Your Kingdom Come

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to pray that God's kingdom would come and God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I always thought those were two separate things--that the kingdom of God was like the realm of God, so praying for his kingdom was praying for the future--that God would expand the boundaries of the people and places that are following him.  But I'm taking this class about kingdom worldview, and I think I was wrong.  The primary meaning of the word "kingdom" when it was used in the New Testament was that of God's rule and authority and sovereignty.  The realm over which the King rules is a secondary meaning. So I'm beginning to think that praying that God's Kingdom to come is really asking that his rule and reign would be top priority, and that I'm seeking the will of the King who has authority over my life.

As I've sat with this idea for the last couple of weeks, it's really changing the way I think about praying for those around me.  What am I asking for if I'm asking that God's kingdom would come in my own heart or the hearts of those around me?  I think I'm asking that God would be the rightful king and ruler.  And that necessarily means that as a result, I'll see my place in the world as one of service to the king.  If I am asking that God be King and ruler in my life, that means I see decisions that I make as decisions that must be offered to him.  In other words, if I believe I am subject to the King, then I give up the idea that I have the right to choose what's best for me.  I don't get to choose the best car for me--I have to ask what car is going to best serve the kingdom.  I don't get to choose the best way to spend money for me--I have to ask God to show me how my money can be used in his Kingdom.  I don't get to look at my time as something that exists just to make my life better--I have to ask God how to use my time to bring his Kingdom on earth.

In our American democratic, individualistic society, this idea is foreign.  We don't have a king.  We don't have anyone who has that kind of authority against us, except, perhaps, our parents when we are young.  And our culture encourages us to strain against those bonds of authority and get out from under it as quickly as possible so that we can be self-made, self-sufficient, and self-satisfied people.

What would it look like if we really invited God to bring his Kingdom in our lives and in the world around us?  How would it change our community if we used our resources like our time and money and emotional reserves to serve the Kingdom instead of ourselves?  How would the lives of those around us change if they began to recognize the authority and the rule of the King in their lives?  Are we willing to pray that God's Kingdom would come and to let his Spirit do the work that would be necessary to bring his Kingdom rule into our hearts and lives?

In re Daniel

So there's this story in the Old Testament about a guy named Daniel.  He was one of the Jews who was carried off to Babylon.  Apparently they had the young captives hanging out together, getting beefed up to do whatever it is they were supposed to do, coming before the king.  And their daily regimen included a diet that was contrary to the dietary restrictions the Jews followed as part of their religion.  So Daniel stood up to the guy in charge and asked if he could eat different things - vegetables and water only.  And the guy in charge said that it would be on him if they didn't perform as well as the other captives.  So Daniel asked him to test them for 10 days, to see if his own diet would hurt him.  After the 10 days, the guy was so impressed with Daniel (and his friends), that he switched all the captives to that diet.

I've been thinking about this recently because we talked about it at my church a few weeks ago, and a lot of new things have been happening with my law job.  I've been seeing some parallels in the way that God responded to Daniel's choice to follow him and how God has responded to my decision to have a nontraditional legal career.

When I first got out of law school, I had a nice cushy state job with benefits and pension and a regular paycheck.  It was relatively prestigious, and I was doing something I enjoyed.  But back in law school, God had given me a different vision for how he wanted to use me.  So the question became, would I follow him into the great unknown, chasing after this possibility of using my legal knowledge to effect justice and impact the people around me?  Or would I stay where it was safe and predictable?

I ended up choosing to leave that job, and I've been on a journey these last five years where I haven't known what to expect.  Those first few months I was living off a credit card and not seeing how I was going to make enough to pay it off.  I was taking legal work I knew wouldn't really pay the bills (or pay anything at all), but I was doing it because I felt like it was the right thing to do--like God had called me to help these specific people.  And I remember making the choice, day after day, to believe that God would provide.  I said to God that everything was his--all my time, all my choices, everything, and I was trusting him to provide.

And he truly has.  After 4-5 months of real testing, work started coming my way.  I got a three-year contract that would pay almost all my bills.  I kept getting classes at a local law school to teach that would pay the rest of my bills.  And I got to give pretty much the rest of my time away, building relationships, serving the underprivileged with legal services, doing ministry, and writing.  God has been so faithful to provide for me.  And he continues to.  I just got another contract that by all rights I should never have gotten--it's extremely competitive and unheard of for someone so young.  I'd like to take credit for it and say it's because of my performance in law school and other things.  But I really can't.  I believe that God opened those doors so that I will be able to continue to do what he's called me to do.

I sometimes wonder whether stepping out by faith like Daniel did actually accomplishes anything.  What impact does it have on the world around me?  What impact can it have?  But I get the sense that it's to be a testimony to the people whose lives I touch about what faith looks like.  Sometimes I get to tell this story when I'm listening to others who are trying to decide whether to risk stepping out by faith to do something.  Sometimes I get to tell it to other lawyers who are trying to figure out why my life looks the way it does.  I really wanted to tell it here because I wanted to tell you--I want God to get the praise and the glory for his faithfulness.  I think it says something about who he is.  My friend always says that you can't out-give God, and I really think that's true.

Many times, walking with God is going against the flow.  Sometimes it's going against the flow of the world, and sometimes it's even going against the flow of our complacent Christianity.  But I want to encourage you to take those risks, to walk by faith, to go where God is encouraging and calling you to go.  A life of faith is like nothing else in the world.  And when you put yourself in a position where God is the only one who can come through, the only one who can answer, the only way you can make it, it's amazing what that does to your faith.  You can't be apathetic when you desperately need him.  You can't.  Even more amazing is what you will see him do through you.

What visions has God put on your heart that you are considering?  What is holding you back?  What would God need to do to make those things possible?  What would you need to do?  I hope you'll pray through these questions, and I hope that you'll decide to step out by faith like Daniel did.

praying for discontent?

I've been thinking a lot about Jesus's description of the Spirit's activity when he was talking to Nicodemus.  I keep going back to that word picture of the wind, blowing wherever it pleases.  We can see its evidence, but we can't predict where it's going or what it's going to look like when it gets there.

I've been thinking a lot about that in the context of praying for my friends.  I think that praying for the Spirit to intersect their lives is immensely important.

But the question is, will I recognize the Spirit's movement when it happens?

I wrote here about praying that God would bless people.  I still think that this is important.  But a friend of mine recently challenged me with the idea of praying for people to be discontented, or praying that people will actually see and understand their brokenness--often this can only happen with painful experiences.

I don't like pain.  I don't like the idea of praying that people will be discontented or unhappy with themselves or with their lives.  I don't like the idea that suffering has a place and that sometimes it's exactly what we need in life to make us go deeper with ourselves and with God.

But when I look at my own life, I have to admit that I am who I am because of the difficult times.  I am who I am because God has been with me through those times, but also because those painful times carve out places in my heart and soul that would otherwise be hardened and unreachable.

I want to pray God's blessing on my friends.  I want to pray for God's blessing of spiritual life, above all.  But I think I have to remember that the path to abundant life is always death.  Jesus's first, of course, making life possible.  But then the death of self-surrender.  That has been a painful death for me, and it continues to be as I daily struggle to lay down my life, my desires, my hopes, my dreams.  But it's also a beautiful thing.  And the life that comes from it is always worth the painful process to get there.

So tonight, my dear friends, I'm praying that in your pain and your discontent--in the place where you are right now--the Spirit will be blowing and stirring a craving for spiritual life that can only come through death.

On pride and transformation

Jesus told a story about two men who entered a temple one day.  The first was a deeply religious man who swept into the temple, chin held high, looking and acting as if he owned the place.  He prayed aloud, "God, thank you that I am not like these other people--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--even this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get."

The tax collector, on the other hand, went in and stood off to the side.  He couldn't even look up to heaven when he prayed.  Head bowed, he prayed, "God have mercy on me, a sinner."

Is one of these men better than the other?  Qualitatively better?  The tax collector likely had cheated many people out of money.  He probably sacrificed to pagan gods in order to get his job as a tax collector.  He would have had to swear an oath of fealty to the Roman government, swearing to serve Rome above all others, even God.  Meanwhile, the religious man probably did everything good that could be done.  Not only did he follow all of the religious rules, he gave away a lot of his money.

I've had a question from a very good friend/reader about what I mean when I talk about this internal transformation that occurs through knowing Jesus.  I am working on thinking about how to answer that question in light of my own story.

But I think that the story I just told was Jesus's answer to a very similar question.  The internal transformation and change begins with acknowledging God and my need for God.  God's story of ultimate reconciliation and redemption starts with broken relationships.  Broken relationship with the Creator-God, with self, with other people, and with creation.  Those relationships are broken because that first person looked at what God was offering and believed the lie that he could do better and get more by doing things his own way.  Each one of us follows in his footsteps.  Jesus called that a spiritual death.

Some people do things their own way by following a religion, even the Christian religion.  Some people make following God into a list of rules and regulations and follow those things to a T.  Some people do things their own way by developing a nonreligious standard by which to live and meeting that standard.  Some people don't care one way or another and live out of what makes them feel good in the moment.

But Jesus offers a life of restored and reconciled relationships.  It starts by recognizing that my relationship with God is broken because of my own pride, and there is nothing that I can do to bridge that brokenness.  It starts by acknowledging that the Creator-God has some claim on my life because he created me and formed me and loves me.

Once I acknowledge those things and invite God to work in my life and walk with me, he begins to transform me and to move to heal those broken relationships.  Once I understand my right relationship to God, one of humility and love and obedience, I can learn to walk in that way in all of my relationships.

There is still a battle--there is always a battle while we are still on earth.  A battle between seeking to meet my own needs in my own way rather than trusting in God.  A battle between doing what feels good and what brings me the most immediate sense of happiness rather than doing what illustrates the character of God and brings honor to his name.  And each of those battles is an opportunity for transformation--it's an opportunity to invite God in, to be honest and humble about the struggle, and to ask for the power and the spiritual recreation that would enable the choice to follow Jesus.  Over time, those tiny little decisions of surrender and invited transformation build character and a pattern of obedience that I believe changes and transforms the very essence of a person more and more into the image of Christ.

So it seems like, for Jesus, anyway, the single most important quality a person could have is humility in his posture toward God.  From there, God can do anything to transform and recreate and make new and make good things.  From there, the door to spiritual life is wide open.

You'll have to tell me what you think, but I can kind of see his point.  I don't care how many great things that spiritual guy had done... I'd rather hang out with the tax collector any day.

When storying becomes community

If I’d questioned what kind of community we’ve been building on Sunday nights, I don’t any longer.  If I’d questioned that we had built community at all, I don’t now.

The last few times I set up to have a Sunday night storying group, no one showed up.  People got busy, maybe they didn’t feel like coming, the weather turned nice, whatever.  So I wasn’t sure where we stood or how hard to push to maintain something that maybe no one else cared about.  I felt like maybe we’d accomplished everything we needed to in at least exposing everyone to who Jesus is and how he lived while he was on earth and how he impacted the people around him.  I was kind of ok with letting it go if we needed to.

But my father passed away this week, and I felt so much support from this little band of friends.  They showed up.  They showed up the minute I got home from the hospital where my dad died.  They showed up to keep me company between visitations.  They loved on me and ministered to me and prayed for me and walked beside me.  Even the people who I haven’t heard from for weeks or even months showed up to be there with me.

This is what the church is supposed to be like.  I think we are becoming the church.  I think that they actually view what we have as their spiritual community.  It may not look exactly like what church usually looks like.  We don’t meet as regularly, for example.  But it seems like we’re doing something the right way if this is the way people respond during tragedy.

One of the most powerful things that I think we’ve done on Sunday nights is the time after the story where we pray for each other.  I don’t think that I’ve talked much about that when I’ve been debriefing the stories.  But from the very first week we started, after we shared with one another how the story impacted us, we prayed for each person specifically.  We prayed for the spiritual needs they’d identified during the discussion and we prayed for anything else that came up.

In order to reach this level of community, though, you have to be vulnerable.  One of the refreshing thing about people outside the church is that they don’t seem to have the same barriers to sharing who they are as people who grew up in the church.  They’re generally willing to share, so long as it’s a safe environment, the things that they’re struggling with.  They aren’t trying to hide their weaknesses or pretend to be perfect so that no one will know how much they’re struggling or how awful they are.  They accept humanity and they accept their own humanity and they’re willing to share from that.  Within this context, we successfully created a community culture that is built on interdependence.  And when I had needs, they all came–every single one of them. 

That kind of community is a gift.  I don’t exactly know how to go forward or what shape it should take, but I feel now that I must go forward.  We must go forward together.  We’ve got to find a way to continue to build spiritually into the lives of the people that we’ve been given so that we all can continue to be transformed into the image of Christ.

Persevering in love

It's exhausting, loving people unconditionally.  I don't know if you've ever tried before - honestly made an effort to walk alongside people, loving them without expectations...

And the sacrifice!  My word.  Laying down your life, your hopes, your dreams and just giving.  It's painful.  It carves out places in you that you didn't even know existed.  It leaves a dull ache at the center of your soul.

So why walk that road?  There are lots of reasons why.  Because unconditional love has the power to bring healing.  Because unconditional love demonstrates how much God love us.  Because unconditional love forms the basis for relationships that can sustain the hardships of life.  Because unconditional love allows us to walk with people who have the stories that we'd rather ignore or pretend do not exist.

The real question is how to persevere in the face of exhaustion.  The only answer that I have to that is somehow relying on the covenant love of God, who keeps his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.  Meditating on that and choosing to love based on how God has loved and treated me as well as crying out to God to give me strength is the only way I know to keep going.

So that's what I'm doing tonight.  I'd kind of like to give up instead.

Life with the Eternal One

I'll never forget one of the first spiritual conversations I had with someone outside of the church.  I was volunteering as a respite worker to stay overnight in a maternity home for unwed mothers who wanted to keep their children instead of aborting them.  This one mother was staying there, and she was a talker.  She told me basically her whole life story.  I barely got a word in edgewise, and actually, I didn't really want to.  Her story was so far outside of my reality that it overwhelmed me and I had no idea what to say.

But I remember that in the course of that conversation, she started talking about her perceptions of Christians and the church.  And she looked at me and said, "Hell?  I'm not afraid of hell.  I've been living in hell for years."

I was, of course speechless.  Clearly it wasn't a time to talk about what eternal separation from God might actually be like.  But she was saying something important to me about the message that had been communicated to her about what it meant to follow Christ.

In my own experience, growing up, I heard so many conversations about "eternal life."  The focus was always on the eternal aspect of it - what would that life in heaven look like, wouldn't it be great to escape this life and go to glory, etc.

So I've been meditating on the story of Nicodemus and Jesus from John 3 as preparation for some storying that we're going to be doing in the next month or two.  And after memorizing the passage and trying to get inside it, I went and read some commentaries on the passage.  And the thing that struck me is that the "eternal life" that Jesus references could really be translated "life with the eternal One."

I know that I've talked about the idea of hope before and how void of hope the places that I walk and live really seem to be.  What if the hope we have to offer is not just the idea of a someday perfect reality, but is something that starts now?  What if it is about having relationship to and access to the Eternal One?  What if that relationship with the Eternal One has the ability to change our lives now?  Maybe not our circumstances, but the quality of the kind of life we live.  What if that is the story we were telling people?

I know that, growing up, I heard that story too.  But it was a fainter story.  It was a story lived by my parents, sure.  But it wasn't the message that the church as a whole was speaking.

It is the story that I've been living though.  Life with the Eternal One is spectacular.  It's filled with peace and joy and a deep, abiding knowledge of who I am and who I belong to.  It's something that orders my steps and helps me to choose right paths.  That is something that I want others to experience too.  It's something I want others to have.  It's so much of the motivation for the passion that I feel for walking with people in spiritual conversations and doing life with people outside of the church.

A couple steps forward

I've had some interesting spiritual conversations over the last couple of weeks with people.  These particular people have moved from an orientation against belief to an orientation toward belief.  So now I am in a new spot - wondering how to help people have what they need to grow in the knowledge and likeness of Christ.

This is probably what's traditionally called "discipleship."  We'd like to think that it happens in the church, but I'm not so sure that it really does.  It's not easy to be discipled when all you hear are general messages preached to the whole congregation.  More often than not, you have to have someone come alongside you and walk through questions and problems as they arise.  There are also lots of curricula that have been used by student ministries for ages that walk people through assurance and some of the essential spiritual disciplines.  But they still have a modern feel and I'm not sure that my friends would really connect with them.

So for the last couple of weeks, my community has been chewing on this question of how to disciple new believers in this age.  As much as I would like to just invite them to the Bible study that the church plant I'm involved in is doing, it's not quite where they're at.  Although they could learn as much as any of us there, it's not really the content that they need.  So now we're thinking about what we need to create to use to come alongside people at this point in their lives.

It's a new problem for me, actually.  I've been removing rocks and planting seeds for a good long while.  What kinds of discipleship curriculum does your community use?  What are some things that have worked?  What is missing that you really feel you need?

Memory as Hope

So on Sunday I was laying down, impatiently waiting for my back to heal, and I popped in the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie.  I'd recently seen the 2nd one when our symphony did a live performance of the music with the movie.  I was preparing to share with our church planting team about hope that evening, so I was watching the movie with thoughts of hope in mind.

I got to the part of the movie where Sam and Frodo are headed through the wilderness, finally abandoned by Gollum, and they are worn and ragged.  The journey has been long and difficult beyond belief.  They keep putting one foot in front of the other, but they struggle to do even that.  At one point, Frodo sort of collapses.  Sam stands there and looks at him, concerned, as always.  And then he starts to talk to Frodo, "Do you remember the Shire, Frodo?"  And he paints a picture of all the things that they left behind, all the things that they remember, all the things that they think are worth fighting for.

How powerful.

I thought of that in the context of the eternal story that we are living in the midst of.  We often think of hope as something to reach for that has no basis in reality, that has never happened before, that we can only just picture the possibility of.  But I think that we also have memory of something that's good and right and perfect that we still long for.  And the fact that it existed before actually can instill hope in us that we can find that again.

One of the most powerful aspects of the story of God is that there is hope for healing and restoration and re-creation.  We have a picture of what that was like - oh so briefly - in the first chapter of Genesis.  Where all relationships were right and good, where people and God walked together, and where work was not the toil it is today. 

When I'm physically suffering, attempting to counsel suicidal clients to get help, watching those around me physically or emotionally hurting, it's so easy to see just those things.  It's easy to see the problems and to be overwhelmed by them.  But the memory of the garden gives me hope that, through the power of Jesus and the work of the Spirit, re-creation is possible.  And not only is it possible, it will happen.  Someday.

The substance of hope

Last night we had the first advent conversation for the church plant I'm part of.  We talked about the first advent topic, which is the hope of things to come.  Although I would typically think of the beginning of the advent season as hope and expectation for the coming of the Messiah, the passages that we were looking at were all about hope for the 2nd coming of the Messiah.

So the question that I posed to the group is what is the nature of the hope that we have to offer ourselves and to the world?

In my daily life, brushing shoulders with all kinds of people in all kinds of places, there's a marked absence of hope.  There's a feeling that the world is not as it should be, and the imperfections of the world around us seem to take center stage in conversation.  Whether it's the economy (Michigan's is still really, really awful), the reality of an possibility of war, or the complete breakdown of our social relationships, people are living without hope.

In Isaiah 2, there's a really hopeful passage of Scripture where Isaiah talks about the end of time, when weapons will be given up for tools of peace.  Isaiah was speaking into a culture of instability and fear that is similar to where we are today, though the invasion of military forces was imminent for Judah.  But the hope that he mentioned was all in the future - the very distant future.  After reading, my question remained - what is the substance of hope that God offers today?  Is it just the hope of a future world where everything will be put right?

Because I'm not sure that hope actually really resonates with the people in my world.  The response I feel is the response of "so what?  How does that even remotely relate to my life right now and all of my current problems?  How does that put bread on the table or get me out of an abusive situation?"

As we talked about this as a community, I think we uncovered that there's a duality of hope that is offered.  Yes, there is hope for the future making-right-of-all things.  But there is also a way in which the body of Christ, the church, is to be an agent of hope and change in the world right now.  How do I know that the future restoration of all things is coming?  Because I am being restored - not just by personal healing, but by being a part of a transforming and transformative community.  

If I can say that I am being restored, recreated in God's image, being made a better person who makes better choices by the power of the Spirit in my life, then it's easier to hope for the ultimate restoration of all things.  If I'm part of a community that is transforming the culture around it, not in a damaging or disrespectful way, but in a way that reaches out and meets actual needs, perhaps it is easier to believe in the possibility of recreation.

How do you walk with God?

So the question I was left with is how do you walk with God?  How do you know when he's leading you?

The reason this is a problem is because, although I'm probably a postmodern person, I grew up with modern parents who taught me to lead with my mind and allow my heart and spirit to follow.  The answer to my question in my home would be to read Gary Meador's book about knowing the will of God.  If I'm remembering correctly, the basic premise is that within the moral and ethical boundaries God has given in his word, I can choose to do anything I want to.  There is no "will of God" beyond that.  I saw my parents make decisions like this.  They would pray about things, they would use their rational minds to think about things, and then they would make the good/wise/right decisions within the boundaries of morality and ethics.

I don't know how this happened, but I actually believe that the Spirit also speaks into a person's life, if she is listening, and can specifically lead and guide.  I think there's biblical evidence that this at least happened in biblical times--even the apostle Paul speaks about being led by the Spirit when he's heading on his missionary journeys.  But my parents had great skepticism about this, mostly because of how immeasurable it is and how you can easily misinterpret your own experiences.

So anyway, most of my life I've lived in a way that I would call is "sensitive to the Spirit's leading", where I make choices about what to do and say based on how I believe the Spirit is specifically leading me.

But this year brought up that question for me again.  Because if I'm going to allow that God means to use people to meet needs in the world, and if I'm going to allow that I should only be doing the things that I'm led to, rather than trying to meet everyone's needs all the time, I have to figure this out, right?

So I was drawn again to the passage of John 15, about abiding in Christ.  And I remembered Galatians 5, which talks about walking in step with the spirit.  What I noticed is that there is very little explanation of what this means.  We're admonished to walk in step with the Spirit, to abide in Christ, but the passages don't really paint a picture besides those word pictures of being connected to the vine or walking in step with something.

So I'm left to interpret these passages in the light of the whole of Scripture.  So I think of Adam and Eve, walking with God in relationship in the garden.  I think of Noah, who somehow knew God and had enough faith in him to build a boat when he'd never seen any rain.  I think of Enoch, who walked with God at such a deep level that he never died.  And then I think of those 400 years of the silence of God when the Israelites were in captivity.  And I think of the 400 years between the last prophet and Jesus coming.  And then I think of how the Holy Spirit came to believers at Pentecost and is now living inside of us.

And what I have to conclude is that God doesn't just plop us here, wind us up like little wind-up toys, and let us go to do the moral and ethical things.  What I see from the overarching narrative of Scripture is that God does want a deeper connection with his people - a connection that acknowledges him and submits to him in all things.  I do believe, not just from Scripture but also from my own experience, that God does lead and guide and give specific direction sometimes.  I think I have to know him and abide with him to the extent that I'm able to recognize his voice in my life.

That does defy measurement.  It can lead me to pretty crazy places if I am not listening to the right things or am just confused.  But just because it's hard doesn't mean that we should get rid of the idea all together.  In the body of Christ, in Scripture, in the orthodox faith throughout history, I think we have some boundaries and some ways to measure what's truly from God.

So that's where I've landed on this issue.  I continue to struggle with the ideas.  But the bigger struggle is actually a heart struggle, and that's actually being willing to wake up every morning and ask the Spirit to lead and to guide, and then being willing to follow where he leads.

Walking thru darkness

I think I've talked before about what I know to be one of my biggest emotional barriers to faith and trust in God - that question of God's goodness and his provision in my life.

After about 10 years of avoiding the question, maybe 3 years ago I went away for a week of silence at this retreat center (for all you extroverts, I'm sure this seems extreme... even for me it was long).  After a couple of days there, I was actually willing to admit that those were my questions.  I think before that, I'd been afraid to verbalize them.  I know that God wasn't afraid of those feelings and questions, but for some reason, I hadn't been willing to own them. 

So anyway, this year has been one of the hardest of my life.  I saw some people who were very close to me suffering intensely, and it affected my life to such a point that I didn't see how it was ever going to get better.  I'd been living with the belief that I had to take care of them.  Going back to that question of whether God is good, whether he will meet needs.  I was not really believing that he would.  So I was trying to take care of everyone around me.  What would happen if I didn't?  How did I know that God really would take care of them?

I think I mentioned before my disillusionment with the belief that God will always meet all of our needs because that hasn't been my experience.  On the trip I mentioned, I allowed myself to ask those questions, and I even allowed the truth of the goodness of God to penetrate my mind.  But it didn't get all the way to my heart.  So when I hit on hard times this year, I couldn't allow the needs around me to go unmet.  So I was trying to meet them all.

I'm sure you can see what I couldn't - disaster waiting to happen, right?  There's no way I can do that.  There's no way that's possible.  I'm human, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), and I totally have limitations.

By this fall, I'd gotten myself to a point of total exhaustion.  I was barely able to pray beyond "God help me," and I couldn't see how I could keep going on that way.  That's because I couldn't.  With the help of a spiritual director, I was finally able to see what I'd been doing and why it wasn't working.

But then there was the question of what to do about it?  The question still remained - if God doesn't always meet everyone's needs supernaturally because he's expecting to use people, but sometimes his people aren't listening, then how can I sit there allowing peoples' needs to go unmet, knowing how devastating that can be?

The answer for me came from John 15 and the picture of abiding in Christ.  I can only control my own behavior and my own willingness to hear the call of God in my life.  I can't meet everyone's needs, not even all of one other person's needs.  So instead of trying to do that, I had to learn to just be faithful and obedient to what God was calling me to do.  I had to abide in him and his word in my life and be obedient to the things he was leading me to do. 

This brought up another question, which is how to know what God is calling you to do.  More on that tomorrow.

For now, I just want to say that I am so thankful that God walked through this with me.  I am so thankful that I'm beyond the darkness that this year brought.

Learning to speak

So I have a friend who's been telling me for a while that one of the most valuable roles we can play in another person's life is to be what she calls a "prophet."  When she says this, she doesn't mean the kind of prophet from the Old Testament, calling down judgment or blessing from the heavens or having a specific message handed to you for another person.

I think what she means is having the ability to recognize God's work in the world around and pointing it out and contextualizing it for people.  She is always saying that one of the difficulties in our culture right now is that we're driven by emotion, but often people don't really have the ability to put words around what they feel or what they need.  One of the most important things we can do for people is sit there and reflect things back to them - thoughts, feelings, and where we see God working.

That kind of role is really uncomfortable to me.  I'm a peace-loving person.  I like to be in harmony with everyone around me.  I'd rather be listening than talking, and I'm usually pretty slow to give other people my opinions about things.  So to actually take the step to say, "hey, here's something I'm seeing," or "have you considered this question?" is always a risk.

What I don't want to be is that arrogant kind of person who walks around bestowing her wisdom and thoughts on everyone around, regardless of where they're at or what kind of effect my words will have.  But I do desire to be available to help people to recognize the work of God in their own lives.

I've gotten more comfortable speaking into the lives of my friends.  My approach is still to ask questions, but I think they've become more pointed as the years have gone by.  Somehow, as I've become more familiar with my own spiritual barriers, I've been able to see those that my friends are running into too, and I can ask questions that invite people to think deeply about what's going on in their own hearts.

It's much harder to do that for people who are casual acquaintances.  To speak into someone's life who you just barely know seems like a bigger risk.  At least when you have a long history of friendship, there's enough of an investment in the relationship that if you say something wrong or hurt someone's feelings, they're likely to be willing to work through it with you.  But with someone you barely know, there's no investment.  And you don't know the person well enough to be able to predict how your words will be received.

I just had the opportunity or the invitation to do that with someone I just met.  I hesitated for a long time, because I didn't want to offend.  I wasn't really sure where the person was at spiritually, and I never want to create a barrier where one doesn't exist.  But after praying about it, it seemed like the right thing to do, so I took the plunge.  I think it ended up working out.  The jury's still out.

Anyway, the key for me is learning to be guided by the Holy Spirit.  It's amazing how the Spirit is working and guiding to meet the needs of his children.  And it's actually fun to be able to be a part of what he's doing there.  It's a matter of learning to see what's going on and accepting the invitation to participate, because when it does go right, it's really cool to see how God is able to use your words and actions. 

A little bit of faith goes a long, long way

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen . . . ."

Hebrews 11 starts there, and then goes on to tell story after story of people who had faith in an unseen God and risked everything to follow him.

The problem I see is that we don't even have hope in today's culture.  The people I meet are hungry for something to hope for and to hold onto.  We all see the brokenness of the world around us.  We're unhappy with the unethical and unjust systems that control our community.  We're devastated by the lack of care society has for the earth and for the people on it.  And everywhere we look, things are only getting worse--never better.

That passage in Hebrews 11 is meant to inspire and encourage people to have faith enough to walk with God.  I recently was going through the Old Testament, and I was stuck on the story of Noah for a while.  We come into the story just when God is telling Noah to build this monstrous boat to float on the water after rain, which Noah had never in his life seen before.

My question is this:  How did Noah know that it was God asking him to do it?  How did he discern that this is what he was supposed to do?  How did he have the guts to actually get to work to do this crazy thing?  It's amazing.  And inspiring.  And challenging.

I think that hope comes from seeing lives transformed by the story and the power of God.  I recently attended a conference where Marton Hall spoke about his faith community, the Awakenings Movement, in Houston, Texas.  I was incredibly inspired by his willingness to step outside of the box, sacrifice the security of his prior churchified life, and risk loving and living in a way that's actually reaching a community that is not otherwise being reached.  His story inspired me to have hope and to want to walk forward in those things that God is calling me to do during this particular time in my life.

What I don't understand is why those stories of transformation and total willingness to follow God's leading are so few and far between.  Maybe we just aren't comfortable sharing the stories of how God has transformed us.  Maybe all it will take to inspire others to get up and walk forward in risk and surrender is to tell those stories of how we were called and how God met us and provided for us in that calling.

With that in mind, how has your life been transformed by God's leading and his work in your life?

From Bitterness to Peace

I have a friend, we'll call him Joe, who has had kind of a rough history with his family.  A few years back, Joe said some hard things about the spouse of one of his sisters, mostly because of the way the guy was treating the rest of the family, and there's been a rift in the family ever since.  Joe's sister barely speaks to him now.  And Joe's sister's husband is usually as mean and cruel to Joe as he can possibly be.

A while back, Joe had a major verbal argument with his sister and her husband, stemming from all the water under the bridge.  He came to see me that evening, and we talked about how to handle the situation.  Joe was understandably angry.  He was furious.  But it was clear to me (the objective outsider... ah yes, how easy it is to see things when you're not right in the middle of it) that the anger had already begun to turn to bitterness.  I let Joe vent for a couple of minutes, and then I simply said.  "Joe, I think this is an opportunity for you.  I think you need to pray that God would give you love for your sister and brother-in-law again."

Cue the chirping crickets.  It was dead silent for at least 10 seconds.  And then Joe protested.  And I just said, "Joe, the anger and bitterness has the power to destroy your soul, if you let it.  You've got to surrender that to God, and let him transform you.  This is the opportunity to see God at work in your heart and your life, to remake you to be more like Jesus."

I left that evening not knowing whether Joe would follow through.  Two paths were clearly in front of him.  One to death and destruction--of relationships, of the ability to love and find joy, of many things.  The other was the path toward life and wholeness and healing.

It's been a long year.  But when I talk to Joe now about his sister & her husband, he's different.  He has a softness and a gentleness toward them.  He sees a little more where they're coming from and can look past some of their offenses against him and the rest of his family.  He clearly took the path toward life, and now he's reaping the benefit of peace in his soul.

This is just an amazing story to me.  It's the gospel--the story of how God transforms people from the inside out.  We can make ourselves conform to spiritual expectations on the outside.  We can do all the right things, and say all the right things.  But transformation of who we are on the inside and what we naturally want to do--to lash out in anger or frustration or hatred--that's only changed by the power of the Spirit living inside of us.  And that change only happens when we surrender.

Transformation to being a people of love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control--that is the fruit of a surrendered, spirit-filled life.  The surrender part is difficult.  It's scary.  It's counter-intuitive. 

But the fruit is something you can live with, that you can live in, that gives you rest.

So Joe, if you want to know how to know that you're a follower of Christ, this is your answer.  It's clear that you are.  Not because of everything you're doing on the outside.  But because you've given God permission to transform you from the inside out.  It's such a privilege to be your friend and to be able to walk beside you on this journey.

Surrender

I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of "surrender."  The word itself conjures up pictures of a battlefield and a white flag waving in the breeze.  But in the context of faith, I think that's the one word I would say could define what I believe relationship with God is all about.

This idea of surrender has been coming up in conversations I've had with a close friend about measuring spirituality.  Both of us grew up in a church culture that taught us to measure spirituality by the external things we did to conform to that culture - maybe it was reading the Bible or praying, or maybe it was wearing dresses and acting respectfully in church.  But I see a lot more in Jesus's teachings about our inner attitudes of the heart and being open to allowing him to move in and through us.  The Pharisees were pretty excited about external measures of faith too... and Jesus was always challenging them that they were "whitewashed tombs" - dead on the inside but looking pretty good on the outside.

Romans 12 talks about offering yourself as a living sacrifice to God, and the Old Testament is filled with pictures of holiness, or the idea that God's people are to be set apart and consecrated to the service of God.

If that's the heart of what it means to walk with God, then I think that this attitude of surrender is really relevant to how to walk through barriers to faith.  If we see faith as a relationship with a being, then barriers are an opportunity to be vulnerable and real and honest about where we are.  Once we identify these barriers, we can offer them to God and invite him to work in them and through them to bring us into closer relationship with him and to make us more like him.

The constant challenge is to abide Christ.  Jesus spoke about this in John 15.  The life that he describes in that passage sounds wonderful, yet so undefined.  The picture he gives is of a vine, giving life to its branches.  The branches have to stay rooted and fed and watered through that vine, or they will die.

I think barriers to faith are an opportunity to choose to abide.  We can allow those barriers to choke out the life and nourishment of the Vine, or we can use them as opportunities to return to the Vine and to ask the hard questions.  With emotional barriers in particular, it's important to give voice to the emotion and the pain that has created the barrier.  It's only when we recognize and give voice to those things that the Vine, who is also the Truth, is able to speak to and minister to and nurture our growth.

It's always a leap of faith--this surrender, this choice to abide.  But until we are willing to daily take that leap in our own lives, it's really hard to be the voice of encouragement and support to those around us who are struggling with their own barriers to relationship with God.