John Fischer The Catch

Nehemiah was a man with a passion. He was driven by a love for God, God’s people and God’s city. He got ideas – big ideas, and he had the guts to believe he could accomplish them. He wasn’t super human, he was super passionate.

God’s city was in ruins; the remnant of His people still living there were living in disgrace. This is not the way it should be. It was their fault. They turned their backs on God and lived as they pleased without any attention to God or His laws. But Nehemiah also knew that if they confessed their sin and turned back to God, He would forgive them and bring them back from exile, regardless of how far away they were. He had promised that. So Nehemiah confessed his own sin, and he confessed for the sins of the rest of the people. “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you.” And then he prayed for success as he went before the king of Persia, because he had an idea that he would be the answer. He would go back to Jerusalem and lead whoever was left in rebuilding the city.

At the end of Chapter One in the book of Nehemiah there is a one-sentence paragraph that seems to come out of nowhere. It jumps out at you when you first read it because it almost seems out of place. It’s the sentence: “I was cupbearer to the king.” As I was reflecting on why that sentence was there, it dawned on me: That one sentence answers why Nehemiah was the one to do this. He had resources. If he found favor with the king, he would have the strength of his army and his influence. He was in the right place in the right time. Perhaps God would give him this!

“I was very much afraid, but I said to the king…” I love this because I understand it. He was afraid in speaking of this in front of the king – “very much afraid” – but he spoke to the king anyway, because his passion was bigger than his fear.

What is your passion and what can you do with it?

I have a passion to serve God. I have a passion for the word of God and for the gift of making that word clear to people. And I have a passion to do that for you – that God has put me here to serve you. And I’ve been coming to you because I believe you have the resources to keep me doing this – to keep my family in our home. I realize it is my job to care for my family, but the current crisis is a burden too big for me alone.

We are down to days now. One of our readers has, on her own initiative, issued a challenge. It is timely. I present it to you just as it came to me:
 
So many people read the Catch; I don’t understand why everyone who values it isn’t giving. Even $5 or $10 from EVERY reader would take care of John and Marti. And we should do that since the Catch helps us take care of our souls. Although I’m not rich and am just an admin in an office, I’m grateful to have a job, and grateful for the Catch, and for my salvation and for my kids and my health and…. (not in order of importance, though), so I will match today’s donations up to $500. Go people! Help out! Force me to give until it hurts (financially, at least). And of those of you who have given, thank you! (but it’s okay to give more than once, just like to our brick-and-mortar churches). God bless!  – Lisa

Who was Nehemiah anyway? The first thing you find out when you set out to answer that question is that nobody knows. That is actually good news for us. That means he could have been anybody. It’s not that he comes from a long line of kings and he was merely fulfilling his kingly destiny when he set out to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. He was the son of Hacaliah, for heaven’s sake. Well who was Hacaliah? Nobody knows that, either. All Hacaliah does is tell us which Nehemiah he was. Oh, he was Hacaliah’s Nehemiah.

Since Nehemiah could have been anybody, any one of us could be Nehemiah in our world. So this is what we will learn from him in the next three days: He was a man with a Place, a Passion and a Plan.

He was a man with a Place. Nehemiah knew he belonged somewhere else. He may have even been born in Babylon during Israel’s exile, but his heart was bent toward the city of Jerusalem, the land of his ancestors.

I have to admit, I don’t have much of a sense of place. Other than the fact that my parents lived in the same house since I was born, that house now belongs to someone else so that’s how significant that was. And of the time before they moved into that house, I know next to nothing. It was never important. For that reason I always took to the spiritualization of home for Christians as being somewhere else. “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passin’ through” makes sense to me, as does Larry Norman’s 1970’s view of the same thing: “Only Visiting This Planet.”

Yet I believe there is a sense of place in this world that is important – it’s just that I don’t emotionally connect to it. For this I have to defer to my wife who has a very grand sense of place. (Our different views on place is something I spent a novel exploring in Ashes on the Wind.) To her, place is roots, commitment, neighborhood, community, and the legacy of leaving something behind. I learn about these things from her. Her connection to this house is rooted in these things – the neighborhood, the relationship, even the school district that is committed to serving Chandler’s learning disability. I can live anywhere, proven by the fact that we have – but our process in and out of the places we have lived has led Marti through a great deal of pain and uprootedness. I’ve missed a great deal here. I think our common American view of a house as only an investment has too.

The scriptures teach about eternity, but always how an eternal perspective affects the lives we live now. It doesn’t diminish the importance of those lives and connections; it actually increases it. Nehemiah was driven by a passion to rebuild his place. We are driven by a passion to save ours. We are so grateful for your huge part in helping us do this. And hopefully, as we do this, you will be rethinking your commitment to place and what that means.

“The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall.” (Nehemiah 4:10)

There were times, during the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, when the people got discouraged and came close to giving up. Whenever we attempt to address some weakness in our lives – be it an addiction, a sinful attitude, an unwillingness to change – opposition will come. In the case of the men and women of Israel seeking to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem that were torn down during their time in exile, that opposition came in the form of the grandiose nature of the task before them and the taunts and negative propaganda of those neighboring nations who did not want to see Israel strong again.

Whenever we seek to rebuild our lives, there will be those who oppose us, whether it’s real people in our lives or the unseen forces of darkness who are against us. There are always those who stand to lose by us getting healthy, and you can be sure they will oppose our attempts to strengthen the weaknesses in our lives. In psychological terms, this is called codependency – the people and forces that have made alliances with our weaknesses and who will lose their role in our lives should we get strong.

Marti likes to wake up gradually. She loves the snooze button. Sometimes I am the snooze button as she asks me for ten more minutes. Am I going to say, “No way, you asked me to get you up so here goes,” as I throw the covers off and pull her out of bed. I could do that, but I don’t. Why? Because I have made certain alliances with this little charade. There are little rewards to this: I get the paper to myself, I get more morning quiet time, etc. She’s a night person; I’m a morning person; this is the way it works. If it suddenly became important for her to get up at the first bell, she probably wouldn’t get a lot of help from me. You can see how this works on a much larger scale with much more devastating behaviors.

This also works inside ourselves in that we have made alliances with our own weaknesses through the excuses our weakness provide us. There is added responsibility to being well. These codependencies will taunt our attempts to rebuild. So what did Nehemiah do in face of this?

He said, “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”

First, and most important of all, remember the Lord. He is great and awesome, He wants us to be healthy and strong, and He is on our side. Second, fight it. The scripture says that Nehemiah went ahead and posted extra people with swords and spears to guard against attack at the weakest points in the wall.

We need to know where the opposition will come from and be on guard against it. We need to pay the most attention to our weaknesses. The strongest attacks will come from the weakest parts of our wall. Don’t kid yourself; this will not be easy. We have, in some cases, a lifetime of dysfunctional behavior tied up in these weaknesses. Only the Lord, who is great and awesome, can help us prevail.

Okay, Marti’s up now… Time’s up for me.

Worldview #1: The world is our enemy. Satan is hiding out for us behind every bush. Secular humanists are conspiring to influence our children and take over our country, and everything we believe in and hold dear is being threatened by the culture around us.

Worldview #2: This is our Father’s world. Every bush is ablaze with the glory of God. The Holy Spirit is behind the past and current events of history, and no force on earth, heaven or under the earth can do anything outside of the will and knowledge of God Almighty who lives in us.

To be sure, the Bible does warn us of Satan’s wiles, but not for the purpose of keeping us in fear. The actual passage is 1 Peter 5:8, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Peter’s admonition to us in this regard is to resist him and stand firm (vs.9), and we do this by being self-controlled and alert (vs.8). And the admonition immediately prior to this warning is 1 Peter 5:6-7, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety [that would be fear] on him because he cares for you.”

No looking behind any bushes here. And no putting us in positions of power, either. “Humble yourselves…”

Worldview #1 has served the Christian community for far too long. It has funded Christian ministries, mobilized boycotts and marches, even put people in the White House. It is a worldview that has turned Christians into a social force to be reckoned with. But for what purpose? We’re here for the gospel. Remember? What’s the gospel? No one in the world would know because we haven’t told them. We’ve been too busy trying to gain power.

With a presidential election around the corner, WV#1 is enjoying new life as political opportunists incite hate and fear daily around the Internet. Nothing like a good dose of fear to motivate and mobilize people to a desired end.

It’s time to stop it. NO MORE FEAR. It’s time for a different worldview. It’s time to do what we should have been doing all along: spreading the good news of God’s love.

And as I finish writing this, believe it or not, Alison Krause is doing just that over the speakers in this Starbucks where I write, which would mean it is most likely playing in Starbucks all over the world. Thank you, Alison.

As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way
 
O sinners, let’s go down
Let’s go down, come on down
O sinners, let’s go down
Down in the river to pray

I’m on my way. Meet you there, everybody. Drop your fear, throw down your placard, and come on down. And bring some folks along with you as you come.

“How was Chandler’s first day?” It was dear of many of you to write and want to know.

Actually, we went out to dinner last night to find out the answer to that question. And Chandler was in charge. It was his evening and he ran it.

He took us to the restaurant he wanted to go to. He didn’t tell us; he just showed us where to park. Then he walked ahead of us a couple blocks until we reached the restaurant he had in mind. I did a quick mental check of my credit card balance because this wasn’t Round Table Pizza. It was a very nice restaurant in town.

Chandler was in charge the whole way. He spoke privately to the hostess. It was a warm night and they have outside seating, but he chose inside. It was less crowded. Chandler and the hostess led us to our seats. I chose the sausage pasta, Marti picked the chicken pasta, and Chandler ordered penne with butter and a little cheese on top. It turned out to be the best pasta I’ve ever had.

Finally we brought up the subject of school and he let us now he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t like it and that was that. The most we could get out of him was that he liked last year’s school better.

And who could blame him? It’s always hard to let go of the familiar and take on something new. The crippled man by the pool of Siloam wasn’t sure he wanted to be healed because he had held on to a disease and an excuse for 37 years.

The new is always a challenge, simply because we don’t know what’s ahead. We prefer well-worn paths. We will even put up with the things we don’t like about something familiar rather than step into the unknown.

God wants to take us to new places. He wants us to leave our sins and addictions behind. Surely there will be new ones, but at least they will be new. New battles to wage; new heights to conquer; new challenges to overcome.

I think last night we said good-bye to the old rather than welcome in the new. But if you’re going to say good-bye to the old, might as well follow Chandler and choose a nice place to do it in.

I was just settling in under the covers when my wife, who clearly had at least another hour in her, got me out of bed. You just want me to be awake if you’re awake, I thought. But I have to get up much earlier than you. It’s not fair. It does seem to be a phenomenon in most marriages that a “morning person” is paired with a “night person.” Opposites attract. But opposites also annoy sometimes, and Marti was suggesting I get out of bed and try and find an adaptor cord to fit Chandler’s phone in the drawer in my office where every outdated adaptor I didn’t know what to do with lies in a mass of tangled cords and plugs.

The last thing I wanted to do.

Chandler’s phone was an outdated version of a flip top phone he had gotten from a friend, and he had lost the original adaptor cord that came with it.

“It’s useless,” I said. “Every phone that’s been created has a different type of plug. The chance of finding something that fits his exact phone is next to nothing.”

“Well then throw all that stuff away if it’s useless. Better yet, I’ll throw it away for you.”

That did it. The idea of indiscriminately losing everything in that drawer got me out of my comfortable spot. She knows how to do this.

Well, would you believe that I immediately found a cord, one end of which seemed to fit the phone, but the other end was a USB plug. That’s not going to help anything. I needed something that would translate a USB plug into a wall plug. Well, you guessed it. Down in the bottom of the drawer was the very adaptor I needed. I plugged the whole thing together, plugged it into an electrical socket and “Bling,” the screen lit up and a little word formed itself: “Charging…”

Unbelievable, I thought. Impossible. But there it was: Indisputable evidence of an electronic miracle.

As I crawled back into bed I couldn’t help but think of God rummaging through all the tangled up cords of our lives and finding just the right combinations that He can run His power through. No matter how messed up we might seem, He can plug us in. He’s got something in there that fits His power perfectly. We work that way because He made us that way. It’s an electronic miracle.

Today is Chandler’s first day in a new school.

Do you remember your first days? I remember being nervously excited. I remember new clothes – a perfect white T-shirt that was about to turn blue where it was tucked into my new about-to-turn sweaty blue jeans. And I remember those jeans, crisp and unwashed, scraping in my inseam as I walked, and chafing my skin a little inside. I remember new notebooks, the smell of unsharpened pencils, the squeak of new, white tennis shoes, and wave set, dry and hardening in my hair.

We sent Chandler off with new clothes today, but Marti was smart to not buy him a whole wardrobe. Christopher and Anne taught us that lesson their first day of school in Laguna Beach, California, after growing up in Newbury, Massachusetts. Marti sent them off to middle school and junior high here, starched and pressed for New England, and everyone else was dressed for the beach. They still tell the story of how humiliated they were on that first day. That afternoon, it was straight back to the store to find appropriate clothes to what everyone else was wearing. Marti is anticipating another trip this afternoon for Chandler, although it may not be necessary. Chandler makes most of his own choices when it comes to clothes and doesn’t much care what other people think. Good for him.

Still, I feel a little nervous for him. This is a new school in a new environment with only one kid he knows previously. That’s why I’m thinking I might take a little of his courage to heart. If we don’t have some new area of action or trust in our lives, regardless of how old or young we are, we probably are not growing.

What have you got that’s new to do today? I’m a little nervous today, too. I’ve got new things to do, and at my age, those new things are even harder because of the years of wrong patterns I have to overcome.

What will you need courage for today? There are resources provided for you and me by the Spirit of God. But take some inspiration from Chandler, too; I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.

If the following sounds like I’ve been reading Job, I have. As difficult as it is to understand, Job is in the Bible for a reason. Here are some of my thoughts as to why.

We are not here to make judgments upon our lives, but to live them. It is not important that Job explain his life; it is important, however, that he live it, which he did. He didn’t curse God and die; he cursed God and lived, and there’s a big difference. To have his house and his family and his livestock and his wealth was one thing; to have nothing but a broken piece of pottery to scrape his boils was another. To live life and experience God is everything.

Whatever we are going through is significant. We are living it and life is the point. Life is more important than answers. Living the question beats knowing or saying the answer. Living the answer would be ideal, but who can do that all the time?

Get it right, or get it wrong, you will live through it either way and if you listen, you can learn.

Listen to the poets:

To open my eyes and wake up alive in the world
To open my eyes and fully arrive in the world…
 
Every breath you take…

The poets get it as right as anybody can. Someone is watching.

Be alive in the world.

Life is huge. Breathing is a miracle. Engaging is the point. Be awake today. Don’t miss anything. Most importantly: Don’t miss the question trying to find the answer; the question may be the point.

I got a new coffeemaker. For those of you who don’t know about my relationship to coffee, this is a little like changing churches. That’s because coffee is my religion. I can say that because Christianity is not my religion. In fact, I don’t have a religion; I only have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ His Son.

But I drink coffee religiously.

Religion is ritual, habit, doing certain things to get certain results, and pleasing the acceptable god by bowing, scraping and doing all the necessary penance required by that god to please him/her/it. I have been known to bow and scrape to the coffee god, but thankfully, not the real God, because the real God does not require this.

God does desire my love and devotion, but He doesn’t want it in the form of religion. He has even been known to get upset with people who make a religion out of knowing Him. He does not want our sacrifices, our regular attendance at worship, or even the praises of our lips, if our hearts are not in it. And if our hearts are with Him, where they should be, none of these things are good for brownie points in Heaven. They may be a part of our lives, but they will flow out from us as a natural expression of a loving relationship.

Now I’ve had my old coffeemaker for at least 10 years, and this new one has a different set of rituals attached to it that I will have to adjust to. No problem. I can do this; it’s just coffee.

God, on the other hand, would not want to be a 10-year habit broken only by a new church, devotional book or pattern of personal discipline. Discipline is fine when it comes to self-control, but God would not like to be the product of discipline any more than you or I would. God doesn’t want our words, our singing, our sacrifice or our self-flagellation; He wants our hearts.

A real relationship is based on love and wanting to be with someone. That comes from the heart. And if it isn’t in your heart, no amount of religion will ever put it there.

Meanwhile, for my coffee experience, I continue to worship at the Cathedral of St. Arbucks. My coffee religion remains firmly rooted. For me, religion applies to coffee, but not to God. God is too reckless and unpredictable and glorious to fit into any religious system or practice. And aren’t you glad?

For more java related spiritual insights check out John’s book, Confessions of a Caffeinated Christian.

I’ve looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall.
I really don’t know life at all.  – Joni Mitchell

It’s such a small amount of money, but I’m realizing the amount is irrelevant to the principle and the joy of giving.

Thirty dollars was all she needed. Thirty dollars to buy enough phone time to hopefully land a job interview. We’ve helped them out before – she and her husband – separated, though not by choice – she in one shelter, he in another. Sure there are ghosts in both their not-to-distant pasts. Drugs, alcohol – maybe some prison time – but you don’t ask. You hope. How else will they ever climb out of this? And if they don’t, have you wasted your money? That too is irrelevant. You give what seems like a little to you, and she acts like you’ve given her the moon.

We gave one woman our bed for a night, and to overhear her ecstasy, climbing in between clean sheets, made you rethink, maybe it was the moon you just gave, and it cost you nothing.

I’ve been on the asking/receiving side of giving for so long that I’ve had a tendency to defer to other people or another time in my life, the experience of giving. And then along came our Isaiah House experience and the opportunity to come to know a few women without homes, and I suddenly realize how relative giving and receiving is.

Thirty dollars to one person is like $30,000 to someone else. I can give $30. Someone else can give a thousand times that with similar ease. We both can know the same joy, and learn the same lessons.

You discover it doesn’t make you better – or bigger – to give. It makes you closer. Like Marti wrote, after our friend had received her gift and apologized for asking, Marti replied:

My sweetest sister: Never ever apologize to me. If I do not have it I will tell you just like you would with me.
 
Let’s not let embarrassing factors about each other interrupt our relationship. We have similar things to contend with, so never concern yourself with the thought that I do not understand.
 
My main goal is to get you and [your husband] under one roof so the two of you can fight about realities like John and me. I will finally have an honest friend who can say, ‘I know exactly how you feel’ without the cloak of darkness most of us hide behind.
 
I have never met the man who would put up with you like John does me – but he is known and loved by John – so he must be amazing.
 
I adore you,
 
Marti