Rainier

I took this picture today while driving in Seattle on I-5. It was probably dangerous but definitely worth it.

Crawford Rhythm

So, we have i have lived for 28 years, been married for 7, had 4 kids and never had a schedule. All that has now changed. In light of some recent thoughts that I will share with you I have decided to come up with a family and person rhythm. While I feel like i was able to survive without a schedule i feel like this will be a much more productive way of accomplishing our goals as a family especially on the macro level. when i say macro level i mean things that are on a week and bigger type basis.
so this is how we created our rhythm. we wrote down all of our values on little pieces of paper. there were a lot of them and some of them were written numerous times depending on how frequent we wanted them to happen. There were 2 different criteria for things that got written down.
1. Things that we consider personal or family values that will not happen unless they are scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis.
2. Things that we don't necessarily need reminders of but unless they are planned out ahead of time will conflict with us being able to accomplish things in category "1."

that is why you will not see breakfast or lunch on the schedule but you will see racquetball. There are also some things that I put on the calendar where the goal was to accomplish more specific goals within the normal task. for example with my work days i now have specific days that are carved out for organization and research instead of just doing whatever seems the most urgent.

this is the beta version. i'm sure there will be some changes and i must admit that when we first put this on our computers it felt slightly claustrophobic but i think it brings some much needed changes. i would be interested in hearing comments from others about things that they have incorporated that they find useful.

a few notes on navigation:
1. i recommend viewing it on the day view.
2. in order to find out my notes and specific purpose on most of the items just click on its title and my notes will come up.
3. check out the first sunday of every month. that is when we will have our monthly "remember" meeting.


You can view my calendar at:
http://ical.mac.com/teamcrawford/Crawford%20Rhythm

For mac users:
You can subscribe to my calendar at:
webcal://ical.mac.com/teamcrawford/Crawford%20Rhythm.ics

is anyone reading this?

i just wanted to take a quick poll to see if this blog is being read by anyone. if it is not i will end it and not shed a tear. if you are reading it could you please do me a favor and either respond to this post or send me an email. thx
bnc

Week 6 - The Spiritual Disciplines

I would like to take this time to state once again that if you are reading these blog posts out of order they will not make that much sense. They are meant to explain the mental, emotional, and spiritual journey that i have been going though in the process of the "story formed life" discipleship course and each step is built upon the previous.

With the whole concept of the spirit lead life being so new, the concept of spiritual disciplines became a bit overwhelming, especially since it seemed to restructure my whole picture of what they looked like and what they were for. Now that i come to think about it, i'm not sure if i really had any firm grasp on what i even thought they were for. i think i seemed to know that they made you a more spiritual person and probably helped you understand jesus and while i am still a long ways away from understanding them fully, much less practicing them, i feel like i have enough of a preliminary concept to start to incorporate them into my life in a healthy way.

I think one of the first things that was important to me was even the understand of the purpose of spiritual disciplines. the purpose of the disciplines is not to make you a better person or make you stronger but they are a training ground to make you less dependent on the flesh and more dependent on the spirit. In the past i often used disciplines to try and become stronger and in turn became more dependent upon the flesh. one of the things i realized about the disciplines is that if i am not doing them for the wrong reason i am actually counter acting the whole reason they were created and should be practiced. by "practicing" them in the wrong way i am actually working against what God wants to do in my life by making myself more dependent upon myself instead of him.
I think one of the most important passages we looked at was matthew 4 when jesus was tempted by satan after not eating for 40 days. we dialoged about this passage and concluded, contrary to natural intuition, that after 40 days without eating and probably BECAUSE of 40 days without eating Jesus was able to completely turn down the temptation of following satan's words instead of the Spirit's words. the reason is this. for 40 days jesus had been saying no to his flesh. that really is the ultimate issue. when we become christians we are given the spirit but we still have the flesh which will always war against the one inside us. our ability to but down the flesh and depend entirely on the spirit is the only real determining factor that we can gauge personal success on. when it came time for jesus to be tempted by satan he had been saying no to his flesh 1000's if not 100,000's of times already so it was not that big of a leap for him to say "NO" instinctively.
This is where spiritual disciplines take a role in our life. i know for me, personally, i am so used to being in the habit of saying yes to the flesh and no to the spirit. this happens in 1000's of small ways every day. because of that, when the spirit is prompting me or guiding me it becomes very difficult to hear and therefore follow because i have built so many habits that are based upon saying "yes" to the flesh instead of "no."
i think fasting is a good example but since i have been in ky i have also been able to be a part of what they call PT(physical training). i think that the reason that they practice this is a good example of the issue. every week certain members of the body get together and physically exert themselves for approx one hour. the goal is not to get stronger or work as a team, although sometimes these things are accomplished. the goal is to put yourself in a situation where your flesh is telling you to do something (in this case usually it is saying "stop") and you can train yourself to ignore it. it is pretty amazing how these very spiritual concepts can be learned though something so mundane as sit-ups or running. at it's essence though it becomes not that different from fasting.
these are some thoughts. this whole idea is still very new to me and i am anxious to see how my understanding of it will empower me to put it into practice by incorporating new habits but also by using existing practices that i have for this new purpose.

Week 5 - The Spirit Led Life

I've had a little bit of time to reflect since this week about the content. I think i learned more this week and more of an information shift than any other week. Growing up in Christian contexts i've heard the word "holy spirit" used but i have never really been in a healthy context where i felt like any goo explanation was given much less any weight given to the idea. One of the main reasons for this is obvious. most christians like me are given examples on tv, and other, of how the name of the holy spirit is used for all sorts of wacky behavior. after attending this weeks midrash though, i am now convinced that this is no more of a shame than the downplaying or flat out ommission that evangelical christianity gives to the subject of the Holy Spirit.
well, let's begin.
here are the main thoughts that hit me hard and the order in which i think they are important:

1. Living a life of under the lordship of christ is not possible to do on our own.
Very little attention is given to the subject of depending on the power of the Holy spirit. I know that in my own life this is a new topic and i'm assuming that since i have heard so little about this from the people around me that it is new to many. i think most of the revelation that came to me is wrapped up in the idea that as much as christians say we need jesus, most of what we do is different in outward appearance more than the actual drive or power source. in other words you have your vegetarian that believes that meat is bad and doesn't eat meat, you have your athiest that believes that religious institutions are bad and doesn't attend and you have your christians that believe the gospel and try and go to church and not sin.

2. Therefore we need the Holy Spirit who is the "helper" that jesus promised us to fulfill our mission while on earth.
What should make christianity unique is not just that it is a different belief system with different practices but that the whole way in which we will practice it is through a supernatural means. That is ultimately what will make all the difference and brings out the weakness of humanity and the power of the gospel.

3. Most people continually try harder to accomplish things in the flesh instead of relinqushing all together and surrendering to the will and direction of the Holy Spirit.
One thing that has really struck me about how misguided we are in this subject is the solutions people (including myself) propose to "christian living" questions. i often find an area of my life like lust, love or patience and i try and set some boundaries or exert more effort in trying to be better in that thing. no there are two problems with this. the first is that it usually does not work. battling the flesh is a task that is generally to big for the flesh. the second problem with that is that if it actually does work it creates a self-sufficient and self righteous attitude that is directly contrary to the gospel. instead of pinpointing tiny points or outward signs that the spirit exists it would be far better to flat out surrender to the spirit and be able to exhibit the fruit of the spirit in it's entirety ...love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.

Europe

Kami and I will be in Europe for the next 10 days with no kids. So no posts for 10 days.

Week 4 - Lordship

In the course of the story formed life, week 4 has the most emphasis on personal response. Weeks one through three really challenge what you believe which does change your actions but week 4 is where there is a fork put in the road and the response of the individual is the main focus.
Week 1- We have established that God is the Creator and Lord of the universe
Week 2 - We learn that we have left and lost that and will not receive eternal life as a race
Week 3 - We learned that God followed through on his promises and brought one who can bring eternal life
Week 4- Lordship is about whether or not we are willing to accept God's gift of salvation by submitting to the Lordship of Christ. Or to rephrase that, submitting to the Lordship of Christ is the sign that we have accepted salvation

There were quite a few things that influenced me pretty deeply about this week. One of the first ideas that was thrown out there was that if the Gospel has not influenced us on an emotional level there is a pretty good chance that we do not undertand or even believe the Gospel in it's entirety. This idea really reasonated with me. I know that there are times when I am emotionally involved with the gospel, or at least have been in the past but i realize for the most part the gospel has been a very atherial knowledge based thing. The verses and ideas that we discussed in this week were, therefore, very threatening to someone in my position.
The main passages we looked at were Mark 10-22, Luke 9:57-62, Luke 14:25-33, Romans 10:9-10, and Matthew 7:21-23.
The majority of these passage revolve around Jesus sharing the Gospel with people in a way that makes them turn away and decide not to follow him. This makes for a pretty interesting thought experiment. The following was my thought process throughout the night:
1. In many cases Jesus seemed to make it really tough for people to follow him. He didn't really throw out the "just accept me into your heart" line to much, especially in these passages.
2. this is a pretty different method than what is commonly used today. I can think of story after story where an alter call is given and people are told that if they raise their hands and mutter a few words and ask a few things they will be christians and inhereit eternal life.
3. It doesn't seem like both of these methods can be right in practice or in their origin.
4. When I think about "sharing the gospel" now, I find myself thinking about a "gospel" that mimics much more the 2nd than the 1st.
5. The reason why I am communicating this "gospel" is because I probably believe it about others as well as myself.
6. Believing in the wrong gospel can be a pretty scary thing. We are told that many will come to him who performed miracles and he will say to them "I never knew you" and we are also to work out our salvation with "fear and trembling." One interesting thought i was also presented with is the idea that we are not given any personal assurance, while on this earth, that we are in fact "saved."

So, this thought process lead to some deep soul searching. There are many areas of my life that I feel i take sole ownership of. By definition they should have been transferred to christs mantel for ownership and by very definition I'm pretty sure that i can not say that i have surrendered to the Lordship of Christ. I went for a walk and found myself in the same park that I originally decided to move to KY for 9 weeks and decide to do the discipleship. I went through a process of prayer and surrender that was very difficult but very refreshing.

There are some other responses that I have had to this experience but i will post them in a different topic.