A very short post

I have come to the realization that all the things that I thought were causing my unhappiness have actually been the means by which God has revealed my unhappiness.  It might be more accurate to say, what has been taken away were the things I was using to cover up an unhappy heart, to distract it.  Must go think about this for awhile.

Church: Instant Circle of Friends for the Socially Inept?

I've been doing some thinking lately about how American Christians "do" church and how it's different from the way it all started 2000 years ago.  There are some that would say that the problem is that we have the overhead of the building or pay for pastor's salaries when Christ is supposed to be the head, etc., etc.  Now this may be so in some ways.  There's a function in one of my husband's desktop publishing programs (I think one of the music ones) that has a "snap to" function that can be turned on so that where ever you place a note, it "snaps to" the closest valid position for a note.  There's a similar function in windows when arranging your desktop.  You can push things around and have the setting on that causes the icons to "snap to" a nice,  neat little spot on the page that makes all your icons line up in neat little rows.  (Though according to my husband, you should have your desktop cleaned up to the point where you don't have enough on the desktop to actually make rows!)

The people of God are the same way really.  God intervenes to get them out of the pattern of the world, and it isn't long before we've "snapped to" the pattern of the world.  One of the biggest patterns of the world that the church has taken on in America is the tendency to pander to the wealthy, the successful, the popular... those who really have it together.  I'm not going to go into the details of how it's done differently, but the evidence is there.  It seems that the church is attracting the respectable more than not and I'm pretty sure those that fill the pews may look a lot like the religious establishment of Jesus' day.  I'm not questioning the faith of anyone in particular or saying that you can't have money and have faith in Jesus.  But Jesus did say it was incredibly difficult.  If it's such a rare and difficult thing to get a rich man into heaven (and yes, most who read this are "rich" or you wouldn't be sitting there on a personal computer in your own home) then why do so many fill the pews in America.  Jesus couldn't give away his message for free when he was on this earth.  Is it the very same message that is actually producing bestseller books and millionaire preachers?

So it comes down to what I've been convicted of personally regarding this.   I grew up attending a Lutheran Congregation (not Missouri Synod, but the very Midwestern conservative LCA.) in Dallas Texas, therefore gained few friends through church that I saw at school during the week.  There was a total of one person my age that attended, and she went to a different school in the district.  So then I came to U.T.  Some people I met in my dorm brought me to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting.  I thought I had entered heaven.  Not because I had entered the presence of God, but because 2/3 of the  members were also members of Sororities and Fraternities on campus.  I was NOT popular in high school.  I now thank the Lord I wasn't.  But back then (or maybe still?), I was still hungry to be noticed by the beautiful people, and here was a room FULL of them and they were all being nice to me.

Now these may have been genuine Christians who really did have the love of Christ for me, but overall--let's admit it-- they had to be nice.  Everyone knows that you're not allowed to prefer the rich over the poor in church.  So even if we don't want to, we'll be nice to those we don't like, and we'll be especially nice to those we feel really uncomfortable around.  But we'll usually only let them so close.

Does anyone watch the show Community?  Jack Black guest stars as a member of their Spanish class who was so beneath notice that no one knew he'd been in their class all this time.  He plops himself into the middle of their study group and starts acting like a member of their "crowd".  No one wants to be the one to admit that they want to kick this guy out.  They don't want to be the mean one.  But ultimately, he gets dragged out kicking and screaming.  But it could have gone another way.  They could have let him stay, out of fear of being the bad guy, and never really let him in either.

I think there's a lot of that in the church now.  The "rejects" of this world come to the Church because it promises something different, and seems to deliver at first.  But they still end up on the margins of an organization that is supposed to favor the poor, the despised the down and out.  But isn't it partly the fault of those coming in for acceptance too?  If we are really following Jesus (and not those people we long to be accepted by) shouldn't we be searching for someone more needy than ourselves to reach out to?  James reprimanded those he wrote to in the New Testament for (this is a paraphrase) "seeking the favor of the very ones who treat you so badly".  I have been guilty of that for years, to be honest.  But these people weren't "dragging me into court", so my error wasn't quite as obvious.  But they were keeping me at arm's length.  They have been for years, but I've been in denial.  The test is, if I stop making effort, will the relationship's still continue?  If I don't show up, will anyone call?  Or will they be relieved.  I know this sounds pathetic, but it's been my reality.  I'm not having a pity part (at all).  I'm just stating facts.

So I'm going to start rejoicing in the special favor I have in my Lord's eyes in my "low position" (see James, chapter 1) and start calling on some people that are actually glad to hear from me!

A Beautiful Key

Here is something beautiful I never saw in Romans before.  I've always been intrigued with this section early in Romans but never have seen before how it can be used to interpret later passages in Romans 7 and 8.

This is from Romans 4:

"[Abraham believed] God, who brings to life the dead, and calls those things that are not as though they were.  Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which is spoken, so shall they seed be. And being no weak in faith, he considered his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of sara's womb...and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able to perform"

The references to a dead womb (unable to receive life) and his own dead body (unable to offer anything good) brings to mind the references to our dead flesh that can do nothing but produce dead works.  And God is able to raise the dead and the promise is made later in this letter to the Romans that the "Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies".  I wait for this, but when I read 1 John and other places about what those signs of life are, well, I'm starting lately to see them, but had not before.  Why?  Didn't I only have to believe?  Why was I acting more like a disconnected branch, a sick tree bearing bad fruit?

Look at Abraham believed God, that real life would be given.  But the actual quickening of the dead happened years later.  Now Abraham did not know how it would happen or when.  And when life did not appear yet, it was not the fault of Abraham, that he was doing something wrong.  Though he did try to readjust the understanding of the promise at one point and thought that since he had not seen the fulfillment of the promise yet that maybe he misunderstood, that it wasn't as wonderful as he thought it was going to be and that he needed to adjust his approach.  And the thing is, Hagar conceived.  It seemed to work.  It wasn't until later that the fruit was manifested to be a work of the flesh.

The sad thing is, in today's microwave, instant society, Abraham probably wouldn't have given up after the Hagar debacle.  He would have assumed that his approach just needed to be adjusted and he would have tried one misguided attempt after another and Isaac never would have born!

But he hung on and believed God would perform as he promised, exactly as he promised.  His faith became so strong that he actually was willing to sacrifice Isaac, after all that waiting.  But God is the one who raises the dead, and it may not happen in my timing, but it will be as wonderful, if not more wonderful, than everything I thought it would be, that it should be, if we believe what is described in the Gospels and Paul's letters and especially in 1 John.  Beyond belief!  But I'm going to believe exactly that.

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand places

Here are some quotes from one of my favorite authors from a book I'm reading by him right now, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.  The idea of the title is that of all the "games" that Man likes to participate in, the reality is, there is only one game going in God's eyes, the game of salvation, and Christ plays every position in a thousand ways.

Here are some quotes that most recently started my wheels turning:

"Salvation is God's work: Jesus saves.  In competence may be the essential qualification, lest we impatiently and presumptuously take over the business and start managing a vast and intricate economy that we have no way of comprehending.  To be sure, we get intimations; we are in touch with stories that reveal God's salvation work at certain moments in history to which we have access.  We know enough to get in on the life of salvation personally by repenting and believing and following Jesus, the architect and pioneer of salvation.  But when all is said and done, we don't know very much.  Most of what goes on in salvation is beyond us; we live a mystery.  We make our way through life in a "cloud of unknowing".  p. 152

"The Wonder at the Sea (the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites) is meant to be unederstood as miracle without qualification.  It was not even qualified by Israel's faith.  Brevard Childs makes the trenchant observation that 'Israel failed to believe right up to the moment of her deliverance.'  At the very outset we are meant to understand taht salvation is not limited by conditions, by impossibilities, by conventions.  The Wonder at the Sea establishes it as fundamental that salvation consists in what God does; it is not a human project.  We see and fear and believe (14:31) and that's it.  This is difficult to digest, for we grow up with and are surrounded with 'salvation projects' on all fronts (many of them in churches) that insist that what we do, how we get involved, is critical to their success.  When waws the last time that we heard one of our pastors or evangelists or politicians tell us, 'You have only to keep still'?  But that is what we are told here.  This is as indisputable and as clear as our story teller can make it: Our showcase salvation story anchors 'save' in the sheer, unqualified miracle of the Wonder at the Sea.  Only God did this and only God could do it.'  p.172

"[Resurrection] happens, we do not make it happen.  The more we get involved in what God is doing, the less we find ourselves running things; the more we participate in God's work s revealed in Jesus, the more is done to us and the more is done through us.  The more we practice resurrection the less we are on our own or by ourselves, for we find that this resurrection that is so intensely and relationally personal in Father, Son, and Spirit at the same time plunges us into relationships with brothers and sisters we never knew we had: we are in community whether we like it or not.  We do not choose to be in this community; by virtue of the resurrection of Jesus, this is the company we keep."  p.231

Absolute Surrender... for real this time!

Yes, yes... I know.  There will be re-surrender, again and again.  "I surrender all" has been the theme of prayers in the past, but there was a different flavor to this one, a brutal honesty that wasn't there before, mostly because so much yuck has come to the surface lately and I can no longer deny that I am unsound and covered in wounds from head to toe, as described in Isaiah.

Those who know me know that I rarely read one book at a time.  Right now I'm in the middle of several and lately I kept reading the same sort of message, no matter who I was reading: Larry Crabb to Johnathan Edwards to Nancy Lee DeMoss to Thomas Merton (and I could go on)-- they were all saying the same thing.  I'll quote the one I was reading when everything seemed to come to ahead:

"The person who has never acknowledged Christ's right to rule over his life has no basis for assurance of salvation.  he may claim to be a Christian; he may have walked an aisle or prayed the sinner's prayer, he way know how to speak "Christianese"; he may be heavily involved in Christian activities; but if he thinks he can have a relationship with God by retaining control over his life and somehow trying to fit Jesus in with everything else, he is deceived and is still at war with God."

-Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Surrender, from the trilogy Brokenness, Surrender, Holiness

This is what I was reading God seized my heart and put my face between his hands and turned it up towards his countenance.  I have been frustrated lately in my efforts to change some things in my life--some of them on the level of "bad habits" and some easily fell in the category of outright breaking of God's commandments.  But I know that truly they are all issues of the heart, because we do what we want to do.  That's what we eventually do, anyway.  And no lasting change would come in my behavior or my feelings until my heart changed.  I knew in my heart that I loved the world.  I know that I love the opinions of men and become a slave to such fear daily. (Most specifically, lately, the opinion of my husband.  And though I'm supposed to revere and obey him and should want to please him, there is no fear in love, so if I'm walking in fear, something is seriously wrong)  And my heart did not hate sin.  I was not facing, honestly, the wall I was building brick by brick between my and my family and me and my God.  (And all the people who were already out of sight because the walls were complete.)

But what hit me at this moment, is that I had not called Jesus "Lord".  I called him "Lord" in the morning, before the kids get up and the demands of the day come, but I have held onto the right to rule my own life and was making decisions all day long that I knew He would not approve of, and that Nick would not approve of, and when it comes right down to it, I did not approve of.  In fact, there was a little girl, a long time ago, who looked just like me, but shorter and with less gray hair, that would be shocked at the things I do, the sneaking, the lying, the distrust of almost everyone.  So no, he was not Lord, absolute authority, in my life.  I could not be described as a slave to him in any sense of the word, but rather a slave to my fear, my passions, to anger, to unbelief.

No, if I looked at what my life had seemed to become, my lips worshiped, but my heart was far from him.  Now what's confusing is, I could still come to experience his presence in my life.  I've heard his voice.  But is this the evidence that is the proof that I'm looking for?  To be free to obey God is what Romans says is the fruit of new life, of a new heart, of being buried with Christ (rejecting the world) and being raised with him to new life (a life which values Kingdom things, not things that feed the flesh).

So I was left with this dilemma: I needed to let Jesus rule my life, but I knew it seemed impossible because my heart was still bent towards the unholy trinity of "I want, I feel, I need".  It would just be another empty promise made in the morning, broken later in the day.  (Though this was actually close to midnight when this all happened, so even worse, I had a whole night to sleep off the effects of my resolve.  But I know it would take more than resolve.  So something else needed to happen, something I'd be completely out of control of whether it happened or not.  Something I could not do for myself.

Now I have told God that I surrendered everything before.  And I have asked for a new heart before.  But there a few things different this time.  I think this is the first time it clicked together at the same time, the conviction that I needed to surrender combined with the realization of my need for a new heart with new desires.  This is the first time I've come before him with such absolute honesty of how much I had hated him and spurned him every time I chose to be deaf to his voice and... oh, I don't know.  It's so hard to describe other than being in the light.  He gave me the grace, at that moment, to come so completely into the light, where everything became so clear.  And as I brought one thing after another before him in confession, his holiness surrounded me and healing was in the air.

The biggest difference this has made in my life is not that it's enabling me to "get my act together".  That would be old way, linear thinking--striving to live up to a code, the law, a standard.  The biggest difference is that it's brought peace.  I have been at war with God and not been admitting to it.  My heart was constantly straining in the other direction, so obedience took so much work.  Just existing, took so much work, because my head was full of so much knowledge of how things ought to be.  So guilt just weighed me down, the guilt of knowing that I didn't want what I ought to want.  Now I have lifted that work up to the Lord and my hope is completely in him to make it happen.

By the way, here are a list of some of the things that I laid down including many that I didn't expect to be on the list:

- the right to spend money how I want to (I am the one who takes care of the bills and who knows where all the balances are at on all the credit cards, and though I know it eventually comes out
- the right to my time, to have any leisure even
- the right to sleep
- the right to a good marriage
- the right to have good kids
- the right to stay home with my kids and home school them
- the right to fellowship with other believers (Really, this a a privilege, not a right.  And the kind of fellowship that first century believers enjoyed is such a rare commodity today, how could it possibly be considered a right?)
- the right to a devotional time in the morning, or any other part of the day.
- the right to read
- the right to feel good or be comfortable
- the right to be useful in God's kingdom.  I am only called to readiness.

I'll close with these words by Thomas Merton, which contain a surprising definition of lukewarm, but rings true...at least it did in my life:

"There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude.  Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything.  Those who do not love, hate.  In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.  That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable.  It is hate disguised as love.
    Tepidity, in which the soul is neither "hot or cold"--neither frankly loves nor frankly hates--is a state in which one rejects God and rejects the will of God while maintaining an exterior pretense of loving Him in order to keep out of trouble and save one's supposed self-respect. "

Little Addendum to my last post

I don't know if I've ever posted twice in one day, but I wanted to get my thoughts on this out there because I don't want to lose this thread and let it vaporize in the attack from the Enemy of distractions and incredibly negative thoughts threatening to wash away all traces of the path that might lead me out of this pit.

I watched an episode of the Closer while on the treadmill. The storyline included a couple who had lost their daughter to a murdering rapist and watched him get convicted but receive a mere 8 years in prison. After he got out, the girl's mother found out where he got hired for work and pass out fliers to everyone at his job, telling what he had done, so he kept losing jobs. When police questioned the couple because they were suspects in the murder of their daughter's killer, the father asked, "Was he brutally tortured before he suffered a long painful death? No? Then it wasn't me." It was really clear that these fictional but realistic characters had clearly not only lost their daughter, but themselves.

As I pondered this story later, I considered how the offense doesn't really matter; the nature of the loss doesn't really matter. When it's all said and done, unforgiveness is amazingly consistent in its effect. I could search my whole life and never find someone who understands exactly what I'm going through, because as the Proverb says, "Each heart knows it's own bitterness." And somehow, it's tempting to believe the uniqueness of my situation justifies staying in that bitter place. But I'm starting to realize that my path is simply a different path that leads to an amazingly similar end.

The Lord illumined something else as I meditated on the effects of unforgiveness: the nature of my burden. I think I carry more upon myself because I have started to lay so much on others. If I cut others little slack, I end up cutting myself even less. I wondered, as this bitterness has grown in my heart, how much my burden of guilt has increased as well, so gradually that I forgot that my heart didn't used to be this heavy. As I allow myself to judge others in the ways they have not met my expectations, I become VERY aware that others have expectations of me as well. And sometimes these are actual expectations, and sometimes they are imagined, and they all increase the pressure, the burden, the weight.

It's like how it is to run on that treadmill. I used to run that same three miles in high school, but it's not the same three miles, if you know what I mean. I weighed 120 when I ran it back then and now I weigh.... well... more. I'm not going to put that in black and white. :) And it's been about 25 years since I ran and it's not like I added all that weight at once. So I don't remember being different, but I know it was. And if I could lose it all at once, I'm sure I'd feel like I was on wings once I started running.

Jesus offers a quick-loss program. I could lose this weight of unforgiveness, but sometimes it seems more elusive than that 120 mark on the scale.

A new Year, A new Heart... this is what I need.

Last night, I had a little meltdown that showed me just how angry I am about some things. I'm not a big fan of laying out my dirtiest laundry in cyberspace, but I'm thinking that maybe there are some that might relate and could be encouraged. Who knows?

As I was beginning to say, I'm very angry inside. What came out as I poured my heart out to God (I'm so grateful when my meltdowns happen with Him and not in other harmful forms with my family.) was a glimpse of the ugliness of rage that I was simply calling "resentment". Like God spoke through Isaiah, I had serious, gaping, festering wounds in my hearts that I was not treating seriously or tending to and they were poisoning my life. If you're married, you know how it can be when you have a fight with your spouse and you separate angrily and can't function to do anything else, can't concentrate on any task, until you resolve your conflict. Well, This is where I am, more or less. But it's over conflict with people I rarely see and whose relationships have become superficial and the conflict will probably never be resolved other than for me to lay my hurt down at the Cross and walk away and never look back.

So what has been happening is that I've been walking in serious poverty where I should have riches. I've entrusted my heart to sinful men, they've smashed it to pieces and I'm sitting here waiting on them to put it together again. And of course, they never will. They wouldn't know where to begin. I'm grateful to my husband who has counseled me over and over to resist the urge to let those who have hurt me know how deeply I'm hurt, to make an effort to get them to see what they've done. It's a tempting but foolish path for so many reasons. As I imagine what would happen if I did, not a single outcome is anything that would ultimately make me happy.

But the desire to "resolve" all this is holding me back from everything that could be called moving forward, or even simply abiding in anything that could be called contentment. And the tremendous shipwreck that I've had has caused me to not even want to set sail again. And I stay on the shores of a dry and weary land, still looking for water. I read "His lovingkindness is better than life" and it's never fallen so flat. But I think it's the first time I've had to depend on him and only him. I think I read that before and rejoiced, but was still receiving water from the broken cisterns that surrounded me. (In Jeremiah, the Lord accuses his people of forsaking the spring of living water and going to broken cisterns when they thirst.) Now I have no one but him and am facing a crisis of belief. Is He really enough?

Will I gladly not look back and gladly look forward to a life where He is my only portion? I have my face turned up toward him waiting for the grace to believe and am hopeful. "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!"