image by Timon Studler from Unsplash It is no secret that one of my besetting sins throughout my life has been impatience. I grew up listening to my mom constantly telling me that my personality traits of being independent, organized, and task-oriented also fed my weakness of impatience. When my mind is fixed on finishing a task, clearing my to-do list or squeezing in one last item before I wrap up, everything else takes a back seat, and anything which threatens to get in the way becomes Public Enemy Number One. I get short-tempered and snap easily at those who are too slow for my pace, since I work (and talk--and read--and move, apparently) at a rapid pace. With a sigh, I wrote patience down on my prayer journal as one of my goals for 2018--and 2019--and here I am, seemingly without any obvious improvement, still working at cultivating this elusive virtue. Why is it I wasn't getting anywhere? I would think I was fine for a stint, then something would happen--some situation would catch me off guard, or some person would just be "too much!!"--and it would happen. As when dealing with any other habitual sin, it's not a straightforward master-this-level-and-move-on-without-having-to-deal-with-it-again matter, handy as that would be. You think you've overcome this besetting sin, broken this habit; then a few weeks--days--hours--later when you least expect, it hits you. And we get discouraged, when our self-control and discipline eventually prove insufficient. This was where Walter Henegar's advice from his little booklet on procrastination came in handy. All along, I had been focusing on the actions themselves--the isolated incidents of impatience. I lost my temper just now; I spoke sharply and dismissed someone who I felt was taking too long; and so on. However, this meant reinforcing a pattern of guilt, of examining myself when it was already too late. Henegar describes how he too used this approach at first when dealing with his own habitual sin--procrastination. Like me, he quickly got discouraged, tempted to blame external situations for his regular lapses, and struggling with guilt yet without any real sense of hope in breaking out of this cycle. Eventually he realized that the right approach was to examine the sinful attitudes in his heart which were the root of the problem, rather than fire-fighting the manifestations. Though our respective habitual sins seem polar opposite, I came to the same conclusion as Henegar when I tried examining the root issues at heart of my impatience: pride. Pride in prioritizing my own agenda before people, before opportunities God had put before me. Pride in assuming my methods were better and others inferior if they took up more time. Pride in relying on that sense of achievement and success as my fulfilment and self-identity, rather than what I had in Christ. Pride in being unwilling to accept and trust in God's plan and God's timing for my life, and instead steamrollering my own plan and own timings. Realizing this transformed the way I prayed about my struggle to be patient. Instead of the well-intentioned but vague Lord help me to be more patient today (which I often forgot by the time I finished praying, and which definitely did not come to mind in time when needed later on in the day!), I found myself praying about the attitudes and priorities in my heart. Lord, help me to love others more than I love the adrenaline rush and sense of gratification I get from clearing my to-do list. Help me not to be blinded by my agenda to Your hand directing me to Your work. Help me to seek Your purpose and Your timing today, rather than mine. Help me to change the sinful attitudes I accept so unthinkingly, and to be transformed heart, soul, mind--and to-do-list! Instead of a guilt-driven pattern of sin spiraling into despair, this enables a grace-driven, humbled, yet hopeful understanding of our hearts, empowered for true change as we work at overcoming our habitual sins, and more deeply than ever aware of the grace and power of God, and where we stand before Him.
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image by Jen Kahanek from Unsplash 1. It helps you stay awake during the sermon. Embarrassing as it is to have this as the first reason, it's nevertheless the most obvious one. Let's not get defensive on this. Even if you managed to go to bed before midnight on Saturday night, chances are your body is still going to think it's naptime as you sit there in that too-comfortable chair, in air-conditioned surroundings, the peaceful atmosphere only broken by the preacher's murmuring voice...aaaaand the next thing you know you're struggling to just keep your eyelids open. Sure, have your coffee, but try taking notes. 2. You're able to see and piece together the sermon's content progression--how this point ties in to one made at the beginning, how all the points work together to address the different issues presented at the beginning... If you're just listening to it as it comes, you tend to forget what came before--you don't realize how important it is that this point was covered, perhaps, or what's the significance that it gives to the main theme. Passively absorbing in our default Sunday-morning-sponge style might allow you to gain a few insights on good days, but it seldom enables you to grasp and appreciate the sermon as a whole, as a carefully structured argument/discussion; to see those insights and points not only individually, but in context to the rest of the sermon. 3. You can look back and have a fresh experience of benefiting from that same sermon, even years later; in summarized form--handily rephrased in the way most suitable to your own learning/reading style! Talk about getting the most out of it. I have a box of old sermon note books under my window, which still benefit me when rereading them. Also providing concrete proof that my handwriting, bad as it seems now, used to be worse. 4. It challenges you to listen attentively (this is, by the way, a whole different thing from simply staying awake as in point 1) and trains you to actively process what you hear, since you're not simply transcribing verbatim what the preacher says. You have to pick out the main meaning of the sentence, determine whether it's the next point or a supporting point, and where it belongs on the page. 5. You learn to better appreciate the work and dedication that goes into preparing a sermon. We tend to take it for granted, don't we? Turn up at church every week and plop down, ostensibly to listen--in reality, try not to fall asleep--criticize the random fragments we remember hearing, because they don't make sense, they sound disjointed, you know I think I could do better than that if I tried... And we walk out feeling vaguely dissatisfied, as if the sermon vending machine didn't give us a run for our money. As a pastor's daughter I've observed how much effort and labour goes into that one hour plus sermon which we take for granted, every Sunday for years and years. Seemingly so simple, yet so unquantifiable the way other kinds of work is. Preparing a sermon is most definitely a creative process, though that's not often what we tend to think of it as. (From my own, if comparatively insignificant, experience of running this blog I know how baffling it can feel to sit down, facing a weekly deadline, and a desire to write something fresh, relevant, helpful, insightful, and yet at the same time have your brain completely blank. It's demoralizing and frustrating. Sometimes you spend hours working away at an idea, only to eventually realize it has to be scrapped. There goes all your work and time, and you're still no closer to finishing. And that's just the logistical side of the actual writing process. The spiritual aspect can be just as big of a barrier as well. You've been feeling low and disappointed in yourself recently; you question whether you've grown spiritually at all, whether you're still qualified to try and edify others after lapsing into sin or falling back into unhelpful habits...) Let's not take every sermon for granted. |
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