What I Learned from Video Stores

As a child, one of my fondest memories is going to West Coast Video as a family and walking slowly through the store, specifically along the wall where the “New Releases” were, looking for a movie to rent.  We would each pick up a few of the boxes, read the back, then debate amongst ourselves to decide on what we would watch that evening.

Last night, my sons wanted to have family movie night.  We turned on the Apple TV, flipped through some choices, read some descriptions, selected, and rented a movie from our sofa.  We were watching the movie is less time than it used to take all of us to cross the parking lot into the video store.

I know that my kids memories of “family movie night” will be different than mine, but they will be great memories none-the-less.  My father and grandfather probably had different “movie night” experiences than I did, and before there were movies, they had “something-else night”. 

I don’t particularly mourn the loss of Blockbuster or any of the other video stores that have gone the way of the buffalo, but I do often find myself wanting to hold on to the past.  We are comfortable with our memories, and generally remember things with more joy and happiness than they actually had.  We tend to elevate our memories, build a scaffold around them, and hold them in such high regard that it feels like nothing new can come close to them.

We are comfortable in our current church family.  We have friends that we like.  We feel useful and involved.  So the prospect of changing all of that and helping to plant a new church seems… uncomfortable.  In our minds, there is no way that a new church in a new location with a new group of people can come close to the experience we have had in our current situation.

One aspect of living in reality is realizing that things change.  Often for the better, sometimes for the worse, but inevitably, things change.  There is nothing wrong with holding on to fond memories, but when those memories become an unreasonable, unattainable litmus test, they can actually hold us back from experiencing the newness that God has for us.  If things aren’t changing, they aren’t growing, and there’s a name for things that aren’t growing. Dead.  

If God leads, we need to be willing to follow.  Into uncomfortable places, places we may have never wanted to go.  But the reality is that change is not something to fear.  West Coast Video and Blockbuster went out of business because people found a better way to find movies to watch.  And while letting go of the experience that I used to enjoy is a little sad, honestly, I hadn’t been inside a video store for years, even before they closed.  The new movie rental experience is really quite nice.

God is blessing us in our church, but that’s not a reason to stay stagnant.  If anything, it’s a reason to pursue God’s leading into new experiences, whether that means planting new churches, stepping out into ministry, or joining a Pastorate.  New memories will be made, and while it might seem now like they can’t compare with memories of the past, give it some time.  But don’t get too comfortable, there will always be a new way to rent movies.

Jeff Hyson

“Relating Without Guile”

(By Thor Knutstad)

Most of our patterns of relating are naturally very self-protective and actually quite manipulative. While distance or demand provides us a setting to be safe from the transparencies of vulnerability, contact and relating in conversation often only touches others to the degree that we get our own needs met. This is sad. Neither strategy is loving, but actually very self-serving.

Life’s disappointments and our deepest pains will almost always seem to occur in the context of some of our closest relationships. Our sinful strategies that try to control our relational world are very self-interested and very self-deceptive. 

Maybe we need to repent of these manipulative styles of relating and move toward others with risky involvement and words that connect to their hearts? Do you fear this style of intimate relating? Do you crave closeness but avoid it to the measure that it serves you?

Though Jesus was careful not to entrust Himself to the Pharisees, He does pour Himself into the hearts of the apostles and sometimes even other disciples. There were emboldened moments of relating – yet there were many tender ones as well. My friend Karen is now 71 years old and is in ministry in the Rochester, NY region. About 10 years ago, this 60+ year old woman came to me (a young pastor of about 33) and asked to be my Philadelphia Biblical University (PCB, now Cairn University) masters level counseling intern. What business did this mature, godly woman have being my intern, but I am grateful for her ministry – to others, and even to me. She was a good learner, but a good teacher as well. She knew how to love people and how to encourage. She gently and confidently once said to me in response to how I had handled some situation at church, “Thor, you are like Jesus – you are without guile.” She then proceeded to tell me what she meant by that. Guile is a military term from the Old King James Version of Scripture that denotes one who strategizes and plans in a sly and cunning manner – like a military leader who in crafty preparation knows how to flank his enemy and set up the victory. 

She was calling me to continue to deal with people and in their relationships (and mine) with a form of innocence – a reminder to never trade it for a shrewd plan or strategy that relies on a craft or skill that manipulates situations. This style of relating is vulnerable, but it cuts to the quick of the heart and often reaches the hearts of others. It touches people where they are, but it doesn’t pretend to have all of the answers. It listens and loves but doesn’t do so with a cunning agenda. It’s how Karen was – it’s who God has made her to be. This encouragement has stayed with me, and I have even passed it on a few times myself. If I have said it to you at some point, you are smiling right now. She blessed me and laid a foundation for my life, my relationships and my ministry.

While the Pharisees were self-righteous, self-absorbed and quite manipulative in tactic (hence, FULL OF GUILE), our sweet, loving Lord Jesus was the COMPLETE ANTITHESIS OF GUILE. His innocent, loving, merciful, gentle, unassuming ways reached into the hearts of His Most Beloved Relationships. Without guile, He healed and did miracles. Without guile, He spoke the Word of God – boldly and unapologetically. Without guile, He fulfilled His calling of His ministry and lived “on mission” with all whom He came into contact with daily. Without guile, He didn’t try to control or manipulate the outcome of those moments – He simply loved others well. Without guile, may WE repent of our maneuverings and the craft of relational control – instead, may WE turn toward our Jesus and replicate His love for others as an instrument of His heart.

Praise Him.

Pursuing God's Glory When I Run

I have two daughters. They’re both mine biologically. So that means I physically carried them both in my body...and my body carries the tell-tale signs of those two pregnancies. I don’t feel (or look) 16 anymore. 

After my second daughter was born, for a long time, I wasn’t happy with how much weight I had gained in the pregnancy and how much of it still remained on me after she was born...and crawling...and walking...and talking. And I’m going to confess something: I felt shame about that extra weight. 

I’ve been reading a couple of books recently by a woman named Brene Brown, who’s a researcher who became somewhat famous after doing a TED Talk  (a 20 minute talk on ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’) that went viral in 2010 about shame and vulnerability. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.” Yep. That’s exactly what I felt about being a different size postpartum: unworthy of acceptance and belonging. I felt embarrassed in social situations, like everyone knew that I was failing at an ‘essential’ part of who I am. I felt not good enough.  

So guess what I did? I decided to do something about it. I jumped into an exercise routine. I started attempting to incorporate a lot more fruits and veggies into my diet. “Great!” you might say. In the past few months, though, I’ve realized that it’s not so great. 

I’m realizing something about the way I exercise that I want to share with you. I honestly don’t tend to exercise to be healthy and care for my body. I exercise to chisel myself into being good enough. I felt shame (remember? ‘not good enough for acceptance’) when I was at my ‘unacceptable’ limit of what I weighed. I thought my extra fat on my hips made me unworthy of love. So I started exercising as a means to prove my worth. As a way to save myself from the pain of not being accepted and loved. 

As a side note, do you know how I can tell what my motivations are about exercising? It’s how I feel, and what thoughts are going through my mind when I’m doing it, and how I view my body afterwards. When I’m running to mold my body back into shape so that I can prove my worth, I feel driven. I feel like I have to run harder, go further. Or I might feel prideful if I did a good run. I’ll think thoughts like, “This will really help how my body looks.” Or, as I’m running, “I’m literally running the fat on my rear end off right now.” I don’t feel gentle or kind or caring to myself. I feel more like, “Make it happen. Fix it. Prove it.” 

Wow. Talk about an internal striving for something much more than just taking care of my body. The exercise turns into a means of obtaining the ‘False Savior’ of being skinny and having a toned body. It promises me that I’ll have safety and status if I’m skinny. I won’t have to feel the pain of rejection or or the vulnerability of not belonging because it will save me. I’m using exercise to achieve something for me that it can’t. It can’t rescue me. 

Now that I’ve realized what’s been going on in my heart, I’ve been wondering what repentance would like. How would I practically turn away from ‘skinny’ being my hope for salvation?

My honest answer is that I’m not quite sure yet. I have some ideas. But I’ve grown up in this culture that’s told me my whole life these terrible lies that I have to be skinny to have worth, and that people who lose baby weight in the blink of an eye are better than those who don’t. I know the answer isn’t to eat whatever I want and to boycott lunges and squats for the rest of my life. It’s got to have something to do with my heart. Where deep inside, I reject our culture’s push and let God train me in a new way of thinking. And it’s got to have something to do with taking care of my body in a way that’s mentally and emotionally kind and gentle to myself. I focus on other benefits of exercise and eating right: the ‘therapy’ that running is for my thoughts and emotions, the enjoyment of moving my body and pushing it to work hard, the way my body feels better when I’ve eaten in a balanced way. 

I’ve heard people talk before about ‘eating for the glory of God,’ and I guess that would be the difference: to do even exercising and eating as an outflow of being already loved and accepted and belonging to God, instead of doing them as a means to secure my salvation among my peers. It’s like doing the exact same actions, but with a very different mentality. I definitely don’t have all the answers for what it can look like, but I’m hoping that God will continue to teach me...as I run. 

Sarah Howard

What's Wrong About Comparing Pain?

This week I want to draw your attention to a resource Ed Welch, faculty at CCEF, produced a few years ago. In his blog "No More Minimizing Pain", Welch help us consider the dangers of comparing our experience of pain to someone else's, and the implications that such actions can have in terms of our reliance on God. When I read his blog I thought about situations I have encountered where I felt I had to suffer in silence because someone else's pain was greater than mine, or where I felt less than considered because someone did not regard my pain as important. I believe Welche's blog is provocative and very relevant. I recommend you click here and take a few minutes to give your soul a gift.

Sincerely,

Diego Cuartas

Reaching Into the Unknown

My life right now is all about the unknown. There almost isn’t a question you could ask me about my life in 3, 6 or 12 months that I have an answer to other than “wherever God says next.” 

Of course, because of my severe control issues (also known as FDD or “Flexibility Deficit Disorder”) I learn big lessons about letting go and embracing God’s timing and trusting His character every time I hit a life transition such as this. 

This time feels a little different because I think I’m also learning about being proactive and not just reactive even when I have no idea what’s happening next. My natural instinct is to only react: to go kicking and screaming all the way- and who among us is really any different? I don’t know anyone who looks forward with joyful anticipation to any change they can’t predict, control or understand ahead of time. It’s just plain scary. It’s the same feeling I have when I watch a movie without first seeing a preview or knowing anything about it. I have no idea what will happen next or what the big storyline is. 

In this case, I don’t know if we’ll be moving this year or when that will happen or if I’ll need to change jobs. There’s very little I can predict or even guess. My tendency in the face of that would be to make plans anyway, add up pros and cons lists, research the best season to move and develop three back up plans, just to be safe. 

And all of that would be in vain. I’ll still wait until God says “go” or “stay” and that will have nothing to with the weather or what I see in front of me. 

All this to say, the lesson in waiting on God isn’t only about not running in circles as I try to weigh the odds of what will happen next. It’s about showing up where I still am. Now. I’m learning to be faithful in what God has already given me. I may be surrounded by my neighbors and co-workers and community for another two months or two years but either way I’m called to love them.

Until the day comes for something new, I’ll show up where I am now and trust that God will do the rest. 

Jessica Noblett

Pedal, Pedal, Pedal!

(By Lois Robinson)

I don’t know about you, but I find myself holding onto things that I really don’t need any more. There is a show on television called “Hoarders” about this. I’m not talking about the disorder of hoarding, but I am talking about keeping things based on the assigned value you have given it, then not wanting to give it up because you might use it someday. Sound familiar?

This issue came up in me recently. Here’s the back story. About two years ago, I realized I needed a recumbent exercise bike for my home as my knee was continuing with its struggles. Since my back had then become involved, a recumbent bike was the ticket! I searched and searched Craigslist and other places.  I then searched some more. Finally, one came up for sale in Cherry Hill on Craigslist for only $75.00- right in my budget.Yay! With extreme excitement, my best friend Jessica and I took a road trip up to the owner’s residence. The bike sat in his garage. Boy was it nice! An Edge 491 with all the bells and whistles for only $75.00! You can’t beat that. I immediately said I would take it, so Jess and the man loaded into the truck and we rode home. This was going to be one of the pieces of equipment that was going to help rehab this leg and get me on my feet walking normally again!

We lugged it into our house when we arrived home and set it up in the living room so I could pedal, pedal, pedal while watching TV, which made the time go quicker. You may know what I am talking about. All I kept saying was that it was such a huge gift from God to get such a great bike for $75.00. I then began the journey of using that bike every day, praying that this new bike would be a tremendous part of getting the knee joint mobile. I rode it faithfully. The discouraging piece was that no matter how much I exercised on it, the knee would still return to the same level of stiffness two minutes after I stopped pedaling. This went on for a year.

I then had to get the next surgery because the boney scar tissue still grew no matter how much exercising I did on the bike or with stretches or weight training. The same result would occur: extreme stiffness and weakness. The surgeons said he would remove the entire scar, get the joint mobile again and then lots of bike work for the rehab. I was optimistic because I had my own bike at home now, a recumbent one at that!

Surgery day came and went. I stayed for 3 days in the hospital, strapped into a Continual Passive Motion machine on my back for all three days. Once I got home, I had to start the bike and stretches. I followed the orders because my hope was this surgery would be the last and I would walk normally again. So I rode the bike: pedaling, pedaling, pedaling.

Well, today is the day I sold my recumbent exercise bike to a lady that was in rehab for her hips. It was a battle for me to even consider selling it. As some of you know, my leg is far from healed. I have to walk with a crutch due to extreme stiffness and weakness. I will get a 3rd opinion next Wednesday, but this may be a lifelong chronic condition I have to learn to live with. As I processed what was going on inside my mind and my heart, I realized that I had in some way linked the exercise bike to my healing. In my mind, that bike meant I was going to walk again, and selling it said I was not going to walk again, that I had accepted the notion that I will not walk normally ever again. I was not ready to accept that. So holding onto the bike meant there was some form of hope. Though I have another upright one in my office, the recumbent was the one that I had such high hopes for. The journey of rehab certainly didn’t unfold the way I thought it was going to when I excitedly loaded it up that night in Cherry Hill.

As I watched the older couple leave with it today, I was thankful that the Holy Spirit allowed me to see how I had assigned such irrational value to the bike, as if it was responsible to help me walk again. Yes, it is an integral part of the rehab journey, but God and God alone is my Healer. He could choose to heal me instantaneously without any bike if He chose to. For now, He is choosing not to heal my leg that way, but He is certainly healing other aspects of me: my heart, my mind and my ability to understand what is truly valuable and what’s not.

I do hope the hip patient enjoys the bike. As for me, my rehab journey is doing well.  The leg is the same, but my heart and mind are healing well!