BE PEACEMAKER STRONG

January 7, 2019 By revheff in Books Tags: church, idols, unity Leave a comment

A Book Review Amazon Declined

Rating and reputation online, feedback, user writing review.

You learn all kinds of things publishing a book.

Whenever anybody tells me they have read The Peacemaking Church, I’m so very grateful and appreciative for their investment of time and effort.

Additionally I request that they post a fair and honest review at online sales giant Amazon. Everything Baker Publishing tells me about getting my book out into the world depends upon a strong showing in these evaluations.

Twice now folks willing to do that have reported back to me getting shut out of Amazon due to their lack of purchases over the past twelve months. Go figure.

I asked one of those readers if he would grant permission for me to post his review on my blog. He graciously consented.

Pastor Heffelfinger offers valuable perspectives for the pursuit of unity among the saints. He puts before us the challenge to endeavor to be the kind of people who treasure a unified Church; who are vigilant in turning the spotlight inward to identify corrosive idols so that, as he proposes, “[T]he best fight your congregation ever experiences is the one you never get into in the first place.” The truths presented in The Peacemaking Church are weapons in a believer’s arsenal that will awaken (or perhaps reawaken) beautiful, powerful insights unique to the function of this Body to which we belong. Pastor Heffelfinger has lived out these insights, and the case he presents will only help to strengthen your own peacemaking quotient.

I wrote this book in the hopes of making readers peacemaking strong. Jan and I continue to pray that the Lord will use it to that end with whomever he will.

Thanks, Jeff, for the kindness of your favorable review and especially for ending on the word quotient!

Question: What will you do in 2019 to help strengthen your peacemaking quotient?

Dear Josh

January 18, 2016 By revheff in Personal Reflection, Uncategorized Tags: contentment, death, grief, idols, Joy, loss 7 Comments

Josh and Me (2)

Hey, bud.

Two years ago today. Goes by fast. Your damaged heart gave out. Cut down in your prime. I’ll never forget the moment I walked through the door that Saturday afternoon. Your mom trembled the horrific news of our loss. I suspect that scene will never dim in my mind’s eye.

Grief gets easier and it doesn’t. Losing you still ranks first among the hardest things I’ve ever endured. Difficult to imagine anything worse. I’ve said it so many times. No one should have to bury their child.

Honestly, son, things haven’t gotten a whole lot easier since that traumatic day. Oh don’t get me wrong. The Lord has blessed us beyond what we deserve in 2014 and 15. Two of His best gifts are named Blaise and Olivia! How about these cuties?!

But December of 2014 hit hard. Mom got diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer. Since surgery that month she’s worked hard via natural methods to beat the remaining rogue cells in her body. Just today she went to a new doc in Lakeland for the fourth or fifth time. He wants her to have a PET scan ASAP to determine just where we stand. We hope to nail down an appointment for that sometime later this week. Lots of prayers by tons of people going heavenward for Ma. So grateful for all the support.

I’m not without my own issues. Long story, but the gist of things is this. I’ve got a busted jaw. I know the irony of that doesn’t escape you. Preacher’s got a bum mandible! It’s a result of the radiation treatment for my head and neck cancer in 2005. Surgeons plan to replace the dead bone with a titanium plate on February 15. I wrote all about that here. I’m thinking of changing my new Twitter address to @robojaw. What do you think?

For the time being I’m on total medical leave from my duties at the church AGAIN. I’ve seen this movie before back in 2005. I work at my writing mostly, when pain and fatigue allow. But preaching, talking, counseling to any degree? Completely out of the question.

As you can imagine one does a lot of thinking/reflecting when largely confined to the house awaiting a jaw replacement. I keep coming back to the things I miss so much.

Like kissing your mom. Don’t give me that look. You know how crazy I am about her. Do you have any idea how much the jaw comes into play for even the slightest peck on the lips? It’s so frustrating. I do not like in the least this hindrance to our closeness.

Then how about eating? Let me tell you about feasting or the lack thereof. I cannot chew a blessed thing. Nary a bite. I dream about chomping on a blue corn chip, dining on a medium rare ribeye, or even gumming a Five Guys french fry. Can’t do it. The menu these days consists strictly of slush and mush. Nice weight loss plan but I don’t recommend it to anyone.

By the way, I wanted to keep up the tradition I started last year by dining at Emeril’s today. Dear Michelle even posted on my Facebook wall a gracious invitation to lunch. It hurt to decline, though I did ask for a rain check. I went to see finally the new Star Wars movie instead. I’m glad I waited until this anniversary day to check it out . You loved the saga so much. I think mostly you would have enjoyed episode 7. It was a comfort to me, but not at all like having Fabian serve me one of those mouthwatering duck tacos and reminiscing with him and the other terrific staff at the restaurant.

I could go on, but I’ll finish with the issue of my preaching. I had to stop cold in the middle of my series on Gen. 14. It just hurt too much to speak for any length of time. I’m on the bench, riding the pines, while others occupy MY pulpit Sunday in and Sunday out. Not fair!

Josh, I thought, I hoped, I dared believe maybe I learned in ’05 some of these lessons related to good things that I so readily turn into god things so that they become bad things. Perhaps not as much as Jesus thinks necessary for me. I just have to keep learning and relearning the main thing . . .

Jesus is enough.

My joy, contentment, satisfaction can’t depend on the presence or absence of God’s good gifts. I need to grow more in saying with Paul in Phil. 4:11-13 that I have learned the secret of being content. I need to sing with the poet more earnestly these words in Psalm 73:25-26.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Lips out of commission? Jesus is enough.

Feasting off the table? Jesus is enough.

Preaching out of the question? Jesus is enough.

Maybe I’ll get it through my thick head and slow heart this time, dude. One can only hope.

By the way, this father misses you terribly, but, and I think you won’t take this the wrong way . . .

Jesus is still enough.

He is gloriously, powerfully, graciously, abundantly, and savingly enough.

The ABCs of REC

January 7, 2015 By revheff in Peacemaking Tags: conflict, gospel, idols, interests, peacemaking, sacrifice, selfishness 2 Comments

So no doubt you get the idea behind the ABCs. The basics. The starting place. The fundamentals. To quote Coach Lombardi of Green Bay Packer’s fame on opening day of summer camp: “Gentleman, this is a football.”

What in the world is REC? Resolving Everyday Conflict.

Last Sunday we began a journey at OGC of working through this study by Peacemaker Ministries. It aims to help us navigate the troubled waters of inevitable conflict in relationships in a redemptive way. If you missed session one, you are more than welcome to join us this Sunday at 9:30 AM for part two.

In session one I did my peacemaking version of “this is a football.” I covered the ABCs of REC. Ready?

A – awareness of one’s heart. Two key texts anchored our study. James 4:1-3 gives us this building block of the ABCs.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

To deal with the symptom you have to know the cause. James makes it plain. Passions, cravings, idols of the hearts, often good things that become god things and end up bad things more than not turn disagreements into relational war. So stand guard over your heart from the get go. Be suspicious of your own desires-turned-demands that throw gasoline on the disagreement fire.

B – burdened for others’ interests. Philippians 2:3-4 shape this fundamental.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Paul assumes we will do the self-interest part of the equation. What he pleads is that we will give the same level of concern to what drives others in our conflicts. It’s not an either/or proposition; it’s a both/and one.

C – consumed with Jesus’ mindset. Paul tells the rest of the story in Philippians 2:5-11.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Imagine that. He points us to the gospel – Jesus sacrificially humbled on the cross, then gloriously exalted in the heavens. Jesus sets the pace for us. He puts the bar high by His own example. But that alone will never get us to a place of concerned deferral to others even sacrificially. Please note. A mind like this, one that looks out for interests of others to such a sacrificial degree, is yours in Christ Jesus. That’s what he wrote. It’s our very own possession. Because we are in Christ we have the supernatural strength to elude the grip of selfishness and travel the way of others-interests. That’s terribly good news.

These are the ABCs of REC. How’s your grade lately in the school of conflict resolution? Maybe you could use some remedial tutoring? Hope to see you Sunday.

Who Should Read “Crazy Busy?”

September 28, 2013 By revheff in Culture Tags: busyness, idols, priorities, stewardship, time 6 Comments

Now that I’ve read Kevin DeYoung’s new book Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem (Crossway, 2013, 124 pages), I’ve formed an opinion on this question. Probably most of us.

By the way. It delivers on the promise of brevity. I got through it in one sitting reclining on the couch while watching UCF lose to South Carolina. I thought I was perfecting my well-honed art of multitasking. Turns out I wasn’t even “switch-tasking.” See page 60 for more on that myth.

You have to love a guy – husband, father, pastor, author, conference speaker, among other things – who starts his latest book this way: “I am the worst possible person to write this book. And maybe the best (p. 11).” This kind of authorial polarization stems from the man’s aim in writing. He explains:

Some books are written because the author knows something people need to know. Others because the author has seen something people should see. I’m writing this book to figure out things I don’t know and to work on change I have not yet seen. More than any other book I’ve worked on, this one is for me.

That kind of humility draws me. I can take my cue from a guy like this. Crazy Busy is insanely good. I commend it to anyone who “feels frazzled and overwhelmed most of the time” (p. 16).

The book follows a simple and straightforward 3, 7, and 1 outline – three dangers to avoid, seven diagnoses to consider, and one thing you must do. It consists of ten chapters, 118 pages, not counting indexes.

Hello, My Name is Busy
Here, There, and Gone: Three Dangers to Avoid
The Killer P’s—Diagnosis #1: You Are Beset with Many Manifestations of Pride
The Terror of Total Obligation—Diagnosis #2: You Are Trying to Do What God Does Not Expect You to Do
Mission Creep—Diagnosis #3: You Can’t Serve Others without Setting Priorities
A Cruel Kindergarchy—Diagnosis #4: You Need to Stop Freaking Out about Your Kids
Deep Calls to Deep—Diagnosis #5: You Are Letting the Screen Strangle Your Soul
Rhythm and Blues—Diagnosis #6: You’d Better Rest Yourself before You Wreck Yourself
Embracing the Burdens of Busyness—Diagnosis #7: You Suffer More because You Don’t Expect to Suffer at All
The One Thing You Must Do

Buyer beware. If you desire a self-help resource with a checklist for increased efficiency and quantum productivity, leave this paperback off your Christmas list. DeYoung goes hard after the heart. Chapter three on pride threw me under the bus, where I belong, I might add. Were I still raising kids, chapter six would have leveled me. Though it’s not my issue (I have plenty of others, Lord knows), the chapter on social media and its dangers is worth the price of reading admission in its unpacking of the 21st century malaise of acedia. I confess. I never heard of that word until now. Read the book for yourself to learn about it, especially if you spend endless hours on the Internet. This self-confessed busyaholic (my term) takes no prisoners on the road to recovery. Prepare to have your categories challenged, your behaviors examined, and your motives unveiled – as well as your prescription for health detailed.

The book is biblical and practical. You would expect nothing less from a Gospel Coalition spokesman. Some chapters may suffer from the minimalist treatment, but he did promise to keep things brief. For those who desire more, DeYoung offers annotation with multiple resources and even cites them at the bottom of the page for the convenience of the reader. I love this guy! If I ever write a book, I promise, I won’t make readers (assuming anybody wants to read what I write, of course) turn to the back of the thing to check the references. I hate that. I am too busy for that inconvenience.

I found chapter nine particularly encouraging. It represents the best of the best in this little jewel in terms of its balance. DeYoung doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. He takes the path of the fellow traveler on the road of finding a middle ground between being crazy busy and redemptively busy. He doesn’t take us off the hook about busyness. Laziness isn’t the answer anymore than frantic over scheduling is. Even the Apostle Paul experienced the challenge of daily concern (anxiety) for all the churches (2 Cor. 11:28). I shepherd only one church. Its concerns I find more than overwhelming. I should not expect to be exempt from the good suffering that is being rightly busy. I just want to learn better how to steward these pressures along the way. Thank you, Kevin DeYoung, for contributing to my shalom as one who desires to be less crazy busy and more redemptively busy.

FYI, I am incredibly pleased to report that copies of this book arrived at OGC this week. They will be available tomorrow morning in the resource center for the crazy low price of $5 for those not too busy to secure a copy.