Live Oak Lenten Blog - Week 2

My 'thing' for lent was to add 30 minutes of scripture reading and prayer to my day. Right away, I have noticed a huge difference in the mornings that I actually get up when my alarm goes off at 5:45 (yes, AM) compared to when I sleep a bit longer and tell myself I'll 'do my time' after I get back from dropping off my son at school. It has been enough of a difference that since February 13th, I've only NOT gotten up twice - an I've regretted it both days.

First of all, the only time I get a solid, focused 30 minutes is prior to anyone else in the house waking up. Secondly, if I wait until later in the day, I might be alone, but I have a crowd of 'to do's' constantly running though my consciousness.

Getting that 30 minutes in the morning has been crazy helpful. It gives me time to breath and focus before I take off running for the day. It has given me new insights on familiar scriptures. Most of all, it has given me the mindfulness to give myself, my day, and my family to God.

What an awesome Lent this has been so far and will continue to be!

-Chesney Szaniszlo

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Live Oak Lenten Blog - Week 1

Hi - I'm Chesney Szaniszlo, pastor for Care and Hospitality at Live Oak Church. I have an incredible husband, Chris and awesome 8 year old son, Lee. I have an awesome life but can never quite find contentment because I can never please myself. Despite my determination to be the best at everything, God has been whispering, then talking, then yelling and then finally silent and waiting in His attempt to help me understand that I can't be perfect. He has been waiting for me to understand that I actually can't do anything without Him. This "God-renovation" has become pretty hard core over the last few years as I've finally run out of my own power. It has been a period of growth in my spiritual as well as personal life and, for the most part, it has not been pleasant or easy - on anyone.

Those of you who have followed my blog know I struggle with the idol of perfection. No matter what I do the lie that "I have to be best" whispers constantly in my ear and over the past 30 plus years has worn me down. I have been conscious of God's actions to rid me of this idol since my early 20's but I have spent over a decade just shifting it from one aspect of my life to another in a false attempt to get rid of it. If I let go of pursuing perfection of my physical body, I begin to pursue it in my mothering. When that doesn't work I pursue perfection in my child. When that doesn't work, I find another area in my life to pursue it or return to one of the others.

Over the years, God has let me wear myself down to my spirit and I have had to acknowledge, particularly, in the past few months, that I am nothing more than a broken person desperately in need of a Savior. Which I already knew and have KNOWN, but have now been brought back to that knowledge on a deeper level than ever before.

This Lent I have realized that I don't need to try harder, yell less, practice more patience, or promise myself to be better tomorrow. What I need is to open myself to God's grace and allow that grace to settle deep inside me and flow out to everyone else in my life. So for the next six weeks I am not trying to do anything or be anything: I am simply going to commit to being in the presence of God for a solid 30 minutes a day so that I am reminded who is the one who is really PERFECT and who is the one who needs all the help she can get.

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No Chocolate and Fish on Fridays

Ash Wednesday (Feb 13) marks the beginning of Lent this year. Lent is a six week period of deliberate focus on the sufferings of Christ. It is a time to meditate on the great sacrifice that God made for us. Your average person in 2013 will probably tell you that Lent is a time to not eat chocolate, give up desserts, or comment on the fact that restaurants begin to have fish specials every Friday. These aspects of Lent have come about because the Church wants people to have a tiny, little taste of the suffering of Jesus and traditionally has asked its members to give up the extravagances of life. At its core, however, Lent is about focusing your attention on Jesus: who He is, what He has done for you, and what He is calling you to do for Him. Sometimes, giving up something that you will miss helps you to do this.

What we (Live Oak Church) want people to do is add or subtract one thing from your life that will help you to focus on Jesus. Give something up so that every time you want to do or eat that thing, you think about God. Add something to your daily routine that will re-focus your attention on Christ. It doesn’t have to be something drastic, but it needs to be something that will be important to you and remind you to re-focus your attention on Jesus not on what you are missing.

As a congregation we will be reading through the Gospel of Mark together. If you were not at church this past Sunday to pick up your copy of our devotional guide, make sure you grab it this week.

Starting on Feb 13, 2013 we will be having members of our congregation blog Tuesday through Saturday about their experience with this challenge to re-focus on God. (I'll still blog on Monday's.)

The next six weeks are going to be an amazing time with God for our congregation. Please check out Live Oak’s FB page, read the  posts and add your comments!

Chesney Szaniszlo

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Just Stop...Dying to be Better

All of us (myself included) spend too much time on self-improvement and thinking that if we just try hard enough, we can be better, faster, kinder, thinner, richer, (you fill in the blank). I know I’ve lain in bed at night telling myself what I’ll do the next day:

Tomorrow, I’m not going to raise my voice when I get frustrated.
Tomorrow, I'm not going to worry.
Tomorrow, I’m not going to….

You fill in the blank. What is on your list for tomorrow? 

All through the Gospels, Jesus tells us that if we are going to follow him, we must die to self - we have to lose our life to find it.

This is the opposite of what most of us spend our lives doing on our quest for self-improvement. We spend our lives searching for 'ourselves' instead of losing ourselves in Jesus.

Losing your life to find it is hard. It's a weird concept for us in our modern world of instant gratification and egotism to understand. It’s also incredibly difficult to put into practice. That's why most of the New Testament is about how to do it and encouragement to keep trying when we fail.

We can't work harder each day to make ourselves better Christians and perfect people. None of us will ever achieve either – those are titles from the 'self improvement' checklist we need to throw out.

No matter how hard we try we can't lose ourselves in Jesus without Jesus. The more we try to do it on our own, the more we will fail. The only way we will find ourselves and the life that Jesus calls us to live is by giving it all up to God - all of it.

We will never get it totally right. We can’t because we are human and sinful. Lucky for us, God isn’t calling us to be perfect people when He calls us to new life in Him. He is calling us to simply abide in Him and let Him work through us. We don’t have to save ourselves, our family, or our world. Jesus already did that on the cross. Our job is help people know that it’s already been done.

Instead of telling yourself what you are or are not going to accomplish tomorrow, ask God to help you empty yourself so that He can fill you up. Ask Him, in the words of  Love Come to Life by Big Daddy Weave, to ‘Bring your love to life inside of me. Why don’t you break my heart ‘til it moves my hands and feet for the hopeless, and the broken, and the ones who don’t know that you love them…”

-Chesney Szaniszlo

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. - Phillipians 3: 12-14

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The pursuit of happiness

I remember being surprised to find out as a psychology major at UT that it wasn't normal for people to be happy all the time; that there is an emotional state of being that is not happy and not sad that most people hover at most of their lives.

This seemed really weird to me because it felt like I had been raised in a culture that said I was supposed to be happy all the time and if I wasn't, something was wrong.

Many of us spend our lives chasing happiness. A fragile emotion that can be lost very quickly. We do whatever we need to in order to feel it. We spend too much buying beauty treatments, clothes, cars, large houses. We let ourselves become addicted to food, drugs, and alcohol (or spend our time focusing on NOT doing these things and become slaves to them anyway). We leave relationships that are too hard, avoid spending time with our kids and families by over-scheduling or over-working, and see our commitments as disposable when they become inconvenient.

All in the name of our right to pursue happiness.

Because somehow we have gotten so totally messed up that we have convinced ourselves that if it is too hard or not making us happy, then it must not be what God has planned for us.

None of us want to hear it, but there is nothing in the Bible about God wanting us to live our lives in such as way as to only be happy. There is definitely nothing wrong with being happy but living our lives in such as way as to only chase something that is based on our circumstances and can so easily be stolen from us in the blink of an eye, isn't very wise.

If we want to live wisely (and the Bible does have a lot to say about that) then it is better to focus on being faithful: Doing the right thing, sticking to your commitments even when they are inconvenient or problematic. Following the path that God has laid out for you might not make you happy but it will bring you joy. Joy won't necessarily make you high-five your neighbor or cause you to break out in a victory dance, but it will sustain you through all the highs and lows of life.

Stop being that rat on the wheel that is chasing after something that is always just out reach. Re-commit yourself to being faithful to those things you have committed yourself to - your spouse, your kids, your Church, and our God.

God is more faithful to us than we can ever be to Him or to anything/one in our lives. We will fail and mess up and yet God will always be there, waiting to pick us back up and help us keep going forward. God is so faithful to us that no matter what we do, we can trust that eternal salvation is waiting for us at the end of our earthly life and that is more than enough reason to live out this life with JOY.

Chesney Szaniszlo

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. - John 15:9-11

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Wherever you go, there you are...

Have you ever thought, "I'd be a much nicer person if I didn't have to...." Fill in the blank. The things that lead us to the edge of sanity are different for each of us. Many of us might have the same issue and many of us have different ones. For me lately, it's been all about parenting. I feel like I am short-tempered, snappish, and sometimes just not nice to the one person in the world God has entrusted to my care. I even found myself yelling the other day that, "...the Bible says that children are to respect and obey their parents!" (I didn't quote the part about parents not exasperating their children (Ephesians 6:4). That wouldn't have helped my case at the time.)

That part I quickly mentioned about God entrusting specific people and things to my care, however, is really what life's all about. It doesn't matter how I'm feeling about my child at a particular moment, what matters is that I am his mom. It doesn't matter if my kid and I can spark a forest fire off each other, God has given me this particular person to nurture and raise - and that is all there is to say about it.

Wherever I go, I am his mom. Just like wherever I go, I am my husband's wife. Just like wherever I go, I am God's child and Jesus' disciple. It is those things that dictate who I am and how I choose to live my life, not the fit of those things with my emotional state in any given moment.

The goal of my day should be to follow through on these calls God has placed on me. A successful day should be one in which I didn't shirk my responsibilities or betray those callings.

Yes - there will be days (have been days) that are terrible, no good, very bad days. Days at the end of which all I can do is ask forgiveness from God and my family and pray that tomorrow, with God's help, will be better. And usually, they are better. But they are better because after a bad day or a series of bad days, I am more mindful of my attitude. I keep in mind that this is not solely my life. I live a life that I have given over to God. It is a life that is outwardly, rather than inwardly focused. When I have that attitude, I am able to give a lot more than I get and stop keeping score. When I remember that I belong to God and His path is my path, I am able to live a much more sacrificial life, because no matter where we go, we are still His, and God doesn't forget this even if we do.

Chesney Szaniszlo

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” - Matthew 11:28-30

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Knock knock...

Who's there?
God.
God who?

Isn't that how it goes all too often in our lives? God asks us to do something and we ignore Him or pretend we don't hear Him?

Maybe He's asking us to do something that is so uncomfortable, we think that we must not really be understanding His 'call' on our lives.

As much as we don't like it, and I've said this before, God will call us to do things for Him which are outside of our experience and our comfort zone.

Sometimes He even calls us to NOT follow the dream that we've aspired to our whole life.

The only real way to know if the calling you feel tugging at your spirit is from God or someone/something else is through the community of Christians around you and through the Bible.

Lets start with the Bible. God is not going to ask you to do something that is contrary to His word. The best way to discern this is to be familiar with Scripture. You cannot know God if you don't know His story as revealed to us in history through the Bible.

The other way to discern if the 'call' upon your life is from God is through having deep conversations about the subject with other Christians who know God and who know you.

When I was in seminary, I really wasn't sure if it was where I was supposed to be. I used to joke that I must have answered my 'neighbors' phone when I got the 'call' to go to seminary. I fought being ordained as a pastor. I tried every possible route to avoid it but God wouldn't let me. He continued to put people in my path who told me I was supposed to be a minister
until I couldn't avoid it anymore. I even had one person in my church tell me I was being 'Jonah' and I needed to turn around and head the direction God had told me to go.

I write all that to say that you can't always determine God's call on your life based on how you feel about it. God calls us to certain things because of who He has created us to be, not because of who we think we want to be.

Take some time this week to listen for God's call. You might be surprised at the door in your life that He is knocking upon.

Chesney Szaniszlo

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