Are You Fully Awake?

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

Technology has almost gotten to the place where it can completely enfold your senses. LCD screens are getting bigger, as have theater screens. Surround sound is old, optical cables are in. The latest generation of video consoles are nearly astounding in their realism. It makes one wonder what comes next. As the virtual world gets more and more real, the real world seems less and less appealing. After all – why live in the imperfect when you can completely customize the virtual? But with all the real living that’s possible for us – who really has time to invest in virtual living?

Then the morning news leaves off where my ipod takes over, email picks up where that leaves off, then the phone starts to ring, appointments pile up, time falls behind, errands accumulate… Before you know it, a blaze of activities, one begins before the others leave of. Books absorb us. Conversations distract us. All these things can “transport” us because our “thinking” is taken to some place else. They compress time because hours fly by. They demand our attention. But what is being taken from us? Are we choosing to apply our attention where it matters?

The wise advice of scripture is that we don’t “boast about tomorrow” (living too much in what hasn’t happened yet – James 4), nor do we live trapped in what’s already taken place (“forgetting what lies behind, we strain toward what’s ahead” – including both past successes and past victories – Philippians 3) and we avoid anything that would diminish our awareness in even the slightest way (“avoid drunkenness – it leads to debauchery” – Ephesians 5).

More and more, I’m convinced that you can string together a whole life of intermediate good things, distracting pleasures or really, really pressing and “important” things… One taking over from the other, so that they keep our minds off dreams, ultimate ends, great possibilities and being fully alive in any given moment. In fact, we can go day to day completely “occupied” without ever really even thinking at all.

In stark contrast to all this is the principle that we were made to be fully alive which is to be “awake”, “aware” and making choices. Yesterday mattered. It was important, not a place holder. It was meaningful for more than just another 24 hours spent en route to something else that would matter. And further more, some part of you died while it happened. So what did you trade it for? Did you really live yesterday? Did you live well? Because today is the beginning of a new chance to be fully alive and fully awake. What will you do with it?

We’ve been getting enough great questions for our current teaching series that I’d like to extend it to the end of February. This Sunday, we’ll take a break from our “Deep Questions” to take a look at spiritual awareness, “staying in the game” and some of what’s holding us back with Norm Bishop. You can tune into the podcast or visit our website for directions.

I hope you fully live each moment between now and then,

Chris

REMOTE CONTROL PULPIT
For the first 6 weeks of the new year, the teaching segment is completely at your disposal. Have you ever wanted something said to the people you live and work beside? Have you ever wanted to ask a question of your own? The whole series will be available for free on CD and DVD so it can travel around. Hit reply to submit a question.

THIS SUNDAY
Spiritual awareness, “staying in the game” and some of what may be holding you back with Norm Bishop.

NEXT SUNDAY
Rounding off a triplet of questions about certainty. Two Sundays ago was, “What about heaven and hell?”, last Sunday was, “Is Jesus the only way?” and next Sunday will be, “How can we really be sure?”

OUR DIGITAL CONGREGATION
There are several hundred people who are a part of the Thomas Question though they never set foot in our Oakville facility. Our digital congregation is as important to us as any of our local connections. Let us know how we can serve you better.

Pain and Beauty

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

Have you ever noticed how a thin layer of ice can turn the most ordinary objects into other worldly examples of beauty? Yes, sadly, it’s true – southern Ontario has only just recently joined the rest of North America now firmly in the grip of winter. Monday’s ice storm may have burst our glorious little pocket of global warming but it also left an unpredictable layer of magic around each corner as it lights up trees and power lines and fence posts.

Here’s something to consider, however, about the beautiful scenes it provides. The very same thing which makes this picture beautiful, also killed more than 70 people along the way (according to the latest news reports). And such is the mixture of things – there is pain in beauty and sometimes beauty in pain. What is a boon to some is the end of all boons to another. And on the very same day, a bride can be praying for clear skies on her wedding and a farmer begging for storm clouds to feed dry fields. One will be elated at the other’s tragedy.

We know there are things which are beautiful and things which are painful, but we struggle to come to terms with things that are both. As an example, I spent years in an employment situation which did little more than gnaw at my insides on a daily basis. In fact, the only thing which kept me going was a stubborn refusal to quit without some sense of breakthrough or a some grand lesson learned. Eventually, I had to realize that life simply wasn’t long enough to spend a lot of time “peeing into hurricane force winds”. So I quit without a pronounced sense of either. It wasn’t until years after the fact that I began to see some of the beauty in what had occurred and the new kind of person the pain made possible. It doesn’t mean the pain wasn’t painful – it just means I was able to turn it into something else.

In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis said pain shatters the illusion that all is well and “plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.” Pain is feedback, it’s truth attempting to gnaw through the layers of stuff we’ve told ourselves instead. Every time you step on a sprained ankle, it shouts a desperate truth through your nerve endings, “Something is not right.” And even if that pain tell is just the truth that our lives will end, this world is not our friend and we were meant for something more – even in this regard, it can be beautiful in the end if we let us tell us it’s truth.

What is pain telling you? What could it tell you if you let it?

This Sunday we’re continuing our series “Deep Questions, Messy Answers” with a slight change to the order (you can visit our website or tune into our podcast.) The question, “Is Jesus Christ the only way?” was submitted this week as a follow up to last week’s teaching and I think it would be good to address them back-to-back. Remember, it’s not too late to submit your questions about God, life or other things that come to mind (hit reply).

I hope to see you there and I hope you bring someone with you,

CSW

REMOTE CONTROL PULPIT
For the first 6 weeks of the new year, the teaching segment is completely at your disposal. Have you ever wanted something said to the people you live and work beside? Have you ever wanted to ask a question of your own? The whole series will be available for free on CD and DVD so it can travel around. Hit reply to submit a question.

LAST SUNDAY
Heaven, hell and the good people from other religions. You can visit our website or tune into our podcast.

THIS SUNDAY
One last look from a slightly different angle, "Is Jesus Christ the only 'way'?"

CD's AND DVD's
The first batch of CD's and DVD's will be avaible mid way through the series and the second at the end of the series.

Astonishing by Accident

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

We have done truly daunting things together without even trying. Consider the Library of Congress on Independence Avenue in Washington, DC. It’s the largest library in the world with more than 130 million items on 530 miles of shelves – which is enough to stretch from our theater in Oakville to Raleigh, North Carolina.

That may not seem all that impressive until you consider the density of information. How many hundreds of pages-per-inch of data does that represent? And it would take you more than a dozen hours to drive through all that information on 1-95, never mind how long it would take to compile and read even just a fraction of it. And how many person-hours does it represent in terms of the time it took to think it, write it, edit it and collect it? Truly astonishing.

Now if you set out to accomplish such a task ON PURPOSE – to accumulate such an astonishing array of information – I think it might break our minds to even think of it. How could you organize, resource and oversee such a mammoth undertaking? How could you inspire – on purpose – so many people to write so many things with such passion? Obviously, you couldn’t. But what is impossible for us to do intentionally and on purpose happens accidentally and all by itself as the human race simply goes about it’s business with millions of people asking and answering their questions and writing down their thoughts as they go. I think that sentence is worth thinking about. The accidents of how you actually live all the time trump the intentions of how you try to live only some of the time.

It’s the problem of litter in reverse. If you get a million people to do a thing only as large as tossing a single napkin out their window, it becomes an enormous problem. One that would cost us millions of dollars to clean up. In similar fashion, millions of people simply writing down their best thoughts has become the Library of Congress – a thing so large and mind boggling we couldn’t have done it intentionally.

I believe a similar dynamic applies in any Kingdom endeavor. Near impossible tasks can occur naturally and organically as a result of many people simply pursuing the Jesus based life with passion. What none of us could ever hope to accomplish strategically and intentionally will happen naturally when enough of us care enough about some piece of the Kingdom to write it on our bathroom mirror and attempt to live it out. All our “on purpose” sentences are like dust flakes compared to the mountain sized message of who we really are.

As a result, I think we sometimes put too much stock in what we hope to “engineer” in terms of impact. We think, “I’ll say this and do such and it will have this effect…” But the net effect of thousands of examples of sincere living would overwhelm such tiny isolated initiatives. The few sentences we design on purpose are drowned in the collective buzz of who we really are in every other way. So our best hope is to simply mean it – as often as we can – as much as we can – and as deeply as we can. Spread across many lives, this collective “noise” of sincere living would become a Library of Congress sized message about a whole other way to live life.

Just a thought…

We’re continuing our series answering the questions you’ve been asking (visit our website or tune into our podcast.), and this Sunday we’ll be focusing on heaven, hell and the good people from other religions. It’s not to late to submit your questions, so hit reply and let us have it. And for those of you who have been asking, there will be a 2 week delay in making the CD’s and DVD’s available – so be patient!

I hope to see you there, and I hope you bring someone with you.


CSW

REMOTE CONTROL PULPIT
For the first 6 weeks of the new year, the teaching segment is completely at your disposal. Have you ever wanted something said to the people you live and work beside? Have you ever wanted to ask a question of your own? The whole series will be available for free on CD and DVD so it can travel around. Hit reply to submit a question.

LAST SUNDAY
Jonah's whale, 6 days of creation and other improbable things explained... Visit our website or tune into our podcast.

THIS SUNDAY
Heaven, hell and the good people from other religions.

A SIDE NOTE
This past Sunday was our largest yet. To all who visited for the first time - we would love to be your church. To all of you not-so-new remember that the best kinds of churches are built from the lobby out. There are already more than a few "Thomas Question" stories about great relationships that began with a single handshake. Why not start another one?

Your Other Resolution Part 2

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

I want to take a risk by stating something emphatically. I think the single most important of all human resources is inspiration. Think about it. The burning inner energy to create some thing we’ve visualized is what precedes all great endeavors. Were it not for that initial picture of some “what if” coupled with a surge of desire, we never would have taken the first few steps.

You could make a strong case that this is the attribute which most links us to God’s image. After all, He is first and foremost The Creator. You could even take it a step further and say He is the embodiment of a loving, creative impulse.

With all these things in mind, I want to suggest that you are most like God when you are inspired. You are most like Him when you are capable of creating. What steps have you taken to create that kind of context in your life? Do you only ever get there infrequently or as a result of accidents you don’t understand? Or are you gradually collecting the principles and lessons which have helped you understand the “physics” of inspiration?

It’s a potentially arrogant thing to recommend your own messages, but I’d like to risk it. I stand behind last Sunday’s teaching because I think it’s something noticeably absent from our vocabulary of thought. We don’t take “rest” seriously, and too often, we don’t take them at all except as a last resort. That’s foolish. It’s like deciding you’ll only fill up your car once it’s already run out of gas and glided to a stop on the side of the road. That’s terribly inconvenient. And it often takes a long, empty, time-consuming walk to bring back a small bit of gas in a can. Not exactly a potent image of abundant living.

Perhaps one of the reasons our gospel has become a spray of chattering words is that our lives no longer burn with an obvious advantage – the heat of some other-worldly joy. I want to challenge you again as you take your first few tentative steps into a whole new year. Let’s give due consideration to the other kind of New Year’s resolution. What about a little “play” on purpose?

I’m renewing my resolve, all over again, to NOT make the choices that would have me dragging my sorry self through another year’s worth of a half-life.

This Sunday is the first in our new series for the new year focusing on the questions you’ve been asking and the question I’m going to start with is this: “Was a man named Jonah physically swallowed by a physical fish for 3 physical days?” Now before you say, “I’m just not into Jonah”, consider the rest of what this is about: the believability of God, the role of scripture and a place for miracle. It’s not to late to contribute your ideas (just hit reply).

Otherwise, I hope to see you there and I hope you bring someone with you.

CSW

BE HEARD
For the first 6 weeks of the new year, the teaching segment is completely at your disposal. Have you ever wanted something said to the people you live and work beside? Have you ever wanted to ask a question of your own? The whole series will be available for free on CD and DVD so it can travel around. Hit reply to submit a question.

LAST SUNDAY
Your life one year from now (see above)... Visit our website and tune into our podcast.

THIS SUNDAY
Jonah's whale, 6 days of creation and other improbable things.

THE RIGHT KIND OF CHURCH
It isn't one you go to - it is one you become. And it happens in the lobby. Church isn't a 75 minute ceremony, it's a chance to do life with people you care about. Do you go have a church?