Why I like snowboarding

I don’t consider myself an expert snowboarder, but after six frustrating years of trying to get the moves, it finally came together two weeks ago. Truth be said, you may have the right bandana, the burton board or the flow bindings, but if you don’t have your toes to heels swing down, you’ll be down on your bum a lot.

On this last trip I had a lot of fun going down the hill. But the whole experience made me think of an entire paradigm of snowboarding and how it relates to life disciplines/spiritual disciplines. This works even better on smaller hills. It took me 3-5 minutes to make it down the hill. I picked the slope that had a few jumps on it and went down and up for four hours. On the first run I went slow, analyzing the terrain, the jumps, landings, and quality of snow. I did not go fast at all, did not expect to many things from the descend. On the way back up, sitting in the chair lift, overlooking the slope, I processed it with a friend. The next time down, I made sure I understood the terrain prior to the jump, aligned the board perpendicular to the jump. No worries about air time, the landing or speed. Back on the lift, processing what I had done and how to get better. By the end of the day it was all coming together.

By all means, I am not an expert, but the repetition of that day made me appreciate the sport even more. Sure I made mistakes, but the neat thing about the hill and the sport is that it gives you another chance… and another chance … and another chance. You are responsible and free to act. For me it was an exercise of learning from my mistakes and improving at this sport while relaxing in the nature. It helped to think that the mistakes I was making were the same every run down. I was either not aligning the board right on the ramp, did not keep my body in the right position or the landing was wrong. While I was making the same mistakes over and over, I was doing some things good–I was snowboarding. So on the way up I reviewed both the wrong and the good. I celebrated the good and worked on changing the mistakes. At the end of the day, I was one sore snowboarder… but I was a … snowboarder.

Perspectives on Lent

I grew up Baptist, where we made a tradition out of not making traditions. That sounds humorous and ironic, but it is also sad … and true.  Having spent seven years in a evangelical/reformed context, my perspective has been broadened and my eyes have been opened to the reality of tradition in our lives and its potential for enrichment.

I gave lent my attention in my early years at Moody. It started by giving up what was already easy at that time… I gave up TV. Easy to do, when you’re living in a dorm and one of your school’s in house rules is you can’t have a tv in your room or watch movies on campus. Since then, I have tried to do something for lent each year. And the time to begin is once again up0n us. In these years I have come to understand both the legalistic and idolatrous pitfalls of this self-imposed time of renunciation and reflection. It can be very negative and exhausting. But there is also a beauty to it. This year I am actually thinking of adding a spiritual discipline instead of giving something up. That is my goal in observing Lent: a time of spiritual reflection and intentional growth in my relationship with Jesus Christ. On a simplistic level, that is why the High Church  has this season incorporated into their calendar.

Lent to me is a time to reflect on how Jesus gave up so much to redeem my soul. It sounds puny and stupid to think that me giving up wearing plaid shirts in some way reflects the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ. It will be a daily reminder that will hopefully serve as a launching ramp toward spiritual meditation and insight into the depths of Christ’s Sacrifice. Now this should be our daily practice as followers of the Gospel, but I have found that taking this time to give up something and meditate on Christ’s sacrifice makes the celebration of Easter so much more special and meaningful.

So, let me encourage you to think about Lent this year. Could this be a beneficial practice for your spirituality? And one last thought… Could this be a beneficial practice to undertake as you interact with people from the High Church context (i.e. Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, etc.) and point to the Gospel truth behind the tradition of the Church?

Here are some helpful links about lent:

http://www.crosswalk.com/1187468/page0/

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2004/lent.html

Lent starts tomorrow, so no big rush…

Marriage

A while back I wrote about my trip to California. As an assignment to the conference I attended back then I was given a book to read called Sacred Marriage, by Gary Thomas. Despite the fact that I am not married, the book has been a very helpful read. I am passionate about helping people have fulfilling marriages and I hope some day to be married myself. I finished the book last night. As I flipped back through the pages I jotted down some quotes from the book. You’ve probably come across those books that begin each chapter with a famous quote or some kind of power phrase. I generally disregard them or skim over them quickly jumping to the content of the chapter. This time it was different. Thomas placed well researched power quotes that accurately described what he wanted to communicate in his chapter. Here are some of the memorable quotes. Feel free to share them with your spouse or your married friends:

Marriage is a long conversation, therefore we should seek to marry a friend (104).

Couples who give up on their marriage after only three years are like people who begin climbing the mountain and give up partway through, without ever reaching the top to enjoy the sights.

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. –Socrates (11).

Marriage is the merciless revealer, the great white searchlight turned on the darkest places of human nature – Katherine Anne Porter (27).

Marriage requires a radical commitment to love our spouses as they are, while longing for them to become what they are not yet. Every marriage moves either toward enhancing one another’s glory or toward degrading each other –Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III (39).

If you treat a man as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become the bigger and better man –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (39).

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars –Oscar Wilde (53).

We must never be naïve enough to think of marriage as a safe harbor from the Fall…. The deepest struggles of life will occur in the most primary relationship affected by the Fall: marriage –Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III (53).

Marriage is the operation by which a woman’s vanity and a man’s egotism are extracted without anesthetic –Helen Rowland (89).

One was never married, and that’s his hell; another is, and that’s his plague –Robert Burton—English Clergyman (127).

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake –Alexander Pope (127).

Because marriage, more than any other relationship, reflects God’s involvement with us and bears more potential to draw our hearts to heaven, it can more readily give us a taste of hell –Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III (127).

Merely being faithful to your spouse is quite a testimony in this society. But as you go beyond that to communicate love for your spouse in a consistent, creative, and uninhibited way, the world can’t help but notice. God will be honored –Gary and Betsy Ricucci (153).

Gifts of a loving Creator, our bodies are not barriers to grace. If we could truly accept this, then we would know God even in the ambiguous delights of our sexuality –Evelyn and James Whitehead (199).

We find God in the contact of our bodies, not just in the longing of our souls – Evelyn and James Whitehead (199).

Casual clothing, Northern Irish and tea!

Today I ran into a lady I had met earlier during the week. She is a sweet lady that serves as a director of pastoral care at a church in Northern Ireland. We had a wonderful time connecting and sharing different experiences about counseling within the church. As I walked through the hallway at the church building I ran into her. Her’s the initial dialogue we had:

Me: Hello Ann!

Ann: (looking at me confused for 3 seconds) Oh hello Filip! I didn’t recognize you. You look very…

Filip: (I was wearing a hoodie with track pants and a hat) Oh, yeah I am dressed a bit casual today. It’s not as formal as the clothes I wore the rest of the week (I mostly wore jeans and khaki pants with button down shirts).

Ann: Oh you are? I thought you were casually dressed all week…

Leave it to those Europeans to tell it straight to your face.

Nevertheless we had a wonderful conversation about driving on the right side of the road and reflecting on the great week we both had! We hugged exchanged emails and I now have a friend in Northern Ireland! The conversation left a weird taste in my mouth. I didn’t figure it out until I drove home. It was the longing for some black tea. So as I write this, I am sitting on the back porch, enjoying the lovely Wisconsin fall weather while sipping on some Black tea with a hint of milk, no sugar!

 

China.Prayer.Church

This Sunday I got to hear some amazing stories. I grew up in a fundamentalist background, was educated in a Evanghelical “high-ish” theological context where we were always reminded that while the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit have not necessarily ceased, they definitely are no longer the norm. The natural progression was to stick our noses back in our rich Theological books and focus on articulating our theology very well. And I am very grateful for my Theology. It has brought me closer to God and helped me understand my role and calling in the Church. I have also had an amazing journey of experiencing and learning to trust in God’s faithfulness to provide throughout my seven years of Theology. But then you hear stories such as this following one and it made me wonder about the time I spent educating and preparing for ministry.

Somewhere in China, this year, a little girl went to visit a family to tell them about Jesus. She went and prayed with a friend and her mother was interested to hear about Jesus. The girl told her about Jesus and the woman was converted to Christianity. A week later she was invited to come back to the same house to pray. When she got there the room was packed with people and she began to pray calling on the name of Jesus. As she was in mid-sentence in her prayer a woman in the crown yelled out. Everybody stopped and turned toward the woman. She picked up a piece of flesh from the floor and told everybody that she used to have a tumor on her neck for some years (not sure how long somewhere around 10) and as the girl prayed the tumor simply fell to the ground. Did I mention that the little girl was only 12 years old?

Second story… a man went to a village to preach about Christ. He routinely prayed and professed that Jesus Christ has the power to transform lives and even resurrect the dead. It happened that on one visit he came before a group of people and professed his faith in Jesus. A woman brought her young boy who had been dead for three days and was in the torn morgue. She brought him before the man and asked him to pray that Christ would resurrect him. The preacher became really nervous. Thinking to himself he said, “Lord, I’ve always preached that you can do this, I believe that you did do this in the past, but can you do it now, with this little boy?” He told everybody to close their eyes and pray with him. He figured it would give him a head start if nothing happened. He began praying and, again, in mid-prayer a woman’s scream was heard. It was the mother. When the preacher opened his eyes he saw the boy standing next to the woman, alive!

Miraculous healing, people resurrected from the dead, these things are happening in the Church. These stories are from China and were told to me by someone who personally knows the people involved in them. These stories make me wonder not if I am a part of the Church, but maybe if I am on the wrong side of the planet “a part” of the church.

Someone asked me why I think things don’t happen in the Church in America. I really don’t know what to say. Are we missing the faith? Are we out of tune with the Holy Spirit? Are we too educated? Are we too program focused? Are we too much in love with the possessions of this Earth?

A 12 year old through calling on the name of Jesus can be an agent of God’s miraculous healing. It seems that faith and the name of Jesus is all it takes.

A preacher prays for Jesus’ powerful work. His heart is honest–he has doubts. But Jesus shows up in a mighty way. How much faith is enough faith to be used by God in a mighty way?

Thoughts on my trip to California

The trip to LA went really well. I am so grateful for God’s provision and the generosity of the members of the church who made my trip possible, pleasant and restful.

Let’s start with the ending. Due to my wise and cheap planning I booked a flight that left LA at 1 am. Add to that the fact that i had to drop off my rental car at 7:30pm. This meant that I was at the airport for seven hours before my flight left (I actually got there at 5:45pm). Most of my time was spent putting together this video I had been planning to edit for a while. You can check it out:

The Conference

Like I said before leaving, I felt out of place at the conference, being the youngest there and pretty far away from being married. But as it turned out those aspects were really not an issue. I actually had a great time connecting with the other participants and going through the material. Much of the content was similar to the Conflict Mediation course I took at Trinity last Spring. But it was much more specific toward marital conflict. The process really came easier to me since it was the second time going through it. I was able to notice growth in confidence in my ability to mediate, listen and counsel people.

The location of the conference was at a church. The view from the church campus was amazing. I kept telling the pastors that are on staff there that I would have a hard time focusing on work with such a view. Check out this view:

One thing that ministered greatly to me is the material on the idols of the heart and idolatry. I had heard the ideas several times in the past, but this time some things clicked for me. I was able to grow a little in my understanding of the whole system. The analogy with a tree was helpful: the fruit of the tree is the idol. The idols are connected through the shoots, the idolatrous behavior and all the way down to the root of the tree, the condition of the heart. The roots of idolatry really aren’t that many. There are not that many reasons we sin. Some might be: fear, shame, pride, unbelief, etc. I’ll give you an example: if the condition of the heart is fear then it might play out in the idol of control (relationships, circumstances, finances, etc.). The conversation is much deeper and needs to be personalized to each of our hearts. But for me this was a helpful conversation. I’m finding that it’s good for my heart to go back through this material or process it with someone periodically. Something to say here about community discipleship…

The Place

The conference location was absolutely beautiful. One of my favorite site to visit is rocky mountain peaks. Even more exciting is visiting rocky shores. California has both and I got to visit both places. On Monday afternoon I was able to take a long drive on Pacific Coast Highway. I stopped in Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach. On my second stop I encountered something for the first time in my 7 years in the States. As I waited to cross the street from the Huntington Peer to the street where I had parked, I heard to gypsy women talking in the rroma language. I recognized it from the streets of Romania. And then I also heard them say something in Romanian. So on the beaches of Huntington Beach, after seven years of being in the States, I encountered my first two romanian gypsy women. I smiled and crossed the street.

Huntington Beach

Driving along the coast of the Pacific

Sunset on Ventura Beach

The People

I was so blessed by people generosity. Aside from the fact that I did not have to pay for the conference, I was also had a rental car paid for and my hotel rooms covered. God is so good to me! On Sunday I had the chance to walk a church through a meditation on Ps. 23. It’s so honoring and humbling to have the opportunity to bring God’s Word to people.

One final picture needs no explaining. This was the car I drove in California. It took a while to figure out why I was getting weird looks from Jesus fish cars.

Off to California

I’ve been trying to end this blogging hiatus for a long time. It seems that today is the day. There is a part of me that wishes to have blogged more often. There are so many pages left unwritten from the many travels of the previous months. But alas, some of our best memories are kept in our memory. Perhaps one day they will invent something to directly access one’s memories, without the need for the intermediary wordpress. Or maybe that would not be such a great idea. Anyway, a brief note about what’s coming ahead for me. In about three hours I will be boarding a plane for a 6 day trip to the sunny California. I will be attending a Conflict Mediation for marriage in Chatsworth, CA. Sunday and Monday will be chill days in Cali.

I am really looking forward to the conference. Yesterday I was joking around that I have been reading a lot of books on marriage, counseling people with marital issues, sitting in on divorce care groups… all this while being single and with no forseen future plans to be married. I almost wanted to say that it seems that my experience seems a bit backwards. But as I voiced that thought, a 76 year old man, who has been married for 50 years (I think), told me that I am actually doing things right. Most people first get married and then realize they have no clue how to love, respect, fulfill and be fulfilled. I hope he’s right, cause it sure feels uncomfortable sometimes.

The weekend will also mean a good time spend with a dear friend. We will be at the conference together and then we’ll have Saturday afternoon and Sunday to visit a couple of places in the area. The agenda has a few stops at In-n-out burger and running into some celebrities…

The Kindness of (wo)man

There is a verse in the Old Testament that is written on my mother’s grave: “What is desirable in a person is loyalty” (Prov 19:22a NRSV). It sounds a little different in Romanian: “Ceea ce face farmecul unui om este bunatatea lui” (rough translation: That which makes the charm of a person is their kindness). Anybody who has met my mother would agree that she embodied that verse.

A few nights ago, I was sitting at the exit of a church auditorium. I had just spoken a brief message during the service (you can read about how my message got to be short here), and was greeting the people at the exit. As I sat there I saw an older man coming straight at me. You know when this happens that he probably knows you or your family. He introduced himself and told me that I don’t know him but he knows my parents. In fact he did not really know my father but he knew my mother. It turns out that my mother had met his wife, who 12 years ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. My mother heard that she was in Romania seeking treatment and having a hard time with the illness. While my mother herself was battling breast cancer with chemo and radiation she went from my home town to Bucharest (3 hours away) to visit with this lady and encourage her. The wife was not there that night, but I could see from the husband how they were both moved by my mothers sacrifice and kindness. Under God’s sovereign control, my mother went to be with Him 8 years ago. That lady is a breast cancer survivor of 12 years now.

When I heard that I told the man: Praise the Lord. As the words came out of my mouth I wondered why I was able to say that. Shouldn’t I be mad that my mother, who was so kind to encourage this lady is now dead and she is living? Shouldn’t my mother at least also be alive? But my heart did not feel that way. But, I am firmly convinced that my mother is in a far better place than here. Not only is her toil under the sun over, but her testimony lives on. Here I am, almost 9 years from her death and 9,000 miles away and I run into the legacy of her kindness. I am so honored and humbled to have had such an amazing mother. I miss her greatly. It’s hard to believe I have celebrated 9 birthdays without her. But her life has such a lasting influence on mine and as I found out tonight on others as well.

Lost and unaware!

I think sometimes you feel most confident about where you are going when in reality you are so far from where you should be and so very unaware of it.

I don’t get lost very often, but when I do it is usually pretty bad. These stories hurt, but I love looking back on them, because despite the fact that they make me look stupid, they make God look glorious and in control.

Everything was set. I had my prayer letters in order, my response cards were fresh off the printer. I had made some touch ups to my video and try to iron my shirt and pants. When my host came home I told him I would need to head out a bit early because I want to get there a little before the service started. He went down to fix some dinner and I was in his office trying to print my sermon for the night. I struggled for a few minutes through printer/computer glitches and finally got stuff printed. By the time I got my sermon notes printed I was already ten minutes behind schedule. But little did I know that was just the beginning of my night.

I got into the car and started driving. I was going to be 10 min late but I had given myself a 30 min buffer so that would have still given me plenty of time. I punched the address into the gps and started following my British lady guide. I kept driving and driving, admiring and complaining the winding roads of Georgia. I hit some traffic, some construction sites, etc. After 45 minutes I wondered what my host said when he meant I would be there in 20 minutes. I began to get a little concerned, but since I was nearing the checkered flag on my gps I pushed onward. I was ten minutes away from the beginning of the church service and my british lady said I would be there in 5. Not as I had planned but still on time. The pastor called me and asked me where I was. I told him confidently that I was 5 minutes away. I hung up turned left and entered the final stretch on the map. But, as I looked around I was entering a cul-de-sac in a residential area. That’s odd, I said to myself, why would they have a church building at the very end of a cul-de-sac. “You have arrived at your destination,” said my British talking device. “What do you mean?” I answered impatiently.

I turned around and called the pastor and told him that I think I had the wrong address. The service was starting and I was at the pastor’s house, 45 minutes away from the church building. He gave me the right address and I started the trek back. I made it to the last 15 minutes of the service. The pastor had to improvise a message and I had to drive back and face the music.

While I was driving I was reminded of a verse with which Paul concludes one of his letters: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5 ESV)
I thought I was going in the right directions. I had all the right tools. Everything was set, my tie was on, the suit coat on the back seat. The gps was pointed in the “right” direction, the AC was working. But I was going the wrong direction. While I was on my way from the wrong address to the right location I had the fiercest battle. The devil was trying to attack me with all the what ifs, with all the scenarios of what the people will think of me when I do show up or how worthless I truly am. But the Holy Spirit strengthened me. I did feel regretful and sorrowful for my navigational mistake and the consequences it created at the church service. But I did not want to allow the devil to get me frustrated with myself. So I started singing, out loud. It was so humbling to walk into the church, 15 minutes before the service and the pastor stopped his message invited me up to the pulpit and told me I have 15 minutes to share what the Lord had laid on my heart. I turned to the audience and said I had prepared a 45 minute message on repentance. But I had to first ask for their forgiveness for not being there on time. I then tried to connect it with my story of getting lost and how we can falsely think that we are repented simply because we have the right tools, membership or behavior. God is calling us and leading us toward repentance.

In the end the message might have been more powerful than if I would have gotten there on time and had the chance to speak the full 45 minutes. But the important thing in this story is that despite my mistakes, God is in control and He was able to receive His glory out of the evening. Truly He makes beautiful things out of us.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that more than half of the trip was made with the red light on going on an nearly empty tank. But that’s a whole another sermon illustration.

Thoughts from my road trips

The other day I had the chance to visit The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I would not say they represent the competition of my alma-mater (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), but they certainly spin in that same circle of Evangelical Seminaries. I As I walked around I was pleasantly impressed with the look of the campus. They had a great recreational facility with an olympic swimming pool, sauna and steam room. Their library takes pride in being the largest among evangelical schools. They even had Ch. Spurgeon’s personal study Bible. The texture of the campus was also pleasant, with a red brick outside to all the buildings on campus. It was funny, from the outside you couldn’t tell which one was the chapel and which was the chapel. They each had a some kind of a steeple on top of it. Must be  a southern thing. From what I was told, they have about 4,500 students.
The overall impression I got was that SBTS is in a good place going in a good direction. Now, I am really grateful for my time at Trinity, but I wonder in the years to come about its direction. I hope and pray it is a good one.