I love stories.  If you’re human, chances are you do too.  If you are a church-going person, do this – next time you are listening to your pastor, think about what happens when he/she begins to tell a story.  Pay attention to yourself; watch what other people around you do – if you listen hard enough, you will realize that the room got suddenly…quieter.  Not as many people rustling pages, opening candy wrappers, or looking at their watches.  Know why?  Because intuitively, people love to hear (and tell) stories.  In my opinion they are especially captivating if they are personal.

Don’t ever forget that God is a God of story.  He is not a list of propositional truths that systematic theology gives us; He is not a bullet-pointed page of do’s and don’ts; He has written and is writing the most captivating Story…right now!  We’re all to be story-tellers.  Telling His Story, and how our stories intersect.

Next week I am attending a conference called, simply, Story.  It’s for communicators of all kinds, in Chicago for a couple of days.  Pastors, teachers, writers, filmmakers, etc.  It centers on what’s been called the Greatest Story Ever Told – the story of God, the story of His Son Jesus, and the story of us.   If you are a pastor, like me, there are TONS of conferences out there.  More than ever before.  But as soon as I saw this one, I knew that I had to go.

Glad my wife is letting me do something like this during this season of our lives!  I’ll be sure to let you know what I learn.

What I’m especially looking forward to at Story (in no particular order):

Main sessions with Donald Miller, Ed Young, and Chris Seay

Workshop with Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers

Hanging out with my buddy Bob Gordon!

Checking out the classic Paramount Theatre, where this thing is taking place

Lesson Learned #3:  Pain is a necessary element of change.

If you want to change, you are going to have to endure some pain.  If God wants to change you, you can be sure that your transformation will, at times, be painful.  Look at this passage with me today:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”  - John 15: 1-2

There is some pain in life you can anticipate.  Exercise falls into this category.  I recently was at the local YMCA triatholon.  Uh…serving cups of water…not running, swimming, or biking (yet!).  It’s a pretty humbling experience to watch all of these very in-shape dudes running by you, grabbing cups of water, sometimes getting you soaking wet as they run by.  It was interesting – on about half of their faces I saw focus, determination, and resilience (these were the first ones to come through).  On the other half – pain.  Sheer pain.  One lady who was participating came by, shaking her head, and said what a lot of the others were surely thinking – “What was I thinking????”

No pain no gain, right?  We know that about exercise.  Clearly these athletes, especially the ones who were doing well, had put themselves through intense training, which inevitably involved pain, to get where they wanted to go.  To give themselves the best chance to win.

That’s what I’d call “intentional pain”.  Pain we put ourselves through on purpose.  I recently have been doing this push-up program, called “100 Pushups”.  The goal is to get to a point where you can do 100 pushups in a row without stopping.  And I can tell you from first-hand experience, if you want to get stronger, pain will be involved.  Your muscles need to break down and regenerate in order to get stronger.  It is the way our bodies work.

There is another type of pain we go through in life.  If the above is “intentional pain”, I’d call this “unintentional pain”.  This is the junk, the stuff we go through, just because.  Because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, because of the randomness of life, because bad things happen to good people, because what was sitting passively in our DNA suddenly got the switch flipped on…the list goes on.  (By the way, looking for a good reason for your pain?  Often there is not one.)  All of us at one point or another suffer through pain that we didn’t ask for and surely don’t want.

So the question is not “will I experience pain in my life?”  The question is “how will I view and deal with the pain that I am going to experience?”

The light-bulb-over-the-head realization for me over the last two years is that God wants to use our pain to change us. He will do it, if I will allow myself to be released to Him.  This doesn’t mean He gave me the pain.  But one of the miracles of God is that He wants to take evil things in our lives and bring good out of them.  This is the essence of the Gospel.  God took something meant for death (the cross) and turned it into the instrument He would use to offer life to all people.  Pain doesn’t have to have the last word.

Pain is a necessary element of change.

I need to prune the bushes and shrubs in my yard so badly right now.  They are out of control.  When they grow without being pruned, it is a pretty bad result.  Everything’s overgrown and we start to get stared down by our neighbors who drive by.  Pruning involves cutting branches and stems until they look uniform.  The cool thing about pruning is that it actually allows the shrub to grow more beautifully and more effectively.  Pruning is necessary for the growth of the plant.

I’m starting to view any difficulties I experience as part of God’s pruning work in my life.

This is hard.  I want to be angry about my pain.  I want to blame God for my pain.  I want to lash out.  I want to retreat inside myself and stew.  God, however, wants me to be open.  He wants me to be at His feet.  He wants me to ask Him to work and open up my life to that possibility.  He wants to use my pain to change me.

I believe He wants to use whatever difficulty you are going through to change you right now.

To prune you, to trim you back, to make you more useful for His purposes.  This will hurt – it always hurts to be cut back.

Do you trust Him to do this?  Do you trust Him to prune you and shape you and mold you?

I’d say He has a pretty good track record with taking awful things and making them into things that glorify Him.  He WILL use what you are going through right now to shape you and mold you, if you submit to His pruning shears in your life.

So I decided to change the title of this series of posts to “On the Anvil”.  Frankly, “Lessons Learned” was a little on the boring side of life, and this hit me today as pretty accurate and a bit more descriptive.  An anvil, according to the dictionary, is “a heavy block of iron or steel with a smooth, flat top on which metals are shaped by hammering”.  If that doesn’t work for you, picture the big metal block that falls on the bad guys in old Bugs Bunny cartoons.  These are used for shaping formless metal into useful objects (so I guess you can call me a TOOL now), by way of a hammer.  A nice metaphor for what happens when we go through tough stuff.  Being on an anvil can be a painful experience – no one likes being beat on.  But I think it is a great picture of how God shapes us through difficulties.  He is the skilled blacksmith, using all the tools at his disposal, with the goal to make us into people useful to serve in his Kingdom.

We all have had “on the anvil” experiences.  For us, the last two years have been that.  We know that God is using the tough stuff to shape, mold, and sharpen us into tools to be used for Him.  The first thing we’ve been learning I talked about here.  Here’s the 2nd thing I’ve learned while on the anvil:

Lesson #2:  No one but yourself can decide what God is telling you, where He is calling you to, or what tough decision you need to make now.

Friends are amazing.  We have some great ones.  They have served us in so many ways in the middle of Susan’s cancer and as we have walked through tough decisions with our church.  They can offer advice, and they have – in fact we have often received very wise counsel from our friends. But they can’t make decisions for you.

Our doctors are incredible.  They are smart, caring, thoughtful and diligent.  They can dispense advice and give us their recommendations on treatment.  But they can’t make decisions for us.  It’s still up to us to decide based on all the facts we know.  (Sometimes you know 90% of the facts, other times you only know 5%, and we still have to decide – know what I mean?)

This goes for everyone else in your life too.  Spouse, brother, sister, parents, your boss, your pastor.  I’m sure if you’re like us you are surrounded by terrific, smart people who are often more than happy to share their stories, opinions, and advice with you.  But they can’t make decisions for you.

I say all of that because there are times, especially when we are “on the anvil”, that we are faced with difficult decisions.  And when I’m honest there are times when I’d rather someone else make the decision for me.  ”Should I go this way or that?  Should we do this treatment or the other?  Should we let this staff person go or not?”  We are called on in the Scriptures to seek the wise counsel of others.  But when the stress gets to me I can find myself seeking not just the counsel, but the decisions of others.  Or I end up making a reactive, defensive choice.

The thing is that no one can make the decision for me but me.  Two problems with this:  1) I don’t very often know what is best.  And 2) while my friends, doctors, pastor, etc MAY offer great advice, they don’t often know what is best either.  See the dilemma?

There is One who does know, though.  He knows the answers to the questions, He knows what is three miles down the road when I can only see thirty feet, He knows what I need.

Better than I do.

The thing Susan and I have learned (and are still learning) is to lean into Him.  He is the One with the wisdom.  He is the One with the answers.  And the good news is, He wants to talk.  He wants to whisper in your ear.  It may not be the answer to your specific question.  I’ve found that lots of times He wants to say something other than what I want to hear.

If you’re not careful, you can get really frustrated by that.  If you want to follow God, though, you’ll have to grow more content each day with what He does want to tell you.  Pretty soon you’ll find yourself wanting more of what He has to say, not just the answer you want.

When you and I are listening to God first and foremost, we can have a peace about the choices we have to make during tough seasons.  And then here’s what happens:

6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7

I was going to title this post “Lessons Learned from Pain, Trial, Heartache, and Failure” but that seemed a little long.  But as we sit at the end of a journey and the beginning of another, I did think it might be helpful to begin to sort through what God has been teaching me over the last two years or so.  Maybe you will find it helpful too.  My wife was diagnosed with Stage 2B breast cancer about eighteen months ago.  (You can read more about that here.)  She is about to finish up with her second full course of chemotherapy.  On top of that, our church, which we began in 2004, closed its doors at the end of August 2009, after several years of financial and growth struggle.  Wow.  There is so much that has happened in and around those two things, it is hard to know where to begin.  I could spend a good chunk of time talking about both in detail, and I just might in future posts.  

I wanted with this, though, to do a series of posts where I could flesh out what we have learned through two years of difficult stuff.  Susan and I are fully aware that there are people who have been through much harder things than us.  And we know that from the outside looking in, it can appear overwhelming and depressing.  Clearly there have been really tough days and nights with this – there’s no doubt.  And yet, God has been so very PRESENT in our lives, to a level that I have never experienced before.  So there’s a truth that we have learned that I want to share with you today:

Lesson #1 – God gives you enough strength for today.

Do you know how many people have asked Susan and me over the last year “How do you guys make it?  How are you doing?  How are you getting through this?”  It must be hundreds at this point.  It is the question we ask people who are dealing with difficulty, right?  Because we can’t imagine from the outside what it must be like to go through something hard.  We are empathetic creatures by nature – we put ourselves in other people’s shoes and say “how would I handle this?”.  I know because I have often wondered the same thing about other people.  A boy that lives near us was run over by his grandfather driving a lawnmower (he survived, thanks to God!) and I find myself wondering – how do his parents get through this?

The answer is not profound.  Or maybe, just maybe, it is.  How does anyone get through pain?  One day at a time.

God does not give you strength for tomorrow.  He does not give you strength for what already has happened, for yesterday.  Remember, He meets NEEDS, not WANTS.  What Susan and I have found is that His strength is enough for us for today, and that is really all that matters.  That what we need is what is provided.  He wants to hold us in His arms while we walk through life, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  

When we found out Susan had cancer, He was there.

When she had her first chemo treatment, He was there.

When we had to tell the kids about it, He was there.

When the stress of a struggling church hit, He was there.

And you know what?  No matter how hard today is, no matter what you are facing, no matter how grim and dark it looks right now, He is there.

And tomorrow, the sun will rise, and strength will be given to you.  How much?  Enough for one day.  

And that’s really all you and I need.

For a great related passage to dwell on, check this out.

I’m currently working on the format of my blog.  Changing some things, making it a little more relevant, and more reflective of where I am right now.  Hope you like some of the changes!  Thanks for dropping by.  More to come…