Discipline Follow Up

Walker started to pee in our backyard today...Not sure what to do about that... Apparently my discipline a few days ago didn't take.

Discipline

Growing up I had the impression that when my parents disciplined me it was more about their desire to inflict pain and damage into my life rather than to benefit me. Now that I have my own children I see things a little differently. To discipline someone requires a level of selflessness and sacrifice.

For example; yesterday my daughter told me that my son had peed in the plastic blow up pool in our backyard. When she told me about this I was in the middle of figuring out some finances and getting ready to have guests for the next few days. Immediately two things arose in me; first there was a deep sense of anger. I was angry that I had to stop figuring out what I was doing and teach my son something that we talked about many times before (there was also a little shame involved because Walker’s lack of peeing discernment reflected on me as the male leader of the household). Second, I though “can I just ignore the fact that this happened”.

In all reality I did not want to discipline or train my son at that moment. I wanted to be selfish and do what I wanted to do. But, in order to properly train Walker I needed to drop what I was doing and address the character issue(s) he was dealing with.

So I sent him to his bedroom and walked him through why it’s wrong to pee anywhere other than the toilet. Apparently, after all the confessions, he didn’t pee in the pool just in the bathtub. He was appropriately moved by my words of what would happen to him if he urinated anywhere other than the toilet in the future.

This disciplinary process showed me something about the nature of God’s discipline. As humans we can discipline selfishly in hopes of changing people so that our lives our easier, God’s discipline is selfless and done so that our lives our bettered.

Currently our family is undergoing some disciplinary measures by God, it is not pleasant. At times I question his love for us, his provision and even whether or not he truly knows what is going on. Last night he brought this thought to my mind: “Ethan, disciplining you is not something I sadistically enjoy, its something that I do (and enjoy) because I love you and I want you to know more of me.”

In my hour long commute to Boulder this morning the thought of God's heart towards my discipline comforted me. I am grateful to know that he disciplines us for our good, and he does not revel in sadistic pleasure as we go through hard times, but walks with us in disciplne so that we see him more clearly.

Long Beach Movement Planting #1

We (My family, 32 students and 9 staff) spent this summer in Long Beach, trying to launch spiritual movements among different cultures and people groups. As a Campus minister I know a lot about leading, training and equipping Chirstians for a lifetime of ministry, but this summer I experienced firsthand working only with non-believers. We wanted to see God raise up spiritual movements, not from an experienced Christian worker, but from lost and broken people. My next few blogs are about this process and some of the things I learned.

Practice of Prayer
Our first step was the Practice of prayer. In the way that we organized the summer prayer was the supreme priority. I know that it seems simplistic, but often we as a group would have a tough time filling 30-90 minutes of prayer, especially prayer that focused on those who did not know Christ. We asked our staff and students to pray daily for large amounts of time even before they had a place to minister in, or a group of people that they would be a part of. This practice led me to one of the first things that I learned this summer:

I am not as spiritual as I think I am. In other words, my heart does not beat in concert with Christ's in regards to the lost, or seeing his kingdom established, or in many other things that he values. It is convicting to see your own heart far away from the heart of Jesus.

The good news is that, though I am not as spiritual as I think I am God already knows this and does not hold it against me. It was a growing experience to confess my hard heart towards prayer and the things of the Lord and to see him changing me. By the end of the summer I found myself praying spontaneously for things that I never thought of before. Often Zach (my ministry partner for the summer) would spend 30-40 minutes praying without running out of things to pray about.

The practice of prayer changed the way that we did ministry. Often times we would leave an hour before we were scheduled to meet at our ministry location so that we would pray, and trust the Lord with all that we were going to do. This gave both Zach and I a deep sense of joy and freedom.

And i need to experience the joy and freedom of God. More often than not I am frustrated that I don't see more fruit than I do, and I work hard to produce it. But in these times of prayer we entrusted the results to God. In trusting God we were freed up in our relationships with our non-believing friends because through prayer and repentence we saw that we needed Jesus as much as they do. So by the time we met with them we were freed up to be ourselves and engage others as friends, not ministry priojects. Knowing full well that Jesus loves them as much as he loves us. I can't begin to describe to you the lifechange that this broguht to me as I prayed for others.

This picture contains some of the people that we met. Please join with me in continuing to pray for (Left to right) Martin, Zach, Joel, Howie, Me, Lester, and Ted.