The Joy of Forgetting What You Need To Remember
If I have my timing right, the last conference I spoke at was the 2020 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors. It was early February and we were just beginning to hear unfamiliar words like “COVID” and “coronavirus.” (A search through my inbox shows that the first mention of it was from an old Adam Ford newsletter in which he speculated that the outbreak in China was far worse than anyone was letting on.) I didn’t think much about the virus as I traveled to Minneapolis and at that time never would have imagined the way it would slam borders shut, disrupt travel, and close down the conference industry. I never would have imagined I wouldn’t attend another event for more than two years.
My topic at that conference was “Pastors and Productivity” and I enjoyed leading a seminar that took pastors through the opening steps of constructing a system meant to help them become more productive. It was based, of course, on the system I outline in Do More Better. I led the seminar, spent some time in meetings and fellowship, and then flew home. Just a few weeks later Ontario was locked down, the borders were closed, the airliners were in long-term storage in Arizona, and my entire calendar was blank.
A couple of weeks ago my church hosted a Weekender event for pastors and I was asked to dust off that very same seminar and to present it again. So I printed the same worksheet, opened the same slideshow, and presented pretty well the same content. I was gratified to see that it stood up pretty well, but did have to acknowledge how different my life has become in the two years between. The pandemic massively simplified my life and did so primarily by taking away almost all travel. I could still write the blog and work on books, but all speaking and all travel was gone. I could see how what I presented there had been flexible enough to easily bend with the changing circumstances.
As I led the pastors through the seminar, I saw that one core idea is still the most helpful of all: A good system of productivity allows us to experience the joy of forgetting what we need to remember. One of the great difficulties many of us wish to overcome in life is the fear that we will miss something, neglect something, forget something. We fear that we will miss an appointment, neglect a responsibility, forget a deadline. And as long as such fears remain present, we have trouble relaxing, we have trouble setting our minds at ease. One productivity writer wants his readers to have a “mind like water” but I’m content to help people achieve a mind that is at rest.
It’s for this reason that the main idea I present in the book and seminars is the value of creating and then perfecting a system that you trust to such a degree that you become confident it will remember what you need to remember, prompt you to do what needs to be done, and remind you to complete what is due. The practice I want people to aspire to and them embrace is getting things out of your head and into your system. This may have the side benefit of allowing you to attempt more and accomplish more. It may have the side benefit of convincing you to attempt less and accomplish less—less overall, but more of what really matters. The main value, though, is not accomplishments, but peace.
Ultimately, a strong system of productivity isn’t necessarily meant to help you do more, but to ease your mind, to calm your heart, to allow you to have confidence that your system is good enough, perfected enough, robust enough to grant you the joy of forgetting what you need to remember. Whether you learn that system through Do More Better or through one of a hundred other worthy books, I highly recommend creating some kind of a system—a system that fits your personality, a system that suits your life, a system that puts your mind at rest. You will know that system is where you need it to be when you trust it enough that you can forget what you need to remember, confident that the system will remember it for you.
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Do You Ever Wonder Whether You’re a Christian at All?
Have you ever had one of those moments where you’ve read how the Bible describes the habits, character, or disposition of a Christian and wondered, “Am I even a Christian?” I expect we all have from time-to-time. Alistair Begg considers the question in this little devotional on Luke 6:27 that is drawn from his book Truth for Life.
When you read the Bible and it describes Christianity, and then you look at yourself, do you ever wonder whether you’re a Christian at all? I know I do.
Neither our assurance as believers nor God’s love for us hinges on our ability to live out certain Christian principles; rather, both depend on what Christ has achieved for us on the cross. Even so, the Bible teaches us to look for evidences of our salvation in the present. If we truly are the Father’s children, we are bound to display a love for others that resembles Jesus’ love for us.
Jesus calls for us to love people in a way that is not related to their attractiveness, merit, or lovability. We know that this is exactly how God loves us—His love is not based on us cleaning up our act, deserving his attention, or demonstrating that we’re predisposed towards or useful to Him. None of these things contribute to God’s love for us. No—“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, emphasis added).
The greatest measure of our faith, then, is love—love that reflects the love that we have received in such abundance. We engage in agape love—unconditional, sacrificial love—because it is an expression of the character of God and all He’s done for us. We don’t exercise this kind of love for our enemies because we are blind to who they really are but because we have gazed at God’s love for us. Jesus says that when we see others as they are—in all of their ugliness and spitefulness, all of their cursing, all of their hatred, and all of their unwillingness to pay us what they owe us—we are to be realistic about all of it, and then love them. Seeing all of that enmity, says Jesus, I want you to love your enemies.
By nature, we are incapable of displaying such love. But consider the kind of difference we would make to our culture if we were prepared to live out, in both everyday and extraordinary ways, a Christlike love which seeks to do what’s best for those who have acted in enmity towards us. That would be revolutionary—without any question at all. -
A La Carte (August 18)
Grace and peace to you today.
(Yesterday on the blog: When Pastors Need To Be Extra Cautious)
Never Shop on an Empty Soul
This is a good exhortation. “The next time we find ourselves looking to buy something to relieve the boredom of our lives, remember, we are the ones being consumed. In a consumer culture, even the consumers become a commodity. Never forget, they are preying on your emptiness.”
GAFCON leading the way
Murray Campbell has an interesting article about the Anglican Church in Australia. “GAFCON is responding to what is a tireless intrusion onto Christian Churches by certain bishops and leaders who are trying to change the Gospel beyond recognition. They are not playing the same game as Christians Churches, but something quite different.” (See also this article by TGC Australia.)
When Bots Write Your Love Story
I don’t subscribe to a lot of Substack newsletters, but I do subscribe to Samuel James’. This article is a great example of why. (You may want to consider at least picking up a free 7-day trial subscription to check it out.)
Is New Testament Greek the Most Precise Language Known to Mankind?
“There is an idea which floats around in pulpits and Bible studies, and it goes something like this: ‘Greek is a perfectly precise language which clearly conveys its meaning, and this is the reason why God used Greek for the New Testament.’ I do not pretend to know the mind of God regarding why the New Testament is in Greek. But there are some substantial problems in the assertion that Greek is ‘perfectly precise.’”
The Way You Look
“My grandmother used to have this phrase to describe a particular kind of family resemblance. She’d say something like, ‘He looks out of his eyes the way his dad did when he was a kid’ or ‘The way you look out of your eyes makes me think of your mama.’” Glenna Marshall explains and applies.
What were the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age?
“Archaeologists are fond of dividing up time into different ‘ages’. This can be quite confusing to the uninitiated, for several reasons.” This article at Creation.com explains what the ages mean and when they happened.
Flashback: We Are Never Without Beauty
We are never without beauty in this world—never without displays of splendor. We are never without beauty because God’s divine fingerprints are impressed on all he has made.In the sight of God the most menial task is as sacred as that of the highest order, and when well done as greatly meets his approval. —Charles Ebert Orr
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Your Loved Ones Love You Still
The old adage may be trite, but that makes it no less true: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. There is something about being apart that stirs our affections, that causes us to understand and articulate what we might otherwise have taken for granted. It is often only through a time of separation that we come to understand how much another person means to us.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true when our loved ones leave us for extended periods or when they depart for distant lands. But “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is equally true when our loved ones depart this earth altogether. We learn that death does not cause love to die, but that in its own way, it fosters and amplifies love all the more.
And why shouldn’t it? In the distance that death interposes, we come to overlook old vices and delight in former virtues. Offenses begin to fade from our minds, replaced by memories that are sweet and delightful. A loved one was never so virtuous and never so much a Christian as she is in our memory. And then there’s this: our hearts are naturally inclined toward those who are weak. And who could be weaker than one who is drawing his final breath, one who lies in a coffin, one who is buried in the cold ground? Death displays the ultimate weakness and it moves our hearts in pity and love.
And so, though our loved ones are gone, we love them still. Though our loved ones have been taken, we love them all the more. Their absence makes our hearts grow ever-fonder.
But what of their love for us? Do our loved ones continue to love us even when they have gone to that Land of Love, even when they have finally come face to face with the God of Love?
I am convinced that they do love us still and I am convinced that their love, too, grows all the more. I am convinced that absence makes their hearts grow fonder, just as it does ours.
After all, they are still sentient, still conscious, still human, still themselves. The lives they lived are real, the relationships they formed are genuine, the experiences they enjoyed are authentic. Though torn from this world and separated from their bodies for a time, they are not torn from who they were. They are not whitewashed into new beings, not reset into people radically different from the people they were on Earth. The bonds of marriage may be severed by death, but not the sweet friendship of a husband and wife. A man’s son here will still be his son there, a woman’s mother here still her mother there. There is much we wonder about heaven and much we discuss or debate, but not the continuity of relationships, not the continuity of love.
And so, if we treasure all the sweet memories we once made together, wouldn’t they? If our hearts yearn to make new memories with them, wouldn’t theirs? If our mouths are crying out “Come, Lord Jesus,” wouldn’t their mouths sing the same?
It is a beautiful thing to ponder that even as we remember our loved ones with such tender affection, they are remembering us with hearts just as warm. Even as we long for the day when we can throw our arms around them, they long for the day when they can throw theirs around us. Even as we yearn for the time when what was severed will be restored, they are yearning for it too. Their love for us continues and their love for us grows, for absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.
