Transforming the Ordinary (under construction)

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding.  John 2:1,2

1. Jesus taught life in the context of life.  Note that Jesus did not rent a building and start a school.  He brought his disciples along as he did life.  He brought them to a wedding.  He taught them as he lived a life consecrated to God.

2. He did not teach them in a linear way.  We don't see a course in systematic theology, history of the Jewish people, or an overview of the development of monotheism.  We see Jesus living and fulfilling the will of God and capturing teachable moments with his disciples.

3. Jesus brought people along as he lived the ordinary, to teach them.  How much are we lone rangers?

4. Jesus was a busy person, but he still did the ordinary things of life.  We are busy people.  Instead of more activities, we need to learn how to transform the activities that we are already doing into events of eternal value.  One time when my children were small, I felt so much pressure to be eternally productive every minute.  This is a difficult paradigm in which to raise small children and change diapers and feed babies.  I remember being in the kitchen cutting vegetables for a salad and stressing about this and the Lord clearly saying to me, "Paul, it's ok to slice a tomato."  I wept.

5.  Jesus did not despise the ordinary things of life.  He participated in them, but in a transformed way.  More and more for people today, it is difficult to tolerate the "mundane" things of life.  A recent Christianity Today article says that there is a trend that we’re increasingly finding embodied life “tiresome.”(1)  God intended the simple human things of life (cooking, working, cleaning house, conversation) to be a joy, not tiresome.

6.  The temple and the tabernacle were the central places of worship.  There were lots of people that were involved in the "unglorious" tasks that were necessary for worship to happen.  Likewise, when we take the time to prepare a good meal with love and attention, we are providing the opportunity for and promoting relationship and love as well as truth, beauty and goodness.  Therefore, it could be said that food prep is worship.

Also, a movie has a few "stars" in it, but when you look at the credits at the end, it took hundreds of people to get those talking heads up on the silver screen (not to mention all the people it took to distribute it and provide a clean, warm place to show it.) God uses hundreds and thousands of people performing apparently mundane and "non-worship" tasks to bring glory to himself and produce worship. Without ushers, deacons, cleaning ladies, grass cutters and nursery workers, a traditional church pastor would have no job (not to mention the contractors, bricklayers, carpenters, architects, and Home Depot employees it takes to construct a building).  "God uses the hand of the milkmaid to produce milk for the people," says Martin Luther.

Transformational living is what we are all looking for.  If we as Jesus people could learn how to live this way, the kingdom of God would advance explosively.   What are the impediments to transformational living?

1. We don't or don't know how to abide in Christ such that all of life is an experience with Him.

2.  We are too busy and simply trying to check boxes in life, instead of living intentionally.  Paul said, "In the latter days, people's love will grow cold."  This is one of the fallouts of a frenetic lifestyle - a depleted emotional state incapable really responding to those around us.  We are crossing on the far side of the road because we are late for church and don't have time to help the guy in the ditch.  Jesus is resting from a long walk when he encounters the Samaritan women at the well.  He has time for her. Are we busy because we are actually doing something worthwhile or do we just like feeling the wind in our faces?

"The medium is the message."  We who are parents are avariciously ensuring that our children have every growth opportunity.  They simply must play sports and take dance and be in the Beta club and see the Dead Sea Scrolls when they come within two hours and go to camp in the summer and piano lessons.  However, what are we teaching them, what are we saying to them with a busy, frenetic lifestyle?  We have to teach our children not only life skills that bring them maturity and ensure that they know how to make a living.  We have to teach them how to live in a healthy manner.  The medium of busyness and toxic lifestyle is the message that our kids get, that life is about production and having experiences, rather than about relationships and a healthy lifestyle.

3.  We are afraid to have people with us because we believe (rightly) that we cannot perfectly model Jesus.  We must remember that we are not trying to model Jesus, but we are to model a broken person imperfectly following Jesus.  We are modeling a life of love and repentance.

4.  Expectations are death.  We expect things to be a certain way and are afraid that they will not be what we think they should be.  We must "lean in", and show up by faith, trusting God to use us, rather than trying to bear fruit on our own.

5.  Pride makes us afraid to be needy.  We need to let those whom we are "discipling" to help us cut the grass, cook and paint the bathroom.  This is where they will learn.

6.  We must learn how to capitalize on the opportunities we have in the workplace.  Co-workers see us as we really are under stress.  They really know us and see what we are made of.

7. We are not living in the here and now, but we are living for next Friday, or when we get married or when school is out.  We must live in the moment, whether it is a blessing or a time of suffering.

Oswald Chambers reminds us that Jesus did not linger where it was easy and he was successful, then hurry through the hard times.  We have to see each moment, each task as a gift from God, whether hard or easy.  This all must be undergirded with an attitude of "in everything give thanks."

In my "before Jesus" days, I read a book called Be Here Now.  It was an Eastern religion book, and the perspective of a Christ follower would be somewhat different, but the idea of being all present at the place and the time where you are actually living the moment has a lot to be said about it in the context of abiding with Jesus.

Living in the moment requires the ability to suffer, so that we fully experience the moment and the gift that God has for us. Bill Gothard defined patience as "accepting a difficult situation from God without giving Him a deadline to remove it."  The capacity to suffer is true power.  A person who has the capacity to suffer and who is not afraid of death is the most powerful person on the planet.  He is truly free.

8.  We don't know what we are really living for and do not clearly know what is important to us.  We get caught in the maelstrom and don't know which way north is.  Stephen Covey says that most time management strategies won't work because your day never goes as planned.  Mike Tyson famously said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."  This is what has happened to us by the second hour into the day.  Covey says we have to have a compass, a set of values so that as we are caught in the vortex of the day we can make decisions that help us make progress toward that which is important.

9.  We are in a hurry because we feel validated by being in crisis mode.  Have you ever noticed how unhurried people are in an emergency room?
"What seems to be the problem?"
"My right arm has been ripped off."
"Ok, we can help you with that.  What is your full name?..."

(Note that this question assumes a priority on living in this life.  We have lost much of our focus on the importance of heaven and "this world is not my home.")


1. "Move Over, Sex and Drugs. Ease Is the New Vice: Do modern amenities make it tough for us to embody God’s love?", Jen Pollock Michel, Posted 1/31/19, Accessed 2/28/19)

Proverbs 32

Proverbs 32

These are not scripture, but good stuff that I think scripture supports.

1 The medium is the message. (Marshall McLuhan)
2 Ninety-five percent of winning is showing up. (Woody Allen)
3 If a lion could speak, we could not understand him. (Wittgenstein)
4 If what you are doing to fix a problem is not fixing it, it may be causing it. (Michelle Weiner-Davis)
5 With males, an ounce of action is worth a thousand pounds of words. (Michelle Weiner-Davis / Lewinstein)
6 People do what they want to do. (Lewinstein)
7 Truth comes in "both / and", not "either / or".  (Jesus - "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.")
8 Things can be true as general statements, even though there may be exceptions. (Kaitlyn Johnston)
9 Nine pregnant women cannot make a baby in a month.
10 Just because something enters your mind does not mean it needs to exit your mouth. (Lewinstein)
11 Don't let someone else's head get your butt in trouble. (Jack and Carol Lewis)
12 Money makes good fertilizer but not good seed. (Lewinstein)
13 Communication at its best is still really bad. (Lewinstein)

Media: The Medium is the Message

Media: The Medium is the Message

Thoughts from listening to and reading Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase "The medium is the message."

Communication has:
1. A content - What is the message that is being communicated?
2. A medium- What is the means or the environment in which the message is being communicated?
3. An effect - The content and the medium work together to have an effect.

When we think about communication, we have to think about the effect, not just the content.

If I were to spray paint "Jesus Loves You" on the side of someone's car in the Walmart parking lot, we could say:
1. The content - the message is "Jesus Loves You".
2.  The medium - spray paint on a random car.
3.  The effect - Anger, resentment, outrage.

Another example:
A ten year old watches "good" television and movies for six hours a day.
1.  The content is good.
2.  The medium is television.
3.  The effect is the sum of 40 hours a week of "good" content + 40 hours a week of watching TV.  These have to be considered together.

What about how we communicate the gospel?
1.  The content: God loves you more than you can possibly imagine, but if you don't trust Jesus for salvation, you are in for a worse eternal destiny than you could ever fear.  You could die today or this week or this month or this year.  This is something that you should come to grips with immediately - your eternal destiny hangs in the balance.
2.  The medium - Large comfortable churches; relational, timid evangelism; believers who have the same values as the people of the world.
3.  The effect - Our "medium" contradicts our message and in effect says that we don't believe our message.

Combining "the medium is the message" with Woody Allen's "95% of winning is showing up":
1. If you come to my mother's funeral, ten years from now I won't remember anything you said, but I'll remember that you came.  Your coming communicated more than anything you might have said.
2.  If you send a thank you note, most of the significance of the note is that you sent it.

Sesame Street was conceived in 1966 and came on the air in 1969.  Their goal was to create a children's television show that would "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them",[3] such as helping young children prepare for school.  It has been said that Sesame Street didn't help kids love learning, it taught them to love television.

In conversation, your greatest message may be communicated through listening and being interested.  What I was with X I thought I was in the presence of one of the greatest people of our times.  When I was with Y, I thought he was in the presence of one of the greatest people of our time.

Jesus didn't teach linearly.  He taught in the moment, based on what was happening.  We see this at the wedding in Cana and with the woman at the well. We must learn how to teach in the context of life.   "Today we're going to Lowes."