Strategy Is Not Bad for Faith and Life

After taking a quiz to find our strengths, one person scored well on strategy as a strength, and she seemed worried and sad about it. She said, "Don't worry, everyone. I'm not scheming against you!" Her view of strategy seemed only that of watching a show like Survivor. The people on the show view most relationships as only valuable in so much as they help the person get ahead, and it's full of strategy—thinking through various possibilities of who to side with to try to win money at the end. Games of strategy don't take into account the other person's success in the game. It's about winning! (But there is fun in doing an activity with a person you like, no matter if you win or loose—as long as the person isn't a poor looser or too much of gloater.)

Strategy is not bad for relationships at all. The definition of strategy is simply a plan or series of steps that are known or predicted to get to a goal or end result. Strategy can be at the root of wisdom if a good heart, which has a love for others and for God, is doing the strategizing.

For instance, you could have a strategy to spend more time with your kids or your spouse. That can take some planning. Possibly aiming to try to think about work less at home, or thinking of an activity that a person likes and scheduling in time to do them, or some type of meditation that helps clear your mind and focus more on what matters more.

Many people have and promote their strategies of reading and praying daily. They wake up super early and use that first hour for that. Or they have a set time at another time, or right before they go to bed.

When a person feels sad about having strengths of strategy, that is a little sad to me that they are missing out on acknowledging and using a good gift. God created our brains to do amazing things sometimes, and being able to think through different scenarios and possibilities and find the best way to proceed is a beautiful gift that we can enjoy using.

Encouragement

The spiritual gift or discipline of encouragement is one of the more neglected gifts in the current day. We are called to encourage others.

To encourage them in their faith, in their faithfulness to flowing Jesus, and in all matter of importance of life. We are called to up build others around us.

The church is a place for sinners to grow in grace and in mutual up building. We do not have or lives fully together. No one does.

To the degree the church acts as if everyone in it's membership either has their life together or really should have their life together the church fails its membership. The pressure for perfection in the church often doesn't lead to perfection but a hiding of issues.

It is difficulty to grow in a place where people hide their sin. If the church is not a safe place to be honest than the church is not a safe place to have authentic relationships.

And this is the flaw in many churches. In encouraging community the community often is hollow and lacks power. Because community is only of real powerful benefit if authenticity is safe.

We have a God in heaven who is not confused about our state. We he knows our faults and beckons us to him. The question is if the church has learned the nature of God and is willing to have the degree of grace and understanding that God has?

Known for Their Love

The theology that a person holds often greatly impacts that person's view and actions in life, and this leads some people to feel a justification to always correct a person for any minor theological differences. They'll confront perfect strangers to, as they would say, stand for the truth. They view this as loving, because they think that if the person only holds that view then that person's life would be so much better.

But the great flaw in that is it rejects the fundamentals of how relationships work, or how to get to know and help people works--of how to be loving. If you tell a stranger, or someone you haven't truly tried to get to know or know their viewpoint well, that you think they are terribly wrong on something, what would you expect? All that is communicated there is that one person has wanted to skip the part of getting to know someone and has jumped into telling that person what to do.

Relationships shouldn't be about trying to correct another person or force them to be a certain way. It's about getting to know and appreciate them, and possibly at certain moments--very rare moments, most likely when they ask for advice--that's mostly when a relationship can include this aim to help another see and possibly adopt your viewpoint.

I wonder if some people think the whole world is an academic classroom. There truly should be a difference here and there. In debate class, you debate. In real life, you talk and get to know each other.

Another flaw is that it may be pride, and not love that motivates people. If you see that people don't often like to be corrected on every little detail that you may view as wrong, you'll know that the end result is often they will want to move farther away from you. So what was the whole point? In the end, it may be that the person wanting to correct the other just wants to be and feel right. That's pride and not love. Or at least pride was the main motivating factor, whether the person realizes it or not.

The Bible talks about matters of indifference. We really shouldn't let matters of indifference get in the way of enjoying being brothers and sisters in Christ. People are learning theology over time, and as long as they understand the very foundation of the Bible, the gospel and all it offers to us, then they will be fine. Don't rush, and wait for them to ask the questions.

As Christians, we should be known for our love. Not for a constant fighting spirit over theological differences.

Theology does affect people greatly. But we have to realize our limitations and how human relationships work, and that pride is all too present and common.

Evangelism & Relationships

Evangelism is about relationships. Relationships are often what often make or break the witness of Christ.

The Gospel is a call for mankind to have a new joyous relationship with God. And to enter into God's work in the world through God's church.

The Gospel is about a persons relationship to God, relationships to family, relationship to other Christians, and relationship to the whole world. Since Christianity is a call to right relationships evangelism should be mindful that the Gospel is not simply a message, but a invitation to relationship.

God calls us to enter into right relation to everyone in the whole world if it was within our power. Often it is outside of our power, but we are called to live at peace and right relation with all people so much as it is within our control.

3 Tips on Offering a Critique or Suggestion

When considering if it's the right time to offer a critique or suggestion to someone or about someone, keep in mind the following three things in order to have a profitable and loving discussion:

1. Be sure you truly understand what you disagree with or want to suggest needs to be changed. "You often see prolonged discussions or arguments that could be avoided by simply explaining what we mean by a term," writes Danny in "Charity in Communication." "Getting others' views right is a part of love. Disagreeing in the proper spirit is Christian.

"Disagreeing in the improper spirit is not Christian even if we are correct. You see truth and love must go together. Truth without love is not Christian."

2. Is there a solution to the problem that you're pointing out? If not, "it is quite disheartening to be told that you are 'on the wrong path' career wise or in another way but to not be told what the right path is," says Danny in "Unloving Advice." "A critique with no superior solution is a worthless critique.

"To say a solution is poor but to not have any idea of a better solution is at best a waste of breath and in fact more likely unloving. To criticize without giving hope is completely un-Christian in spirit.

"We should build up others. If we cannot be building up and offering a better approach than it is best that we say nothing at all."

3. Is there something that you can do to help the problem that you're pointing out? It's easy to critique others and other cultures but not ourselves and our own culture. Read more in "Critique of the Other."

4 Reasons to Slow Down in a Busy World

It feels like there are endless possibilities we can do each day: Friends to talk to, places to go, things to read, work to be done, and games to play. The Internet alone has what feels like an endless number of webpages with a variety of content: videos, images, drawings, and words.

The result of this causes many people to spend seconds here and there and not really truly focus much on anything. You may have had a conversation with someone that when it started you sort of knew the person was already thinking about the next thing they wanted to do and any moment would break away to it. In order to do it all, that person felt like that was needed.

There are a number of reasons to try to slow down in this world—to pick a small amount of things to do in what seems like a sea of possibilities. Before I get into the reasons, I want to mention a possible cause that might help: Pride is sneaky, and it may take the form of thinking that we can do everything. A big problem in thinking we can, or even should, do everything is that we feel awful because we end up not being able to. The reason is we can't humanly do everything, but pride tries not to show us that.

Here are the reasons to slow down. Slowing down will help the following happen:

1. Relationships. The example I mentioned above shows the issue with going too fast or being too busy doing everything. There's no way to truly get to know and have deep relationships with people if we are always running to the next thing without taking as much time as is needed or it takes to finish a full, good conversation. Of course, along with relationships with people, this principle applies to our relationship with God too.

2. Enjoyment in God's creation/gifts to us. When we have time to focus on things, we see the beauty and beautiful complexity of things. Like simply taking a walk through a forest preserve.

3. Thinking and reflecting. With so much information everywhere, if we never take time to think and reflect on it, we'll never be able to truly process it all and think through what we think about it. We need to be careful and think through how what we do and what we've read all relates to our faith and what matters. Otherwise we might be running around doing things that aren't really worthwhile.

4. Creativity. When we allow more space and time in our schedule we might come up with interesting ideas and things to create and do that we wouldn't have otherwise.

When Anger Is Good

Many people feel uneasy about the emotion of anger. It feels uncomfortable and may cause change. However, there is a good time and place for anger.

God is angry at sin, and this is good. Sin in itself is the opposite of love and life. Sin is what we dread when we see it clearly, and it's good that God is against it. Being in Christ allows us to still be in relationship with God even though we are sinners saved by grace.

Like God's anger at sin, a person may become angry when someone or something that's beautiful to him or her is threatened. Anger could be a form of wanting to protect, and this is a good type of anger. It indicates that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. It is love for someone or something that makes us feel very strongly that we want to protect the person or thing.

Anger is good if it involves love or is in line with wanting what God wants.

Often anger goes wrong because it's anger due to pride. An example of bad anger is someone being angry that a friend has decided to not go to an event they're planning because of being sick. This friend who is sick is making the right choice to try to heal. The angry person is not being right because the wellbeing of their friend should be more important than their event being more full of people. It's loving to want a friend to heal. It's prideful to want a friend to suffer in order to look good.

Pride often is what makes anger bad. But it's not to be confused with standing up for one's rights. It's okay to be angry if someone is treating you badly if truly you should be treated better in the situation. It's right to want to flourish and do well--God wants that too (although sometimes we don't agree with God on what that looks like exactly) and if someone is intentionally harming that, it's good to feel very strongly that something is wrong and should be changed if possible.

God as Complete

The Christian faith insists that God is complete. God has nothing he needs of man.

We often live and act as if God has something he needs from us. You see we are very foolish to feel that in some sense we have something which God needs.

The reality is that God does not need us. But he loves us anyway.

You see there is a great freedom knowing that God does not need us but loves us unconditionally. There is no danger that he is using us.

He knows us in our fallen state that we have nothing to offer him and our lives grieve him but he loves us anyway.

You see God is not like mankind. Man often forms and leaves relationships depending on if they make sense.

God says "yes" to all who wish to have a relationship regardless of the sensibility of the relationships. You see of course that no relationship that God enters makes sense to him ultimately.

There is often discussion of the various covenants that God has entered with man. Some are more one sided than others. But you see this often misses the point that no covenant God has entered with man made sense entirely the mindset of benefit to God.

"This is love that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." You see God always transcends in love to meet men in their state at a cost to himself.