Twitter @Jesus

I enjoy Twitter. Tweeting is fine, I send something out a couple times a week. I pick up about a new Tweep every week. It's fun for news and sports updates. Some people can't have a thought that runs through their head without Tweeting, while others try very hard to show just how profound they can be in just 140 characters. If you look on the front page of my blog you can see my last five Tweets, usually something like "stuck in traffic on I-4" or "enjoying the afternoon with my girls". Pretty routine stuff. Everybody can't enjoy the Twitter lifestyle of Charlie Sheen - #WINNING!

A couple weeks ago a friend from a previous life started following me on Twitter. Got an unexpected email to inform me that "@anonymous is following you on Twitter!" Really, I'm not sure why. In real life outside the Twittersphere, there has been no effort at friendship. Just a seemingly random followship request. Maybe it was an attempt to allay some guilt by clicking a button. In any event, now he is my follower. And the next time we ever talk or email, there will be fodder for the conversation - "Hey there! What's up? I saw that you were stuck in traffic on I-4."

As I have thought about this arrangement more and more, it has occurred to me - isn't that the sort of arrangement that we want with Jesus? We want a Twitter arrangement in which our discipleship costs us nothing more than clicking a button. Now I'm a follower of Jesus, it says so on my Twitter home page. Jesus, Conan O'Brien, Oprah and CNN. I follow them all. While following Jesus in this way makes us feel good, it also allows us to gloss over anything He might have to say as it scrolls by in our Twitterstream. So, as Jesus stands and knocks at the door, it is pretty easy to ignore amidst all the other messages we are seeing. Nothing has to get through, nothing has to change, but I am a follower of Jesus and I am able to move on to the next thing.

Communicating with Twitter Jesus would keep him at a distance, not letting him see the real us. That's safe. What does He expect from 140 characters? So we can give profound one liners about our spiritual life, but remain fundamentally unchanged in our relationship. When life throws a curve, there is a crisis or a need, we can just throw our Tweep Jesus a direct message. "Hey @Jesus, how about a little help with my job situation?" That's prayer. Since Jesus is lost in the stream, we don't have to listen - we've absolved ourselves of that responsibility - and prayer become a one sided thing. Usually a laundry list of what Twitter Jesus needs to do for us so that our lives can be happy and glorious, like we know he intends.

Twitter may allow us to stay connected with others, but it is not a relationship - although that's how it is used. You cannot know me in 140 characters, and likewise I cannot know you. Even worse, when you are one of hundreds of other people I follow, the best you're going to get is a passing glance or maybe a mention. It is control: I can control how much of me you see and I can choose whether or not to notice you. There is no cost in this sort of followship. No investment and very little return. You reap what you sow.

I did that with Jesus and my life turned out to be the house built on sand. Swept away by the storm of life because I had no foundation. Jesus did not know me, despite my works in His name. I wanted to be in control of the nature of my relationship with Jesus. Yet, I've found the opposite to be the spiritual reality. What Jesus desires is an opening so that He can know me. For me to stop what I am doing and listen so He can be in control of my sanctification. To offer spiritual disciplines, not as a way of proving my worth, but rather as a way to allow God to stir the Spirit within me. Discipline without expecting anything in return. Releasing control of my relationship with Jesus to Jesus. He, after all, is the one who chose me.

Even if I did push the "follow" button.

An Open Book

I recently said goodbye to a good friend who is being led by God to the other side of the country. It shouldn't be one of those things that affects our relationship; we have the sort of friendship that you can get together after month's apart and the intimacy is still there. As if it were only a day. His being far away just gives me an excuse to see somewhere new.

His moving is going to bring he and his wife closer to her family, a fact that is going to change the dynamics of the relational system of their marriage. A fact that I pointed out to my friend, along with things he can consider in order to lead his family and prepare for the new situation.

Imagine the irony of me doling out marital advice, and my friend who knows all my mistakes sopping it up eagerly. I don't know why I get surprised, but I am. That God can (well, it's not that He can that surprises, but that He does) continually put me in situations in which my experience has value. He is able to use it, and I can be a blessing to a friend who is yearning to define himself as a man in his marriage.

In the course of our time together, we somehow got on the topic of discipline. Maybe because we are both very similar, and for some reason, while the desire is there, discipline does not come easy to us. This is my year of discipline that flows out of God's love, and my friend is going back to school in order to be forced to study the Bible. That's an expensive way to develop discipline.

There really is a tension to developing spiritual discipline. On the one hand it can be just a routine. The thing you check off on you list in the morning. Pray. Check. Read the Bible. Check. "What's next? Oh, it's Thursday, my google calendar says I need to fast." Check. It becomes such a routine, habitual behavior that the reasons for engaging in it are lost. "Why do you fast? Well, obviously because it's Thursday." There becomes a disconnect. You have a big heaping order of discipline, but hold the spiritual. It's just something you do, like washing your hair. "Lather, rinse, repeat." (By the way, how many of you actually follow those directions and repeat?)

On the other side is the person who practices discipline in order to prove themselves to God and everyone else. Much like the pharisee described by Jesus who thanked God that he fasted twice a week and gave a tenth of everything. That is what made the Pharisee different, and in his own eyes, what made him closer to God than the tax collector. His discipline was his justification.

Be honest, as you read that, you have someone in mind. We have all met that person who when you ask how their week was or how they are doing in their relationship with Jesus, they will regale you with a list of all they have done. For them, spiritual and discipline are expressly linked. And that's how they know God loves them, because they perform enough disciplines. The measurement of success is how long did I pray for, how many chapters did I read in my Bible, how many meals did I miss, and let me count how much time and money I gave. There is always a record for those practicing self justification or works righteousness.

Where then do we land on the spiritual disciplines? Why practice them, if not to prove your righteous worth? What value do they have?

Disciplines provide the opening for God.

When we fast, pray, read, give generously, meditate on scripture, or any of the others, we open ourselves up to the God who saves us. We show that our lives our open to him. He is allowed to come in and continue his work. They serve as a reminder to us that there is a God who is bigger than we are. Disciplines are the opening.

What better way to open yourself to dependence than to fast.

How better to trust than to give generously.

Nothing fosters the reality of a relationship like prayer, reflection, and listening (you do listen, don't you? or do you just implore?)

When scripture is meditated on, it is thoroughly digested and becomes part of who you are.

Disciplines are the opening. More than a routine, they are a connection point to the God who loves us. In an of themselves, they do not make us righteous, but they allow us to remain in the one who is righteous on our behalf. Through our disciplines we open ourselves up to God. Then He can flow out.

I'll miss seeing my friend, I only hope to remember to send him an email.