emotion and becomes a driving force. You know you can be addicted to resentment. The person bent on revenge moves unknowingly further and further away from being able to forgive. It has been said that hatred is that rabid dog that turns on its owner, resentment is that raging fire that consumes the arsonist, bitterness is the trap that snares the hunter. But you know what? Mercy is the choice that sets them all free. Resentment has no place in your heart. Stop taking it such large doses. And let the addiction cease.

Max Lucado

How do you pray for forgiveness?

Pretty early in life, I was taught to pray something like this:

"Father, forgive me of my sins."

As I got a little older, the Lord's prayer had more of an influence on my prayer life and this part of my prayers turned into:

"Father, forgive me of my sins as I forgive those who sin against me."

As I matured in my faith, I began to realize there were “sins of ommission” which were just as offensive to God as the “sins of commission.” Therefore, I found myself praying along the lines of:

"Father, forgive me of my sins as I forgive others... both those sins where I have done something wrong... and those times where You wanted me to do something and I did not."

Lately, however, I have thought a lot about Christ's one-time payment for all our sins. Surely Christ was aware that He was substituting Himself for me even though I wasn’t even born yet. That means He was offering himself as a living sacrifice for sins not committed yet. It seems that the forgiveness is on-going and once we are saved we should be thanking God for forgiveness that He has already granted. As a result, I wonder if a believer should pray something more like this:

"Father, thank You for forgiving me of my many sins as I forgive others... both those sins where I have done wrong and those when I failed to act on faith when You needed me to do something. I thank You also for continuing to forgive me both now and in the future for sins I will certainly commit in my future weakness and lack of faith.”

Maybe I'm crazy. Opinions are appreciated and encouraged.

Forgiveness & Grace - 20 Years in the Making

A true story that starts about Twenty Years Ago...

A young enlisted man in the US Navy and young woman meet, fall in love, and get married. The start their life together in a Navy town, San Diego I think. But duty calls the young man out to sea. Over the span of 3 different cruises, the two of them get to spend maybe 2 months together while he is in port. (Not that he could do much about it.) The young woman gets lonely. She finds herself liking the attention of other men. She strays too far and commits adultery. The young couple who barely have had time together at all get divorced. No kids so no custody issues. Neither has much money either so there is no mess with dividing marital assets. She moves away.

About Ten Years Later....

He has married a second time, but it didn’t work out either. He moves to Memphis. Later he comes to know Christ and gets married a third time, this time to a Christian.

The first wife matures and becomes a Christian, too. She remarries, moves to Oregon, and has children. The woman begins to feel led to seek out her first husband and ask his forgiveness for what she did wrong in their marriage. But she doesn’t know where he is.

A Couple of Years ago...

The need to seek forgiveness is still strong in the first wife. Luckily, technology has advanced and there is a bunch of information readily available on the Internet. She finds that her ex-husband used to have a job with a chain of bookstores and had written a bunch of book reviews that got posted on Amazon.com. She finds out his old employer. She finds out his new wife’s name, too. She finds where his new wife was a full-time Director of Christian Education at a church in Memphis. She calls them. She discovers the 3rd wife is no longer there, but took a position at another church in Northern Mississipi.

A Few Weeks Ago...

A woman in Oregon finds out she has to go on a business trip to Memphis.

Monday, October 26th, 2005 or thereabouts

The pastor of a mid-sized church in Northern Mississippi has to make up his mind what to preach about on Sunday. After all, they have to print bulletins ahead of time. He decides to preach on the topic of forgiveness.

Sunday, October 30th, 2005

A woman from Oregon has extended her stay from her business trip to Memphis and finds her way to that mid-size church in Northern Mississippi.

That pastor begins a sermon on forgiveness, much like he has begun many other sermons for the last 15-20 years. He notices a new woman in the sanctuary. He doesn’t know who she is but he keeps coming back to her face during the sermon because it is glowing. She is smiling ear to ear. “She must really like my sermon on forgiveness," he thinks to himself.

The pastor pronounces the benediction. The congregation starts heading out. From the door at the back of the sanctuary, wife #3 sees her husband kneeling in prayer at the altar at the front of the now almost empty sanctuary with a woman she doesn’t know, also in prayer. Curious, she heads that way. Her husband sees her and says, “This is Pam.” “Hi,” she says, “nice to meet you Pam.” “No,” her husband interrupts, “This is PAM.” Then it clicked. His first wife.

So, twenty years after committing adultery, ten years after becoming a Christian, and after 10 years of wanting to do it... a woman from Oregon finds her forgiveness and a burden of 10 years is lifted.

And a pastor finds out why he was led to speak about forgiveness.

After reading with this story are you filled with gladness for them? Do you have a new found appreciation for the power of grace? Or, are you trying to figure out how much of your personal information could be pieced together from a Google search on the Internet? Maybe being found wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

PS. I got this story tonight from wife #3 herself.

Copyright © 2005 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

My Purpose This Week? And Yours?

My Sunday School literature asked a really deep question as I was reading tonight, “What purpose does God have for you this week in your family, in your job, in your social relationships?” For some reason, this really struck a chord with me. There are so many possible answers. Here are some answers I thought of:

• God wants me to be a good example for my children this week.


• God wants me to love my wife unselfishly this week.


• God wants me to honor Him in the way that I do my job this week.


• God wants me to show Christian love and respect to my co-workers this week.


• God wants me to be a Christian friend this week.


• God wants me to allow a Christian friend to hold me accountable for the way I live my life this week.


• As they have given me permission, God wants me to hold my Christian friends accountable for their lives this week, too.


• God wants me to avoid temptations which draw me away from Him this week.


• God wants me to be a good steward of the financial blessings He has put in my care this week.


• God wants me to live below my means and return a portion of my financial blessings to Him and the Church this week.


• God wants me to give thanks to Him this week.


• God wants me to praise Him this week.


• God wants me to want to have an even closer relationship to Him this week and not just because I want Him to do me a favor.


• God wants me to live my life this week so it is a positive witness to anyone who might be paying attention.


• God wants me to pray that the Holy Spirit would lead me to someone whose heart has been prepared to hear about Jesus this week.


• God wants me to pray that I will be ready and willing to respond when the Holy Spirit prompts me to take action this week.


• God wants me to offer encouragement to someone who needs it this week.


• God wants me to forgive someone who has done me wrong this week.

I would love to hear some of your responses.