jesus – Page 2 – Ben Ward

September 2, 2009

Even in the Everyday

I read this article recently by indie music entrepreneur Derek Sivers. It’s about a lecture he went to where the idea of the story – the rise and fall of drama – is illustrated and explained. He talks about how we love stories because the pendulum swings so wildly from misery to exceeding joy. Drama is exciting. The problem, he infers from the lecture, is that everybody wants their lives to be like this. But, in reality, our lives are mostly mundane and, well, boring. He gives this as the reason why people start fights and create drama; so we can live more of the stories we love so much.

I disagree with his conclusion.

My father-in-law has been Olivia’s and my pastor since we were married. One of my favorite things that he says about a life following Jesus is that it is a great adventure (not to quote old school Steven Curtis Chapman or anything). It’s true. When the Holy Spirit is in you, you live a life that is not even imaginable without Him. You do things that make the world (and even many Christians) go, “Huh?”

Scripture says, “His ways are higher than our ways” so sometimes things don’t always seem logical, but you are persuaded to go, to follow. Jesus tells us that the Spirit is like the wind – you don’t know where it came from or where it’s going. We are supposed to be like that.

Like I shared last week, sometimes you’re just living everyday life and God drops someone in your way, changing all your plans.

Sometimes He tells you to give someone a call, or a hug, or money. Sometimes He tells you to move across the country, or the world. He’s always working in people’s lives. He’s always orchestrating His plans and He wants to use you. He wants to use me.

Sign me up.

Because I don’t want a storyless life. I want to know God and I want to see Him move in amazing, supernatural ways in unbelievable places with fascinating people.

Even in the everyday.

August 27, 2009March 10, 2015

Football Movies

So, I like football movies…

I only played for a couple years, but I think back on that time with a lot of fondness. Maybe because the practices was so incredibly grueling. I know that seems weird…you are sure that you are going to die right there on the field from pure exhaustion…I remember being so thirsty that I would suck on my sweat soaked jersey. But you don’t die, you get a water break and nasty garden-hose-pvc-pipe water tastes like Evian. The feeling afterward of having accomplished something is nothing short of exhilarating.

So, back to football movies…

I watched The Express recently and was reminded of something that I want to be a part of my life now: The head coach in the movie (Dennis Quaid) talks about how they can beat the other teams by being more prepared — by the quality they produce.

In my songwriting I want to keep pushing through until I have a song that is the absolute best it can be. There is a part of music that is intangible and you can’t control, but the part I have responsibility for, I want to be exceptional.

In my singing and guitar/keys playing I want to play the best parts possible for me. I don’t want to just play chords…I want to write parts that I have to practice! (I can’t believe I’m writing this down…) It doesn’t have to be complicated, just right. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most beautiful. But I don’t want to just settle for something because it’s just good enough.

In my relationship with God I want to press on and experience all that He has for me. I don’t want to just get by and know that I’m a Christian. I want to know more of Him. I want to see and hear things I can’t even imagine. I want Him to use me to do great things. What He designates as great — not necessarily what the world thinks is significant. I want to see Him move and touch people and shower them with grace and mercy like He has throughout history…I want to be a part of great stories that people tell years from now.

So, yeah, I like football movies…how about you?

August 24, 2009

You’ve Been Activated

Have you seen the movie Eagle Eye? Two seemingly random people are thrown together by a mysterious voice that keeps calling them with instructions. They end up working this wildly elaborate plot in supposed service to their country. I won’t ruin the ending for you (and it’s not relevant to my point).

The thing that caught my attention is the when the voice calls them for the first time. She gives them a directive and then says, “You’ve been activated.”

They are unsuspecting, normal people whose services are needed because they are in the right place at the right time.

I think God calls on us in the same way sometimes. We are going about our daily routines and “bam,” we’re called into service.

“You’ve been activated”

Last week I was heading to work when I got on the subway at the normal time and normal place. An older gentleman sat down and began to talk to me. Now, if you are familiar with NYC subways, you realize that no one talks to each other…usually ever…especially in the morning. The thing about this man is that he wasn’t annoying. He was 73 and he had chronic pain in his back. He was on his way to physical therapy in Jersey City where the doctors do not have any other options for him except live with the pain. He kept saying “I just don’t know what else I can do.”

Almost immediately I knew that God said, “You’ve been activated.” I thought, “Lord, You don’t want me to pray for this man on the quiet train, do You???”

It got even better when the man explained that he had seen a preacher on TV the night before talking about healing and he had called, but couldn’t decide whether to go…he wanted to know if I believed things like that could happen. First, I thought about how the Lord has a sense of humor. I told him I knew God could heal Him and give him a miracle. I have seen it myself.

I still didn’t know if I should pray for him on the train, but it turned out he just needed someone to tell him he should go to the church. Sometimes God just needs us to give people a prod.

You just never know when you’ll be activated. But, rest assured, God has activated others for you and He will use you if you are willing. If you and me are paying attention.

Do you have an “activation” story?

July 15, 2009

Withholding

Have you ever had a falling out with someone in your life? Have you parted ways with the possibility of never speaking to them or seeing them again? The fault may be yours, it may be theirs, or (most likely) the blame could be shared.

I have.

And then, later on, I decided I was wrong in so many ways and it was ridiculous that we weren’t friends anymore. I called to apologize and say what an idiot I had been and could they please forgive me. But, that wasn’t enough. They couldn’t forgive. They weren’t even interested in talking about the situation or the relationship.

This was painful.

Now it has been seven years. This seems crazy. We were like best friends! I sent a little note the other day and got no response. It’s possible they didn’t get it, but more likely they feel the same way they did years ago.

At what point is it too late? What constitutes the line that, after you cross, you can never go back? You see it all the time: husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and daughters, friends. Why can’t the offenses be overcome?

Jesus said it’s in my best interest to forgive:

Matthew 6:14-16
¹⁴For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 18:20-22
²¹Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
²²Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Why is it so hard? What’s going through people’s hearts and heads when they withhold forgiveness? Especially when someone asks for it.

The hardest part of my situation is that I miss the friendship. I miss the laughter, the crying, the boring, the crazy times. Maybe they feel this is the price I must pay for my offenses. But I still hold out hope that the forgiveness I long for won’t be withheld forever.

And, even more urgent: Can I somehow give forgiveness when it’s deserved and even when it’s undeserved?

May 19, 2009March 10, 2015

So I Have This Theory

So I have this theory. The simplest way to begin to explain it by using songwriting. I feel like songs are “in the air.” I, as a songwriter, reach up into the air, retrieve and assemble them, and voila: you have a song. That’s not to say it’s easy. But it is to say that the song is there — waiting to be written. (One of my all-time favorite lines from a song is by Darrell Scott: “A good song never comes to those who chase / it comes to those who listen)

That’s the start of my theory, but it expands to other areas. Prophetic words, for example. One line of thinking says that God gives a word to a person to give to another person. If that person doesn’t deliver it, then the message is not given — at least in that manner. My feeling (totally mine, I don’t know of Scripture that explains it) is that the word was “in the air” (more specifically “in the Spirit”) around that person. What it needed was a person with a prophetic bent to pick it out of the air and deliver it. It may even be possible that more than one person could hear the word. God may just be looking for someone to hear it and have the guts to deliver it. I think of Jesus with the woman at the well in the Gospel of John. He had a word of knowledge about her (she had had five husbands) and it radically changed her life. I imagine that knowledge, that word was there in the Spirit as a revelation from the Father because he knew it would be a sign to the Samaritan woman. Jesus heard it in the Spirit and delivered it.

I believe that God, at the appointed time, releases things into the Spirit. These can be creative (songs, books, dance, art, etc.), spiritual (prophetic words, theological understanding, apologetics, etc.) or scientific (inventions, cures, discoveries, etc.). Even business and political realms are wide open.

This is just a little idea that God has been sparking in me, but I was quite surprised to come across this article from New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell recently. He argues that the geniuses we herald so much (Einstein, Bell, Edison, etc.) were actually geniuses at deciphering what was “in the air.” Almost every major discovery of the modern era was simultaneously made by several people (the telephone, calculus, oxygen). Gladwell goes into detail about the scientific / cultural / educational reasons for this, but I was struck by the spiritual implications. This is exactly what I had been sensing!

So, once again, it’s just a theory, but I will be listening like crazy to hear what the Lord is saying. I want to hear. I want to discover. Help me deliver.

Jeremiah 33:3 (New International Version)

³ ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’

Proverbs 8:12 (King James Version)

¹²I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions.

(I was turned on the Malcolm Gladwell’s writing by Bob Lefsetz. I read a few New Yorker articles and was hooked. So I got his first book, The Tipping Point and must say it was great. He’s written three books and I’m working my way through all of them.

What strikes me the most about Tipping Point is the discussion of teen suicide in Micronesia and how it became the cool thing to do after a particularly charismatic teenager took his own life. Gladwell argues that there’s a tipping point because the teens that follow suit have been given social permission for the behavior they’ve only fleetingly considered. I would add a spiritual dimension to it: it’s the Satanic imitation of God. Satan is releasing evil in the spiritual realm and there are people who are susceptible to that particular influence. They grabbed it “out of the air” and acted on it.)