I was sitting in my office and thought I would share this quick thought.  A few months ago I had the opportunity to hang out with a close friend.  At one time he was a pastor for a church and had a large library for preparing his sermons every week.  He is now working a “regular” job and doesn’t see himself being a pastor ever again.

I remember coveting after my friend’s library.  I remember going into his office and thinking to myself, “I want a library like this some day.”  I remember just staring at his books and taking note of his collection.  I even remember the distinct smell his office had from all the books and wanting my office to have that same smell.

When he heard that I was going through Re:Train, he wanted to help me with my expenses, but due to life circumstances he wasn’t able to. While I was visiting with him, he took me into his garage where he had his library stored.  He humbly pointed out the boxes and told me to take whatever I wanted/needed.  I left his house with more than 500 theology, commentary, history, cultural analysis, and linguistic books.  The total cost has to be over $3000 easily.

While he couldn’t help me pay for my flights to Seattle or the cost of my laptop, what this friend did in my mind was priceless.  From his gift, I’ve been able to do all the research for my papers.  I’ve been able to loan/give books out to friends.  My library has more than doubled.  All these things are great, but the greatest gift this friend gave me was a lesson in generosity.  I had to ask myself if I would be willing to do the same thing…and I don’t know if I could have.

This makes me ask you the question:  What do you have that you don’t need (or do need) that you need to give to someone else to bless them?  Do you have a treasure that you need to pass on to progress the kingdom for Jesus?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a series on tips for developing different spiritual disciplines.  Here is a list of the posts:

• Bible Reading/Journaling – Four Tips for Bible Reading and Journaling
• Prayer – Six tips for talking to God.
• Generosity – Five tips for becoming more generous.
• Confession – Five tips for developing a habit of confession and repentance.
• Service – Four tips for becoming a servant.

We live in a world where those with the most authority do the least amount of work.  Those with the power don’t serve others.  They are the ones that are served.  It is the American dream to gain enough power and wealth that you never have to work again.

Jesus showed us that in the kingdom of heaven it is quite the opposite.  The all-powerful God became a human being and served us by dying on the cross.  Jesus is the perfect example of leading by example.  He constantly served those around himself.  While his disciples were arguing about who is the greatest, Jesus healed countless people, fed thousands, and humbly washed the dirty feet of those that were fighting for ranking in the kingdom of heaven.

A true Christian isn’t noted by their pious self-righteousness but by their humble servanthood.   It is through service that we walk in the same steps that Jesus did when he was here on earth.  Through a kinetic learning experience of serving, we grow in our understanding of God’s heart for the lost and hurting people of this world. Here are some simple tips and steps for developing a discipline of service.

Tip #1: Aggressively look for places to serve.  For those of you raised with a strong work ethic engrained in your brains, this won’t be much of an issue.  The rest of us need to constantly seek places to serve.  This is both in the church and out of the church.  Seek ways to serve fellow Christians, but also seek to serve those in your community and at work.  If you ever catch yourself saying, “I wish someone would…” You need to take it upon yourself to be that someone.

Tip #2: Seek a change of heart.  1 Corinthians 13 says that if we do anything without love, it is pointless.  If you have a heart that is begrudging towards service, seek God to change your heart.  Jesus wasn’t reluctant in his service.  It was his joy to serve.  Seek God to give you a heart that takes deep joy in serving those around you.

Tip #3: Use your stuff to serve others.  Everything that we have in our lives is a gift from God.  Therefore we should see our stuff as a gift from God not just for us but also for those around us.  Serve those around you by sharing your stuff with them.  Open your house to share meals with friends and family and host events.  Use the yard tools you have to care for and maintain more than just your yard.  Give people rides in your car.  If you have two of something, give one away.  Develop yourself to see the stuff you have as being used more than just for you but for those around you.

Tip #4: Serve first and ask questions later.  Just like generosity, our tendency is to ask the question “Why?” Why should I serve those around me?  How is this going to develop my relationship with Jesus?  The reality of it is that these questions can’t truly be answered on paper. You can read countless Bible verses. You could hear stories from people’s lives. You could hear hundreds of hours of sermons about Jesus humbling himself as a servant. But you won’t get it. You won’t get it until you mow your elderly neighbor’s yard without them asking or paying you. You won’t get it until you pick up trash in your neighborhood without anybody asking you.  You won’t get it until you serve in your church’s nursery. If you decide that you aren’t going to serve until you fully understand why, you’ll never serve. The reality is you need to serve first and then ask questions, because by serving you’ll find the answers.

After understanding that everything we do is worship, you will begin to see that one of the biggest idols in your life is stuff.  More than likely, you are a worshipper of stuff.  Your car, house, computer, iPod, phone, television, paycheck, books, yard, clothes, furniture, bike, music instrument, and movie collection all hold a higher place in your life than God.  You spend more time focusing on them than Him.

At heart, we are very selfish and greedy.  This is in direct contrast to God the Father who gave us His Son and the Son who gave up His life for us.  If we want to grow closer in our understanding of God, we need to become generous people.  We need to have the mindset that God is more important than stuff.

Here is the amazing thing.  You can use your stuff to worship God.  Your stuff is really God’s stuff and He can do with it whatever He wants.  When you invest your stuff in the kingdom of God, you start to put God before your stuff.  By being generous with your stuff, you are aligning your heart with the heart of God.  Here are some simple tips and steps for developing a discipline of being generous with God’s stuff.

Tip #1: Make it a priority. You’re not going to be generous until you make it a priority.   For example, when I was in college, I had a moment of enlightenment. I was a poor college student, and I went out to eat with a group guys. At the end of the meal, an older gentleman in the group paid for the meal. I remember telling him how I wish I could do the same thing. He responded with the kindest of words: “If you aren’t generous when you have nothing, then you won’t be generous when you have everything.”  You have to make being generous a priority in your life. There are too many other shiny things that will take center stage if you don’t. Make it a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly task to look for ways to be more generous in your life.

Tip #2: Have a budget. 
You won’t know what to give until you know what you have. This works for both your money and your time. For your money, you should have a budget for every month. This takes away the excuse of saying, “I just don’t have any money to give.” You don’t have money to be generous with because you don’t plan.  Most people will tell you that when you first started budgeting, it was like you get a raise.  When you start budgeting, you are finally able to plan. You are able to make your money work for you instead of the opposite.
 You also need to budget your time. Some of us don’t serve others because we never have any extra time. Here is a tip…there is no such thing as “extra” time. There are 24 hours in a day and that is all you have. Just like your paycheck only has a set amount of money, your life only has a set amount of time. You have to budget your time wisely so you’re able to serve those around you.

Tip #3: Give first. This has two implications. You can take the idea of biblical “first fruits.” This was the commandment given by God that you should give the first of everything that you receive (animals, harvest, children, etc.) to God. The top line of your budget should have a line for a certain percentage of your money that you want to give away. When you get paid you should automatically take that percentage of money out of your check to give away.  If you’re a member of a church, it should go to your church. No questions. No ifs, ands, or buts. Just do it. Then budget the rest to live off of. If you don’t do this, you’ll just make excuses and never be generous with the money you have. This will teach you to be generous. The other implication is if you have the option to serve someone or to do something else with the “free” time in your life, serve. Give of yourself first. Generosity now has the priority. So skip watching TV and go do a generous act.

Tip #4: Have a separate checking account. This is a little trick that my wife and I learned when we weren’t part of a local church for a while. We didn’t have a place that we could write a check to for a weekly tithe. So we opened up another checking account and we transferred a percentage of our paychecks into the account every time we got paid. Then we knew we could use this account to be generous whenever the opportunity presented itself without having to worry about whether we were using money that was needed to pay the bills. When we became members of a church, we started giving our tithe to them. We still transfer the money into the account so we don’t get it mixed up with the rest of the money we have, but we enjoyed having the freedom of the extra checking account so much that we transfer an additional amount of money into it every month so we can be generous when the Holy Spirit presents us with opportunities.

Tip #5: Give first and ask questions later. Now this might sound like you’re to give money to anyone on the street who asks you for it, but this is different. What this means is that we have the tendency to ask the question “Why?” Why should I be generous with my time and money? The reality of it is that you can’t understand the answer to that question until you start being generous. You could read scripture. You could hear stories from other people’s lives. You could see a vision of heaven coming to earth. But you won’t get it. You won’t get it until you take a homeless guy across the street to Arby’s for lunch. You won’t get it until you mow your elderly neighbor’s yard without them asking or paying you. You won’t get it until you help your wife’s single-mother-coworker pay her rent. You won’t get it until you pay for lunch for you and your friends, knowing that you might not be able to eat dinner. If you decide that you aren’t going to be generous until you understand why, you’ll never be generous. The reality is you need to give first and then ask questions, because by giving you’ll find a lot of the answers.

So Lent is centralized around three actions that are lived out through the season…prayer, fasting, and generosity. I’ve already covered prayer.

The idea behind fasting is two fold. The first is to deny yourself of something you like/need in order to drive/draw to you God. The second is to give yourself extra time to pray (which pours back into the first part).

Most fasts typically give up food for a season of time, but there are a lot of options for fasting during the Lent season. You normally start on Ash Wednesday and go until Easter taking Sunday’s off (adding up to 47 days). Sunday is suppose to be a time of celebration, therefore you don’t fast at that time.

In this post I hope to give you a few tips for fasting that I’ve picked up. Once again, I’ve only been regularly fasting for about a half-a-year, but hopefully you can learn from the mistakes that I’ve already made.

1. Be honest with yourself
   Forty days is a long time to go without something no matter what it is. For most this will be a life changing event. Be honest with yourself. Don’t say you are going to give up TV for Lent if you know that there is no way that you really will. You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. Be honest with yourself and give up something that you know you will be able to go without for 40 days.
   If you’ve already started a fast and are realizing now that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew (sorry I couldn’t pass up that pun), it’s ok to edit your fast. God won’t shot you with lightening bolts from heaven (or will He….hmmmm).
2. Start Small
   If this is the first time that you are going to fast, don’t give up everything but water (by the way this is the hardest and most dangerous of all fasts and should only be done with a doctors supervision). Start off small. Give up meat or alcohol (for all my boozers out there). Then work your way up to harder fasts later down the road.
   My first fast was a three day all juice fast. Since then I’ve done a three week juice fast and a three week fruits and vegetable fast. But the key is to start small and work your way up to more challenging fasts.
   A side note though, make sure that the fast is still challenging, or else you’re not fasting. You’re just giving something up for a little while.
3. Check your calendar
   This will happen every time you decide to do a fast. You will swear off booz for a week, and an hour later your best friend who you haven’t seen in four years will call you up out of the blue for a beer. These are the things you have to prepare yourself for. But you need to make sure in advance that you don’t already have something scheduled that will conflict with your fast. This might mean that you are going to need to reschedule your fast, alter your fast, reschedule your event, or be prepared for the temptation that comes with your event.
4. People will find out
   Jesus tells us that we aren’t to proclaim to people that we are fasting, but the reality is that people will find out (unless you’re giving up some obscure thing that no one would notice anyways…even you). When people notice that you turn down their offer for a Starbucks run for the fifth time in a row, they will start to ask questions. I find this is a great opportunity to share the gospel with them in a simple and humble fashion. “Oh I’ve given up coffee for Lent so I can draw closer to God.” The key is to not make a big deal about it and most of the time they won’t either.
5. Don’t do it alone
   Fasting isn’t a glamorous or easy act. So don’t go it alone. Team up with a friend or a group of friends. This way you have someone to pray with during lunch. You can also pray for each other during your fasts too.
6. It’s not a contest
   This happened to me on my first 40-day fast. I had given up all food for forty days and I was doing really well…too well in fact. I was getting really excited. I was half way through the fast and was really starting to get full of my self. I was starting to think about how cool it was going to be to tell people that I had gone 40 days without any solid food (I was just having juice and smoothie every now and then). I knew I needed to edit my fast mid-stream and start a fruits and vegetables fast. This kept me from being prideful, but still allowed me to deny myself and drive myself to God.
   If you find yourself getting prideful about your fast, it’s time stop and reevaluate your actions. Remember your purpose is to draw closer to God.
7. If necessary, STOP
   There are times when you will just need to stop your fast all together. Your health is a really good reason for this. Any fast where you deny yourself of food can be dangerous to your health (do lots of research before you give up any type of food).
   The main reason to stop is if your fast interferes with your relationship with God. I have a friend who doesn’t fast because he says that he ends up focusing on the fast rather than focusing on God. Remember the ultimate purpose of a fast is to draw you closer to God. If you find that your fast is doing the opposite, STOP! No fast is worth your relationship with God. Stop your fast and find other avenues to draw closer to God.

That’s it for now. Until next time, enjoy your chicken broth.

photo by: Lori Morris

I have to be honest, this is actually the first time that I’ve participated in the Lent season. If you don’t know what Lent is, wikipedia states it as so:

Lent, in most Christian denominations, is the forty-day liturgical season of fasting and prayer before Easter. The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where, according to the Bible, he endured temptation by Satan. Different churches will calculate the forty days differently.

The purpose of Lent, like most Christian seasons, it to be a special time where you grow closer to God and those around you. You are to do this through three ways: prayer, fasting/self denial, and generosity. Now I’m not a master at any of these…but I’d like to give you some advise from what I have learned over the years (I sound like a wise old sage…um…I’m not).

Prayer

I must say that prayer has only increased in my life in the past few months to where I could even start to give someone advice. Before then, it was simply something I would do during the typical expected times (at meals, church, ect). I’ve only recently come to begin to understand how God uses prayer to draw us closer to Him and as a tool to complete His work. With that being said, here are some simple tips to help with your prayer time during Lent.

1. Set up Triggers in your life.
   I’ve talked about triggers in a previous post. This is taking something that you normally do in your life and using it to “trigger” you to do things that wouldn’t normally do. For example, most people use sitting down for dinner as trigger to pray for the meal (I hope you’re not one of those people that pray for like two hours before every meal…that’s really annoying). Take things that you do everyday, and make them triggers for you to pray. Some of my favorites are taking a shower, using the bathroom, getting in your car, making coffee, getting in bed, getting ready to read your Bible, finishing reading your Bible, driving to work, driving home, finishing lunch, eating eggs, sailing on a boat, scratching your nose, and buying a tambourine. You get the idea. Take things that you do everyday and use them as a trigger to pray.
2. Have a plan.
   This is probably my biggest short-coming. I’m a random prayer. Whatever comes to my head at the time is what I pray for. For this reason, I’m constantly praying for the same things over and over (these are mainly food, finances, my future, my son, and my wife). This isn’t necessarily bad. But there are a lot more things in my life that I would like to pray about/for (did he just end a sentence with two prepositions…yes he did). So have a standard place where you keep track of all the things that you want to pray about. Then review this list at least once a day. This way nothing gets left behind.
3. Talk to God.
   This might sound dumb to some, but for me this was an epiphany. I don’t know if you noticed this or not, but over the years I’ve discovered that people like to use what I call “prayer talk.” You know what I’m talking about (if you don’t…go to a prayer meeting and you’ll know). This is where a person suddenly embodies the spirit of Benny Hen and sees how many times they can say the words God, Father God, Lord, or Jesus (whichever is the persons favorite) in a prayer. Shannon and I actually have a game where we will count how many times someone uses one of these words in their prayers (I know…we’re a bunch a heathens…but Jesus loves us just the same).It came as a surprise to me that I could actually just talk to God. I didn’t have to use His name as the punctuation to every sentence. I didn’t have to speak in old English. I could just talk to Him. Just like I talk to my friends about my troubles and my successes, I can talk to Him. I can tell Him my struggles and failures. I can tell Him jokes. I can even be angry and yell at Him (read a few Psalms and you’ll get the idea). Prayer is me simply talking to God. No flair. No technicalities. No special formulas. Just talking.
4. Write it down.
   This one comes from my wife and Dave Ortega (Dave you need to get a blog so I can link to you). I’m not good at this, but for the two previously mentioned they swear by it. My wife has several spiral notebooks that she has filled with her prayers over the years. This has been really cool, because she can look back and see how God has answered her prayers.Dave does the same. The last time I talked to him about the subject, he said the biggest tip he could give someone was to not set a limit. That means no minimum or maximum. It puts an unnecessary burden on you. Some days he will write pages worth of prayer to God. Other days it will be the simple phrase, “God help me.” The idea is to simple write it out.
5. Keep it simple.
   Awhile back I learned that, during the time of Jesus (and I think it might be true for today too), Jews would have standard prayers for everything that they would do. You would have a standard prayer for plowing a field, eating a meal, drinking wine…even going to the bathroom. The key was that most of these prayers were only a sentence long. The reality is that our prayers don’t have to be 5 minutes long for God to hear us (once again with you guys who like to pray until my food it cold…stop it). Sometimes the simplest prayers are the best prayers. If you can only think of a few things to say to God, then say them. God isn’t keeping a tally of how much you pray. He just want to hear from you.
6. Keep it sweet.
   Remember who you are talking to. While God is the King of the Universe, He is also the Lover of your soul. I think the reason that David was a man after God’s own heart was because he was passionate and honest with God. He was open and honest as you can only be with a closest friend. I think the worst prayer isn’t a long prayer or a prayer said in Old English but a prayer that has no heart. If you aren’t praying out of a love for God, then are you really praying. The reality is that this is the core of all prayer…to seek the face of God….to seek after His heart. Prayer is one of the most intimate times we have with God. Treat it that way.

Ok that is it for now….I’ll cover fasting and generosity in the next couple of days. Until then, enjoy God.

Here’s a quick recap of last weeks blogs:

Monday: I forgot to write a blog (ok I was just lazy)…so I vowed to do two on Tuesday.

Tuesday: “Give it up.” was a post about the lack of generosity in the the church and people today. Huckabee Hater was one of my most commented blogs for the week. I talked about my dislike for Huckabee’s Christian platform.

Wednesday: You got another two for the price of one as I talked about the Belkin Podcast Studio and how I need one. I also put out a desperate plea for some suggestions for the use of my iTunes Gift Card.

Thursday: In Waaaaa. I’m Not Getting Fed, I commented on Vince Antonucci‘s posts by the same name.

Friday: The The Black Screen of Life covers our need to get rid of distractions.

Saturday: The book UnChristian gave me the idea to post my own survey.

Sunday: I used this Week in Review as a sly way out of getting to write a new blog.