There’s a lot to be said for day-to-day consistency. The longer and more consistently we work at anything, the better we get and the more we understand. But, this is assuming that we are going at it in the right way. Yesterday’s quote was from Vince Lombardi. “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.“

Yesterday, I was kicking around the growth elements of grace and truth. We need them both, and we need all of both of them. But, we also need time. Time is what I want to talk about.

A musician who practices hours each day will continue to grow and improve as long as she is practicing in the right way. If you ever learned to play an instrument, you might remember playing endless scales and arpeggios. A master musician still plays scales and arpeggios after decades of consistent practice and performance, but there is a backlog, buildup, whatever you want to call it – a foundation of repertoire, technique, skill and experience.

A concert pianist may have played Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” many times.  He may spend as much or more time practicing every day as the years roll on, but the emphasis is different. If a performance of the Beethoven concerto is coming up, he doesn’t have to learn the score. That part is done. The emphasis now is on nuance, style, experience, interpretation and execution. There is a cumulative effect of investing years in consistent good practice.

I have a watch that is powered by light. Every time it is exposed to light it is able to convert a small portion of that energy into fuel to power my watch. It is impossible to overcharge the watch. The energy just keeps accumulating. With a full charge, the watch can sit in a dark drawer for almost a year and still keeps ticking – the cumulative effect.

Watchman Nee was a Chinese pastor imprisoned for decades under the communist government that came to power after the Second World War. He had an amazing teaching gift, and his ministry was a blessing and encouragement to Chinese believers during the first half of the twentieth century. Many of his outlines and sermon transcriptions have been put into book form and continue to bless believers everywhere.

Someone once asked Brother Nee how long it took to properly prepare a sermon. The young seminarian who asked the question was imagining that it would take maybe eight or ten hours of sermon preparation each week. Nee paused, thoughtfully considered his response before opening his mouth and said (paraphrasing), “Ten. No, make that twenty. I think it takes about twenty years to prepare a proper sermon.”

He was thinking of the cumulative effect.

Many years ago when I would prepare a study of a certain book of the Bible, it would take a great deal of time to research the background, history and context of the book. Over the years I have followed that procedure on several occasions for every book in the Bible. I do NOT know it all and still seek out all the information I can find on a book before teaching it, but there is a certain cumulative effect that comes from having studied the Bible diligently for over 40 years. My focus is different. I already have a great deal of information about the background, history and context, but now  I see things I never saw before. I have time to investigate things I never even thought of before.

Next year I am going to do a study I did twenty years ago on Psalm 119. I even wrote a book! I put a great deal of effort and study into that series and book on Psalm 119. I’m sure I will put in many hours of study each week as I prepare to teach it again this coming year. But, this time it will be different. The world has changed. I have changed. I already have a cumulative data base, a foundation of knowledge on Psalm 119. I can’t wait to see things I have never seen before!

We are easily discouraged when we do something for a few days or weeks and seemingly see no tangible result. Let me encourage you to keep on meeting with God in the scriptures every day, day after day, year after year. If you do this with the right heart and depending on his power alone, something is happening. There is a cumulative effect that is welling up inside of you and gaining momentum that one day will not easily be stopped! Don’t lose heart! Keep on going! The cumulative effect is real.

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi is quoted as having said, “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” There is some good wisdom in that saying. Doing something sloppily over and over for hours on end does not make you better; it only establishes your ability to do something in a perfectly sloppy manner.

Some followers of Jesus Christ think that just because they have been walking with God for many years that makes them mature. Not necessarily so! A walk of faith does not depend on how long or hard you do something. If you are an immature, whinny, self-centered little Christian and persist in that day-after-day for many years, you will only become really good at being an immature, whinny, self-centered little Christian. You’ll get so good at it, in fact, that you won’t even have to think about it. It will just come naturally.

These are the people who make a profession of faith in Christ and yet never grow, or grow only so far. Living life as God intends for us to live is not a matter of trying harder or longer. It is a matter of knowing truth and living out life on the basis of that truth.

In his little third letter, John tells his disciple Gaius how thrilled he was to hear the report that Gaius was a man who not only had the truth in him, he also walked in truth.

Jesus Christ is the truth (John 14:6) and his word is truth (John 17:17). Some people try to live by the truth, but do not have the truth in them. Some have the truth in them, but choose not to live it out. Some people know a lot about the Bible, but they don’t know the Savior. Some know the Savior, but are hopelessly adrift in life because they are ignorant of the truth of scripture. Put it together – life as God intends involves an element of knowledge and it also involves a relational element.

Growth must occur in both elements – knowledge and relationship. Without this you can “practice your faith” as long as you want and you’ll remain the same. You’ll just get better at being immature.

You can learn a lot of knowledge about the Bible and not grow in your relationship to God and others. Keep at this for a long time and you’ll become an obnoxious, preachy, holier-than-thou Bible bigot. Or, you can become obsessed with worship, praise, relationships, feelings and sensitivity, yet remain virtually ignorant of the Bible. Keep at this for a long time and you’ll become a silly, irrelevant, spiritual airhead.

Peter, at the conclusion 0f his second letter, admonishes us to grow. He also tells us what this should look like. We are to grow in grace, and we are to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Here again are the elements of knowledge and relationship.

Jesus brings both elements together. John’s Gospel (1:17) says that he is full of grace and truth. Grace is the relational part, because grace is something that comes from outside of ourselves. Theologians say that grace is unmerited favor – what we cannot earn or do for ourselves.

John’s Gospel also says that the law came by Moses. What Moses said was truth. The problem was that no one was capable of living out that truth. The law bears witness of God’s righteousness. However, there is none righteous, no not one.

This changed with Jesus. The one who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2Corinthians 5:21). We now have the capacity to live out truth because we have a relationship with the truth (Jesus Christ) who lives in us and through us.

Not long ago I said that growth has three key components – grace, truth and time. Time is essential, but without grace and truth, time is just, well … time.

Grace comes from relationships outside of ourselves. First and foremost, of course, is our relationship with God. However, Peter also said (1Peter 4:10) that we minister grace to each other as believers according to the gift we have each received. Just as Jesus was the human representation of truth (the Living Word), God is busy dispensing grace today through his people in whom his Spirit and truth dwell. We don’t get grace by digging down deeper into our own selves; we get grace from God and as God uses others.

Grace, truth and time. You don’t need a balanced mix; you need all three – and you need all of all of them.

Today was the day I had my weekly meeting with my Life Team. I always hate to miss this time to get together because I always seem to learn something new as we share the issues and challenges we are facing in life. We don’t necessarily have a Bible study; we share what we are learning from the study of the Bible. At the same time I get a lot of grace!

In the next installment I’ll pick it up from here,  something I call the “cumulative effect.”

In the final study of The Mission I promised to post a list of some very basic books that give an overview of what God is doing in our world. I told you it would be a couple of weeks before I could get around to the task since I knew I was leaving immediately for vacation.

These books are offered with the following explanation. The purpose is to offer an easy-to-read, popular approach to global missions, not a technical or academic work aimed at specialists. This is in no way a complete list, just some that come to my mind as a place to begin. Maybe some of you can suggest others. Also, remember that a book is out of date the very day it comes off the press. These books are several years old in some cases, but they are well-written and enough to give you a good sense for what is happening today. Finally, I am not writing this list in proper bibliographical form. I’m simply giving you the title and author. You can ask for them in our bookstore or another, look them up on Amazon or similar or Google them.

• We are the World: Globalizaton and the Changing Face of Missions by David Lundy
• Borderless Church: Shaping the Church for the 21st Century by David Lundy
• New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone, by Samuel Escobar
• Mission Now: Developing a Mission Lifestyle by Trev Gregory
• The Book that Transforms Nations: The Power of the Bible to Change any Country by Loren Cunningham
• What in the World Is God Doing, by Gordon Olson

Here are a couple of books that are not “Christian,” but they will give turn your perspective of the world upside down.

• The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
• The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, by Thomas Friedman

For those who REALLY want to know:

Here is something to keep in mind and perhaps put on your calendar. I am very pleased to announce that we will be hosting an intensive version of Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. This is a college level course developed by the US Center for World Missions in Pasadena, California. I honestly do not know of another single tool responsible for the transformation of more lives of professing Christians. It is called Perspectives because I guarantee it will totally transform your perspective on the world.

We will be offering this course in conjunction with The Summit. Final details have not yet been announced, but this course will run from February 22nd to March 2nd and will be during the day. It will cost what you would expect a college course to cost and there is a good deal of reading and writing involved. It will be worth every penny and every ounce of effort.

In the future, we hope to be able to offer the normal version that involves one evening a week for 15 weeks. The content is the same and so are the requirements. The course is much easier to absorb spread out over a 15 week period. There are a few other places in the area that offer the course if you don’t want to wait. The regular version is clearly the best way to take Perspectives.

This intensive version is designed especially for busy pastors, missionaries and leaders, but it is certainly open to anyone. I’ll be taking it myself. I have recommended and used the reader for this course since its first publication in 1982, have participated in teaching, will teach two sessions next year in Costa Rica but never had the opportunity to actually take the course because of the time commitment and my crazy schedule. I’m very excited to have to chance to finally take the course myself! Several of our pastors and staff will join me in enrolling, and I know of at least one or two of our missionaries that will be coming in just to take the course. It’s that good and that important.

Not everyone can take off a week from work or school, but some can and will. Are you up for the challenge?

Sorry. Never bought into the fad. Never wore the bracelet. The question, though, is quite often valid.

Take the other day, for example. Cheryl and I are just settling into our seats having boarded our flight from Anchorage to Houston on the way home from our Alaskan adventure. When we travel together we agree to sit in aisle seats across from each other. We can both potty when necessary without having to inconvenience fellow travelers and neither has to sit in the dreaded middle seat. One of the advantages of having a lot of FF miles is that I and a companion of my choice can board early with the elite people (usually about half the frickin’ plane) and get a first shot at the overhead bins.

Our flight is jammed packed and the herds of weary, greedy, aggressive passengers have begun their charge down the aisle. Facing them, my mind flashes back to the thousands of salmon we saw swimming, jumping, slithering upstream in their mad race to spawn and die. I try to read, but think that the Grizzly Bear we saw could make his way down the aisle more gracefully than many of these humanoid travelers.

Suddenly, my head is driven to the left with synchronized pain. A backwhacker nails me with a force that smashes my glasses into my eye and temple, knocking them off and leaving my forehead with broken skin and a red knot. The nice and nerdy 14-year-old in the middle seat even looks up momentarily from his video game to say, “Geeze, mister, you OK?”  Don’t know about you, but any blow hard enough to distract a 14-year-old from a video game is pretty serious stuff.

I know this must sound cheesy, but do you ever think, “What would Jesus do?” I mean, really! I know he had to deal with the Pharisees and that wouldn’t have been pleasant, but Jesus never had to travel on an overbooked 737. If he had, I’m pretty sure he would have jumped right over the present age and gone straight to the Great White Throne Judgment.

I sit nursing my wound, alternating between feeling severely irritated and sorry for myself. I know, you’re shocked that the man of God would not automatically say, “Father, forgive these morons, for they know not whom they whack.”

Not so! The man of God IS irritated and IS feeling sorry for himself. Oh the thoughts that come to mind! What would Jesus do indeed! Satan himself is breathing his fiery dragon breath in my ear.

“If thou truly be the servant of God, then command him to move you to first class.”

Come on! You have those weird thoughts sometimes, don’t you?

Wait! There’s more. As I try to adjust my attitude, another drama unfolds across the aisle. Cheryl, unaware of my trial of faith, sits contentedly reading her historical novel as a 50-something graying blond swaggers toward her with a defiant look in her eye. OK, maybe she was 40-something and just didn’t do her makeup that day. Or, maybe she had just spent too many years in the Roller Derby. Whatever, she reached directly above Cheryl, removed Cheryl’s backpack and headed down the aisle to deposit it in a bin or two behind her. This broad was not even sitting in the aisle with Cheryl, but two rows ahead of her.

I see Cheryl lift her head in disbelief. She can’t believe what is happening. My normally cheerful and pleasant wife begins to sputter,

Excuse me, Ma’am. Ma’am, excuse me! That’s my bag.

Not to be detoured, the blond pauses in her mission no more than a mother Grizzly separated from her cubs. Without a word she then lifts up her roll-on and hoists it with a flourish into the bin above Cheryl’s head.

“Ma’am, excuse me, that was my bag that I put there and that you have now moved.”

Finishing her bin invasion, the blond stops, glares and growls,

“I know. I moved it back there because I need to  put my bag here. You got a problem with that?”

I sit paralyzed with amazement in my aisle seat. What would Jesus do?

To start with, I know that Jesus would have been in an aisle seat like mine. Not even Jesus would want that middle seat.

Would Jesus punch a woman? Would Jesus cuss a woman? Would Jesus begin to pull out hunks of dirty blond hair? I’m running down my check list of options.

Had she been a man, I probably wouldn’t have been asking what Jesus would have done. I probably would have finally found something useful to do with over 20 years of martial arts. I probably would be having a discussion with a room of air marshals trying to explain what I had just done.

Had she been a man, I would have chosen from those options. But, then again, she wasn’t a lady.

My poor mind was trying to process all this information in an eternity of mili-seconds when God sent an angel to intervene before I did or said something stupid. This angel miraculously appeared from the midst of the carbon 14 units crowded in the aisle, gently took the blond’s roll-on and turned it from its horizontal position, inserting it once again wheels in first. Voilà! The roll-on now occupied only half the previous space freeing up just enough room for a — backpack!

Grudgingly, the blond looked at Cheryl and said,

“Well, you want me to move your bag back here? I think there’s room now.”

Cheryl - “Yes, I would prefer that. Thank you.”

This all happened so fast. I looked across the aisle at Cheryl. We stared at each other, mouths open, eyes wide in amazement. What had just happened?

So now I’m really thinking – I’m serious about this – what would Jesus do? Funny how we seem to pick scriptures out of context in moments like that to justify just about anything. For example, I’m thinking Jesus might,

• Grab that Klondike souvenir bull whip and being to run all the Bullwinkle look-a-likes out of the aisle as he proclaims in a thunderous voice, “You have taken my father’s plane and made it into a den of obnoxious, rude and ugly people.
• In a more loving moment, he might have said, “If any woman moves your backpack, let them move it one bin and then even go the extra bin. But by all means draw the line at three!”

The backpack was eventually moved back to the proper bin, but even then I fought the urge to say something, to put her in her place, to let her know she can’t get away with stuff like that. Or, maybe I should just do as Jesus did with the woman caught in adultery and say, “Go, and bin no more.”

Seriously, I struggle with these things. If my faith doesn’t work in a stuffy, stinky oversold 737, then I don’t want anything to do with it. I mean that. It’s easy to sit in the sanctity of the sanctuary and theorize about what would Jesus do in all the great issues of life. But it’s usually the little stuff that brings out the reality of our faith – or not.

And, even when our faith is genuine, it’s always God’s grace that ultimately comes through and saves the day. It’s God’s grace that uses the momentary short-circuiting of my brain cells responding to the surreal circumstances around me to overcome my natural temptations and inclinations to protect me from doing or saying something stupid that would discredit the holy name.  Wow! Did you catch all that last sentence?

If we are really going to grow, it will show in the little stuff of our daily lives. As Solomon said, it’s the little foxes that spoil the vines.

What would Jesus do?

That was our theme this morning as we gave our latest “Vision Update.” We decided to move the Vision Update to August to take advantage of this time when students are getting back to class and all of us are trying to steer life into some sort of  ”normal” mode after a busy summer.

Our theme for the year has been very simply – Grow.  The idea is to finish off the year with a major emphasis on our need to grow and how that happens as we learn to understand and apply scriptural truth to our lives. This Fall we are all going Back to Class! i was very encouraged to get home this afternoon and already have some encouraging messages waiting from people who are very excited about the journey ahead.

Yesterday I had fun giving you a little update on our cruise and how it required some stretching on my part. I was apprehensive as we approached the cruise, but very soon settled down and thoroughly enjoyed it. By this time you are seeing that stretching is a part of growing.  Sometimes frightening, often painful, growth is something that demands our full attention and participation. Ever tried to lose weight without cutting back on calories and doing more exercise?

So, get ready to stretch as we get back to class and see how we can truly assimilate biblical truth into our daily lives. Remember, our ultimate goal is not more information but transformation. The only requirement is to be needy. Excuse me while I cut to the front of the line!

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6)