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Anybody else traveling this week?  There’s nothing fancy about it, but I have a works-for-us kid travel tip.

First, though, I want to make sure and say I’m a big fan of a good movie on a road trip.

But, sometimes we get a wild hair and ask our children to not watch a movie or even listen to their music in the car…but to play nicely or read while we have an adult conversation.  (Any other couples have excellent communication while traveling?  I’ve concluded it’s because my man is doing something productive [getting to a destination] while not having to make eye contact.  Combine that with me having a confined captive audience, and we’re both happy!)

So I have a trick up my sleeve.  You know all those treasures your kids collect on their shelves or the kitchen table or any flat surface?  Like the party favors and McDonald’s toys and trinkets from a quarter machine and prizes from the dentist and stickers from the doctor’s office and impulse dollar bin purchases?  Approximately once a month I go crazy and collect those bad boys and put them in a zip loc.  (They do not notice.  If they did and something was very important, I would retrieve it for them.)  Then I stick them somewhere until a good time.

Let me tell you, friends, a road trip is a good time.

I will pull out one trinket per child every 20 minutes or so and they are happy, seriously happy, and entertained for quite a while.

We get to have adult conversation or listen to music or watch the beautiful Kansas scenery.

Win – win!

And, finally, my new favorite Thanksgiving book:  The Perfect Thanksgiving by Eileen Spinelli.  So so cute.

Have a Happy Pre-Thanksgiving Day!

“My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.

May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:

I in them and you in me.

May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me…”

John 17:20-23

I haven’t really thought too much about how making His Name our Strong Tower and being sanctified by The Truth while remaining in the world is connected with the unity of believers.

But it makes sense.

Remembering that unity does not mean uniformity, I have been pondering the different ways we all fill our brains with stuff.  This, of course, is a good thing as most of us aren’t called to read the Bible all day.  Even our pastor, like he said yesterday, doesn’t live in a closet between Sundays.  We all live in a real world.  And we have to think about the things He’s called us to.  Teaching, construction, business, retail, engineering, art, health care, home management, social services, parenting.  All these things are such beautiful expressions of our multi-faceted, infinite God.  There is no need for uniformity in this.

However, as Believers, something has to bind us in unity.  Oh thank the good goodness we have His Spirit.  But praise Him we also have His Word.  Without it we will always be confused.

If the main way the world sees us as His is our unity and love for each other, whenever those things are out of whack, we had best get our tails in the Word.  The Truth.

Of course this is difficult.  I can be in Proverbs and you could be in Revelations.  These are very different books.  But the same Spirit is in those Words.  That is the Spirit with which we need to connect for unity and love.

We can remember certain things:

There are rib issues and spine issues.  We do not have to have uniformity in the ribs.  And trying to force uniformity on those issues will lead to resentment and disunity.

We are always called to love each other.

Pride is never okay with God.  It shouldn’t be okay with us.

The enemy is prowling around like a roaring lion.  That is in the Bible.  We need to pray for each other and protect each other.

If we have something against our brother or sister, we need to go to them.

Idolatry always leads to captivity.  Love God more than you love anything else.  He’s jealous for us and that jealousy protects us.  It is for our good.

If we are not believing God we will take matters into our own hands.  Unbelief leads to bad things. Ask me how I know.

Legalism will choke the life out of us and His Spirit among us.  Let’s depend on His grace even as we are obedient in what His Word tells us to do and the ways He’s individually leading us.

If we are not praying, we are not syncing up with Him.  And you know what I mean by praying.  Not just telling Him what we’d like Him to do.  But pouring out our hearts, then making sure we don’t get up from our knees until we have surrendered those plans and can honestly conclude, “Not my will, but Yours.”

We will not see our blind spots without community.  We need to listen to the feedback we give each other in love.

In love.

I am not some sage here.  I have learned pretty much all of these things the hard way.  You probably have, too.  We’re gonna mess them up.  But let’s give some grace, friends.  The world is hard enough on all of us.  Let’s have some honest love and mercy and patience and kindness and joy and gentleness and humility and protection and trust and hope and perseverance and considering others as better than ourselves in our relationships as Believers.

Our unity and His glory is at stake.

So, The Truth.

“Sanctify them by the truth; Your Word is truth.”

Sanctify means to set apart as sacred.  We are set apart as sacred in this dark world by Truth.

The only way we could be the light of the world, living sacrifices, and have our conversations always be full of grace and seasoned with salt is if we are sanctified by the truth.  Since the only offensive weapon we’re given in Ephesians 6 is the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, it would be good to know how to wield it.

There have been seasons of my life where, in the heat of battle, I have drawn my Sword and it was only 6 inches long.

I hadn’t been renewing my mind, making sure I had the mind of Christ, taking my thoughts captive.

Our pastor talks about getting perspective, but leaking perspective.

I leak.

My brain is so prone to self-absorption and the lies of this world.

But when I feed it Truth?  His Spirit in me resonates with the Spirit of His Word.

Deep calls to deep.

Truth prevails.

And it sets me apart as sacred out in that dark world.

And when I can tell I’m leaking, well, I can feed my brain more Truth!

That is how we can, as my friend says, “leave potato chips everywhere we go.”  Our conversations will be seasoned with salt.  It will bring out the God-flavors of the world.  And hopefully not in a stiff, awkward way.  And definitely not in an unkind way.  But because it is oozing out of us in a natural way.  We have truth in our inner parts (Ps 51:6).

What does all this have to do with media?

If we are oozing truth, we will have discernment when watching, reading or listening to media.  We can talk about issues with our friends who don’t know God and come from a biblical perspective.

We can be aware of the kinds of things our kids will hear about in school and beat their peers to the punch.  We can talk through things with them first so they will filter anything after that with a godly perspective.

We can inject truth at home into any curriculum that needs it for our kids.

We can help our kids understand their friends’ perspectives who don’t know God and help them see where the differences lie.

(All these kid ideas are from watching and reading about and listening to parents ahead of me.)

We can train ourselves to have a biblical view of the world.  We can so know the truth that we automatically do critical thinking with what we see and hear and recognize any lies in it.

In that way we can be sent into the world and yet set apart as sacred by Truth.

Of course this does not mean all media is good to go as long as we’re oozing truth.  Some is a horrible, corrupting influence on our brains. Some is dark and evil and straight from the pit of hell.

We don’t need discernment or critical thinking for that kind of media; we need to run away from it!

I also want to say something about knowing Truth versus doing Truth.  The Pharisees knew all the truth they could, and yet Jesus – the One to Whom all that truth pointed – stood in front of them and they missed it.  They missed Him (John 5:39).

If Bible Study was all we needed to know Jesus and be sanctified by Truth, they shoulda been good to go.  But we are told to do the Word.  To confess our sins to one another.  To expose our hearts to Him and ask Him to heal us.  To love one another and weep and rejoice and break bread and share our faith and be the Body.

Community is part of being sanctified by Truth.  Others and the gifts they’ve been given can redirect us.  They can encourage us to continue.  Help us keep our focus.  Give us a context in which to do the Word.

Then together, we can take The Truth to our dark world into which we are sent that desperately needs to know He is reconciling all things to Himself.

And they are welcome to respond to that invitation.

Welp.  For the last week of “Media Fast” I will be aiming to blog every day.

Oh, the irony.

Aside from feeling led to write about the internal nature of simplicity, there were some personal family reasons I wanted to redo this fast.  Having children really makes you evaluate what you input and what you don’t and why and how much.

(Speaking of children, I laughed the other day to realize how I started last week’s blog post.  How willing my children are to go along and give things up.  Over the course of that very day, that was not the case.  I laughed even further when at Super Church on Sunday my oldest wrote on his Thanksgiving Tree Leaf that he was grateful for video games.  And there you have it.)

In The 7 Experiment, Jen dives into John 17.  I have committed to not picking her book back up, but rather to dig in myself and write through different thoughts on media.  And we cannot do that without John 17.

“I pray for them.  I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours…I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you.

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me – so that they may be one as we are one…

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.  My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one…

Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world….”

John 17:9, 11, 14-15, 17-18

They are still in the world…I have sent them into the world.



Protect them by the power of your name…protect them from the evil one…sanctify them by the truth.

These verses say we are protected from the world and the evil one by two things:

The power of His Name and The Truth

And not only are we still in the world – which could be read as something like as long as we have to put up with this world and its people and problems – but we are sent into the world.

As in, we have a mission here.

But this place is dark.  Sometimes I feel like we can distance ourselves from that evil enough to forget how truly wicked the prince of this world is.  Here in our city something happened recently that is hard for me to even think about.

And yet, sticking our heads in the sand isn’t the answer.

In this context the answer is the power of His Name and The Truth.

How we desperately need both.

I have been in Psalms right now with God.  I’ve been struck by the conditions David attaches to some of his pleas for protection:

Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in You…

For the sake of Your name, lead and guide me…

Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, for I have cried out to You…

Vindicate me in Your righteousness…

Deliver me from the wicked and save me, because I take refuge in You…

Give the command to save me, for You are my rock and my fortress…

It is so like Proverbs 18:10:

“The name of the LORD is a strong tower;

The righteous run to it and are safe.”

I’ve found myself doing what David did.

Jesus, because of what You did on the cross….Not because of my righteousness, but because of Your righteousness in me…As I hide myself in You…Because You are my only hope in this situation…

Making His Name my Strong Tower.

This is especially comforting for times when I’ve messed up.  I rarely feel morally superior to those around me (and if I do it’s because I’m being severely forgetful and choosing pride).  I am such a work in progress, but I am so unbelievably grateful He has promised to use this jar of clay that I am to show this all-surpassing power is from Him and not me.

I am further grateful that I can claim if I’ve confessed my sins, He has forgiven me (1 John 1:9).  But even more I can ask for the sake of His Name and because of His perfection, that He would take my mistake and do something for His glory and everyone’s good in that situation.

So.  The power of His Name.

It’s like that song we sometimes sing, At the Sound of Your Great Name:

Lost are saved, find their way…

All condemned feel no shame…

Every fear has no place…

The enemy, he has to leave…

At the sound of Your Great Name!

It’s just the facts.  In the spiritual world, at the Name of Jesus of Nazareth, evil has to bow down to Him.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

And gave him the name that is above every name,

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.

Philippians 2:9-11

True, the Story isn’t finished yet.  And the enemy is given a short leash of power for the time being. But because Jesus the Messiah ultimately made a public spectacle of the powers and authorities by triumphing over them on the cross (Col 2:15), His Name is the pinnacle of authority.

Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your Name – the name You gave me…

I do believe we should save The Truth for tomorrow, eh?  So many words!