Book Review: Simple Spirituality

If you ever have a chance to meet someone who used to take out the trash at Mother Teresa's House for the Dying in India, you should stop and learn from them. Christopher Heuertz, the author and International Director of Word Made Flesh ministries, showed up in India one day looking for a place to serve with the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner. His journey there, as well as his other adventures around the world, give him the life lessons that he shares in Simple Spirituality.

In a similar vein as the previously reviewed book, Radical, Heuertz approaches Biblical living from a more personal point of view. Unlike Radical, Simple Spirituality is directed specifically at the walk of individual Christ-followers and not the Church as a whole. He focuses on 5 core values to combat the giants that tend to block our view of God:

Humility to slay the giant of pride and arrogance.
Community to slay the giant of individualism and independence.
Simplicity to slay the giant of intemperance and excess.
Submission to slay the giant of power and control.
Brokenness to slay the giant of triumphalism, defiance, and resistance.

Heuertz believes that any true path to spiritual sight ought to be simple. While he's not a contemplative or a mystic, he has found, in the Bible and in his work with impoverished people, evidence of a simple spirituality. This way of humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokenness will help you see - no matter how dark things get.

Here are some quotes from Simple Spirituality:

It's humility that opens our eyes to the discovery of God. The self-righteous seem to have the hardest time recognizing God. Story after story in the Gospels illustrates this.

If we are unable to give something away, then we do not possess it, rather it possesses us.

Non-poor Christians mistakenly come to view God's financial and material provision as individual blessing rather than kingdom resources.

For many of us, the things we fill our time with become not so much expressions of who we are but rather distractions from whom we need to become.

We want to make room for Christ to reign on the thrones of our hearts, but only a clean Christ who doesn't make a mess of our lives.

Mother Teresa said, "If the poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough."

Simplicity is best understood in evaluating how we hold things, not just what we do or don't hold.

We want to make the issue about what we give, but in truth the issue is about what we keep.

We are broken when we recognize our utmost need for God and leave everything behind to have our needs met in God.

Book Review: Radical

Here's the short book review. I liked this book so much that I ordered a case of them to give to our staff and other leaders at TrueNorth Church. I read non-fiction books with a pen to mark and underline significant thoughts or passages. Radical is one of the most marked up books that I own now.

The longer review: Why did I like this book so much? David Platt and I think alike. :)

You can tell he struggles as the leader of a megachurch trying to lead others to follow the leader of a minichurch movement, i.e., Jesus. The subtitle is "Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream." American Christians have confused Biblical Christianity with the American way. Our wealth and independence have made us a little too self-sufficient. Our churches have learned how to grow and operate just fine without the power of God. All churches need to exist today is a good performance on Sunday mornings by musicians and teachers. A nice building to put everyone in and programs for all ages to keep people coming back. It is sad but true.

Platt contends and shows by clearly using the Bible as a guide that our purpose in life is NOT to grow nice big churches for American families to thrive. Our purpose here is a global mission. We exist to enjoy God's glory and to extend God's glory. Jesus called his followers to a new lifestyle. Christ-followers are called to leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. We are to abandon everything for the sake of the gospel. We are to take up our crosses daily and follow him (Luke 9:23).

Unfortunately, our churches tend to disinfect us from the world. We have manipulated the gospel to fit our cultural preferences. We have embraced values and ideas that are not only unbiblical but actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe. In our world where church success is defined by bigger crowds, bigger budgets, and bigger buildings, Platt challenges his readers to realize that these values are not important to Jesus at all. What is important is that we believe and obey what Jesus teaches. All of his teaching.

You can't take the privileges of Christianity without also fulfilling the obligations of Christianity. We are guilty of picking and choosing what we want from Jesus. Everyone wants the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10 but then we say, "We are not called" when we read the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20.

One of the few original thoughts I've had in a long time is "Every Christian needs a passport (see link)." David Platt confirms it. But this book isn't just about global missions, it's about living simply, praying sincerely, giving sacrificially, and much more. The truth is what Platt calls "Radical" is really just living Biblical. Unfortunately, we are so far removed from Biblical living it seems to be radical.

If you want a FREE COPY let me know. Amazon shipped them yesterday. I'll give copies away on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you live out of town, I will mail it to you.

Some things I highlighted in my reading:

We've missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it with what is comfortable. We've settled for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.

"God's Word is enough for millions of believers who gather in house churches...His Word is enough for millions of other believers who huddle in African jungles, South American rain forests, and Middle Eastern cities. But is his Word enough for us? This is the question that haunts me when I stand before a crowd of thousands of people in the church I pastor. What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would his Word still be enough for his people to come together?"

"The goal of the American dream is to make much of ourselves. The goal of the gospel is to make much of God."

"God blesses his people with extravagant grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all peoples on the earth."

"One of the unintended consequences of contemporary church strategies that revolve around performances, places, programs, and professionals is that somewhere along the way people get left out of the picture. But according to Jesus, people are God's method for winning the world to himself. People who have been radically transformed by Jesus. People who are not sidelined to sit in a chair on Sundays while they watch professionals take care of ministry for them. People who are equipped on Sundays to participate in ministry every day of the week. People who are fit and free to do precisely what Jesus did and what Jesus told us to do. Make disciples."

"We look back on slave-owning churchgoers of 150 years ago and ask, 'How could they have treated their fellow human beings that way?' I wonder if followers of Christ 150 years from now will look back at Christians in America today and ask, 'How could they live in such big houses? How could they drive such nice cars and wear such nice clothes? How could they live in such affluence while thousands of children were dying because they didn't have food and water? How could they go on with their lives as though billions of poor didn't even exist?'"

"There is never going to come a day when I stand before God and he looks at me and says, 'I wish you would have kept more for yourself.'"

"Why not begin operating under the idea that God has given us excess, not so we could have more, but so we could give more.?"

"What would happen if we stopped asking how much we could spare and started asking how much it was going to take?"

(After explaining that the origin of the ichthus/fish symbol is traced back to persecuted and martyred Christians.) "How far we have come when we paste this symbol identified with martyred brothers and sisters in the first century onto the backs of our SUVs and luxury sedans in the twenty-first century."

"Church-goers today want short-term commitments with long-term benefits."

Reflections from SE Asia

I returned late last Thursday night from an 11 day excursion to SE Asia. I think I have most of the jetlag and cobwebs shaken out by now and I wanted to record some of the things we experienced as well as things I learned while there. Since this is kind of a brain dump, I'll just put everything in bullet form. Here goes:

- It's a long way from home. If you look at a globe, we were exactly on the other side of the planet. We left home on Monday morning, May 10 and arrived in Singapore on Wednesday, May 12. A 3 hour drive from here to Charlotte. Three hour flight from Charlotte to Minneapolis. Twelve hours from Minneapolis to Tokyo. We literally ran through the Tokyo airport to catch our next flight to Singapore which was an 8 hour flight. If you're keeping score, that's 23 hours in the airplane. The next day was the final leg of our journey which was another one hour flight. So, 24 hours in the air - one way. (For security reasons, our final destination has to be confidential.)

- The good news about 24 hours in an airplane: I read 4 books. Also watched a few movies, journaled, and catnapped.

- Singapore is one of the most impressive cities/countries that I've ever experienced. Clean and green. Everything looked new from buses to cars to buildings, even the roads. They take a lot of pride in their country. It is one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Singapore is a melting pot of Asia. You'll find Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Koreans, Malaysians, Australians, and more represented on this small island.

- You'll have trouble enjoying meals in SE Asia if you don't like rice. Rice was included in every meal. (The photo above is my first of dozens of meals there.) Rice and spice - two essential elements to a SE Asian dish. In addition to rice, we had some fruits and vegetables that I have never heard of along with standard things like chicken, beef, and seafood (lots of seafood). We saw lots of prawn, shrimp, squid, and fishheads.

- We visited a young female believer with tuberculosis. Pray for her as medical help is not good nor is her outlook. She could probably be treated to recovery but she would have to leave the country to seek better care. This isn't likely, unfortunately. We were heartbroken at her story.

- Radical Islam is alive and well. As if you didn't already know this from reading the papers every day, we actually heard more stories of things that Islamic fundamentalists had recently done where we were. Anything from planning to bomb a Singapore train station (that we frequented a few times) to protesting and rioting because evil American sex symbol/singer Kelly Clarkson was coming for a concert. The concert was cancelled. Not sure if it was rescheduled or not. Only a few years ago in the city that we worked in, three girls who attended a Christian school were captured as they walked to school and decapitated. I tell you this not to hinder you from joining the work over there, but to say that it's serious business. There is a deep spiritual darkness on that side of the earth.


- With that being said, one of the most encouraging things for me was the incredible work that was being done there for Jesus' sake. We visited a megachurch that is reaching thousands of people for Christ. In Singapore, we visited a missionary training school that is training and sending workers out by the thousands each year to nations all over Asia, Africa, and Europe. If I had to put my finger on the highlight of the trip, it was probably sitting down with the Founder of this school and the current president for over 3 hours just to talk about what God is doing in Asia. Their faith and trust in God challenged me deeply.

- We attended a circumcision party. Ow!

- The "DONS," our code name for an unreached people group that TrueNorth Church has adopted, desperately need your prayers. Mostly relying on the fishing industry to get by, these folks as well as millions of others there survive on one dollar a day. That's one order of french fries for us. One billion people in the world earn $1 each day. Two billion people earn about $2. Drop to your knees right now and thank God for your house, your job, and all of your stuff. And while you're down there pray that the "DONS" will hear about the amazing grace we have in Jesus. Of an estimated 4 million, only a handful of DONS are believers. Pray for the workers there.

- The great need in that part of the world burdens me but even greater than that burden is the complacency of the American Church. We are so inward-focused, so selfish, and so caught up in our petty cares of this world that we virtually ignore the Great Commission that Jesus gave us. We will answer to this one day. Most of our money stays here as do most of our people. We are comfortable, fat, and lazy. While believers there literally risk their lives for the sake of Jesus each day, most believers here struggle to get out of bed on Sunday mornings to sit in padded pews, listen to good music, and take in another sermon without doing anything about it. It makes me mad and angry. I will struggle with this burden for a long time barring a great revival in our churches. I pray that God will wake us from our slumber. The American Church has the resources to reach billions of people for Christ if we put our minds and hearts to it. Instead, the Church here is a sleeping giant.

Is There Life After Birth?

In Our Greatest Gift, Henri Nouwen tells a parable of faith and hope. He imagines twins - brother and sister - talking to each other in their mother's womb:

The sister said to the brother, "I believe there is life after birth."

Her brother protested vehemently, "No, no, this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but to cling to the cord that feeds us."

The little girl insisted, "There must be something more than this dark place. There must be something else, a place with light where there is freedom to move." Still, she could not convince her twin brother.

After some silence, the sister said, "I have something else to say, and I'm afraid you won't believe that either - but I think there is a mother."

Her brother became furious. "A mother! What are you talking about? I have never seen a mother, and neither have you. Who put that idea in your head? As I told you, this place is all we have. Why do you always want more? This is not such a bad place. We have all we need, so let's be content."

The sister was quite overwhelmed by her brother's response and for a while didn't dare say anything more. But she couldn't let go of her thoughts, and since she had only her twin brother to speak to, she finally said, "Don't you feel these squeezes every once in a while? They're quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful."

"Yes," he said. "What's special about that?"

"Well, I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother face-to-face. Don't you think that's exciting?"

The brother didn't answer. He was fed up with the foolish talk of his sister and felt that the best thing would be simply to ignore her and hope that she would leave him alone.

It's About Time (Part 3)

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack my days so wretchedly into small portions." Unknown Poet, 200 BC

In his book, Margin, Richard Swenson noted that nearly every study on the subject of family reveals that stress produced by time pressures are at, or near, the top of the list. The average time that a husband and wife spend in meaningful conversation each day is four minutes. Parent-to-child quality time is somewhere between 37 seconds and five minutes a day depending on the study.

Our mismanagement of time is killing our relationships. Busyness destroys relationships. We allow our busyness and lack of time to be a point of pride. It boosts our ego to appear busy. It's an expectation and status symbol. It makes us feel important to say we don't have time. When someone asks us how we are doing, we love to respond with, "I'm busy."

How do you know if you're too busy? Gordon MacDonald gives these symptoms of disorganization in his classic book, Ordering Your Private World. (See link below right.) You don't have to have all 9 of these symptoms. One is enough to let you know to slow down.

1. Clutter
2. Condition of your car
3. Self-esteem diminished
4. Series of forgotten appointments, messages, & deadlines
5. Invest energies in unproductive tasks
6. Feel poorly about work
7. Rarely enjoy intimacy with God
8. Quality of personal relationships reveals it
9. Don't like ourselves, our jobs, or much else about our worlds

God never intended for us to be oppressed, depressed, and stressed about our busy lives. He never intended for time to dictate our every move and mood. Jesus moved through life deliberately but was never in a hurry. Crowds thronged around him. The sick wanted to be healed. His followers wanted to be taught. When people came to him for help he gave them the impression that no one else was more important than them.

The secret to Jesus' effectiveness was that he knew that God ordered his footsteps and he saw every appointment or interruption as a divine appointment. The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives (Psalm 37:23, NLT).

Are you on the road to a purposeful life or a purposeless life? Here's the progression to a purposeless life:

A Crowded life = "I'm busy."
Busyness = "I'm tired."
Fatigue = "I'm grumpy."
Apathy = "I don't care."
Purposelessness = "I hate my life."

Give thought to your life. Be careful how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of your time (Ephesians 5:15,16). Determine to take a step each day toward purposeful living. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction. It's also been said this way: "Inch by inch, anything's a cinch!"