This is one of the most powerful things that is taught in Choices.

So why is it so hard to accept the gifts others so readily see in you?

You are not alone in this. It is one of the issues I struggle with based on my core tape: “I’m not good enough”.

When at Choices and when I am in my normal “human-ness” is when I have expectations for someone on what should happen for them, that is when I have missed the very miracles that God had placed me in position to see. When I am in my normal “human-ness” is when someone walks through the door on Wednesday and I hope they won’t be in my small group. That person was then ether the first person to make a beeline to my group or who at a later time I was to realize they were the one person I had needed to know.

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Joy

Joy is one of my criteria words. It was hard earned. I thought all I wanted to be was happy. But happy has limitations, joy knows no bounds.

Amanda Pickens and I were talking this week about times we felt significant. I proceeded to tell her my true mountaintop story.

I was 20 years old, the summer between my sophomore and junior years at the University of Missouri (Mizzou). I got offered the job to spend the summer working in Colorado at a kid’s camp. I had never been to the mountains. After working the better part of 2 months at an elevation of 9,500 feet I was in really tremendous condition. Toward the end of the camp, we took the older kids on a campout near Breckenridge, at about the 10,000 foot level, just below treeline. We were just below a major reservoir sandwiched between a 13,000 foot mountain and a 14,000 foot mountain. In mountain climbing parlance, climbing a 14,000 foot mountain was significant.

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One of the things we do in Purpose is to tell people about finishing the Choices training. To do so, you must sponsor someone and come back and TA. I think some people continue to be in their fears about becoming a TA, hearing their tapes: “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not smart enough”… on and on.

I have information for you: you are good enough and you are smart enough and you do matter. But most of this is what you don’t know, so it doesn’t really help does it?

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Dr. Clayton Oliphint, our pastor, taught on Thessalonians 5: 11-24 a couple of weeks ago and I found my notes from his sermon. Thessalonians was for me a powerful and positive writing about the human and Christian condition, of course written by the ultimate “green”- Saint Paul.

So I want to point out some of his direct comments from Clayton with comments following from me at the end.

Thessalonians 5: 11-24

11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

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One of the “features” of Choices is talking about and discovering “trying is lying.” To the point that many of us use it in everyday circumstances to make points and to show people what it meant to go through Choices. So I was feeling pretty full of myself when I was reading a chapter in Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. (I know, I know he is showing up a lot lately… well there may be a good reason for that as I will try to explain.)

In Chapter 12 of his book entitled “Faith”, he goes on and on about people trying to do good and to be good. All about people trying to be good Christians and failing. I was thinking to myself, obviously without any divine intervention as has occurred to Lewis on many occasions in his life and writings, well if he had only gone to Choices, he would know all about “trying”.

I kept on reading and realized, or should say had it pointed out to me, that what Lewis was saying was that: “All trying leads to Failure”.

You can’t try to be good, you can’t try to be a better Christian, mother, father, daughter, son, employee, employer or can accomplish whatever it is that you want in your life by trying.

And here is what he says exactly:

“Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get into Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

I’ll say it again: “a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

What would your life be like if you knew that a gleam of Heaven was already inside you?

How about if you just live your life like a gleam of Heaven is already inside you?

Life wouldn’t be so trying… would it?

May the gleam of Heaven within you, shine to all around you and lead you and them into a new relationship with God, Love, Durk

Suzy and I were driving back from Colorado a couple of weeks ago. We had left Aspen with Rick and Linda eating bacon and making plans for the new day, one hour at a time, and were headed back to Dallas being beckoned by my daughter who was undergoing emergency kidney stone removal. Outpatient and successful, thank you for all of the prayers. As we were approaching New Mexico the sun was setting in the west, as it always does, and we were approaching an area of rain to the East of highway 25. We began to see the edge of a rainbow to the south in the direction we were driving. It got brighter and brighter the further south we drove, when it went into a beautiful full 180 degree arc from horizon to horizon. This went on for 10-15 minutes when this rainbow was joined by a second rainbow on the north end of the storm. We watched and followed and were in awe of this rainbow for 30-40 minutes, it finally disappearing as we went into the last mountain range before entering New Mexico. WOW.

Did you know that in the bible rainbows symbolize God’s (visible) covenant with mankind?

Knowing that, do you believe God make rainbows just for beauty’s sake? God has a purpose for everything that is made. Just as God has made you

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Partly inspired by the song that includes the line: “Rocky Mountain Climbing” and my impending move, with the lovely Suzy, to Colorado, I thought I would share some wit and wisdom from my point of view. (Distorted though some of you may think.) Today I want to acknowledge Doris Stone of the 37^th Power Group who sent a great clip from a book she is recommending called “The Traveler’s Gift”. I have had this writing in my heart for a few days and have just been a little too busy to get it sent out. What tape am I playing in my head with that self defeating game?

So energized by Doris, I want to share with you something from C. S. Lewis’ book “Mere Christianity”.

As an introduction, I have used the term, borrowed from Thelma, “Act your way into a feeling.” Quite often, I have had many people ask what that means or how to use it. I have probably given them some lame reasoning and paths to follow. And then I read this. It is from Chapter 9 and the title of the chapter is: Charity.

“… Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When we are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

…the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on- including people he could not even imagined liking at the beginning. (Sounds like Wednesday of Choices doesn’t it?)

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