The Phil Files

Despite all the appearances that I have dropped off the face of blogdom, I want everyone to know that I am alive and still kickin’ — at least for one more day. However, it feels like our family was asked by the DNC to be a volunteer poster family for the Hillary and Obama nationalized health care debate — we were the test family this week to see how health insurance works. (I think this also may be payback for my mom voting republican all these years.)

This is what I mean on the health care issue. My mom had knee replacement surgery on Tuesday … but hold on, that’s just the beginning! While I was waiting with Grady (mom’s husband) at the hospital for mom to come out of recovery, Donna (my wife) was with Megan (our daughter) at the doctor having an MRI read on the ankle she broke five years ago playing softball in high school — a plate and 7 screws was required then to patch it up. Megan did not receive a great report, so she is now referred on to an orthopedist — the same one who did mom’s knee surgery. Megan has been limping around and hurting pretty badly at the end of each day working as a tech at a physical therapy center. Meanwhile, I start my “day before colonoscopy” liquid diet today to get ready for my appointment tomorrow with the dreaded “long black snake” — be warned, I get a little cranky on water and Jello diets in anticipation of drinking concentrated saline so they can look at me where the sun doesn’t shine. While I am having my “procedure” tomorrow, Donna goes for blood work. Ah, can you say “insurance deductible” four times very quickly?

Of course it’s been a crazy and nutty work week for Donna at school and church is its normal insanity for me. Hopefully we all — mom, Megan, Donna, and myself — go home at the same time, in good health,. Of course I can’t be the one driving! They promise that they will dismiss me before I’m fully returned from “lala” land. But that’s what they said last time when I woke up during the beloved “procedure” — but that is a story for another day and time.

So if you ask me how the week has been, I would say, “We’ve paid our insurance deductible and are still standing.” But then, I haven’t survived the long black snake.

Nobody told me when I was 20 that falling apart when you are over 50 is “so much fun”!? Who needs TV when you can watch pictures of … well, let’s not go there.

As I have searched for spiritual application for my “procedure,” phrases from Genesis 3 keep popping into my mind:

“I was naked and hid myself.” (Yeah, that’s what I will want to do in the morning when they take my clothes, put me in that “gown” with no back door. I will want to hide.)
To the snake God said, “Because you have done this, curse are you among all the animals … upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” (Yeah, we all pretty much want to put a curse on the snake in moments like this.)
“I will put enmity between you and the offspring of the woman .” (Yeah, I’m going to hate this whole deal!)
“By the sweat of your brow …” (Yeah, I’m going to be doing this!)

On closer inspection, the only Scripture that seems to righteously apply right now is this:

[Jesus asked] “Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” … And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles” (Matthew 7:19-20 NRS).

Which is, I guess, the Lord’s way of reminding me to not sweat the deductible, but work on the heart of the deductee — a heart that needs to be more patient, kind, gentle, appreciative, thankful, forgiving, empathetic, holy, and joyful. Amid all the whining, I’ve got a place to sleep, a family who loves me, food to eat, a church family to support me, friends to hold me accountable, resources to help provide health care for my family, and a million other blessings I don’t have time to name … and, by the Lord’s grace, I can pay my deductible.

So Lord, I ask that you take the whiny voice out of my heart and replace it with the heart of grace that Jesus had when he compassionately touched the lives of others. And LORD God, please be with all those we know who are truly wrestling with life and death health issues today, and help them to feel your presence and know that they are not alone in their struggles. Bless, especially O LORD, those who do not have access to health care or cannot afford it, and help us find ways to change that situation in our country and in our world, to Your honor and glory. Because of Jesus’ love for us, and in the name of the Great Physician, I pray. Amen.

It’s hard when you have to face your own words. Sunday was frustrating on many fronts for me. When I arrived at home from preaching two services and a pre-marital counseling visit, Donna sensed something was not quite right with me. After visiting with me awhile, she said, “You feel defeated, don’t you?”

I admitted that is where I was at the moment — well, where I was most of the afternoon.

Preaching post-mortems are always pretty rough for me; I am nearly always too hard on myself and how the morning went. I am just frustrated that we seem to have the same technical problems over and over and in the process, my heart-felt response in worship has become dampened. Part of it is that I have been a bit depressed, off and on, since returning from Africa. So much of what we focus on — what I focus on — when discussing church seems so shallow and selfish. Yet it still matters to me as a matter of excellence and offering my best and our best to the Lord. When I lose my passion in worship, I’m a whole lot like a sailboat without a keel and rudder: I’m left to blow in whatever ill wind catches me.

Thinking through my message convicted me that I am guilty of not hearing my own message about staying on the journey — my Heartlight article today covers some of the same emphasis. I want to see movement and passion. I want to see message move us to mission. I don’t want to feel like I’m dosing out spoonfuls of water to sponges and then watching the water evaporate over the course of a week only to see the same dry sponges return the next week without any observable movement or change, they’re just back for their weekly dose of water.

Is it the process of preaching?

Is it the way we do church?

Is it me?

I know late Sunday nights are not the best time to look at such things. I may feel totally different by tomorrow morning — or at least a little different.Thankfully for me, friends from our care group came over and I was profoundly blessed by their friendship and conversation. Donna was precious as she showered tender attention on me after our friends left. During the process, through friends and family, I was gently nudged to hear the words the Spirit game me to share … words I needed to hear.

Remember your destination: becoming like Jesus — be like Him until you go home to be with Him.

Remember the journey can be long: stay committed.Remember what maturity is: realizing you haven’t arrived until you’re at home with Jesus.

So I’m just before sleeping myself into the beginning of another week with many of the same challenges of the previous week … and the one before that and the one before that … But I’m trying to trust the words I shared with others are words I must hear and apply to my own heart.

But it’s hard staying on the journey when the landscape doesn’t change very quickly and the problems seem to be the same from week to week. And it’s hard to stay on the journey when you’ve come to the conviction that we’ve got to change some significant, meaningful, organizational things about how we do church and refuse to be misled by cosmetic and faddish things.

Let’s help each other hang in and stay on the journey!

If you got some suggestions for me and others who are reading the blog, then please suggest to me resources that have blessed you on your journey. What words of encouragement you would offer to someone who, like me, gets a little bogged down and distracted on the journey? How do you find strength to stay on the journey?

In my article this week on Heartlight, I continue to talk about “The Jesus Vibe” — living out the two great love commands of Jesus.

Ultimately, if I’m going to really love God, I’ve got to love my fellow humans. This is not easy when some of them are bad, mean, or hurtful to us … to me personally. How do I respond? Especially in light of the fact that God doesn’t allow me to compartmentalize my life and treat some folks one way when it’s easy, and treat others folks a different way because they are mean or I’m in a different setting. So I’d like for us to chew on a couple of questions:

What makes it so hard for us to forgive when we’ve been forgiven so much?

What helps you to forgive others when you’ve been wronged or hurt severely?

Finally, in one of those interesting acts of Providence, the daily Psalm in my other blog, A Psalm for Each Day, is focused on Psalm 38, a psalm begging for God’s forgiveness. It offers the perspective on sin and forgiveness from “the other side of the coin” and would be good to factor into our thoughts today.

Any insight you give will be a blessing to me and to others.

Thanks!

If Satan is a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, most of us have realize that the lion is often parked outside our door waiting to pounce on us. In my Heartlight article this week, we look at how Jesus dealt with the challenge of tempation in his own life. Take a look and then I’d love to hear from you about the following things:

In the face of temptation, what does it mean to “love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind”?

How are you doing in your battle with temptation and sin?

What are some of your strategies to facing down the evil one and winning the war with the sin that is “crouching at the door”?

So let me hear from you! What’s your take?

This week, I wrote about Larry in my Heartlight article entitled, “Of Natural Causes.” Larry’s death got me wondering about some things:

What holds you back from reaching out to someone else?

What makes it hard to help touch the heart of someone who seems to be alone that you regularly see each week?

Why have we become such an isolated culture as we grow more supposedly “civilized” and “high tech”?

I’d love to hear your take on this and what we can do to make it better.

In a recent Heartlight article, I talk about the power of God’s grace and how we seem to have wasted on what is irrelevant to most folks in the world today. Do you feel that most people in your culture think church is irrelevant and not important in the life of everyday people and deep social problems? Why or why not?