How to identify your idols

David Powlison’s list of questions in Seeing With New Eyes are good for a diagnostic test on our lives now and again to help us identify idols.

1. What do I worry about most?

2. What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live?
3. What do I use to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?
4. What do I do to cope? What are my release valves? What do I do to feel better?
5. What preoccupies me? What do I daydream about?
6. What makes me feel the most self-worth? Of what am I the proudest? For what do I want to be known?
7. What do I lead with in conversations?
8. Early on what do I want to make sure that people know about me?
9. What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?
10. What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?
11. What is my hope for the future?

(Taken from a post on TGC.)

Give it a try!  Don't share your results, etc.  This isn't one of those things, it is for you alone.

Blessed Assurance

I have an assurance that brings me peace, comfort, and joy.  Recently I'd been knocked for a spiritual and emotional loop when I tried to apply contrary opinions to the gospel that had been revealed to me years ago at the point when I truly turned my life around and was able to let go of constant doubt and worrying of whether what I was doing was worthy or not and whether I was "deserving" of salvation.

Well, here this assurance is summed up nicely in an 8 minute audio clip: http://www.gty.org/Blog/B120830 

But, mind you there is true assurance and false assurance.  Of what I speak is *true* assurance based on comprehending the objective truth of the gospel, not what some out there are selling along with books prominently featuring their photoshopped uber-white teeth.

False Prophets

"When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him." - Deuteronomy 18:22

This is intense, yet so freeing hearing it from another... 

Once a false prophecy is spoken over a sincere but undiscerning believer, this supposed divine "word" becomes a chain about his neck. For when it does not come to pass, the condemnation will wear him down, cause him to question his relationship to God or his very salvation, or may turn him bitter toward the Lord whom he believes promised it in the first place. Wherever he goes, he will hear the clink and drag of those formidable links, ever reminded that he must have done something wrong, or that God really doesn't care.

"Wear him down"... no kidding!   Luckily though I have a deep enough faith that it didn't cause me to be bitter with Him and I've no question in my salvation, unfortunately I allowed it to cause me to be bitter with others that I love along with being disappointed in myself for following emotions rather than discernment.  

Sweet Tooth

So I see a homeless dude scarfing something out of a can like he hadn't eaten in forever and I ask Nikki "give me a 5 please, I'm going to grab a drink and get this guy some cookies." She let me know all she had was change and the drink was a stretch, then finds some random ones in her wallet she swore weren't there before. So I head into the store and grab my drink and go up to the counter and grab some of the fresh baked cookies. The guy at the counter recognizes me from something I did for him in the past and tells me "the cookies are on me tonight" without any mention of what they were for. I then take them out to the homeless dude who lights up and says "how did you know I had a sweet tooth", grinning so big literally showing that single tooth (which is kind of odd as Nikki said "make sure not to get macadamia nut cookies", not even knowing the dude was literally toothless.) One of those moments you only get when you show a little love and expect nothing in return.

Competition

One of my favorite movies has been "There Will Be Blood" as the worst of me identified with Daniel Plainview. In the movie he says the following lines that I told myself I really related to: 

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money I can get away from everyone. I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built up my hatreds over the years, little by little." 

The problem is, this sort of competition is very un-Christ-like. Actually, this is downright evil. But I could sadly feel I identified with that and actually relished in in such a thought in an oddly perverse manner.

I had operated like this for years in my career. You could find me with a book studying for the latest certification I was after, etc. so I could prove I was more worthy than those around me and when I’d climbed to the top of the pile, I’d jump to a bigger one. I even did this in other areas of my life including family, social, and even church circles. It was a disaster because I saw everyone else as someone to be better than and their accomplishments were not things to be happy about, but something to strive beyond. My relationships never grew correctly with those I saw as competitors and I lost lots of opportunities to truly show the love of Christ.

So, are you measuring yourself to others? Do you find yourself being disappointed when others experience successes, or do you become covetous of their advancement? Do you constantly try and point out why you are more worthy of something than others, or how much more you are doing than someone else? These questions are not asked judgmentally, but in the spirit of personal knowledge as I am guilty of them all. If you do these too, perhaps take a moment to read and pray on the following article: Competing Against Other Christian’s is it Wise?

In the article the author states the following which is rather humbling “...we are to measure ourselves against God not other Christian’s. If we measure ourselves against each other we become high-minded, arrogant, prideful and hurtful to others. But if we measure ourselves against our LORD Jesus, we see ourselves impotent, weak, needy, and thankful of His blessings.”

It’s so wonderful to feel the grip of the competitive drive rooted in my own insecurity and selfishness that ruled my life and ruined relationships for so long being loosened dramatically recently and I hope and pray for others struggling with the same to start experiencing freedom too!

Love is...

Tim's Telling's initial post and official introduction

Welcome to "Tim's Tellings".  Yeah, that's pretty cheesy but all the good URLs were taken.  With a little help of the thesaurus I grabbed that "telling", which is synonymous with "revealing", but there is a little word play there too.  I guess in a way I wanted a place to "reveal", and work some things out in text as I find it rather cathartic.

I've had another blog out there for years.  Some of what was in it was gold, the rest was just black sand.

I wanted a new start for a blog, but I also wanted some of that gold to be placed here too. Meaning, while there will be new posts arriving here, there will also be old posts posted with their original dates so they can be retained for here on out so feel free to look "backwards in time" rather than at just new posts.

After I finish cleaning the gold from the other blog, the black sand will be thrown back in the river.  Don't worry, it won't be missed.