resident alien day 3: johhny get your compass

At one point in my life I studied for my state watercraft license through a program. It was both intensive and extensive for a kid my age but what stuck in my mind were all the stories my instructor shared of his sailboat's keel being caught in lobster pot markers and "TV makes dead cows".

TV makes dead cows was a mnemonic device I thought up to help me remember how to adjust my compass on my chart. There is a formula you follow and a few numbers you plug is so that you literally don't go "off the chart". TVMD was stuck in my head and even now, thirty years later I can recall it.

TV = "true compass reading"

Makes = magnetic reading

Dead = deviation

Cows = compass

Proper orientation is vitally important when living as a resident alien and a follower of Jesus, but most of us neglect it as the first priority of the day. If you start to sail before you calculate your compass and orient your chart you may think you are going the right direction but in reality you are not. You maybe only a couple of degrees off "true", but over time that slight angle will increase until you are way off the mark. How often does this happen in our day?

So, how are we to orient your internal compass as we live here?

One great tip we have developed in our church is to keep up with the daily readings from our lectionary. These are a collection of scripture readings from the psalms, Old Testament, New Testament, and a Gospel reading. They rotate yearly and are collected so that your read and understand the great themes (characteristics of God) and the meta-narrative (over-arching story of God's redemptive work in history) of the Bible. The readings are spread across the whole Bible so that we can adjust using all of the characteristics of God. Too often people read only the Gospels or the New Testament when come to faith. This has the effect of only using the magnetic readings and neglecting the deviations. We see a piece of the direction but not the whole chart.

Here are some tips to use this great tool (the lectionary readings) to keep you on track as a resident alien;

1) Read before you even take your shower. Yes, I understand some are not "morning people" but even if you get just a few verses in your mind it will keep you from drifting.  Just like sailing, adjust yourself before your journey. If you get them inside you in the morning you can chew on them all day.

2) Stick with it. If you miss a day, as with all spiritual disciplines, just jump right back in. If you wander off course it is best to stop and readjust.

3) Develop a method to help. We send out the readings each morning via an email. It hits our inbox before 6am! You can print these up, bookmark them, whatever. If you have the chart in your possession you will use it.

Orientation is important. If you don't know where you are starting from you can't get anywhere.

Resident Alien Day 2: focus

Years ago I heard this story:
A man went to hear a famous evangelist preaching on revival. He loved the Lord and had a passion for the world to hear  the message of salvation and mercy through Jesus Christ. 

After the service he ran up to the preacher,  and with a renewed passion he explained:

"That was amazing! I'm with you! What must we do to bring revival!"

The evangelist looked at the man and said "it's simple, go back home, draw a circle in the dirt and stand in the circle. Then pray in earnest "Lord, I pray that you would send revival to everyone standing inside this circle"

If we are to live like resident aliens, as missionaries in this land doing the work we are called to do while we await upon the day the Lord shall return we need revival in ourselves. This can happen if we keep these things in mind;

1) We need God as desperately as our next breath, and that next breath was provided by Him. Tell this to yourself every day.

2) We are the first mission field we are called to work with, at least that is what Jesus tells us

A Simple Guide for Behavior

“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.

 It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. 

Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Matthew 7:3-6 (Message Translation)

3) See # 1 

If we are to act as  salt, light, living water,  and the fragrance of life we need to make sure we are salt, light, living water and the fragrance of life before we try and be it. We can only be those things by God's grace through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I took this to heart in seminary and found a way to keep myself in proper order. I didn't have dirt in my back yard.

My wife and I had a small foot stool we used in our kitchen. I was afraid in school, honestly afraid that I would become jaded and sour to the church and her work in the world. I fell prey to all of the jokes I heard as a young evangelical, calling seminary "cemetery" and believing that my faith and zeal for Jesus would die there.

We were "required" to attend Morning Prayer Service each day we were on campus but I didn't want that to become regimented in my faith.  I took my little step stool and underneath I wrote; "Lord, please send revival to everyone who sits on this stool, I beg".

I would wake up early, make a french press, get my Bible and guitar and then sip, pray, read and sing long songs to my King before I went to chapel I asked God to fill me to overflowing with the remembrance of who his is and what he did for me. I prayed for personal revival daily. He honored that.

 I am no longer in seminary and I since traveled ten's of thousands of miles proclaiming the Good News of the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. I have preached in Cathedrals, under tarps and on the side of the highway.

I still have that stool in my kitchen ten years later.

I still weep the same tears I wept when I first learned of His love and mercy for me.

I am a resident alien, longing for home.

just passing through; missional living for a year

As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose. Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here. So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues. You can start looking forward to a great reunion when I come visit you again. We’ll be praising Christ, enjoying each other.
Meanwhile, live in such a way that you are a credit to the Message of Christ. 

Beloved, 
I would like to invite you on a journey with me; focusing ourselves for one entire year on living out our true citizenship. 365 days of intentionally understanding that we are resident aliens here.

What would that look like to you? How do we live in the world but not be changed by it?  How do we become light, salt, living water, fragrance of life? 

This is not a magic formula, it is a lifestyle modeled after God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.

Where do we start? 

First light.... Before there was anything, God was. Before a flower bloomed, an atom split, a cell divided, He was. Before a Seraph's wing brushed the wind, before the water pooled in the seas, before light came from dark, He was.  We did nothing to create anything. We can at best use what he has given us for good.

This has not changed. 

How do we live missionally at first light? Be thankful. 

Before our feet hit the floor, when our minds first sense that we are alive. Say thank you. It can be that simple. It acknowledges the fact that we did nothing while to slept to keep yourself safe or alive. We did not tell yourselves to breath or pump blood. We did not tell the sun to burn or the earth to spin. We did not ask gravity to continue. We simply laid still, or if you sleep like me, thrashed like a wounded fish. And viola, we awoke again!

What is our response to this great miracle we have been given? How do we respond as an alien in this world to the simple fact we woke up?

 Say "Thank you Lord" Amen.