20 Questions? (Plus 2)

John Wesley’s Methodists started as a regular meeting of students at Oxford University called The Holy Club. These are 22 questions the members of this group asked themselves every day in their private devotions over 200 years ago. These questions convicted me, so I thought I would share them.

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me?

Multiplication Tables

This is awesome to me! And so challenging. I am excited to write about this.

What are the things that you really own (I do not mean material things but rather things that you own deep within your person, mind, heart, psyche, whatever you want to call it.)? Drop the spiritual things that you are supposed to know. That is not even a spiritual question. What things do you own? I own my multiplication tables. We'll come back to this.

Who is God? What is His' character? Who are you? What kind of relationship do you have with God? What are the intimate, fine qualities of this relationship? These questions to me are basic and foundational. If God is real - and He is, and if I am real - and I am fairly certain I am, then how should that cause me to live? This has tremendous implications. The scary thing is that most often we settle for not really digging deeply into these basic questions. So answer them. Who is God really? And what is His' character? - I mean really. My answers: God is love (1 Jn 4.8 - see I even have a reference for this one), God is good, He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. If I am really honest that is just about where my list stops - or at least where it used to stop. The issue is not a lack of knowledge. See in fact I could go on and I could talk about the balance of love and justice that God shows or we could talk about the sovereignty of God or the problem of evil and an ever-loving God. I am equipped with the knowledge, but what's the point? Go back to that list. After I say love, goodness, and all the omni- qualities why go on? What is the point in just compiling a list. And here brings me to the point of this post: For most (it might even be all of you who will read this) of us all we have is a list. That's it. We have a list of who God is, of His' qualities and character. Now that is not a terribly bad thing. But I think it's less than ideal. In fact, in a lot of ways it is actually a very good thing. We ought to know and be able to tell someone who God is. It is important to know that He is those things, but we can do better. We must do better.

So why is this important? It is important because we have failed to sufficiently question what we have been told to believe. Now listen clearly to me, not everyone should question theology because most people are not really equipped to do that. But if no one questions, ever, how do we guard against poor teaching. If no one ever says "Hey I'm not sure that is biblical or correct" then we are surely setting up a system where unbiblical principles will be taught. Paul calls Timothy to "guard" the treasure that Paul had given him. He was to guard "the standard of sound words...in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus." (2 Tim 1.14-15 [see also 1 Tim 6.20]) Surely this is important today just as it was important then. Again, this is not for everyone. But if those who are serious about their faith, for those who are serious minded about the things of God, we must guard our doctrine and faith carefully for ourselves and for those who follow us. I fundamentally believe that this is not just for pastors, neither is every pastor ready for the fight unfortunately. This is for those who are actually following Jesus - who are daily picking up their cross, who are really leading others and helping others to Christ.

Here is a very poignant example: What do you believe about the Holy Spirit?
Even this question causes discomfort and awkwardness. This is mainly because of the abuses that we have seen by some who go too far. And surely, some have abused the real work of the Spirit, but can we just allow ourselves to ignore 1/3 of who God has revealed Himself to be? I do not think we can afford to do that. So let us return to the Word! Let us dig deeply into the Bible to see what the role of the Holy Spirit is. Let us see how He works, what He does, and who He is. This is a perfect example because we have allowed ourselves to believe things about the Spirit because someone else basically told us what we should believe. And whether they used words or just simply communicated through the medium of their life, they told you to ignore the Spirit. They told you that was for crazy, radical people. And we listen. I listen. And that is a shame. And I will not do that anymore. We must go back to the Word for understanding. And not just for what we should know about and how we should live with the Holy Spirit. We should go back to the Word for understanding of everything: the character of God, for understanding myself, for understanding how a perfect God interacts with someone who is so imperfect, for meaning, for purpose, for biblical theology, and whatever else we are seeking.

Now let me clarify one thing. I have written a good bit and I think it would be really easy to close your computer and maybe feel a slight nudge to study harder or to take and make your faith your own just a little bit more. And that is great! Please do that. But what I really want to challenge you to do is to memorize. And here I will return to the promise I made at the top of the post. We own things like multiplication tables. We own particular skills that let us play frisbee or an instrument. We own the ability to read and speak well. We own the plot of tv shows, movies, or dramas and the intricacies of their characters. We do not own who God is. Now I am not suggesting we can own God in a way that lets us wrap our heads completely around who He is, but we have not dedicated ourselves to knowing him like we have dedicated ourselves to knowing a ton of other crap. I can throw a frisbee eleven different ways. Anyone who knows me at all knows how I love to play ultimate. I own that game. I understand it inside and out. I know skills and strategies. I know cuts and throws. I can even hold a frisbee in my hands and tell you if it is a good disc or not. I own frisbee. I have dedicated myself to it. Far, far too often I have not dedicated myself to my relationship with God. I have not owned the Word. I have not even come close to taking the same effort I put into frisbee and putting it into my relationship with Jesus. So here is my specific challenge: MEMORIZE. Dedicate yourself to this. Hard. Long. Impossible. Effort. Worth It. Life-Changing. Apply yourself to memorization. Yes it is difficult, but you take time to memorize all those things above: music, instruments, tv shows, poems, songs, sports, rosters of college football teams, the lives of pop culture icons, even movie scripts. See we just have this aversion to sitting in a bare room with just the Word of God and trying to cram it into our head. We are not actually opposed to memorization. And I think most of us could actually sit in that room if we put our minds to it, but the point is, we memorize things all the time, they just don't change us. So let's own the things of God.

What is 6x7? How about 12x5? Those answers come from somewhere deep inside of me. I put them in my heart and they have kept me from bad math. Now I am desperately trying to put God's word in the same place that my multiplication tables reside because it is only in that place that they will keep me from sin. I am done with knowing a handful of verses that kind of sort of support things I have been told to believe. I am going to memorize. And after those things are inside of me, I will own who God is. They will not just be right answers. I have no more lists. I will have deep knowledge of His character. I can do better. We can do better. There is more to be had. We have not even touched or scratched the surface. What a shame to spend the moments we have been given with things that do not change us. I want to throw myself into things that matter.

I do not know how to wrap this up in a neat and clean way...so go do it.