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I grew up near the ocean and spent many child hood hours playing at the beach; I loved playing in the waves at the beach and actually do still. The bigger the better I say! I especially liked the night after I spent an unreasonable time in the ocean. Do you remember? You would crawl in bed exhausted and as you lay still your body had those internal motions like you were still in the ocean. I can distinctly remember enjoying that sensation.
I recently read Mastery by George Leonard which is a great read and taught me much about myself and how to persevere through difficulties. One of his primary points is that to become good at anything, to master anything, you will spend the majority of your time on a plateau experience. He explains on the road to mastery you will experience little blips of progress followed by long periods of non-progress. He uses anecdotes from his experience as a martial artist to explain that if you become emotional about trying to advance you will lose ground, or, worse, you may get hurt.
Mastery has been an eye opening book for me in relationship to my desire to follow Jesus. His book is not written for Christians and in reality it is opposed to much of what is called spiritual growth. I grew up believing and teaching that spiritual growth is about peaks and valleys. We have heard the sermon about Peter being on the mountaintop with Jesus at the transfiguration but he had to go down the pastor will say because life cannot be lived on mountaintop experiences. I like many American teenagers of my day accepted that following Jesus was about these extreme valley and mountaintop experiences. I would go from camp, to conference, to retreat experiencing such great highs. Then August, school and real life would come with the inevitable valleys. Having just turned 34 and still relatively young in this disciple thing, I am finally beginning to realize that Jesus’ earliest followers did not live this way. From reading their words there are minimal emotional appeals, and surely the emotional appeals which exist are not combined with high sugar diets, adolescent relationships and campfire songs.
I think in my second half, I will view following Jesus more like a long plateau where I will be constantly learning the same lesson over and over followed by a blip then some progress and a new lesson that will be learned repeatedly until the next blip. I love the emotional charge just as much as the next guy. I mean it can be fun, but it is dangerous to think it produces real lasting fruit. It is much like the waves of our childhood…they are fun and they even last into the night, but in the morning they have departed and we are left with the reality of being on land!
The Apostle Paul speaking said something similar. Philippians 3:13-14 reads, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” So we press on and enjoy the slow process of becoming like Jesus one blip at a time.
I wonder what the the Father thinks of all our new year promises each revolution around the sun? I spent some time this morning thinking of last years ‘promises’ or resolutions for 2008 and sadly they did not get far beyond January. For some reason though that will not hinder me from sitting down at some point today or tomorrow and making some goals for ’09. There is something about us as humans that keeps us convinced that the future can be better than the present. We are always hopeful for tomorrow. If you were to ask us for some evidence as to why we are hopeful for tomorrow, our best evidence would be circumstantial and something along the lines of a hunch. I mean we can point to coming things and know that at their coming our lives will be better, for example, this year Mari and I will have child number two and three at the same time. We have good evidence that leads us to believe that life will be better in the future. But most of the time we have no strong evidence that our lives will be better in the future. And even our evidence of Mari’s growing belly and numerous ultrasounds is dependent on God’s continued protection of our little ones.
The reality is most of us spend the majority of our lives in the past reflecting or in the future dreaming. We look to the past and reflect which causes either joy over happier days or guilt due to poor decisions and maybe a little of both. We look to the future with hope of better days, or of things working out the way we wish them. Wherever we spend most of our mental living, either the past or the future, while we are there we miss the place life is actually happening. Maybe this year, we will not think about the year, and only think about the day. I am learning about myself that I am most happy when I am not looking backward or dreaming forward too often, but instead just enjoying the moment that is grace filled.
You see our pasts are full of forgiveness, and our futures do have hope because God has promised good to us, but our present is where his true riches are…right now in this moment. see them….?
What do you say when you prayed for 7 people to be immersed into Christ on a Sunday you are challenging people to clothe themselves with Christ (Galatians 3:27) and God calls 24 to accept that call and put on the savior? You stand amazed! You realize you have too little faith. This was me today because I prayed that God would call 7 people to answer the call to be baptized into Christ and he had such bigger plans. This morning blew me away. It was by the far the greatest day in my short ministry of just around 10 years. At the end of the service we all gathered in a huge circle around the room and prayed and people cheered (not seeker sensitive, I know). I stood by Marianne and held her hand as I led the prayer because I could not have imagined not sharing that moment with God’s ordained partner for my life.
Today’s awesomeness had nothing to do with me or my efforts. Actually I felt like todays gathering prior to the end was average and mediocre. I felt the worship was good but not great and I sensed my message was missing the mark in energy, clarity and flow. Even while I was teaching I was saying in my head, ‘dude Saxton, what is wrong with you, get it together, this is supposed to be an important day.’ It reminded me yet again that ministry, preaching, church leadership, etc is NOT about me or how I feel about it.
So today 24 people ranging from 8 to 55 years of age decided to put on Christ, to take the gift of his armor and step into the battle of their lives. This unbelievable outpouring from God had nothing to do with me or Jay but was only the power of God to save people from their desperation. He loves his people and wants them to win in the spiritual warfare they face continuously so he gave them Jesus to guarantee the victory!
I hope I will remember this lesson and always ask our Father for more especially when it comes to his church!
The news that I wanted to share with you next week that would change our family’s life needs to be shared with you now. However, I am sorry to say the news is quite different than I hoped it would have been. Marianne and I have had a difficult journey through the years with having children. We have one child Madilyn Pearl Saxton and she is 22 months old. She was our fifth pregnancy and she was a miracle. Well a couple of weeks ago we discovered we were pregnant again without really trying all that much. I must be honest I did not want to be excited because of the previous pain. But I chose to embrace this gift from God and trust him with the whole of myself including my anxiety about the pregnancy.
We had blood work and saw our specialist in Savannah who we had seen before. He felt like everything looked pretty good with her test results but we needed to go with the same protocol we used with our first pregnancy. Blood thinner and hormone treatment to help the pregnancy move along in a healthy way was used again as before. Yesterday Marianne had some pain in her abdomen area and pressure in her shoulder. Today we spoke with the doctor and this afternoon he met us at the ER in Savannah.
After waiting forever on an ultrasound our absolute worst fear was found to be a reality for our new baby. He never made it from the tube into the uterus which meant the pregnancy was entopic or tubule. This means that not only will we lose this pregnancy but also that fallopian tube that delivers the eggs to the uterus. Tomorrow morning at 9 am is the surgery. They normally would do this surgery immediately but since Marianne was on a blood thinner called Lovenox she needs to wait 12 or so hours for the drug to get out of her system.
When we got the news I was heartbroken and cried more than I have in a long time. I felt heart ache like I have not felt in a long time. You know the pain that is deep in your chest and it causes an actual physical pain. I ached because my beautiful wife had suffered already enough and had more suffering ahead of her. I ached because she is heart broken at a child we will not know in this world. I ached because I believed Madi was going to be a great big sister and I wanted to see her grow with this new child. I ached because I know how much I love Madi and want to love another child as well. I ached because of loss.
Initially I was pissed because I thought, ‘what is the deal God? Why would you jerk us around like this? You know we were not even trying very hard and this pregnancy was completely your idea. So what is up with this?’
His answer was no answer. As I reeled in my shock and pain of the bomb that had just been dropped in our life I tried to process all the emotions running through my heart. Anger, sorrow, pain, dejection, depression and then guilt for all those emotions were all present. I tried to reflect on who Jesus was in this situation and I thought of Peter.
I thought of the story in the gospel where Jesus tells people who found him intriguing that they must eat his body and drink his blood. Although they were intrigued their intrigue was not enough to cause them to stick around for this blasphemous teaching for they were devout Jews. As the intrigue transitioned into disgust and the people trickled away muttering about the lunacy of this carpenter, Jesus looked at his twelve closest followers and asked if they were leaving as well. I love Peter’s response and tonight it has been my response as well. “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the eternal One of God.”
In a way Peter was saying Jesus we do not understand this and we have lots of emotions running through us that are causing us to ask questions BUT, there is no one else. You are the only one offering hope. You are the only one saying there is more to this life than the confusion, pain, sorrow, loss, and death. You are our hope, Jesus.
So tonight sitting in room 433 of Candler hospital broken hearted beside my pain inflicted wife together mourning our child who will soon be snatched away from us I announce with the prophet Habakkuk, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.”
Dear Jesus we do not understand this but to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life and we believe and know that you are the eternal One of God’
I suppose I am getting closer to the edge….
Marianne and I have been in South GA for a few days enjoying the sheets of humidity and bugs raining against our windshield. It is amazing how two places just a few hours apart are so different. I am sure there are plenty of ‘country’ people in Lawrenceville but wow there are some serious country people around ‘heanl’.
It is really easy to adapt to the culture when we come down here. One day Madi played in the dirt driveway of Marianne’s parent’s house, drank from the water hose and ran around the yard barefoot which are all things she never does at home. It was great because she was happy and occupied which meant she gave her mother a break for a few minutes. I even commented to Marianne how we need to find a place with a little land so she can play like this at home.
One evening we went to ‘The Wal-Mart’ (that is how you refer to it here) and Madi having already had her bath was just in a diaper and bare foot. Well….we just took her to Wal-Mart in her diaper. There she was running around in her diaper through the store looking like a good trailer park baby fresh from playing all day in the yard. She was running through sporting goods and electronics and I was chasing her having a blast. I would have never let her run around bare foot in her diaper through Hamilton Mill Wal-Mart but since we were in the ‘ham’ I thought it would be just fine.
It is bizarre how we let our guard down when we are in a comfortable setting and allow ourselves to be more of who we truly are. I believe this character trait may also carry over into our spiritual lives as well. We have a true person that we are and we know when we are being that person and when we are not.
Often times our circumstances and the people around us determines what self is revealed. Who are we trying to impress? Why do we care about their impression of us? Are we concerned about Jesus’ impression of us? Do we realize he loves our true selves and wants us to let it out for good in every situation? He wants us to stop grand standing pretending we are someone we’re not and just be who he made us to be all the time.
Whoever He made you to be, find it and live it out everyday…not matter where you are. I am certain it is more fun to live this way!
edge of desperation 