-Tweet Me A Life Lesson-

On my way in this morning my phone beeped alerting me that I had just received a text message. Being the irresponsible driver that I am, I grabbed my phone and diverted my attention from the road in front of me to the small 1.5’ by 2.5’ screen on my LG Voyager phone. I feel like I should have a “Don’t text and drive” disclaimer at this point but really, would anyone care what I have to say on this subject? Especially after just confessing to do it myself. I will say that if you’re in California, texting and driving will be illegal come January so there you go. Anyway, on with the story.

The text was actually a “tweet”; that is to say it was an update from someone I’m following on twitter. The tweet came via a good friend and mentor of mine named Billy, (yes, the same Billy I mentioned in last week’s post); indicating that today, October 15, 2008 is his and his wife’s 20th wedding anniversary. 20 years is a long time. Some of you reading this may not even have been alive for 20 years yet so you know what I mean. To be cohabitating, loving, being loved by, learning, raising kids, paying bills, cleaning, working, and growing with someone for 20 years is pretty impressive I think. It makes my seven years of marriage seem quite minimal but based on my seven years, (not a single one of which I would trade in or change), I can say with confidence that going 20 takes a lot of love, patience, understanding, compromise and most importantly…arguing. Because you can’t live with someone for 20 years without having a few yelling matches. What fun would that be? So how have my friend Billy and his awesome wife Annie managed to do it? He once told me about their marriage philosophy which I will share with you. At least, what I took from it.

Most people probably view marriage as a 50/50 type of an arrangement. It’s a “give and take” philosophy about knowing when to give and knowing when to take at the right times as to make both of you relatively satisfied that you are getting as much out of the marriage relationship as you are giving to it. In short, the idea is to give 50% of the time and take 50% and both of you will break even in the end. On the surface this seems like a great arrangement. A simple and logical, mathematical formula ensuring the “contentness” of all parties involved. The problem is that relationships, especially marriage relationships, are anything but simple, logical and mathematical. They are messy and abstract without fixed lines and permanent definitions. Knowing this, Billy and Annie have developed a different formula.

Billy once told me that in his marriage they do their best to apply not a 50/50 type of philosophy, but a 100/100 one. The idea is that if they are giving 100% of themselves to their spouse and their spouse is giving 100% to them, it becomes a win-win scenario. This made such a huge impact on me because Billy and I had this conversation shortly before my wife and I married. Now, when we talked about it, it just seemed to flow naturally out of the conversation we were having. But as I look back to that conversation knowing what I now know about Billy, I think that he was steering the conversation in that direction intentionally to help set me up to have a healthy marriage.

I loved this philosophy from the word “go” and Krissy and I have done our best to use it in our own marriage. Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not. I have also found this idea to be a manifestation of how the Apostle Paul describes the marriage relationship in 1st Corinthians 7:4. He writes, “The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.” Billy and Annie give 100% of themselves to one another because they realize that they belong to each other and not just themselves. I think this is beautiful.

But today, as I read Billy’s tweet and marveled at how awesome it is to see two people love each other so much for so long a time, I began to expand their philosophy beyond marriage and ask myself a few questions. What if I gave 100% of myself to my children too? What if I gave 100% of myself to my friends? My co-workers? My neighbors? My Bankers? My grocery store clerks? My waitresses? My fellow commuters? What if I gave 100% of myself to my fellow human beings everywhere? What would that look like? Is that what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Love one another. As I have loved you so you must love one another.”?

What if I could do that? And what if I could, by doing it, inspire others to give 100% of themselves as well? What would that look like? Imagine. What would that look like? I think it would be beautiful.


P.S.

Thanks Billy. You continue to challenge me toward greatness without even trying or know that you’re doing it. People like you don’t come around often and I’m glad God put me in your flight path.

-Who Are You Really?-

Not too long ago I was having lunch with a friend, (another Pastor), and he was telling about a speaker he had recently went to see. As he recanted his experience of seeing and listening to this man, you could tell how deeply the experience affected him. It was obviously a defining moment in his life and he was adamant about not walking away from the experience unchanged. I have much admiration for this attitude of his and have really let his response to that experience speak into my life as well.

When the speaker was finished and the event was drawing to a close, my friend approached him to speak with him. As he told me about his conversation with the man something he said struck me. He said he told the man, "Whatever it is that you have, I want it." I have heard that statement before over and over again actually and usually not in the same way that my friend meant it. I know what my friend meant when he said it and I admire his tenacity in going our and trying to become who he was made to be. But usually when I hear the statement, "Whatever it is you have, I want it," it means something else.

In the Pentecostal environments I have been in, this statement usually has something to do with obtaining some gift or power instilled by the Holy Spirit. There have been several "movements of the Spirit" over the past 15 years or so and that is when I hear this statement most. The problem with this statement is that it is the very definition of envy, which the Bible tells us is a sin. This puts me in an awkward place when I hear the statement.

For me, the idea of wanting what someone else has is an issue of discontent with what you do have. Even when it comes to Spiritual gifts, which are good things, it creates an attitude of discontent. When we want the gifts and abilities that God has given someone else, what we are saying is that we are not happy with the gifts and abilities that He has given us. We are saying that we would rather have what God wants for others than what God designed for us. This can be such a destructive way to view things.

In almost every ministry position I've held, paid or unpaid, I have made this error. I have tried to be someone else. Someone I wasn't created to be. I modeled my speaking style after someone else, my speaking content after someone else, my administrative strategy after someone else, my mentoring style after someone else, and in doing so I left no trace of myself in any of it. This only works for so long. The person I really was invariably began to come out, often to the detriment of the persona I was trying to create. One day I decided to stop trying to be a carbon copy of my mentors and only recently have I really begun to get a sense of who I am in ministry. This process is ongoing still today as I try to glean lessons and wisdom from what my mentors have taught me rather than try to become my mentors themselves.

To give you an example of what I mean I need to tell you about one of my mentors. His name is Billy and he is a natural born mentor. He invests himself fully into people and sometimes even gets hurt because of it. He feels deeply for people and because of this he bears their burdens with them. It also makes him a bit of crier but we won't get into all of that. Because Billy is so gifted at connecting with and raising up others, I tried to model myself after him when I was attempting to mentor others. The problem with this is that, even though Billy and I have some similarities, we are very different people. So my trying to become him was actually destructive to my goal of mentoring others. What I am now learning to do is take the things I learned from him and altar them to fit my personality and skill-set rather then altar my personality and skill-set to fit the lessons. Lessons from him like, "Be intentional about bringing them into your world," or "Ask them the tough questions," are easily transferable into any context and I missed the point years ago when he taught me these things.

I am finally in a place where I am not only content with who God is making me into but excited about it. Billy is one of many mentors whose lessons are paying off huge dividends currently because I have learned the hard lesson of being who I am. Being who God created me to be. So next time you find yourself wishing you were more like someone else or wishing you had something they have, please, learn from my mistakes rather than repeating them, and altar the lesson to fit your personality rather than trying to altar your personality to fit the lesson. Because who you really are will always come pouring out and usually at very inconvenient times.