Well, it’s a new week and as such, we have a new med­i­ta­tion focus. Fol­low­ing the com­mands of Christ given through the ser­mon on the mount, this week we high­light Matthew 5:29 – 30 and the issue of lust.

In our cul­ture today, lust has taken claim to most prod­ucts in adver­tis­ing. If it isn’t sex­ual, then it’s other form, cov­etous­ness, takes it’s place. It would make you believe life isn’t the same unless you have this, eat that, take this or enjoy what­ever. While you can­not con­trol the heart responses that tran­si­tion from a legit­i­mate need to cov­etous­ness, it’s my per­sonal goal to never adver­tise with the spirit of lust as an asset. Cre­at­ing desire for a prod­uct where there is a need is one thing. Stir­ring up dark­ness within peo­ple is some­thing com­pletely different.

So, with that in mind, I have these two desk­tops avail­able if you want — 2560 x 1600 (desk­tops) and 1920 x 1200 (lap­tops). In this design, I did not want to illus­trate a spirit of lust to then cre­ate a ten­sion to fight it. If I can find another image that would relate but not ensnare, I may alter the design. But for now, here we go. Let’s fight the good fight and keep the charge in front of us.

It’s strange to think my iPhone, with it’s mul­ti­ple alerts and chimes, may be inhibit­ing my abil­ity to con­cen­trate, think deeply and be cre­ative. At least, that’s what the New York Times recently reported.

In route to Ten­nessee we stopped at a Star­bucks. No sur­prise. What was sur­pris­ing was the New York Time’s front page arti­cle enti­tled, “Hooked on Gad­gets and Pay­ing a Men­tal Price: Con­stant Use Takes Toll on Con­cen­tra­tion and Fam­ily Life.” The photo showed this cou­ple, both on their iPads at the kitchen table enthralled in their own activ­i­ties. Of course, I added this to the bill and while Liz drove, I read aloud.

While this may bore some of you, hang on. It get’s inter­est­ing. Accord­ing to sev­eral stud­ies from respected aca­d­e­mic and medial insti­tu­tions, our gad­gets are frac­tur­ing our minds abil­ity to pri­or­i­tize infor­ma­tion, con­cen­trate and be cre­ative. The var­ied, infor­ma­tion bar­rage gives your brain a dose of dopamine, the stim­u­la­tion that pro­vokes excite­ment, which encour­ages impul­sive­ness. In this case, impul­sive­ness leads to drop­ping the cur­rent item for the imme­di­ate. As such, you never stay on one thing for very long. The New York Times explains it more in depth here.

So what does this look like? You’re play­ing catch with your kids and your iPhone chimes. Now, you have this thought in your head, “I won­der who that was. Was that work? Did he answer my ques­tions from this morn­ing?” And you tell your kids to hold on while you check your phone. What may start as a sim­ple glance turns into a “quick response” leav­ing your kids stand­ing there. Sev­eral more emails to check and your kids have started pass­ing the ball among themselves.

While I don’t have kids ( yet ), the con­stant dis­trac­tions do com­mand frac­tured atten­tion away from my work. I’ve even dubbed some Friday’s as “cre­ative day”, which is really a time for me to leave my dis­trac­tions and try to think and cre­ate in a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment. But for all my efforts, I can tell my once-​​a-​​month excur­sion isn’t enough. I need more delib­er­ate separation.

Recently, my the­ory was put into prac­tice. Dur­ing a strong thun­der­storm, we lost power in the stu­dio. I made my way to the com­puter back-​​ups, saved every­thing and shut down the com­put­ers /​ server. The storm thun­dered and I had enough day­light to work at the con­fer­ence table in another part of the stu­dio. Time for cre­ative devel­op­ment. For the next two hours I came up with sev­eral design ideas for music projects, thought through type solu­tions and font choices and made head­way into a sec­ond job before the power flipped back on.

What if the power didn’t go off? Would I have had the time to sit and think? Would I have been dis­tracted by email, Twit­ter, Face­book or iPhone noti­fi­ca­tions? Prob­a­bly. I doubt I would have made as much progress, but like any exper­i­ment, I’ll have to try it again and again to see the results. We’ll see…

This morn­ing, I caught the news report­ing the pass­ing of the ever-​​popular Health Care Bill. Democ­rats pushed for it to be passed into law. Repub­li­cans objected to it, cit­ing it’s extreme expense among many other neg­a­tives. Both sides are so entrenched in their beliefs that a final deci­sion, when it is signed into law, seems inflam­ma­tory. I don’t see any way that it will turn out well.

In fact, some deci­sions of this mag­ni­tude divided nations. In 1 Kings 12, Solomon’s son took con­trol of the throne. The peo­ple sought reprieve in their taxes. After tak­ing poor coun­sel, he raised taxes even higher and threat­ened the elders of the nation. Sub­se­quently, the nation divided and the peo­ple set up new gov­ern­ment for themselves.

The French Rev­o­lu­tion started with sim­i­lar roots. The ris­ing price of bread, increased war debt, and lux­u­ri­ous liv­ing by the court of Louis XV and Marie Antoinette made the peo­ple furi­ous. In the next ten years of rev­o­lu­tion, the peo­ple took mat­ters into their own hands and exe­cuted the rul­ing class.

While the health care reform issue won’t get our lead­ers exe­cuted in a rev­o­lu­tion, you have to take note of his­tory. Secret deals and closed door ses­sions gives the impres­sion that the gov­ern­ment doesn’t need the peo­ple. It’ll develop it’s own agenda and then sell it to the peo­ple. I just doesn’t work that way. Ignor­ing the voice of the peo­ple gets you into trouble.

You know, if we wanted a bet­ter qual­ity of life we should exam­ine the indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the food indus­try. We need to eat real food again that will help our bod­ies fight sick­ness and dis­ease. Sub­si­dize the healthy pro­duc­tion of fruits and veg­eta­bles so the poor can afford it. What if we sub­si­dized efforts to help the body’s nat­ural defenses against sick­ness and dis­ease instead of devel­op­ing drugs to do it for us?

But it’s really not about rais­ing the qual­ity of health. It’s not even about pro­vid­ing insur­ance options for those who haven’t had it. It’s gov­ern­ment con­trol. It’s leg­is­la­tion that decides what health care cov­er­age is appro­pri­ate for you. It takes the promised care cov­er­age and rations it (Pg 29 lines 4 – 16) at the gov­ern­ments dis­cre­tion (Pg 29 lines 4 – 16). And when you are reach­ing the end of your days, they will decide what treat­ment you will receive, if any, and how you will die — whose extreme expres­sion may include an order for end of life plans (Pg 429 Lines 1 – 9).

From the news reports, this bill will take 10 years to put into action. I hope and pray many things are changed in this bill before it really gets intense.

If con­fes­sion is good for the soul then here goes: we use Net­flix. If you don’t know what Net­flix is,
click here for my expla­na­tion. In the doc­u­men­tary sec­tion, we selected this title, No Impact Man. In this doc­u­men­tary, Colin Bea­van, along with his wife and two-​​year-​​old daugh­ter, embark on a one-​​year exper­i­ment to live with­out leav­ing any net impact on the envi­ron­ment. This means no trash, no car­bon emis­sions, no tox­ins in the water, no ele­va­tors, no sub­way, no prod­ucts in pack­ag­ing, no plas­tics, no air con­di­tion­ing, no TV and no toi­let paper. Colin con­ducted his exper­i­ment in New York City where he lives and works as a writer.

In this film, Colin steps through phases of his no impact plan. Each phase they exam­ined what may be pos­si­ble to reduce impact on dif­fer­ent areas at a time such as trans­porta­tion, energy con­sump­tion (food an elec­tric­ity) and waste while attempt­ing to affect a pos­i­tive change for the envi­ron­ment. It’s actu­ally very inspiring.

And this brought me to won­der, what is my respon­si­bil­ity? What should we, as Chris­tians, be doing to help the envi­ron­ment? Now, if you’re like me, you’ve seen and heard the extreme envi­ron­men­tal­ist expres­sions in the news reports. I’m not advo­cat­ing we kill humans to save the whales. But I am ask­ing, what is our respon­si­bil­ity, as excel­lent stew­ards, to pre­serve the planet? How do we lessen our impact on the envi­ron­ment? I believe we need to excel in all areas of stew­ard­ship; not just in finances, energy or time. I don’t think we can get away with the phrase, “It’s all gonna burn anyway.” :)

Liz and I aren’t going to copy Colin per se but I think it is nec­es­sary to con­sider what we con­sume and what we throw away. Can it be bet­ter? Can we affect pos­i­tive changes in the name of stew­ard­ship? I say “yes.”

Start­ing this 60-​​day raw diet, I didn’t grasp that self-​​denial would be so cen­tral to it’s suc­cess — espe­cially in the begin­ning. Detox­ing sugar, white flour and caf­feine pro­duced the expected aches and pains. One night my mus­cles were inflamed that it kept me up almost all night. So in the mid­dle of all these light, momen­tary suf­fer­ings, I was look­ing at the refrig­er­a­tor and pantry. “Let’s see. What do we have in here that’ll taste good?” I was look­ing for some­thing to ease my pain but I never actu­ally grabbed any­thing. And it was good that I didn’t. I needed to deny the urge.

This time period has really high­lighted the need to deny my flesh. It’s like a liv­ing para­ble day in and day out. I want the pizza. I can’t have the pizza. I want the pasta. I can’t have the pasta. Cheese and crack­ers? Nope. Crazy pota­toes and but­ter? Nope. I have to deny my urges. This basic Chris­tian­ity 101 has my atten­tion by the stom­ach. And that’s how it’s been. Over and over again, the Lord has extended grace to empower us to walk in the fruit of self-​​control and over­come the urges.

He’s also tipped me off that it becomes eas­ier to deny myself when I am serv­ing oth­ers, in this case, my wife. With the raw diet, we go through a ton of food prep to cre­ate the final dishes we enjoy. Some­times it’s just a salad but other times, like the raw tomato lasagna, each com­po­nent is made up of many ingre­di­ents just to cre­ate the desired fla­vors. And all this is sep­a­rate from the end­less dishes that pile up just to be washed and dirt­ied again ten min­utes later. So tak­ing time from what I would choose to do and choose to serve her instead really strength­ens self-​​denial. Com­pas­sion grows and in the mid­dle of serv­ing, I find joy. When she finds out what I did in her absence, she’s thrilled. The smile across her face is awe­some. She’s feels loved, and shows love in return. What a great combo! And all I had to do was put on an apron, get my hands dirty and clean up. That’s not too bad. Not too bad at all.

If you want to do a ded­i­cated time of raw foods, it’s worth it. It’ll take work but the results are amaz­ing. You feel healthy, think clearly and get a chance to oper­ate in the fruit of the Spirit and grow with the Lord. :) It’s good prac­tice for when you really need it on larger life issues.

A friend of mine, Ryan Inter­ni­cola, wrote a post enti­tled Bat­tles Won. In this post, Ryan shines light on the vic­to­ries in our own hearts (the inter­nal) as opposed to con­cen­trat­ing on the fold­ing of min­istries (the exter­nals) — which is really good these days.

Recently, the Zadok House of Prayer in Char­lotte has announced that they will be clos­ing their doors in the Car­oli­nas and join­ing their base with the Inter­na­tional House of Prayer in Kansas City (IHOP-​​KC). While most of the mis­sion­ar­ies on the base are mov­ing, oth­ers are mov­ing back home or stay­ing in the area. And for those who are not join­ing IHOP-​​KC, it can be dif­fi­cult to look for­ward into the unknown. For those stay­ing in the area, I can imag­ine it would be pretty dif­fi­cult. A com­mu­nity of peers will be leav­ing one by one. In such a com­mu­nity, so much life is lived and shared together in the con­text of min­istry. When that is gone, it’s a huge change. So while read­ing his post, I wanted to bring an addi­tional point.

Although Chris­tians par­tic­i­pate in dif­fer­ent con­gre­ga­tions or fel­low­ships, we are still the body of Christ. He moves His body how He wants to in what­ever way or direc­tion He thinks or feels. Just as we have the abil­ity to move our body, so does He.

Another word pic­ture that helped me when mov­ing from Voice Min­istries was the the pic­ture of the chess set. Despite any strate­gic group­ings we see in the nat­ural, the Lord takes the chess pieces where He wants to on the board to His best advan­tage. It doesn’t always look like it’s in our per­sonal best inter­est ini­tially but, in bril­liance, it serves a pur­pose indi­vid­u­ally, com­mu­nally and globally.

Lastly, I’ll use the flo­ral word pic­ture. When the body of Christ shifts we cross-​​pollinate. No one group of believ­ers has the entire wis­dom of God for this day and age. We all need each other. One group shares what the Lord has done with them and can impart it to another and vice-​​versa. The net result is we grow from these exchanges but they can be more painful when we are trans­planted some­where else — espe­cially if our roots are wrapped around any­thing or any­one but Jesus.

I admit my tran­si­tion to Osgood, Indi­ana was a bit tough at first. I went in obe­di­ence, know­ing it was right but feel­ing bad. Now, I feel a set­tled feel­ing know­ing the hand of the Lord is with us. He has some­thing for us here and we’re right where He wants us. For those of you who are strug­gling with tran­si­tions in your life — maybe even against your pref­er­ence, take heart. Although the future and pur­pose is hid­den, rev­e­la­tion will come. As the good book says, “It is the glory of God to con­ceal a mat­ter, But the glory of kings is to search out a mat­ter.” Proverbs 25:2.