Randy Frazee's Blog

“Nona, do you smile all the time?” My granddaughter asked.  These words fell on shocked ears.  My response?  “I do when I am with you!” The shock came because one of my spiritual struggles has been that I allow my circumstances to rob me of my joy.  A few years ago, I started paying attention to all the times any little thing would aggravate me, or set me off, or just plain make me sad. I decided that my joy was not going to be hijacked anymore.  It hasn’t been a perfect journey, but it has improved. What made the difference for me?  Here are somethings I tangibly chose to do.

Paying attention really made a difference.  Whenever my joy would start to slip and it was evident in my attitude or words, I would catch myself, or my husband would give me “the look.”  You know what I mean.  I think every couple has these looks between them. (BTW, I had given him permission to do that.)  Accountability helps.

Secondly, I came to the realization that, as a Christian, my hope for a perfect world or life, cannot rest in the circumstances we experiences on this earth.  Instead hope has to be placed confidently in the next world, Jesus new Kingdom where He will reign as King.

Thirdly, I read John 15:11 – “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”  Jesus is addressing His disciples here.  Jesus had complete joy and He wanted His disciples to experience the same. This joy brightened His path through his darkest days here on earth. And it is in me!

Jesus knew by this point He was facing the cross, I imagined how He must have felt and yet he said He had complete joy.  I don’t know about you, but I haven’t faced anything remotely close to the cross.  I doubt many of us have. Jesus could not have been focusing on the cross before Him.  Instead He must have focused on the crown He would have in eternity.  I understood that I needed to do the same – focus the eternal, not the earthly.

My granddaughter isn’t always with me to make me smile, but Jesus is.

Ever time you choose to smile genuinely, even though your circumstances are less than joyful, you give evidence that the same joy Jesus experienced in spite of the cross is in you.

Resources:  The Christian Life Profile Assessment tool. https://g.co/kgs/2yRinB

Get the full devotional at:  http://www.zondervan.com/believe-devotional

The medical test results came back confusing. Baffled doctors are not what you want when they are talking about your body. More tests; then waiting. Putting one foot in front of the other, trying to get on with Christmas cheer and preparations. Waiting is the hardest place to be. When you get bad news your world goes dark, your focus drifts to the negative and it’s as if you are having an out of body experience. This was my experience this past week.

When you have times like these do you doubt that God is with you? It’s certainly easy to. For me, it has been a week of having to continually decide to choose faith over fear. I know what God has said. I know He is with me and will never leave me (Isaiah 41:10),  but fear continually tries to sneak back in like early dusk of an evening in mid-winter, I realized that I was having to make a conscious choice; let fear consume me and rob me of the joy of this season, OR choose faith in the One who is faithful?  By choosing faith, I have been able to push fear out of the driver’s seat on this journey.

First day I woke up with this prayer on my lips.

Heavenly Father, This is the day you have ordained for me.  Whatever I must walk through I know  you will give my spirit peace, allow me to draw from your strength and will hold my hand, for you are with me.  Thank you! Today I choose faith over fear.  Amen.

Yesterday, God brought me across this scripture:

Strengthen the weak hands, steady knees that give way. Say to those with a anxious heart, Be strong; fear not!. . .

Isaiah 35:3

How comforting to know our Heavenly Father pays attention to details like knowing my hands get weak; my knees buckle; my heart becomes anxious. He has promised to be with me and uphold me with his righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10) I believe He even caused me to read that particular verse on that specific day!

He sees yours too!  He is with you too!  He is interested in every detail of your life too! Isn’t it amazing that the God who created the universe and all that is in it, cares about the little details of our lives?

A few more tests to go, but the last news was good. I continue to pray my prayer every day, surrendering what I want to the will of the Lord.

At this time of year, I can’t help but think of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I imagine her hands were more than a little weak, her knees buckled under her and her heart was extremely afraid as she heard from the angel that Messiah was to be born in her. She chose faith saying, ” I am willing to be used of the Lord. Let it happen to me as you have said.” (Luke 1:37)

Help me, Father, to trust you always.  You are who you say you are. Your righteous right hand upholds me. You are faithful!   May I keep my eyes on you and allow you to do with me as you have planned. As you have displayed Your glory through Mary, will You do the same with me. Thank you for paying attention to every detail in my life; my shaky hands, weak knees and fearful heart. I believe you are involved in and care about my daily life. I am willing to be used of the Lord. Let it happen to me as you have planned. Amen

Society pitts women against each other.

We constantly feel a need to compete; to be good enough in every area of our lives. We compare our cooking to the chefs on FoodNetwork. We compete with the constant barrage of half-naked women streaming into our home through catalogs. magazines, television, our phones and computers. They make us feel as though our body continually needs to be tweaked no matter what shape we are in. Other moms in our kids’ classes seem to do so much more than we do.  They are room moms, have full time jobs, have leadership roles at their church and/or Bible Study Fellowship. We have so many pins our Pinterest boards that if we were able to accomplish them all, we would never die. Our society, and even our churches, have adopted the mentality that women can even compete with men and do anything and everything they can do.

So, we fill our lives with activity, exercise, several Bible studies, serve at our church, try to cook full meals while running kids everywhere trying to be the perfect mom, be the perfect wife, work to provide more income for our families, and the list goes on.

That made me stressed just writing it.  What awful feelings were dredge up for me.  Like the fear I felt every time my child brought home a “project” from school —  a diorama (creating a 3-d scene in a shoe box from a book they had read ) or a costume created to go along with an oral book report, or creating a time line on poster board for history class, or worse, the dreaded science fair approaching. Ahhhhh!  I am not given to panic attacks — that is unless you make me go to a craft store.  Then all of a sudden, I can’t breathe, my head starts to spin out of control, and my hands start to shake.  I cannot get out of there fast enough. My “projectfobia” stemmed from the very real sense that the project I would help my child create was never going to measure up to the kids in the class who had that “craftee” for a mom. Now that’s competition!

Competition enters our life like a thief and robs us of joy if we aren’t careful. Jesus wants us to have an abundantly full life. “Doing it all” is not the “full” life promised in John 10:10.

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy; but I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

He didn’t want us to “fill” our life with competing, but desires us to experience life “full” of contentment and joy. In order to do that we need to live by His standards and not the world’s. Society tells us to add all these things to our resume, but God never intended us to be or do everything.

I just recently read a book by Jen Hatmaker, called For the Love; Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards.  Jen gives some straight talk about how our culture breeds wrong thinking, contrary to God’s intentions.  She says some things up until now I have only been brave enough to think.  I admire her honesty, courage and humor.

You will laugh, nod your head in agreement, be refreshed, and most of all begin to, as Jen says, “Break free of guilt and shame by dismantling the unattainable Pinterest life.”

Stop filling your life, and begin to experience the full life Jesus promised.

Are you in a valley right now, staring at a mountain you did’t expect? Maybe the mountain seems so overwhelming you can’t imagine being on top, let alone getting on the other side. Is God really with you? Does He care about your struggle?

Imagine taking a deep breath and stepping back so you can see not just the mountain you are facing but the entire range of mountains. The psalmist prompts us in Psalm 121:1-2 to look higher than the massif to the One who created them.  Your help will be found there.

This psalmist later reminds us a few verses later, “The Lord watches over you.”  He is the “shade at your right  hand.” He’s as close as your shadow. Like your shadow, He will be with you every step of the way. He doesn’t want you to take even one step alone.

In sunlight your shadow is clear, but when things get gray and dark our shadow is hidden. It can be the same with God. Because we can’t see Him, we think He isn’t with us. He may appear to fade or disappear completely as the cloudy circumstances of life roll in. If you pay attention and focus your thoughts on Him, He will show up in a friend’s hug, a sweet word from a co-worker, an encouraging verse or devotional seemingly written directly for you, or even shade at your right hand in the blistering sun.

Can’t even muster the strength to look up right now? Your loving heavenly Father is close enough to place His strong hands under your chin and help you even lift your eyes to Him. Just ask Him, or recite this Belief to yourself over and over until you can lift your eyes unto the hills. I am continually surprised how declaring truth makes a difference in my mental strength and attitude.

The church has become a collection of individuals, due at least in part to the prevailing mind-set of individualism in our culture.  I want to offer what I see as the principal solution to overcoming the devastating effects of individualism on our search to belong. The answer is simple and straightforward: We must have a common purpose. We must once again come together around a set of shared beliefs and values.

Based on his extensive research of the social world of the first-century church, historian Wayne Meeks has said: “One peculiar thing about early Christianity was the way in which the intimate, close-knit life of the local groups was seen to be simultaneously part of a much larger, indeed ultimately worldwide, movement or entity.”[i]  At a basic level, community unites us to a purpose bigger than our own lives as individuals.

 [i] Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1983), 75.

In his gospel, John introduces the coming of Jesus with these words: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”[i] Jesus always deals with us in truth but does so in a gracious way.

Jesus tells us that we are sinners—those who have offended God—and he says it because it’s true. Hearing this may be, and certainly was in Jesus’ day, offensive to some. But in his relationships with others, Jesus always spoke to them on the basis of truth. When Jesus met the woman at the well in Samaria, he confronted her with the truth of her failed marriages and current “live-in” situation.[ii] When he dealt with the woman caught in adultery who was about to be stoned by a group of hypocritical men, he identified her actions as sinful.[iii] However, in contrast to the religious leaders of his day, Jesus tells us the truth in a way that is filled with grace.  For sinners, Christ graciously died on the cross to pay the debt we owed for our sins. For the Samaritan woman at the well, he offered “living water” as a real solution to her broken life. For the woman caught in adultery he rescued her from a lynch mob by creatively chasing them away.

For Jesus, grace without truth is not real grace—it’s a lie that is ultimately destructive and harmful to the person. Yet truth without grace is no better—it fails to offer the hope that change is possible. The alternative to our contemporary tolerance is to do what Jesus did—dealing with others in “grace and truth.” As Christians, this means that we must learn to  uphold the basic elements of the Christian faith as revealed in the Bible while faithfully dispensing this truth in a gracious way.

To do what Jesus did should go a long way toward preventing spiritual abuse and legalism. The apostle Paul confirmed the teaching and practice of Jesus by saying that we should “speak the truth in love.”[iv] Whenever this takes place in Christian community, “the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”[v]

[i] John 1:17.

[ii] See John 4:1–42.

[iii] See John 8:1–11.

[iv] Ephesians 4:15.

[v] Ephesians 4:16.

Robert Wuthnow’s research revealed that when the average small group member would share a particular struggle in his or her life, along with the decision on how to handle the struggle, other group members were not in a position to challenge what was shared — even if they sense that the decision being made might harm the other person. The most common response in a group is to say nothing; the most aggressive response is to timidly suggest that this isn’t the course of action they would personally take. Now, if the decision involves the breed of cat to purchase or the menu selection for an upcoming wedding anniversary, then a nonchallenging response is appropriate. But what if the decision is to leave one’s spouse, or to buy something that will put a person in massive debt, or to embrace the view that all religions have a valid path that lead to the same God? Or more realistically, what if the issues involve a strained relationship or making a career change? Applying Scripture to such practical issues is central to living as a follower of Jesus Christ, yet many small groups fail to consistently do this.

We define a “co-dependent” person as someone who enables a person to continue in his or her destructive behavior, such as alcohol or substance abuse. And there is a slight difference between a codependent person and a tolerant person.  The difference is determined by the nature of the behavior of the other person: If the behavior is seen as moral and nondestructive to herself and others, then the confronting person is considered tolerant; if the behavior is immoral and destructive to herself and others, then the confronting person is considered codependent.

Are our small group relationships merely tolerant—or even worse, codependent?  Or are they based on a set of shared, mutual convictions about the things that lead to thriving, healthy relationships?  The Christian faith offers us a basic set of beliefs, values, practices, and virtues that Christians believe are essential for a constructive and fruitful life.  The Word of God is powerful to effect change and transformation in the lives of people, but it must be applied in to our relationships, a practice that rubs against our ingrained cultural individualism.  Consider the words of the apostle Peter:

“His [God’s] divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”  (2 Peter 1:3–11)

In this passage, we find a basic and essential set of beliefs, values, practices, and virtues set out for us, which still leave room for disagreement on the nonessentials. As Robert Wuthnow has suggested, one of the major problems with the typical small group in America is that people do not enter the group with a common understanding and commitment to the basic tenets of the Christian faith. They may acknowledge that their church has a doctrinal statement of beliefs, but often they do not understand the relationship of these beliefs to daily life and therefore are not really committed to them for everyday living. These beliefs, which form the bedrock of Christian identity and practice, have no practical influence in the small group. Instead, everyone has their own individual idea or opinion as to what the Christian life is all about.

Anyone who was born after World War II feels the impact of individualism every day. They really have no concept of an alternative society — one based on community and rooted in common values and purposes. Because they’ve never experienced the alternative, they have a hard time seeing the problem with their individualism. Changes in the use of technology and the rise of social networking, email, and online “communities” only make the problem of individualism worse.  Online communities lack the permanence that we associate with real-world communities.  If past history is any guide to the future, users tend to switch from one community to another based on personal interest and their need at the time, from services like MySpace, to Facebook, to Twitter, to whatever is next.

The breakdown of our common beliefs and purposes has not only plagued American society but the American church as well. The “hard to swallow” premise I am making here is that today’s church is not a community; it is a collection of individuals. This is not to place blame on church leaders or parishioners but is simply descriptive of the way things are. The pervasiveness of individualism in the church is one of the primary sources of frustration for its leaders, and it has caused many a pastor or priest to scold their people for their lack of commitment to the church. Only now are we beginning to understand how unrealistic this call to commitment is, and why it is unlikely to bear the desired fruit, given the lifestyle advocated by an individualistic culture.

After finishing his work of creation, God made only one adjustment to his original design—the addition of human community.  Genesis 2 is clear that man was not made to be alone.[i] Because it reflects the way God designed us, many people do have a longing to make a commitment to a community. Deep down, people want community, but they don’t know how to get it.

[i] See Genesis 2:18.

We’ve been called the “me culture” by many culture specialists, and our focus on the “individual” goes beyond issues of human dignity, rights, or even the celebration of human uniqueness and diversity. All of these are valued in healthy communities. Individualism, however, is a way of life that makes the individual and his or her wants, needs, and desires supreme or sovereign over everything else. Individualism places a higher value on:

• Lawsuits…                         over Reconciliation

• Individual Rights…          over Community Responsibilities

• Career Advancement…    over Company Loyalty

• Cynicism…                         over Trust

• Relative Truth…               over Absolute Truth

Individualism, where the wants and desires of the individual take precedence over all else, has no place in Christian community.  For Christians, Christ is valued over all others.[i] The Christian faith boldly and counter-culturally invites us to think of others as more important than ourselves.[ii] A culture of individualism means that when we gather in a room,  we gather as a collection of individuals who are primarily concerned about our own wants and needs, not as a community united around a common cause, concern, or purpose.  What makes us unique and different is more highly valued that what we have in common.

Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that prior societies did not even have a word for the phenomenon we now refer to as individualism, because in their time there were no individuals who did not belong to a group.  The idea of being completely isolated and cut off from any form of community was inconceivable.[iii] Today, it’s the norm. We have become, in the words of Locke, solo sapiens.

Most Americans tend to see individualism as a positive trait, something that is reflective of their rights to exercise liberty and freedom.  Individualism is seen to promote free will, free choices, free markets, and good self-esteem. Yet after more than sixty years of trumpeting the virtues of unrestricted individualism, we are coming face-to-face with the dark side of individualism, particularly as we find ourselves lonely and isolated from one another.[iv]

John Locke, chairman of the Department of Human Communication Sciences at the University of Sheffield in England, has written about our contemporary social dysfunction in his book The De-Voicing of Society: Why We Don’t Talk to Each Other Anymore. He labels our Western condition atomization — the fact that people today tend to drift away from each other, rather than remaining connected in close-knit community. Like many sociologists and culture experts, he finds the modern rise of individualism in post-World War II America.[v]

Peter Block, in his timely book, Community: The Structure of Belonging, speaks about the danger of thinking that societal change is possible through a focus on the individual alone: “Individual transformation is a more popular conversation, and the choice not to focus on it is because we have already learned that the transformation of large numbers of individuals does not result in the transformation on communities.  If we continue to invest in individuals as the primary target of change, we will spend our primary energy on this and never fully invest in communities.  In this way, individual transformation comes at the cost of community.”[vi]

 Individualism diminishes our sense of community. Education and culture expert E. D. Hirsch, the author of Cultural Literacy, provides a list of key people, events, and literature that have helped to define America’s vision, values, and purpose. He suggests that the American people should be literate about and share a common understanding of these matters. For example, Abraham Lincoln’s name is contained in the list of key people. When Lincoln’s name is mentioned, there should be shared knowledge among Americans that he was the sixteenth president of the United States. In addition to this factual piece of information, an emotional response should arise concerning an important document signed by Lincoln — the Emancipation Proclamation. A bedrock value of the American society is the belief expressed in this proclamation, namely, that “all people are created equal.” Hirsch strongly suggests that if we cease to share our history and a common belief as a people, we will cease to be Americans.[vii] In other words, there is a huge difference between being an American and being a group of individuals who happen to reside on American soil

[i] See Philippians 3:7 – 11.

[ii] See Philippians 2:3 – 4.

[iii] Quoted in Locke, The De-Voicing of Society, 125.

[iv] See E. D. Hirsch Jr., Cultural Literacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987).

[v] John L. Locke, The De-Voicing of Society: Why We don’t Talk to Each Other Anymore (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 122.

[vi] Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging (San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008), 5.

[vii] See Hirsch, Cultural Literacy, xvii.

The Bible clearly teaches that God intends to accomplish his primary purposes in this world through his church. The first Christians understood that a decision to follow Christ also included a decision to make the church the hub of their world, even when it required the abandonment of existing social structures. Yale University professor Wayne Meeks makes this point, based on his meticulous research of the early church: “To be ‘baptized into Jesus Christ’ signaled for Pauline converts an extraordinary thoroughgoing resocialization, in which the sect was intended to become virtually the primary group for its members, supplanting all other loyalties.”[i] The experience of authentic community is one of the purposes God intends to be fulfilled by the church.

Some of you may have tried church and have given up (if not literally, perhaps emotionally), because you were receiving a minimal return on your investment of precious time. Some of you stopped attending, not because you were against church but because you found its impact not significant enough to make the short list of activities for which you had time. I suspect you may be more ambivalent toward church than against it — a reasonable attitude if you see church as merely another world to manage. Scriptures tell us that God intends the church to be the very hub at the center of one’s life and community.

If the church is going to accomplish this divinely inspired purpose in a postmodern world, it will need some restructuring. In a speech to a group of pastors, Lyle Schaller, a leading church consultant, has suggested what this restructuring might entail: “The biggest challenge for the church at the opening of the twenty-first century is to develop a solution to the discontinuity and fragmentation of the American lifestyle.”[ii] The church of the twenty-first century must do more than add yet another relational world to an already overbooked society; it must design new structures that help people simplify their lives and develop more meaning, depth, and purpose in their experience of community.

From Connecting Church 2.0 (release date Feb. 15, 2013)

[i] Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1984), 78.

[ii] From a speech given by Lyle Schaller at a Leadership Network Conference in Ontario, California, October 1998.