Losing All Hope?

I saw this article on The Onion (www.theonion.com) and found it quite amusing and thought-provoking. Can we really lose all hope? Let me know what you think.....

Man Who Thought He'd Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had
August 2, 2000 Issue 36•26

INDIANAPOLIS–Despite assuming that he had lost every last possible ounce of hope long ago, area office-supply coordinator Bob Dempsey, 31, was surprised to discover Monday that he did, in fact, possess one tiny additional shred of hope, which he subsequently lost.
"Contrary to the belief of coworkers, neighbors, distant relatives, and Mr. Dempsey himself, this so-called 'hopeless' man actually still had one infinitesimally small shred of hope, which he became aware of in the process of losing said last shred of hope," said noted therapist Dr. Eli Wasserbaum. "Oddly, it was only during that fleeting moment in which he was losing this additional micro-hope that he was able to realize that the hope had ever existed at all."
"Unravelling this singular psychological event makes for a tremendous challenge for the trained therapist," said Wasserbaum, who is attempting to reconstruct the basics of the incident, believed to be the least epiphanic moment of self-discovery in the annals of modern medicine. "In fact, some might even say a challenge so daunting as to be hopeless."
Dempsey's discovery and subsequent loss of the hope is believed to have begun at approximately 8 a.m. Monday, when he noticed a letter in his mailbox–which he checks every two to three weeks, usually finding nothing–from a German address unfamiliar to him. Unable to open the letter at the time because he was on his way to work, he left it behind to read later.
At some point during his workday, which consists primarily of sitting at a desk, staring into space, and occasionally placing a checkmark in boxes next to such words as "staplers" or "paperclips," he realized that the name on the return address was that of an old college friend who had moved to Germany years before and told Dempsey that "maybe you'll hear from me again sometime."
"Apparently, though he had long since forgotten about the friend, there remained in Dempsey some residual, subconscious awareness that there was a tiny chance, however microscopically small, that he would one day hear from this person again," Wasserbaum said. "He must have realized this at some point during the day and experienced a slight sensation of excitement, looking forward to going home and reading the letter."
Upon returning to his squalid one-room flat that evening, however, Dempsey discovered that the letter was actually a notice from German authorities informing him that the friend had died in a fire and asking assistance in locating his relatives. The only reason Dempsey was sent the letter, sources said, was that his name was the only legible words from a charred college yearbook unearthed in the ash and rubble of the tragic blaze.
Prior to Monday, Dempsey had not experienced any loss of hope in more than three years. According to Wasserbaum, a majority of Dempsey's hope-losses hit him in successive ramrod batterings between the ages of 18 and 24. By the time he had reached his late 20s, Dempsey had lost enough of his remaining hope to be considered officially hopeless. Nevertheless, he forged ahead with his few tiny remaining shreds of hope–too insignificant to be considered hope to the average person–until a final devastating blow depleted his hope reserves in February 1997.
"There have just been so many times he's lost hope over the years," Wasserbaum said. "There was the night of his senior prom, when his date and then-best friend drunkenly made out in front of dozens of classmates before openly mocking him in a group sing-along along with the rest of the senior class. This is just one of a lifetime of incidents. There was the time his recently discovered biological mother, for whom he had searched for years, told him, 'I have no son' at her own wedding, the first time they met. And one can safely assume that his rejection as 'unsuitable for conversion' by a pair of Mormon missionaries he attempted to befriend after they randomly knocked on his door must have cost him a significant amount of what precious little hope he had left. But this latest loss is one not even he could have anticipated, as he was unaware that he had any hope remaining at all."
Incredibly, even greater pain may still lie ahead for Dempsey. Experts fear that the German-letter incident may lead to the discovery of other Lilliputian bits of undiscovered hope, all of which are certain to be ultimately lost.
"If this poor, miserable wretch can finally lose every last ounce of hope, then at least his life will be relatively bearable, inasmuch as he will have nothing more to lose," Wasserbaum said. "However, as long as there is even the slightest chance, no matter how astronomical the odds, that he has more undiscovered hope left inside him somewhere, he will always have the inevitable loss of that hope hanging over him like a dank cloud of black soul-sludge, waiting to devour him in a pit of churning agony."
"Of course, maybe this was the last time, after all, and he is completely hopeless for good," said Wasserbaum. "But even that scenario constitutes a form of hope, making his overall prospects of eventually finding a stable, hope-free existence a distant hope at best."

Prayer of Abandonment #5

For I love you, Lord, and so want to give myself,
To surrender myself into your hands,
Without reserve and with boundless confidence,
For you are my Father.

There is a lot in this long sentence.

1. There is a longing to give ourselves in surrender. When we surrender we give over to someone else the control over what is next.
2. This is the third time in this prayer that we put ourselves into God's hands. We have abandoned ourselves, commended (entrusted) our spirit and surrendered. Do we really understand what all this means?
3. We do this with love, without reserve, and with boundless confidence. All three of these phrases should take some time to work through. Do we really give ourselves to give "without reserve?"
4. For you are my Father. Not an abusive or distant father, but a loving trustworthy Father who has shown His worthiness to be surrendered to.

I give this prayer to you to use not once, but continually as a part of your own prayer life. I pray that in will enhance you prayer-life, spiritual life and relationship with God.

Prayer of Abandonment #4

Into your hands I commend my Spirit. I offer it to you with all the love I have in my heart.

This is the second time in this prayer that we place ourselves into God's hands. I like this image. In the first live we "abandon ourselves." That means we leave ourselves in God's hands, removing all control and influence. Now we commend ourselves, which means to entrust our spirit, our life, into God's hands. That seems like a natural step. If we give ourselves into God's hands, we really need to trust God or we will forever be trying to get it back.

And we do this with all the love we have in our hearts. As I pray this prayer I wonder how much love I have for God on that paticular day. I think some days I offer my life to God with very little felt love. I do it out of mostly duty or "oughtness" or because it is what I am supposed to do. But even on those days, with whatever love I do have, I entrust my life to God. I do notice, however, as I linger on this part of the prayer, I realize even on those days I feel very little love, I have much more love for God than I feel. When I see this, the entrusting myself into God's hands becomes very easy.

Prayer of Abandonment #3

Here is the third section:

I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
And in all your creatures.

I wonder about how ready I am for whatever God does, and how willing I am to accept whatever God does. It is a beautiful thought, an admirable trust in God. But before I could really say those words in a prayer I really needed to take them seriously. It still takes me a while to get through this part of the prayer. But once I come to terms with a readiness for all that God does and a willingness to accept whatever GOD does (not what Satan does), a great sense of peace and trust overwhelm me and all feels right no matter what happens around me. The questions of "why" fade into the hands of God and an alert readiness occupies my mind and heart.

This prayer's desire is also that ONLY God's will be done in me. There is no room for anything else. Do I want to give up everything else that is not God's will, including my "little" sins, my addictive actions, my selfish attitudes, my painful past, my uncertain future....

"Whatever you do God, is what I want...and nothing more."

Prayer of Abandonment #2

The second and third lines of the prayer are:

Do with me whatever you will
and whatever you do, I will thank you

Is this a prayer that we can really prayer and mean? "Do with me whatever you will?" Whatever? That means anything God wants to do with us we are not only willing to do, but are thankful for. What if God wants us to "sell everything we have and give it to the poor" or "get out of the boat and walk on the water" or participate in a ministry that we do not want to do or befriend someone we absolutely hate? Are we willing? Are we thankful?

Spend several days working through this part of the prayer. Mkae sure you mena it before you go on.

Prayer of Abandonment

I have grabbed ahold of a prayer that I used for over a year in 2005 and have begun to use it on a regular basis again. I call it the Prayer of Abandonment. During my Sabbatical I would sometimes take each line as a prayer for the day and found that it contained some powerful statements that I could not just simply say and move on. I interacted with these statements and God revealed some things about me that I needed to deal with.

Over the next two weeks I am going to give you this prayer one or two lines at a time. You will need to come back each day to grow this prayer. I hope you will find it as challenging as I did, and do.

First Line:

"Father, I abandon myself into your hands."
(Hint: What does it mean to abandon yourself into God's hands? Define it in specific terms. When you abandon something what happens to it? Who controls it?)

One Thing You Lack

Once a man came to see Jesus (Mark 10:17-22), fell down on his knees and asked him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus told him to know and do the commandments and the man responded that he had followed these since he was a little boy. The scriptures said that “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” Here is someone looking to have a relationship with God and Jesus has only love and compassion for him, even with what he would next ask him to do. Jesus told him there is only one thing that he lacked, and that is to sell everything he owned and give it to the poor.

One thing he lacked.

I wondered as I read this event that if I would fall down before Jesus today and have a similar conversation, what would Jesus say that I lacked? I spent an hour or more walking during my retreat two weeks ago thinking this very thing. I discovered something pretty amazing. There wasn’t one thing that I lacked, but many. As the scriptures flowed over my mind and heart I was reminded of many things that I fall very short of in my relationship with God. Yet I was assured on this one great truth: Even as God was revealing things to my mind, my heart was filled with love by God. There was not an air of evaluative judgment, but of love for me in all my shortcomings, and a desire for me to be more than I already was.

I may lack many things, but never love from God. I finished my walk in peace, and a strong sense of God’s presence to strengthen my walk with Him.

If Jesus would say to you, "One thing you lack...." What would it be?

Proud Dad

It is simply fun to sit back and watch your children do well. Let me brag for just a moment.

Alicia took here Praxis Test in Education last Saturday and feels that she did well. It is nerve-racking taking these tests that have to do with your future vocation, and I was extrememly happy to hear that Alicia felt good about how she did. She is in the classroom this fall leading reading groups, will do her student teaching this winter, graduate in May and then be teaching full-time next fall. How do I know she will have a job? Because, who wouldn't want Alicia to be in their school?

Lauren and the Olivet Nazarene University Tiger volleyball team won the conference tournament on Saturday to advance to the National NAIA Tournament. Lauren has played extremely well this year (as always) and she has adapted to her role on the team with excellence. They play on Saturday, Nov 22 in their first round game against Asbury. She is also excelling in the classroom.

Both of the girls did very well in choosing their schools and it has also been fun to see how God is growing their faith! I am a proud Dad!

Prayer

The Prayer Room is open for business! It is my hope that many people will use it as a Holy Place or a Sanctuary for prayer. Please sign up for a time to pray!

"The Purpose of prayer is not to change God's mind. It is to get our hearts in line with His will and His Spirit." (David Nasser)

That is an interesting description of prayr in our world where prayer has become predominately asking God to do things, particularly with anatomy and healing. It is the "predominately" part of my analysis that really bothers me.

So the qustions I leave you with today are these:

1. How often do you pray?
2. What happens in your times of prayer? What do you do?
3. In your time of prayer, are you seeking to place your heart and mind in line with God, or are you trying to get God to get in line with yours?

HHmmmmmmm........

Quitting Church

During my retreat I finally finished the book, "Quittng Church" by Julia Duin. Although I do not agree with some of the conclusions of the author, I found it to be a thought provoking book. For me it raises the question of what people really need from church. Decades ago a person's whole life revolved around church. Now the church is just one compartment of a person's life. There is pressure to have worship experiences in which the music is done perfectly and the songs chosen are perfect. The preacher must be articulate, funny and good-looking (there goes any advantage I might have). The messages should be challenging. The bathrooms must be spotless and the nursery beautiful. If anything is off, then we might lose somebody. It is overwhelming to me, but there are some good questions I might leave you with:

1. Why do you feel people are leaving the Church (any church not Judson) but not leaving God?
2. Would a small house church have more benefit than a church? Why or why not?
3. Is the worship experience on Sunday morning more important, or fellowship, or small group/bible study or outreach?
4. Has the institutional church as we have known it been passed by and another way of doing church ready to be unleashed?

Some books lead me to more questions than answers. This was one of them. Respond if you like.....

I will be gone for the next week as I am going on a personal retreat at Cedarly Pastor's Retreat Center and then spending the next weekend with Alicia in Hannibal.

During the retreat I will be focusing on the Gospels, Worship in the scriptures and prayer. I find this time alone refreshing, energizing and challenging, as well as essential for personal spiritual journey as I seek to lead Judson.

See you all in a week!

Mom

Thursday was a hectic day. When I got home for lunch I received a call that my Mom was headed to the hospital for emergency surgery: on her appendix! I quickly packed a bag and headed for the hospital. By the time I was 45 minutes down the road I discovered she was out of surgery and that her appendix had indeed ruptured, which I means she will be in the hospital 4-7 days to make sure the poison, that caused her appendix to inflame and then rupture, is out of her system. She is doing well, although she is very impatient that she has to be in the hospital for that long.

On the three-hour ride home that night I thought about the poisons that get into our lives when something in our life ruptures. Although we do go get help to repair the rupture, I wonder if we take the time to make sure all of the "poison" is out of our lives:

• A relationship ruptures but we do not remove the anger that sits and continues to do damage,
• Finances rupture but we do not make the necessary changes so that our finances are healthy,
• Sexual purity ruptures but we do not take the things out of our lives that lead to the rupture,
• A sin that you commit ruptures a part of your life and you repair the rupture but do not remove the sin or the temptation that leads to the sin.

How do we remove the "poison?" The Spiritual Disciplines of prayer, confession (both to God and to another person), Scripture reading and memorization and worship can all help. But this is not an instant repair. It takes time. And we must be willing to take that time.