Creatio Ex Nihilo

Decisions: Sources of Wisdom

A message from Proverbs 3 by Don Heatley from Vision Community Church 1/25/09

A few months ago I was having coffee with a friend who was facing a difficult decision in his life.  The decision involved a complex web of factors, his marriage, his career and his finances. There were a few paths from which he could choose and the best path was not clear at all.  We talked for a while and he reviewed the pros and cons each possibility.  Finally, he seemed to have chosen a strategy for moving forward.

“At times like these,” my friend said solemnly, “I always come to back to one simple question.  I ask myself, ‘what would my father do?’”

“That’s great,” I said.  “It’s wonderful that your father was that kind of example in your life.  It must be reassuring to have someone to admire.”

My friend looked puzzled.  “You don’t understand,” he said. “My father was an idiot who screwed up everything in his life.  So when I face a hard decision I just ask myself what would he do and then do the exact opposite.”

Decisions: God's Will and Decisive Diversity

A message from Romans 12:1-3 by Don Heatley from Vision Community Church 1/18/09

How many of you are facing a decision in your life right now?  How are you progressing in making that decision?  Have you moved on it and acted on it?  Or are you caught in a permanent holding pattern of leaving your options open? In the coming weeks we will be exploring how to move past indecision and what criteria we use to make good decisions.  We will examine what factors should and should not play a role in that process.

Where does that process begin?  When we face a decision, what is the first question we should ask?  For those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus, the basis of making all our decisions is supposed to be doing God’s will. In Romans 12 Paul instructs us that our minds must be renewed so that we can discern God’s will. Many of you shut me out the minute you heard me say that we are going to talk about basing our decisions on doing God’s will. 

We shut out that message because we have a lot of misconceptions about the will of God.  That phrase “God’s will” scares us a little bit.  We know it is supposed to be a source of peace for many Christians, but for some of us it has always had the connotation of a wet blanket.   It is as if the life offers all these exciting possibilities and choices and then along comes someone talking about God’s will.   Much like that opening scene in Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories,” we often believe doing God’s will is like being trapped on a bleak dull train ride, while the rest of the world carouses along on the party express.

Who Do You Think You Are?

Although my weekly messages are featured as audio on the Vision Podcast, some of you prefer reading to listening.  So I figured I would try posting the text of my messages as well.

Who Do You Think You Are? - by Don Heatley - Mark 1:1-15

This week I faced one of those decisions that could affect my life for years to come.  It involved my very definition of I am.  It was the kind of momentous event that gives one pause – and pause I did, for a long time.  I can be notoriously indecisive. So what was it that froze me I my tracks?  I was signing up for something on a web site and there it was, that soul-wrenching decision.  Sitting in front of my laptop, I agonized for at least a quarter hour.

What would be my user name? 

Face it. It’s a difficult decision.  I wanted to pick something creative and expressive, something people would say, “Oh how clever!  Let’s read what he has to say.”  You know what I finally picked as my user name – don heatley.  There’s 15 minutes of my life I won’t be getting back.  Our nicknames, screen names and user names say something about us.  Not only do they express how we see ourselves, they tell how we want others to see us.  How many of you wrestled over which picture to use for your profile in Facebook?  Or you color scheme for Twitter?

Discovering who we are, defining our identity, and struggling with how others perceive us is all a part of being human.   Since Jesus was fully human, in addition to being fully divine, I imagine it was a part of his life too.  History and scholarship can tell us a lot about an historical person, when and how they lived, what they did and said, what social forces shaped them.  But it can’t tell us what was in their head or how they thought of themselves.   This is true of Jesus as well.  All we have to go on, are the stories others told about him.

A Methodist Experiment

Kevin Watson at deeplycommitted has started an experiment to see how much social capital Methodist bloggers have. This experiment was prompted by the feeling among some Methodist bloggers that United Methodism does not always do as good of a job as it could at getting the Wesleyan message out there, particularly on-line. So, he wants to see how many views a YouTube video can get if Methodist bloggers work together to promote it. The experiment is to see how many hits the video will receive in two weeks. If you want to participate you can: First, watch the video below. Second, copy and paste this entire post into a new post on your blog and post it. Third, remind people about this experiment in one week. Based on the results of the experiment, Kevin will get in touch with the folks at Discipleship Resources and let them know the ways in which Methodist bloggers are often an underused resource. 

"Studying for the Wrong Test" on EV Site

An article by me is up on the Emergent Village site.