joy in pressure and stress

I've been going through Psalm 119 in the mornings, and it's become one of my favorite Psalms. It presents such a unique relationship between man and his Creator. The psalmist (most likely Ezra or David) pours out his love for God in verse and says repeatedly, "I love you so much that I am willingly subservient to Your commands; they are life to me." (that's my paraphrase of the whole chapter)

I find this verse to give a particularly fresh perspective in today's fast-paced, worry-filled culture:

As pressure and stress bear down on me,
I find joy in your commands.
Psalm 119:143 (NLT)

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Living with Headroom

Wow! I've been on an unannounced blogging sabbatical. Life has been pushing me to become stressed lately, and I'm on my guard against it, but it's a difficult battle. Below is a post from almost two years ago that I felt was appropriate for me, and I wanted to share it again:

Headroom. The first (and probably most obvious) meaning of this word would be something like "the space from the top of one's head to a ceiling or door facing," or something similar. Or possibly "the amount of space between the top of a truck and a tunnel or a bridge's overhead girders."

But I tend to think in terms of audio when I hear this word. Let me explain as simply as I can.

Headroom, in the world of audio, is the loudest signal (music, for instance) that someone will be actually playing through a sound system vs. the loudest signal that the sound system could produce before beginning to distort (which typically sounds pretty nasty).

So, for example, on a given day I might be playing a Nat King Cole CD on my boom box at a relaxing volume of, say, 60 decibels (the typical volume of a normal conversation), but if I really wanted to, I could crank it up to an ear-splitting, rock-concert volume of 120 decibels before my boom box started going all buzzy and crackly, blowing speakers and what-not. (Doing the math, that's 60dB of headroom.)

However, if my CD player is capable of playing at only 70 decibels and I run it at 60 decibels, that gives me only 10dB of headroom, constantly pushing the limits of the boom box and delivering sound that is not as "clean" as one capable of spitting out loud volumes.

Bored yet? Stay with me -- by now you surely see the analogy I'm making.

Thinking in practical terms, does the "volume" at which we typically live life leave us enough headroom for emergencies, when we need that extra boost? Or are we running mostly full-blast all the time? This situation applies not only to the life of a church fellowship, but to any individual person's or family's life -- finances and schedules being the first areas that come to my mind.

When I consider church work, do we pour so much into what we're doing that when a situation comes along where we need to "go the extra mile" for someone -- to be the body of Christ in an extraordinary way -- that doing so would cause "distortion," either spiritual, mental, financial, or physical?

Since each person and each church fellowship has a different amount of this kind headroom, some fellowships and some people may find that they work better at a "louder volume." Many, though, may find that they're either giving themselves too little headroom, or possibly even 0dB.

I encourage you to daily and continually seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in knowing where your headroom lies and how to wisely use your volume control.

Paul summed up this thought perfectly when he talked to the Corinthian church about giving:

Of course, I don’t mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves. I only mean that there should be some equality. Right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need. Later, they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it. In this way, things will be equal.

- 2 Corinthians 8:13-14 (NLT)

(Fellow techno-nerds, no need to point out the differences between volume, level, and loudness.)

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Worry

So, how are we doing in these areas? How's your worry level today?

Come and listen, all you who fear God,
     and I will tell you what he did for me.
For I cried out to him for help,
     praising him as I spoke.
If I had not confessed the sin in my heart,
     the Lord would not have listened.
But God did listen!
     He paid attention to my prayer.
Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer
     or withdraw his unfailing love from me.
- Psalm 66:16-20 (NLT)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
     do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do,
     and he will show you which path to take.
Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom.
     Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
- Proverbs 3:5-7 (NLT)

For the despondent, every day brings trouble;
     for the happy heart, life is a continual feast.
Better to have little, with fear for the Lord,
     than to have great treasure and inner turmoil.
- Proverbs 15:15-16 (NLT)

"So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today."
- Matthew 6:31-34 (NLT)

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
- Philippians 4:6-7 (NLT)

And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.
So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
- 1 Peter 1:5-7 (NLT)

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When Lipstick Attacks

Several years ago I went to a restaurant (one that's now out of business, for some reason) with a few friends. I'd heard good things about it. I ordered my food, with coffee to drink. The guy next to me ordered chicken.

My coffee was delivered with lipstick stains on the cup and when my friend cut into his chicken, we noted that it was cooked somewhere around medium.

We probably happened to go on a really bad day, and the odds that the cook messed up on the same day as the dishwasher were likely very high against. However, I never went back to that restaurant.

"Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8, NLT) You know, the one that the devil is seeking to devour may be you, but it very well may be the person next to you (or both of you, as a "twofer"). The one you come in contact with on that freakish, exceptionally bad day. You know, the one when your hair didn't do right that morning, you and your spouse got into it over bills, the toilet was stopped up and flooded the bathroom, you were late for work...

And then you wind up delivering Jesus Christ to your neighbor in a lipstick-stained coffee cup.

I'm not suggesting that we put on a false face for someone on a bad day. It's not wrong to let people know that Christ-followers have bad days. But it's important that we go out and face the day actually trusting that God will bring good out of the situations we see as entirely negative. Often we'll get only one chance to impact another person's life for the sake of Christ. We should never take on the day failing to live what we believe.

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Practicing What They Preach

I guess this is officially the first guest-blog at EGBDF. A friend of mine, Robby Newton, sent this via our church's e-mail distribution list. I couldn't help wanting to pass it on, and with his permission I do so:


Our character isn’t molded by adversity as much as it is manifested through it. Few of us will bury our grown daughter, or simultaneously experience the joy of birth and sorrow of death, or gaze at our grandchild through the viewing window of not one, but two, neonatal intensive care units. Yet, within the past month, three of our pastors have experienced the above events.

To be sure, our true character is manifested in both good times and bad. Yet, the character we exhibit during times of adversity is the more noticed by both the lost and the redeemed. What sort of character is being manifested in the trials of my life…when uninvited circumstances press in from all sides? Is it of the godly sort, as we have seen and are seeing in the lives of our pastors? If so, perhaps some will be encouraged to press on. If not, then maybe my spiritual roots aren’t as deep as they need to be.

Of course our pastors aren’t the only ones in our fellowship that have or are still facing Herculean adversities. But what makes a pastor’s situation somewhat different is that their sorrows are so very public, open for all to see. But their response is so very public as well, for which we all who claim the name of Christ should be grateful. It’s one thing to talk the talk, but quite another to see our leaders practice, with humility, what they so fervently preach.

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Everything in Moderation -- Including Moderation

Over the past week or two, I've slowly gotten out of my regular habit of getting up early. I've felt I needed a little additional sleep, so I've set my alarm clock for an hour or so later than ususal (or have snoozed it a silly-large number of times).

The first morning after I went back to my original wake-up time a few days ago, I was on my second cup of coffee and thought, "Wow... I feel horrible!" I tried to assess whether or not I was coming down with the flu, since I'd had some of those symptoms a few days earlier. Thankfully, I was able to rule that out -- my wife says I'm a horrible patient (but I don't belive that; it's got to be her imagination). Then I tried to think of the foods I'd eaten the night before that might be contributing to my rotten feeling-ness, but I could think of nothing out of the ordinary.

It dawned on me that I'd not gotten "up and at 'em" that early for almost a solid week; I was out of the habit. I came to this conclusion because I recalled feeling similarly horrible a number of times, most notably after all-night youth lock-ins when I was a teenager. After thinking of those wonderful days gone by, my brain remarked, "You're just tired!"

So here I sit this morning, back in the routine and not feeling anywhere near as poorly as I did this time a couple of days ago.

It seems to me that it's generally difficult to establish a good habit. Once it's established, a good habit is easy to break simply by not doing that particular thing for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the opposite seems true of bad habits. A bad habit is relatively easy to get into, but is extremely difficult to break. This pattern is really not surprising, given our sin nature as humans.

Paul said, "[L]et’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up." (Galatians 6:9, NLT) My sleep habits may not provide the perfect illustration of this, but the word "tired" brought it to my mind.

A life of balance is required if we're truly not going to grow weary in doing good. As I've noted before, some people seem to excel when they're constantly going and doing, but others will hit points at which the brain says, "WHOA! Slow down!" Once we've gotten to that point we've probably gone just a little too far, and we may find a real need to withdraw from certain activities, good ones included. Once withdrawn, it's likely to be difficult to get back into the swing of things. I'll bet you can apply this to a specific area of your life. I can certainly do so.

I'm still learning that it's okay to say, "No, I can't do such-and-such; I need to keep that day open to spend with my family," if the matter is not one of extreme urgency. I believe the most difficult part of saying something like that is learning when not to use it simply as an excuse.

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Worrying is Like a Rocking Chair...

"...it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere." - Glenn Turner

"For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe." - Author Unknown

(These and more great quotes on worry can be found here: The Quote Garden)

Last night I had a dream that three very unfortunate and disturbing things happened. As a result, I feel really out-of-whack this morning.

I'm not looking for the deeper psychological meaning of the dream, and I don't intend to pick it to pieces. It just brings to mind how worry can taint a person's outlook. In much the same way that the the events in my dream never happened but are still the cause of mental overhead, worry is the process of holding on to baggage as a "result" of things that have not occurred.

The New Living Translation closely mirrors one of the few passages in The Living Bible that I thought were very well-paraphrased: "Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done." (Phillipians 4:6, NLT)

I've found that this is one of the verses where I look back and see that I've been the most unintentionally... disingenuous (not quite the right word -- someone help me out here) during my walk with Christ. It's very difficult, as an act of the will, to truly let go of worry and do this verse: "Commit your way [literally "roll your life or course of action"] to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass." - (Psalm 37:5, NKJV)

Worry is not the same as planning ahead, though we (particularly those of us labeled as pessimists) often get those things confused.

I know that many, if not all, of those reading this are dealing with the problem of worry, some on a large scale and some on a comparitvely smaller scale. Together today, let's take the simple action of letting go of it -- something that sounds so easy but can actually be incredibly difficult -- and trusting God to address our as-yet unrealized problems within His perfect plan -- one that involves us.

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Headroom in the Church

Headroom. The first (and probably most obvious) meaning of this word would be something like "the space from the top of one's head to a ceiling or door facing," or something similar. Or possibly "the amount of space between the top of a truck and a tunnel or a bridge's overhead girders."

But I tend to think in terms of audio when I hear this word. Let me explain as simply as I can.

Headroom, in the world of audio, is the loudest signal (music, for instance) that someone will be actually playing through a sound system vs. the loudest signal that the sound system could produce before beginning to distort (which typically sounds pretty nasty).

So, for example, on a given day I might be playing a Nat King Cole CD on my boom box at a relaxing volume of, say, 60 decibels (the typical volume of a normal conversation), but if I really wanted to, I could crank it up to an ear-splitting, rock-concert volume of 120 decibels before my boom box started going all buzzy and crackly, blowing speakers and what-not. (Doing the math, that's 60dB of headroom.)

However, if my CD player is capable of playing at only 70 decibels and I run it at 60 decibels, that gives me only 10dB of headroom, constantly pushing the limits of the boom box and delivering sound that is not as "clean" as one capable of spitting out loud volumes.

Bored yet? Stay with me -- by now you surely see the analogy I'm making.

Thinking in practical terms, does the "volume" at which we typically live life leave us enough headroom for emergencies, when we need that extra boost? Or are we running mostly full-blast all the time? This situation applies not only to the life of a church fellowship, but to any individual person's or family's life -- finances and schedules being the first areas that come to my mind.

But when I consider church work, do we pour so much into what we're doing that when a situation comes along where we need to "go the extra mile" for someone -- to be the body of Christ in an extraordinary way -- that doing so would cause "distortion," either spiritual, mental, financial, or physical?

Since each person and each church fellowship has a different amount of this kind headroom, some fellowships and some people may find that they work better at a "louder volume." Many, though, may find that they're either giving themselves too little headroom, or possibly even 0dB.

I encourage you to daily and continually seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in knowing where your headroom lies and how to wisely use your volume control.

(Fellow techno-nerds, no need to point out the differences between volume, level, and loudness.)

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"Eeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssss"

I realized some time ago that I have tinnitus; a ringing/hissing in my ears. No worries, though -- it's not very bad at all. I guess it's developed as a result of 20+ years of listening to moderately loud music, assuming I started around age 15 or so. But maybe it's all in my head. (Bada-boom! Thank you, thank you!) Or maybe it was all the time that I spent reclining on the runway at the airport, just relaxing and listening to the planes take off on lazy Saturday afternoons... Oh, wait. I never did that.

Seriously, the peculiar thing about it is that I don't even know that the condition exists until I remove myself from any noise. The tinnitus is so slight that even the gentle hum of a ceiling fan (or the tick-tick-tick if it's on "do-not-turn-me-up-this-high" speed and the blades aren't balanced) masks it. The fan inside my computer is loud enough to cover it up, and of course music (loud or soft) prevents me from knowing the condition is there.

I stepped outside around 5:00 this morning. It looked like what my mind tells me that London looked like every single day in the 1800's -- dark, foggy, the silhouettes of trees (or buildings, in the case of London) taking on forboding, ominous shapes... And it was dead quiet. No birds chirping, no crickets making that cricketty noise, no... er... cars making that carry noise. There was a nearly complete absence of sound.

Except for that "Eeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssss" in my ears. (Or something vaguely similar to that -- words are my craft, you know.)

If I didn't ever withdraw from the noise of all that goes on around me, I'd never have realized that I have this ringing in my ears, and therefore I'd probably be less inclined to take care of my hearing.

Jesus took time on a number of occasions to move away from the crowds that so often followed Him. Luke 5:16 states that "He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed." Jesus obviously believed it was imperative to get away from the noise (figuratively and possibly literally) of the crowds and instead be alone with His Father. Sometimes the crowds followed Him (by the way, I believe that this kind of behavior is what will often follow in our churches as we get out and help others -- people will frequently come to us when they see genuine good works. But that's a topic for another post...), but the fact stands that when He walked as a human, He made time to be alone with God.

For each of us, in order to recognize the "stuff buildup" (why do I suddenly think of earwax?) in our lives, it is necessary for us to withdraw from the busyness of life; to give ourselves self-imposed down-time, and to use that down-time to be alone with God. In my case, having this time every morning is crucial to the general success of the day.

Please don't read all this and think, "Good point," and then do nothing about it. (Of course, please don't read it and think, "Bad point," either.) We are not supermen or superwomen. If Jesus Christ found it necessary to get away from His physical work, it is obviously an example we should follow. I am thoroughly convinced that this applies not only to us as individuals, but to our church fellowships, as well.

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The Total Perspective Vortex

Posthumous apologies to Douglas Adams for taking his concept and altering it slightly...

I was a rocker in the 80's. I vaguely remember my brother telling me back then that there was a band which claimed it performed the song "Rock of Ages" (not the Christian hymn) better than Def Leppard, the band that wrote and originally recorded the song. We both thought the claim was goofy, because the original version was the definitive version; the plumb-line against which all other versions must necessarily be measured.

I was reminded of this because on Saturday during the worship time at the Worship Leaders' Fellowship, we sang "Above All" and were led by Lenny LeBlanc, the writer of the song. I've jokingly commented to a couple of people, "He did it all wrong!" In fact, he didn't do it all wrong, but, for whatever reason, I thought it'd be funny to say so.

I've been trying to figure out how to spin that into something deeply spiritual, but haven't met with success (at least, nothing terribly on-topic for this blog right now), so I'll move on into what I was originally going to say.

I was moved (again) by the words of "Above All" as they described Jesus. As we sang the short phrase, "You lived to die..." I wondered how Jesus felt the day before being taken to be flogged, tortured, and killed. And then I compared that amount of stress to the amount of stress I was feeling on that particular day...

Saturday is my "mental preparation" day for Sunday services. On any given Saturday I will play and replay in my mind, ad nauseum, anything that could possibly go awry during services and other activities in which I'll be involved the next day. Of course, here and there I am able to go over things that will go correctly, but to a far lesser extent. I'm sure this state of mind is absolutely delightful for my family. (I should note that lately I've gotten much better at being faithful to lay these stresses at God's feet and asking Him to take them away.)

So, back to the worship time... I was sucked into something like the Total Perspective Vortex that morning: my situation compared to that of Jesus. He was mentally preparing to have nails brutally driven through His wrists in service to God and humankind, and I was mentally preparing to play the guitar (using only three or four chords -- maybe that needs to be addressed in a blog) and sing praises with a crowd of people in service to God and humankind.

And then I thought that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have too much reason to stress out over my situation.

This may not be an apples-to-apples situational comparison, but it's the only time I can find in the Scriptures where Jesus was actually distressed about something that involved Him. I also noted (again) how Jesus handled the stress: He found a place to pray about it.

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