Author Archives: Seth Grotzke

Memories for sale!

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There is a standing joke with one of our friends every year at their garage sale. We line up all our stuff on tables and shout, “Memories for Sale!”

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That phrase gets to the heart of a battle between keeping and throwing, hoarding and giving. What should we keep?

It is a hard question to answer. About a year ago we went through a major move and eliminated a lot of stuff that we had been using or storing. We asked some difficult questions as we packed everything into bins, questions you can read here. But now we are entering into new territory. We have opened the “Bins of Memories” (cue Indiana Jones music).

Those sacred receptacles designated by the word “Keepsake” with the scrawling Sharpie marker are the target of our current focus. What do you keep that was from your childhood? What do you keep that has been past down to you?

We don’t have a perfect answer, and I am sure that at some point we will be disappointed for keeping, or failing to keep, something in particular. However, Crystal came up with two criteria which have been helping us to realistically evaluate what we think is important to us:

  • Will I display this?
  • Will I use this?

If it does not match either of those two, then it doesn’t have much significance for me. And if Tanzen doesn’t see us use it or display it, it won’t have much significance for her on the day she sorts through our possessions when we are gone. I have several things from my grandparents and parents that I will want displayed so they can become part of our daughter’s life as well, and can draw friends and visitors into our lives as we share the stories behind them.

I also have some memory laden everyday tools. I have a couple old butter knives from England, a coffee cup from my first official ultra marathon, a satchel from Perú. I use those knowing that I could accidentally break them, but that is a price I am willing to pay (There will be another post later to fill out this idea).

Disclaimer: There are some trophies, or projects, or horrid first attempts at sewing, or woodworking, that have great memories but would be embarrassing to put on your living room wall. One or two of those we may keep, but others we are taking pictures of and then “gently releasing them into the wild” (think trash can).

How do you determine what to keep and what to thrown?

Lessons I Tried to Teach You Without Teaching You

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Another graduation ceremony is upon us. Young adults move from “young” to “adults” with a flip of a tassel – or so we say. In reality, some of them were adults long before there was a ceremony to prove it. Others will remain childish for years to come.

For 6 years, Crystal and I worked heavily in the youth ministry at Liberty Baptist. We saw the transformation from young to adult. We spent many hours with teens around the church, our kitchen table, a campfire, or a ball field. I taught a lot of lessons, and I think a few of them were actually helpful. So, a couple years ago I decided to write out lessons that I was trying to teach the teens without actually giving a lecture. The result was this short series. It includes lessons entitled:

  • Protect the face
  • Eat the hotdog
  • Read that verse out loud
  • Girls can go first
  • Let’s sing that first verse again
  • and others

So, if you ever sat in on a youth group lesson, suffered through a manathon, or choked down a burnt hotdog on one of our camping trips, this book may answer some questions. Or, at least it will give some background material for any therapy you may need in the future.

If you never had the “privilege” of participating in any of those, you can still read it. It should at least make you thankful that you didn’t have to learn these lessons the hard way.

Lessons I tried to teach you without teaching you

(Click on the link to download the PDF)

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I am but a small part

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“The horizons of my world were changing, but in an unexpected way. It had less to do with passport stamps and frequent flyer miles than it did with my own heart. Growing up, when I thought about the church around the world, it looked like my church. That was all I knew. Sure, Christians in other countries had different languages and cultures, but if their worship styles were different or their theological preferences deficient, well, that’s why I was going over to teach them. And so, as is too often the case in missions, church planting resembles church franchising instead…What I really learned was more of the gospel in all its dimensions—its height and depth and extent as I saw it cross every kind of barrier to save souls. The cultural differences in the church only displayed the truth that “by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). I have seen empires come and go, but never have I seen anything so radical and pervasive as the gospel of the kingdom. The kingdom of Christ is diverse yet unified, boundless yet bound; for our lives are forever bound up in his life—and thus bound up with all other believers. We are like family, his body. The more I grasped the gospel, the more I loved Christ—and the more I loved him, the more I loved his people. I found a certain likeness in them.”
Keesee, Tim. Dispatches from the Front. Wheaton: Crossway, 18-19.

Like swallowing chocolate covered arsenic…

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I have been convicted about how I use my words. The conviction is part of the reason I picked up this book, and more conviction came as I read this book.

I criticize because I think I know better.

I mock because I think I could do better.

I belittle because I think I am better.

These ought not to be so. They are symptoms of a sinful heart. In “Resisting Gossip,” Mitchell defines gossip in this way, “Gossip is bearing bad news behind someone’s back out of a bad heart.” And while it is tempting, pervasive, and easy, there is hope in Christ for those who gossip and those who are hurt by it.

I would recommend “Resisting Gossip” to individuals and small groups in personal reading, Bible studies, or church groups. It will be a challenge whether you have been on the receiving end of gossip, or the carrier. It will help to define, spot, and deal with gossip in your own heart and in your circle of friends.

Click here to read a full review, and consider picking up this short book and reading through it with a friend.

Mitchell, Matthew C. Resisting Gossip: Winning the War of the Wagging Tongue. CLC Publications, 2013.

Two years ago, today…

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IMG_1018Today is “Celebration of Life” day. Maybe not on your calendar, but on ours. Today marks the 2nd anniversary of two very special lives. Our arms were first able to hold Tanzen, and Crystal was once again able to use hers.

We celebrate life today because, no matter how thorough your birth plan, it is God who gives life.

A car accident, a birth, and a stroke were all used to point us to our great God who holds us in his hands. He knew. He planned, He protected. We cried. We feared. We didn’t understand.

9E9A2005And we still don’t. We don’t understand why this happened, and neither does the incredible staff in hospitals around Minneapolis. We don’t understand the secret paths of the heart and brain, the sprawling stream of veins and nerves. And we do not understand the secret plans of our great God. And we don’t need to.

As Jon Bloom has said, “much of the Christian life is spent trusting Jesus now and understanding him later” (Bloom, Not by Sight, loc. 1496).

But in these moments of haunting fear and feelings we were able to keenly experience the giver of all strength. In the darkness of doubt the speaker of light shone brightly. I was not sufficient for her, but we rested on the one who is.

It was not easy but the significant times rarely are.

9E9A1994And for these reasons, we celebrate life today. Our days our numbered, and until we regularly remember that, we will squander them away.

So rejoice with us! Sing with us! Thank God with us! He has given us life today, let us live in light of him.

Final Edit - Project for Pastor Seth

Proud people…

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Here is a particularly convicting quote from a book which convicts at every turn.

“The bottom line is this: proud people tend to talk about themselves a lot. Proud people tend to like their opinions more than the opinions of others. Proud people think their stories are more interesting and engaging than others. Proud people think they know and understand more than others’. Proud people think they’ve earned the right to be heard. Proud people think they have glory to offer. Proud people, because they are basically proud of what they know and of what they’ve done, talk a lot about both. Proud people don’t reference weakness. Proud people don’t talk about failure. Proud people don’t confess sin” (Tripp, 175).

Tripp, Paul David. Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry. Crossway Books, 2012.

Killing Christianity…and seeing it pop up somewhere else

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“The outer world…thinks we [Christianity] are dying of old age. But it has thought that very often before. Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying, dying by persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of the physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements. But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man came to life again. In a sense—and I quite realise how frightfully unfair it must seem to them—that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that He started: and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.)” (Lewis, 221).

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Lewis on Surprise and Sin

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“When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul” (Lewis, 192)

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Some wisdom on romance novels

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In light of 50 Shades of Grey, Amish Romance Novels, and a whole host of other writing, I think we could take some wisdom from Victor Hugo in Les Misérables,

“It was at the epoch when the ancient classical romance which, after having been Clelie, was no longer anything but Lodoiska, still noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de Scuderi to Madame Bournon-Malarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the portresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent. Madame Thenardier was just intelligent enough to read this sort of books. She lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she possessed…Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.“

Heaven

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There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of ‘Heaven’ ridiculous by saying they do not want ‘to spend eternity playing harps’. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 137)