It is a natural and human habit to, from time to time, introspectively reflect on our life. To wonder what matters. To think about what we've given ourselves to. We all have the occasional moment where an existential crisis creeps in. Questions like, "how did I get here?" or "is this what I want my life to be?"

In part two of this series on the Psalms God's people sang on the road, Solomon warned them (and us) against building a life of vanity. He pleaded for us to avoid walking this pilgrimage in a way that amounts to nothing. He reminded us that it's possible to completely waste our life. Obviously no one wants that, and yet it happens all the time. How do we know what kind of life we're building? We'll get there in a moment.

Ever notice that Jesus is constantly showing people that it's not too late? He loves giving "4th quarter hope". The parent of a dead child. The meal plan for thousands after they've arrived. The thief on the cross hung next to him certainly had to believe that there was less than a .000001% of things taking a turn that day. Jesus loves redeeming lives that were previously confused, unprepared, and squandered. He often recalibrates people's lives by asking them questions about how they are making decisions, not just what they are deciding. I love the wisdom of this.

So how do we know if our life is being wasted or moving towards beauty and stewarding our resources well? To really know the answer, it's essential for us to take inventory. Below are a few thoughts that are shaped by Biblical wisdom and watching people of all ages follow Jesus for the last 20 years.

1. Look at your calendar. What work hours do you keep? Do you have time to be present with the people you care about? Want another time check (this one is only for the courageous)? Look at your Screen Time on your iPhone.
2. Look at your bank statement. What would someone who only had your statement, say you love most? I imagine most of the things on that statement are good things
3. Listen to your own thoughts. What do you spend most of your time thinking, worrying, and dreaming about? That will clarify what you're probably giving your best energy and creativity to.
   

Take inventory of these areas and then ask yourself this essential question:

"Is this the life I want?"

With all the affection I can possibly have knowing nothing about you, hear me say this: If the answer to that question is no, we are fools to not make an immediate and significant change.

Let's say you want a change, but it feels overwhelming. Thinking about these sort of things can be daunting and deeply discouraging. What can be done?

With the Holy Spirit's guidance, you and I have everything we need to spend our lives wisely. One of the most practical tools to move this direction is to implement is a rule of life.

WHAT IS A RULE OF LIFE?
It’s a set of filtering questions for life decisions It’s a way to make sure you are building the life you want on this pilgrimage. You probably already do a version of this subconsciously, though perhaps not with our emotional and spiritual health in mind. Examples:

I won’t do my job for less than this salary.
I won’t live in a place smaller than _.
I won’t eat ___ because of how it makes me feel or how it affects my body.

So here’s a start for a Biblical rule of life?
        Does this build my relationship with God?
        Does this build up my family?
        Does this build up my community/church?
        Does this build up my witness?

Run your current life commitments through the rule of life. If you end up with four no’s, then you just made the way forward really clear. It's time for change. You’ve likely identified something that may be helping you build your life in vain.

If you're a young professional or single: Is anything right now violating your RULE OF LIFE? Do not date people that do not consistently move you TOWARDS Christ. To be crystal clear, I’m not talking about “well this person helps me go to Jesus because I have to repent every time we hang out when we go too far”. If it violates a rule of life, make a change.

If you are married, what rule of life is broken right now and working against your marriage? What do you need to say no to, to make a date night happen consistently? Do you have time to have fun together? Are you married and stuck in a bad cycle or just lonely because you don’t make time for people to know what’s really going on with you?

To all the parents, are the things you’re signed up for improving your family life? Does sports year-round make family life better or more chaotic and disconnected? Are the extra curricular activities a little too extra? Do you have time to care for your own soul and invite others to your dinner table? Working parents, are you busting your tail at a demanding job to have an extra vacation or nicer things for the kids that would far prefer you home another night a week? Are you the watchman in Psalm 127, working extra long hours for nothing?

To anyone currently employed: does your role or company or culture at work, require you to violate your rule of life? Will the next strategic move in your career break the rule? Will one more late night at the office to catch up (you and I both know you won't) break the rule?

If you begin using your rule of life, you may have some big decisions, but you’re also going to have a fighting chance at experiencing the beauty and power of Psalm 131. If you give it a look, I think you'll quickly see why it's worth it. But let me tell you why anyway, in the next installment.

Years ago I toured around the United States with music and improv comedy ministries (I know...random). We hit 47 states and drove 60,000 miles in 9 months. It was a special chapter in my life. (read: bare-bones, sweaty, 15-passenger van with an exclusive diet of fast food and sweet tea)

Music is a vital part of any road travel. There was a pretty short list of albums my touring buddies and I could agree on (available here and don't you judge me for a second), and those songs have a special place in my music library and heart today. Those songs remind me of the friendships that formed along the way, national landmarks I got to see with my own eyes, and all the crazy antics on the road. 

Those were in a sense, my pilgrimage songs. Many people don't realize that some of the Psalms we have today were the pilgrimage songs God gave his people…both then and today.

I want to look at the pilgrimage Psalms through the eyes of a father and son, unpacking two perspectives. These two poems are going to give us vital information about the journey you and I are on. We begin with the son, Solomon, as he writes in Psalm 127:

Unless the Lord builds the house,
    those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
    and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.

SOLOMON WAS A REAL GUY.

This pilgrimage psalm was written by Solomon, a real historical figure who lived and ate and slept like you and me. But the Bible says Solomon was the wisest man to live. That wisdom came from delighting in God and from God’s discipline through the catastrophic failures in his life. Whatever wisdom I have today is in part from time with Jesus and also from the failures, large and small, in my life.

My church is full of a lot of very smart people. They are up the ladder at Microsoft or Amazon or Boeing. They have degrees from renowned schools, and accolades in their industry. I'll never forget the time I met an exhausted and disheveled Mom wearing sweat pants with an infant snotting down her shoulder, and learned later that she was one of the top biochemistry researchers in the United States.

Maybe you know people with a lot of power or influence, or you yourself have those things and those are all good things. Maybe you make good money, or have changed whole markets with your innovation and hard work. You might be really smart.

But you aren't Solomon.

We aren’t as smart as he was (1 Kings 4) or as wealthy as he was. 
His wealth adjusted for modern times lands somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion dollars. If Solomon lives in Seattle, Gates and Bezos can’t afford his neighborhood. He ran the rat-race that defines so much of our culture and actually crossed the finish line that escapes the rest of us. Can we learn from someone that actually lived the life we’d ask for if we had three wishes? All of the things you want, he owned it, tasted it, or touched it.

Solomon begins the poem with a pretty provocative statement that without the Lord’s blessing, human effort is worthless. 

The examples he uses covers work-life, city-life, and home-life. Didn’t miss much did he? Solomon is warning us that if we aren’t careful, we’ll spend our whole lives working and building and not end up where we wanted. It's possible that we work really, really hard in this life and completely waste it. Sheer effort is not a guarantee of a life well lived.

I know we all feel the tension between church stuff, family stuff, friend stuff, dating stuff, work stuff, school stuff. It’s a lot to figure out, isn’t it?

But there’s a very real danger that we spend our whole lives with a loose connection to Jesus but never putting our best energy and effort where He commands and where He leads. This is marked by a life of never listening, never waiting on Him, never obeying, never resting...but always building, always toiling. God is not opposed to you building, He's opposed to you building where He has not led you, and toiling without Him.

How do you know what you're building? Tune in for part three.

When we read our preferred news source, or a email from a friend, or our favorite song lyrics, we treat those kinds of writing a little differently. They differ in purpose, and so we read them with different eyes.

The whole bible is true and helpful, and yet the books of the Bible are no different. The different genres are to be read differently and with different considerations

So then...what are the Psalms?

The Psalms were poems to be sung in community. The weren't sermons or theological treatises but they are incredibly helpful in our understanding of God and how God's people saw Him in the Old Testament.

We can gain fabulous insight into our everyday discipleship by paying attention to them. The pilgrimage psalms in particular (Psalms 120-134) are some of my favorites because I see my own journey with Christ in these words.

These 15 poems were sung in community three times a year during the three festivals that happened for the Jews up in Jerusalem. Each festival required that everyone make the haul from their homes up the hill to the city. Scholars tell us that the three festivals, Passover, Pentecost, and Day of Atonement, had different customs and procedures, but all three meant a road trip for the Jews and that meant these songs were pulled out. It was a significant journey because Jerusalem sits above the neighboring regions, thus an uphill climb from most directions.

Jesus’ parents made these trips (Luke 2:41)
Jesus himself would have made these trips.

The parallels for God’s people then, and you and I today are easy and obvious. We too find ourselves on the road. Perhaps a bit cliche, but our lives are a journey. We're all hurling through time and space and heading somewhere. Between creation and recreation. Between the Garden as it was and the garden as it will be.

We, too, and moving towards the Heavenly city. We too, are heading toward a time when all of God’s family will be gathered as one. Regardless of what you think about God, or whether you even think he is real, your life is a journey.

I love the Psalms because there’s so much heart in them; not just heady facts about God, but an invitation to find God himself. I need the Psalms because they remind me that GOD sees everything in my chest.  And that includes the hard and heavy stuff.

The psalms say over and over and over again, that God sees all of it, He sees us, and He is with us in the midst of those honest prayers. I need the Psalms. And I suspect you do too.

We're about 75% of the way through the book of 1 Corinthians at Doxa. The last few weeks we've spent time looking at the ways in which God gifts his children for the revealing of his character, the benefit of those around us, and witness to the world. For the "call to worship" these past few weeks, I asked the room to extend their hands in a posture of receiving as I recited prayers for a subset of the giftings we see in scripture. Some of those prayers are below.

TEACHING
Help those with the gift of teaching communicate your perfect truth with care and precision. Help their joy for your words to us move them toward obedience. Spirit, fill them with the ability to help our hearts understand your will. Help them love those they instruct, and always maintain a posture of learning for themselves.

GIVING
Thank you Father for the generosity of this church. Bless those that give sacrificially and let their willingness to make your kingdom first be contagious for all of us. May the freedom they experience remind us of the temporary nature of most of what our hands hold.

MERCY
In light of the brokenness we see outside of us, and feel inside of us, help those with this gift to minister to us. Give them the care and concern of your son Jesus, to weep with those that weep, and mourn with those that mourn. Many of us need a friend to speak words of mercy, so raise up more of us to mirror this aspect of your perfect love.

ENCOURAGEMENT
Give them the words we need to hear from you. Help them speak into the deepest wounds and bring healing to us through words of kindness and empowering grace. Help those of us who lean towards the critical to receive from them.

PRAYER / INTERCESSION
Father help those with the gift of prayer find you in their quietness. Help them pray for what you desire for our lives, instead of things we substitute for you. Help them lead us towards greater dependence. We have so many needs in this season, yet you are our supply.

SERVING
Many hands are required for the thriving of your local church. Thank you for those that use their gifts today. Help them see their service as a beautiful act of worship. Help them see how their service looks like your kingdom. That your hospitality extended, your truth taught, your family cared for is our very purpose for living.

EVANGELISM
You have sent us into the world to love others and share with them who you are. Give them courage. There is nothing the world can take from us that lasts. Give them the words, forgive them for ever treating others like projects, and may our own humility and sacrifice be attractive to those around us.

DISCERNMENT
For those with this gift let their discernment lead them to deep care for others and not judgement. Give them the patience to watch your plans unfold. Lead them to ask questions that encourage your saints towards greater obedience and lives of holiness.

Worship leading is a beautiful privilege and massive responsibility. I have found it is a struggle to hold both of these truths in tension all the time. This past week reminded me rather pointedly that both of these statements are equally true and essential. Godly leadership requires that you have to maintain humility and an open posture for feedback while keeping a thick skin and expecting scrutiny.

Inside of 24 hours this weekend, I had a congregation member attack me via text while another one gift me something very thoughtful as a gesture of appreciation. High mountains and low valleys are part of being in ministry to be sure, but I so desperately need grace and Christ's presence to level the terrain. I don't often respond the way I want to. I weather one storm to be spun around by the next. And then in his kindness, God sends an encourager, an ally, or a grateful word.

Feeling a bit beat up and rattled, I wrote this confession for our gatherings on Sunday, mostly because I needed it:

Though made in the image of a giving God,
we have withheld from others.

Though made in the image of a patient God,
we have lost our patience.

Though made in the image of a Savior that willingly took our punishment,
we defend ourselves and demonize others.

Though made in the image of a God of kindness,
we consider our own needs above others.

As always, I'm thankful for a God who is for me, who never provokes us, puts words in our mouths, or assumes the worst. In fact, I am increasingly convinced that he is for me...a truth I've known in my head for two decades but a "heart belief" I've found slippery. My faith is small and my Savior is great.