He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, And established my steps.40
Hello friends.
I wanted to touch base. For those of you who have followed me for some time I’m sure you’re wondering where I went. To have missed a couple of weeks’ worth of blogs after faithfully pumping out at least one and often two or three a week it surely seems as if I have been MIA.
Well, I have been a little occupied. Besides working on an out of town construction project, my wonderful wife and I ran away to the nearby tourist town of Cody WY for an anniversary weekend—34 years and counting.
And around all of that I was busy getting my life arranged and prepared to be out of commission for a total knee replacement. I had that surgery done a little over a week ago and this is the first time I have felt the energy and clarity to sit at my computer and write a somewhat cognizant blog (hopefully).
Although I am busting with things to share about the goodness and faithfulness of our God through this time, I am going to keep this brief for now. Because I do not want to teach about, and presume to speak on behalf of, our Awesome and Merciful God while I am under the influence of pain killers.
I am healing well; my physical therapist says I am right where I need to be in the healing process, and I have many prayers going up on my behalf—thank you for any you who may be inclined to offer up as well.
As this surgery is all about getting me solidly back on my feet, as I continue in this strange new season, for me, of waiting on the Lord as a pastor without a chapel, I will leave you with the words of the Psalm that are echoing in my heart right now:
I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me, And heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, And established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth— Praise to our God; Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the Lord. Psalm 40:1-3
May God bless you all as we continue to navigate through this insane and chaotic world as children of the God of creation who hears us and guides us.
O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways. Psalm 139:1—3
The Lord knows us, really knows us–do we know each other?
Having been in construction all my life I have spent a lot of time working out of town. I have spent my construction career, first with a pipeline contractor and then with commercial building contractors, working in or out ofBillings MT. So when we in my business refer to working out of town, that generally means somewhere in one of the myriad of smaller towns within a few hundred miles of the city of Billings, often spilling over into Wyoming.
Montana in itself is a big state with relatively few people, even the big city of Billings is relatively small, so generally speaking anyone within ten miles or so is considered your neighbor, and aside from the few places of denser populations, you most likely know all those within 10 miles of your home.
Then there is the small town dynamic. Having worked, and even lived in several different small towns, or no towns—what most would consider the middle of nowhere—I am always fascinated by the people and how each community has its own personality, often depending on how many people have spent their lives in that community as opposed to how many transplants, or tourists, there are.
I have spent the last 8 months working in the small eastern Montana town of Forsyth. Eastern MT is much different from western MT in that there are far fewer transplants, as all those who are now fleeing the big cities and the liberal chaos that has permeated those places, especially as of late, all want to live near the western mountains. Forsyth is a small town on the Yellowstone Riverin the heart of cattle country somewhat removed from the alpine mountain scenery that draws the big city folk who are all looking for their piece of paradise—so they can build a huge house, plant a perfect yard and put up a big fence to look over at what’s left of the paradise they just defiled, just so they can fly south when it snows—anyway I digress. . .
I have been working and staying in Forsyth long enough now, going home on the weekends, that I am treated as a local, but then; that’s not a whole lot different than how I was treated right off the bat. Driving around in small town eastern MT everyone waves at you when they pass, just in case they know you, chances are good that they do, and everyone wants to know you if they don’t.
Four way stops take much longer than they should because everyone wants to make sure that they are not going out of turn, and the other person just might be in a bigger hurry. The wait staff in the few cafés all know how you like your coffee and your eggs, the folks at the next table are familiar and say howdy even if they are not, and the folks at the hardware stores and convenience stores treat you like an old friend and are genuinely glad you came.
The only time you hear a horn honk is if someone is saying hello or a couple of the neighbors cattle have gotten out on the highway, and you need to alert them.
And crime, like burglary, random acts of violence and vandalism is pretty rare compared to many places. It’s much harder to steal from your neighbor when you know how hard they worked for something, to spray graffiti on the wall of a business whose owner coaches your basketball team, or to vandalize the property of the person who leads your 4-H club.
Besides, there’s a good chance they’ll figure out who did it, they likely know you. When people are no longer nameless strangers, it’s much harder to mistreat, harm or berate them.
Thing is, that’s the way the world used to be. Back when we had front porches we spent our evenings on watching the neighborhood kids play together, corner stores we ran into our neighbors at, and neighborhood churches where we all worshipped together and planned our next picnic or work party for the neighbor who needs a new barn, or a hand branding his calf crop.
The more we get connected the more we become faceless drones that no longer see one another. The more we digitize worship, the less real communion there is. The more we strive for our corner of paradise, the farther away we get from it—we loose the heart in our fight for the peace.
I’m not saying we should all move to small town Montana, (please don’t) I’m just looking at the lessons to be learned there. And as one who has seen the world change dramatically and become much more disconnected from reality, from one another, and especially from the God who knows us better than we will ever know ourselves, I see the stark contrast of what’s being lost. Our humanity is at stake. Much of that humanity is in our ability to connect with one another and communicate our hearts to one another in love trust, and respect.
Let’s not trade the universe and all its wonders for the metaverse.Lets not trade relationships for likes. Lets not turn inward—striving for all that we think we deserve and forget what we are here to do—to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to be a light to the world. Honestly, we all have much more than we deserve.
So wave at the nameless person you pass on your way to work. Say hi to the person next to you in line at the coffee shop. Tell the cashier thanks, and have a great day, even if they look like they would rather not be there. And go to church—real church—and get to know your neighbors. Maybe shovel their sidewalk, mow their grass, share a BBQ, meet up for coffee. You may just find your next best friend.
We, and they, are created in the image of God—and he knows us, cares about us, and is acquainted with all our ways. We are not meant to walk this world alone, we need Him and one another.
Stop hiding behind your phone, your windshield, and your vinyl fence, and be a neighbor. You’ll be amazed at what you’ve been missing.
“It was not long before we heard sirens coming from what seemed every direction, . . . we were now the idiots who tried to blow up Billings. “
Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? 18 Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? Mark 8
Can you imagine standing toe to toe with Jesus and having him ask you this? The indignation of this question is quite obvious in the context. So this was no rhetorical or contrived discussion question.
“Welcome to the Capernaum chapter of the Clueless Fishermen for Jesus support group. Let’s break the ice by going around the circle and explaining in two or three sentences why you are still confused about this carpenter/teacher/prophet from Nazareth.Who wants to go first?”
No, This is a question from Jesus that no doubt made his followers a little uncomfortable. It’s like—‘Do I need to call Captain Obvious to explain things to you?Can you not hear? Can you not see? Have you forgotten everything?’
Do we understand? Because it’s easy to miss the obvious truth that Jesus is the Christ and that in him we have nothing to fear and nothing to loose, if we are totally surrendered to and trusting of him.
We have to keep fanning the flames of truth and understanding to really bring the knowledge of who Christ is, and what that means for us, from the head into the heart, into our very spirits. We have to letthe Holy Spiritmove freely through us and in us and that is a huge challenge because the enemy will do everything he can to block that wind of the Spirit so that those flames will die out leaving us with nothing but head knowledge and a weakness that leaves us susceptible to the yeast of the Pharisees—a yeast of selfish ambition and religious attitudes of judgment and haughtiness.
‘Look at me. I’m somebody and you are nobody, and I am worthy of more.‘ That attitude, along with the weaknesses of the flesh that we may give in to, can block the Spirit and leave us smoldering.
Why do we not understand? Because we are not putting it all together. This is what the Lord told me, because I asked, and the Lord gives wisdom to those who ask:
“The understanding is in the heart, the wisdom is in the word, and the conjunction is in the Spirit.”
Worldly wisdom comes from the head and what we can put in it. Godly wisdom is seated in the heart, it is a wisdom that comes from God’s word and is brought to life by his Holy Spirit.
The word is the fire that is in the heart and the wind that fans the flames is the Holy Spirit fanning it all to life for wisdom, power and understanding. All of that leads to the faith we need to get us through this life with and for Jesus, blessed, fruitful and advancing the Kingdom of our God.
Fire!
Back in the 80’s when I worked for an outfit that did pipeline and refinery work we got contracted to do the demolition of one of those big oil storage tanks at the Conoco refinery in Billings. The tank was located in a lot just behind the refinery actually, just off the Interstate in what they called the “tank farm.” If you are going through Billings you have surely seen those tanks right near the river just before you get to the Lockwood exit.
Our job was to go in there with cutting torches and cut this huge tank into sheets of metal small enough to fit on a flatbed truck to haul away for scrap metal.
So where do you start demoing a giant steel tank?On the roof of course. So, using a crane with a “man cage” swinging from it they hoisted me up to the top and deposited me with my cutting torch in hand. The Oxy/Acetylene bottles were still on the ground and I had many feet of hose run out to it. I started cutting away, the plan being to cut pie shaped pieces of the lid loose and let them fall down inside. That’s another story all in itself, it’s a wonder I survived my earlier construction years looking back at some of the things we used to do. But anyway, so far, so good.
Now, this tank had been sitting empty for many years and there was a large hole cut in the side big enough to drive a small skid steer through and to let things air out real well. But there was this weird thick black dry residue of something all over the floor. It looked to me like ground up tires, three inches thick or so. It was actually some kind of residue from the crude oil that had been stored in the tank at one time.
We soon discovered that it was somewhat flammable, no problem. As I was cutting on top, occasionally a small fire would flare up on the floor and someone would just go in and pat it out with a shovel.
Then the boss, the owner of the outfit, ol’ Wayne, at least he seemed old to me at the time, decided that it would be much more efficient to put the oxy/acetylene bottles up on the lid, and then we would have enough hose to get two guys cutting.
So they loaded up the bottles into the man cage and hoisted them up to the lid. Everyone’s attention was on the bottles and the people going up to the top—and no one was watching the inside of the tank where a little bit of smoldering residue had got enough wind to burst into flames.
We now had a big enough hole in the roof that the wind blowing through the opening in the side could really get to fanning the flames and soon there was quite a plume of smoke billowing out of the top. I shouted“Hey, there’s a fire down below!”
The flames were now way too big to pat out with a shovel. The boss quickly swung us and the bottles down off the top and soon everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I was standing there with Wayne waiting for him to tell me what to do and he looked at me and said; “I don’t know what to do!”
By this time there was a line of cars stopped on the highway watching this huge column of thick black smoke billowing out of the top of a tank; at the refinery!—this does not look good. We were a long ways from the nearest phone but the smoke signals we were sending up could be seen for miles. Just imagine a giant burn barrel full of tires; that’s what we had going there.
(A more recent fire) A STORAGE TANK at the ConocoPhillips refinery, above, lies crumpled Friday morning after a fire on Thursday in Billings.
I looked at Wayne and said “We have to stop that wind from blowing in that hole in the side—it’s just fanning the flames and making it look really bad.” We grabbed a large tarp from one of our trucks and Wayne and I stood there and held it up against the hole as best we could to block the wind.
It helped but it did not stop the flames, the smoke was still horrendous. It was not long before we heard sirens coming from what seemed every direction. Soon a big yellow fire truck came rolling up and fireman all decked out in their coats and respirators came running at us shouting “What’s going on?”
We were standing the with our arms up over our heads holding the tarp against the tank, futilely trying to cut off the air, our faces black with soot—and Wayne didn’t say a word. I don’t know what he was thinking but he looked like a deer in the headlights. So I quickly explained the situation. About this time hoses were being strung out so we dropped our tarp and got out of the way as they ran headlong into the tank and started spraying foam everywhere.
Photo by Tobias Rehbein on Pexels.com Here I am– to save the day!
Before it was over we had five different fire crews show up. The City of Billings, Lockwood, the refinery fire crews from Conoco and the nearby Exxon crew and a truck from the now defunct O’Donnell’s Fire service clear out in Shepherd.
I was just shaking my head. I kept thinking, “It’s just a little fire inside of a tank all by itself over here, it’s mostly just smoke!”But apparently everyone thought that the whole city was in danger. The fire was out long before all the trucks stopped rolling in.
Of course we made the evening news and we were now the idiots who tried to blow up Billings. But we went back to work the next day and made sure we kept someone on fire watch. Life goes on.
Thots
Do you understand?
Understanding is the small flicker of flame that starts as a little smolder in a rich and abundant bed of fuel planted in our hearts by God’s word, that has to have the wind of the Spirit to really get it roaring. The Devil will try everything he can to put out that fire. But all he has is a tarp made of lies to try and block the wind. Don’t let him do it.
To understand you have to put it all together, if you understand that Jesus is the Christ, that he is with you, that you have nothing to fear, that he can use what you have to do incredible things from a heart of compassion for people, and do not let the greed of the heart, the lies of the world and the pride that is always prodded by the enemy choke you off, then the Holy Spirit will fan the embers of faith in your heart into a roaring fire that God can use to overcome any obstacle to his purposes that he puts on your heart to achieve.
Not for greed, not for glory, not for fame or self-satisfaction, but for Jesus.
The understanding is in the heart, the wisdom is in the word, and the conjunction is in the Spirit.
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How he knew where I was, why he was even in the area—I still don’t know. But here he is, the building inspector…
one of many churches in Plevna
Years ago I was sent to a little town in eastern Montana called Plevna to do some work on a church. Unless you are from that area you have probably never heard of it. It’s just east of Ismay. . .which should clear that right up.
The project manager told me to just load up and head over there. (over 200 miles away) He couldn’t remember the name of the church but, he said, it’s a tiny town you should have no problem finding the church, it’s the white one with the bad sidewalks.
Guess what, there are six churches in Plevna, and they were mostly all white with old sidewalks that looked like they needed replaced. In fact, it turns out that the name Plevna is an eastern European word (Turkish, Bulgarian?) that means many churches.
Anyway, after a phone call back to the office for a little more information I found the right church. It was the Baptist church, and we went to work replacing sidewalks and improving the drainage from the site to keep the water out of the basement.
Now, I am in the middle of nowhere by most reckonings. A couple of miles off of a secondary highway on the back side of a small town, working at a small church— and after a couple of weeks on the job, guess who shows up. The State building inspector.
The first thing you see coming into Plevna
Now, aside from the few bigger towns who have their own building inspectors, there are two state inspectors that cover the entire state, one the western half, and the other the eastern half.
That’s a lot of territory. How he knew where I was, why he was even in the area—I still don’t know. But here he is; “I heard there was a project going on here so I thought I had better check it out. I don’t think anyone pulled a permit for this did they?”
Um, I don’t know. Excuse me, I need to call the office. The office told me that the value of the project was under the dollar amount that required a building permit. When I told the inspector that he said, “Well that might be true, but when you are doing anything that changes an egress, you have to have a review and a permit.”
For those of you non construction types, an egress is the way you enter and exit a building. So I told him, well, we are not changing any doors or paths of travel inside or out.He saw all the new concrete around the front door and just assumed that we had changed everything.
No, all we did was bust out the old and put in new, it’s all exactly the way it was before—without the big cracks. “Oh, okay, I guess your good then, have a nice day!”
The moral of the story is, no matter how far away and tucked away you are, you can’t hide from the building inspector. But I was not doing anything wrong, in fact, I was diligently doing my best and that little church got a nice new sidewalk among other things. A few Baptists in Plevna MT were blessed and I have since been entrusted with much larger projects—and have a great rapport and trusting relationship with the state building inspector–who never fails to find me.
You never know when the chief shepherd is going to show up, so you had best be found playing by the rules.
Obscurity
And take care of that with which you are entrusted.
2 Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly; 3 nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; 4 and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. 1 Peter 5
There is a phrase, more of a concept really, that has been on my mind and heart a lot lately. I first heard it about two years ago, a prophecy with a promise, that those who are diligently laboring in obscurity will be the ones God uses in a mighty way to accomplish his purposes in the great harvest to come.
I have certainly felt at times like I am laboring in obscurity here, in my little Red Lodge church, diligently toiling away, fixing broken things at a small church in a small town that few know even exists let alone try to find. But there is one who sees, one who knows, and he will reward us, all of us who are quietly working, doing the best we can without thought to what we can get out of it or our own advancement.
For all of you, my fellow shepherds and bond servants of Christ, toiling in dry fields far from the lights of notoriety, in the Ismays, Plevnas and Red Lodges of the world, hear this;
In that quiet humility and eagerness to just do what God asks us to do, because we love him and his, and for no other reason, we will be blessed with grace and favor that will one day turn into a crown of glory that will make us forget all about the days of frustration and doubt that we may have had.
The chief Shepherd is watching us, and he knows exactly where we are— and he is pleased.
As a good leader you know that everything that happens under your watch is your responsibility.
Years ago I was working on a project at Rocky Mountain College in Billings. It was an addition on the Student Union building. I showed up shortly after it started to help form the walls for the foundation and quickly realized that the guys who were doing the work did not have all the stuff they needed, namely whaler brackets, and they did not really know what they were doing —the hundred foot of wall they were forming was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.
The foreman was off getting some parts at the yard so I made a phone call to the shop to try and catch him because the guys had told me what he was after and I knew it was not what we needed.
I was no expert but I had been on a couple of big concrete jobs by then and had learned from the best. This was long before everyone carried cell phones so the best I could do was call the office and hope someone could run out to the yard and give him the message.
I missed the foreman, he had come and gone, but somehow I ended up talking to the big boss and I explained to him what was going on and he agreed that ‘yeah, you need some whaler brackets to straighten that wall— why don’t they have any?’
We soon had some whaler brackets. Of course then I was worried that the foreman would be angry that I had seemingly gone over his head to get the right parts. Instead he was grateful that I had set the wall and the crew straight—he admitted that he was not very experienced in doing concrete foundations. I had to admire his humility anyway.
As the job progressed it wasn’t long before the crew was looking to me for guidance on how to form the walls that got higher and more complicated as we worked around the building. I was just a carpenter, same as everyone else, but one day the foreman came to me and asked, “Dan, I would like you to run the concrete crew.”
I said, “That would be fine but if you want me to push these guys I need to get paid to make it worth the push back.” (Actually I said it in more blunt construction terms; “If I’m going to be an asshole, I need asshole pay”) He said he would talk to the big boss and see what he says.
A day or two later the big boss came out to take a look at the job and he came over to where I was working and looked at a corner in the twelve foot tall foundation wall we were forming. He saw some bracing he thought was inadequate and said, “You know the hydraulic pressure of that much concrete is probably going to blow out that corner the way it’s done there.”
I looked at it and said, “Well, yeah, you’re probably right. I didn’t form this corner, Randy and Monty did.” At this —and I’ll never forget this—he turned and looked me in the eye and said; “A foreman has to take responsibility for everything his crew does.”
I looked at him for a moment and simply replied; “I’ll make sure it gets taken care of.”
That was his way of telling me that I was now the official leadman and I did get an extra dollar an hour on my paycheck. And a couple years later I got promoted to foreman.
We all have those moments when something changes the way you think and set’s you on a better course that leads to favor and blessing—if we’ll humble ourselves and listen.
I remember that day well, standing there in that hole on a hot summer day some 25 years ago, covered in form oil, dust and sweat, and it was a lesson I never forgot. And I still live by that rule to this day, as a Job superintendent and as a leader in the church. With authority comes great responsibility and everything that happens under your watch is your responsibility. And you cannot throw people under the buss to make yourself look faultless.
In the end that only makes you look small, and the people you lead will stop respecting you and the quality of the work will suffer greatly. Carrying the load of others’ mistakes or failures is never easy but that is what those who would lead, whether in business or in the church, are called to do.
It’s not just taking the responsibility, it’s striving to help others avoid those mistakes going forward and to recover and recoup from the mistakes already made.
Heavy is the Head
There’s an old saying that was popularized by William Shakespeare in Henry the IV; “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
Everyone wants to be in charge, until they are. True leaders know that they are servants who get others to follow by showing them the way, not just telling—carrying the burdens with them, not just demanding that they be carried. True leaders have been there and done that which they are now expecting of others while knowing that if the job is not done he will likely have to do or fix it himself.
Am I talking about construction or ministry? —both. Heavy is the head that wears the crown whether it’s a white hard hat or the anointing oil of ordination. And the older you get, and the more you understand the significance and the reasons why, the greater the burden becomes and the more valuable your leadership.
If others will listen. It’s the fool who despises the words of their elders.
Which is why we are told to submit.
People who have earned their authority didn’t get there by being lazy or foolish.
It is not for naught that Jesus gives certain persons the gift of leadership and then has them earn their crown—pay their dues so to speak. Those who don’t are more likely to fall, or more likely be knocked off their high horses.
Grace and favor come to the humble.
Our humility today, our humble and faithful service, will gain us the crown of glory. We do not get to lord over anyone today as if we have already been glorified and all must look up to us. We have our greatest example of that, of course in Jesus. Jesus set aside his glory and became a servant, a suffering servant.
Exaltation through Humility. Jesus literally took the blame for everything mankind has ever done, he bore all our sins on that cross, exemplified love, grace and selflessness and is now wearing the crown of the king of glory over all the universe.
Certainly, his was a heavy head as it was crowned with thorns. But he did it because he knew that the end result was worth it, the end result being the redemption of those he loved.
DanSwaningsonWordsAndWit 