Recommitting

Lamentations 3:22-23
Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I have never, at least as far as I can remember, been faced with the reality of having to renew my commitment to something each day. My faith as it was taught to me was largely a set of facts to believe. I had no problem waking up each day and saying yes I still believe them. My commitment to my wife and children has never been difficult to recommit to each morning. My commitment to my work at the Police Dept is not difficult to recommit to each day. I have a queue of things to do at the office that is waiting to move to the front of my list of prioirities on Tuesday morning, Monday is New Year's day.
In fact I am committed so deeply and easily to these things that I actually don't even think about daily recommitting to them. In fact I guess maybe I don't. They are part of my identity. It is easy to stay committed to your identity.
Lately a situation has required my daily willful recommital and even a minute by minute recommital. Up until a couple months ago God had always blessed Lee Ann with jobs that allowed her to stay in pharmacy and be there for me and the kids. Recently because of people leaving her job and company restructuring she has had to start working until after dinner on the three days of the week she works and then be on call on a greater proportion of her off days. This has required me to be solely responsible for the kids from after work until just before bed time, picking up the kids from daycare, fixing dinner, washing dishes, picking up the house, all after a full days work. Now understand I usually am able to manipulate most situations to where I am in control, but when I can not I am given to deep bouts of self-pity. And lately I have been swimming in self-pity, drowning in it.
I want to roll with the punches when I am put in uncomfortable situations. That's what this is. I am out of control. I am having to sacrifice. I KNOW God is using this situation to shape me, improve me, but I have to recommit to this knowledge moment by moment. The part of me that hates the discomfort of this shaping and the lack of control tells me this is abandonment. It tries to convince me that the fault lies with Lee Ann. That she is the cause and then if I just apply more pressure and manipulation to her my discomfort can be alleviated, as Rachel puts it if I "yell at mom." I know I shouldn't do this and yet I have wrestle with the STRONG desire to do it anyway because it feels better than humbling myself, bowing my desires to the needs of her work place and accepting the sacrifice that is required of me.
I pray each night over my son that God would help me be the kind of person that would be a good example to my son, but when it comes to being that example the desire isn't always as strong.

This is what recommitting looks like.
Ephesians 4:22-32 (New Living Translation)
throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy. So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body. And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil... Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.
And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

I guess in the end I'm just glad that this is true.
Lamentations 3:22-23 (New Living Translation)
The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

The Tithe

(Note: the term "tithe" refers to the idea that 10% of a persons income should be given back to God, usually through a church) We have experienced our first time of reaching year end with our tithe money needing to be spent. Before we gave it to the church we were attached to. But since we have a house church with no expenses there is no organization to tithe to. We have still stashed our tithe money away and looked for needs in our community to use it towards. But last night we realized that we needed to spend what was left, which was the lion's share of it, quickly if we intended to reap any tax benefits for 2006. So we sat down and decided on 4 organizations to split the money between. This brought up several issues in my mind.
1. Ideally we don't want to give our money to someone else to spend for us unless we can't find needs around us that we could help with. But come on there are tons of needs around us. We are really going to have to keep an eye open to spot them. We are going to have to change 30 years of habits and thinking.
2. Does the tax benefit of charitable giving teach us to only give to organiztions and not help individuals, who can not provide us with a tax deductible receipt. I have been struggling with this one a lot. It makes me wonder whether or not the church we plant should become a IRS-registered tax deductible organization, however that works? Or should we encourage followers to stop caring about such tax benefits?
3. Why do I feel more comfortable giving this money to someone else to spend?
4. What, if any, level of our tithe should be used to help our "ministry" related expenses? And better yet how do you draw a nice clean line down your life between ministry and non-ministry? Is there any non-ministry?
During my training I witnessed one of our road sergeants give a homeless man we came in contact with a $20 bill. I could see it gave him joy to do it. He doesn't hand 20s out all day long. This was a special situation, but I felt it was a great example to follow.
What a great struggle for each of us to have to struggle with. When do I give? How much should I give? Should I be ready to give at all times?
I'd love some discussion and suggestions on this topic!

a quote from "The Importance of Being Foolish"

By Brennan Manning (writing on the topic of the importance of transparency)
...Often our preoccupation with the three most basic human desires -- security, pleasure, and power -- is the cloak that covers transparency. The endless struggle for enough money, good feelings, and prestige yields a rich harvest of worry, frustration, suspicion, anger, jealousy, anxiety, fear, and resentment. These powerful, emotion-backed desires cause 99 percent of the self-inflicted and unnecessary suffering in our lives. They continually focus our attention on self and keep us from being transparent, dimming the light and obscuring "the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Cor 4:6)

There is no objective point of view

Everyone sees life from a certain point of view. Mankind has tried to step out of this point of view and look at things objectively, and even at times believed that he has accomplished this. But just as a man can try and run from his shadow and can even position himself so that it appears to have disappeared, he only need look behind himself to realize that he has only fooled himself. Our society seems to understand that the objectivity that we thought we gained with the enlightenment was only a mistake. It is funny though that the scientific arena seems not to have got word of the myth of objectivity. They theorize. They study. They test. Then their findings are taught as fact instead of our best understanding of things up to this point. The presentation of their findings, at least as they were taught to me in the course of my education, lacked humility. Their findings and understandings change over the years. Millions change to Billions and back again. Our galaxy of nine planets becomes one of eight over night. Another area of study has closely reproduced this blindness to their own limitedness and subjectivity, namely theology. In seminary I was taught how to read the scriptures in their original languages and then taught what to believe about what they said. The more I read the scriptures for myself the more I realized that there were a great many issues which the seminary had said could only be understood to say "A" which could actually be read to mean "A", "B", "C", "D", or "E" (and probably more that I just couldn't see from my point of view).
Now none of this is to say that there are not things that are objectively true. I believe there are things that are true. I just believe that none of them can be "proven" objectively. All of them must believe by faith. If God does not exist and the world and all that is in it came into being and continues to exist without him, that can not be proven, but only taken on faith. If God did seek to bring people who had alienated themselves from him back to himself by sending his son, that too can not be proven, but only taken on faith. The enlightenment taught us to only believe what we can prove, but as we know now today's rock solid findings are corrected by tomorrows. Some things have more evidence today than others but everything must be accepted on faith.
This shouldn't change that much because underneath it all I believe we know this is true. My dad, an avowed creationist, debates with a friend who is an avowed evolutionist. Both think their arguments are ironclad and should sway the other but in the end neither believes what they do because of the proofs but because they have faith that they are true.
I would like to see the church move in the direction of being more careful about the teachings that it says are absolutely fundamental to calling yourself Christian(fewer of these) and more humble about the conclusions it draws on non-fundamental issues(more of these). I believe this would create an environment that respected freedom of conscious and encouraged thought on difficult issues. As things are, I believe that doctrinal statements tend to scare believers into not thinking deeply about spiritual things. What happens if you study and then realized you weren't sure about the stands the church that you and all your friends attend takes? Will you really choose integrity and lonliness over brushing it under the rug? After all people smarter than you came to these conclusions. If I am even a little right this situation is more likely to create shallow liars than honest deep thinkers.