This is an article I wrote for my work’s monthly newsletter. I thought I’d share it.

Messiness.

Yes…messiness. People and community are messy things. Life doesn’t fit into neat little boxes with lids that I close tightly around them when I need some peace. Sometimes I really wish it did. I don’t like it when I leave a room or a person with tension, or when I have no clue what I’m doing, or when things just don’t make sense.

But, alas, it seems that God delights in bringing me into messy situations…because this is where real life is happening. This is where I realize my true need for a Redeemer. People are broken, people are messed up, life is chaotic, and so am I. The depravity of sin has reached its grappling fingers into every part of my being and into every part of my dreams and desires.

Just when I think I have things all figured out and life is starting to make sense, and to fit into those boxes, God faithfully slaps me in the face by His grace and mercy, and again I see that life isn’t clean cut, and that I am more of a mess than I even realized. And praise God for doing so! Praise Him for crashing down the walls of pride and isolation that I so easily build up in my mind and heart. Praise Him for rescuing me from myself.

I’ve heard it said that when you are living missionally, you will have no clue what you are doing. I must be doing a good job, because daily I must reshuffle my head in order to realize that restoring life to others, myself, and our community is not an easily traceable or manageable series of events. But I must rely on my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to move through the Holy Spirit to restore and renew and bring life again to His creation.

And He is moving! I’ve had and listened to conversations with several people in this last week about how God is “doing something” to get His people out of the church buildings. He is awakening us to remember that indeed, we are the church, and we are in need of the Gospel as much as any man that has ever lived! And when we truly begin to grasp this truth, we experience such joy and soul-wrenching love for Jesus that we cannot help but become part of the revolution of redemption that He is designing!

So embrace the messiness. It reminds me of something my friend Will Walker said: “But here is the deal man, what we consider our greatest failures, often will be a great catalyst for transformation. So just sit back and enjoy the crash.”

There is a Christian Science Reading Room down 13th St. half a block from where I work, and when Tyler comes to visit me, we usually walk right by in on our way to the Holiday gas station where I get a 32 ounce fountain drink - filled 95% with Diet Pepsi and 5% with Dr. Pepper (there’s no root beer).

Today Tyler wanted to stop in, so we did, and we talked to a really nice older gentleman by the name of Maurice for about 15 minutes. We asked him some things about Christian Science, trying to figure out what is different from “traditional western” Christianity. So he told us that Christian Science is based on the Bible (after Tyler asked this question), and that they believe that we can use science to understand how Jesus healed, and prove it, and therefore do it ourselves, logically. He said, “There are some things that seem quite radical at first, until you get used to them,” with a chuckle.

So, that’s fine and dandy, it’s interesting to learn first hand from someone that believes something different than me, and I really would rather hear it from them than read it or hear it from someone that believes the same as me (in most cases).

We talked for a little bit about the founder, Mary Baker Eddy, and such, and I went over to look at something that seemed like a doctrinal statement, which seemed a little sketchy. Somehow it seemed to say that evil is unreal, and some vague things about Jesus and the Christ…(I just tried to look up the 6 tenants of faith, but I had to buy a book).

One key point is this:

“…Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God.” (Science and Health, 361:12-13)

Another is:

“Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal. . . .” (Science and Health, 291:13-16)

And don’t forget these points:

“Man is deathless, spiritual. He is above sin or frailty.” (Science and Health, 266:29-30)

“Christ came to destroy the belief of sin.” (Science and Health, 473:6-7)

“No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually, even the judgment by which mortal man in divested of all material error.” (Science and Health, 291:28-31)

And……I would say…..

Not Biblical.

Somewhere in the last month, life switched to crazy. I don’t know when this happened, but I find myself in sporatic mode most of the time. It’s not a bad thing, actually I’m just realizing how my life is actually how I always dreamed it might be.

I have true community and friends.

I have love.

I have a job I truly invest in.

Having said all that, here’s the great part: these wonderful things have brought me to a new awareness of my desperate need for a Savior.

My true community has been faithful to sit me down and talk to me about sin in my life, sin that I didn’t even see until they showed me.

The most amazing man in the world has been incredibly loving by allowing me, through his patience and leadership, to see the ways I have built up pride and selfish expectations of love throughout the years, and how I throw my failures toward him, instead of owning them.

My job has shown me that deep down I think I’m perfect, and no one else has it quite right (especially if they think things should be done differently), and has challenged me to shut up and put myself at the bottom once again - to realize that I’m the one that’s here to learn and grown, and I need to realize that I am looking to perfection for my personal identity and value, instead of Jesus’ righteousness & love.

So. In the last few weeks, I’ve had 2 of my closest male friends/leaders talk to me about some crap I needed to get rid of in my heart (this prideful need for perfection), I’ve had Tyler so lovingly lead me to seeing my own need for perfection and my lack of grace for myself (I am okay with others’ failures, but not mine), and through a study I’m doing with some wonderful women, I’ve realized how critical my tongue can be, and what I’m looking for through that.

It’s been so good! Such a freeing week. It reminds me continually of Hebrews, which tells us that God disciplines those He loves. And not only that, but John 15, which tells us that the Gardener prunes the branches that bear fruit. So, I can only be confidently humble and thank Him for taking care of me in order to free me from my own suffocating mess.

More to come…

P.S. Did I mention that Tyler is the most spectacular man I know?

(Written 1/18/07) 

Stillness is uncomfortable. It’s scary to be vulnerable.

Tonight I was at church and I was the only one there. It was dark outside and even darker inside where the parking lot lights didn’t reach. For some reason my imagination went crazy and as I looked left into complete blackness, I imagined a demon running through the hallway, unseen but felt, toward me.

I picked up my crap and left.

That may seem dramatic, but hey, these things happen when you start realizing there’s more going in the world than we have control over. When was the last time you shut off your radio while you were driving home late at night, the only one on the highway? When is the last time you went outside and just looked around? When was the last time you allowed yourself to stand and wait before God? ooh…yes.

It’s scary to lose control. It’s scary to not have anything to claim an identity in, no group to link up with, no agenda to hide behind, no control of the situation.

I think we do this with the Bible. We talk about it a lot instead of letting it overwhelm us in silence. It’s not as scary when we talk about it.

This reminds me of Makenna, my almost 3-year old niece. We watched “Robots” more than once in my room, and there is a scary robot who looks like a monster, who happens to be the overwhelming, domineering mother of the main villain…and she has a man’s voice. Anyway, Makenna for some reason kept wanting me to rewind it to the “mean mommy” part… “Is this where the mean mommy is??”  “Is the mean mommy in this part??”  “Where is the mean mommy?”  “I want to see the mean mommy again.”

I could not figure it out until her dad, my brother, called her over and asked her why she wanted to see the mean mommy so badly. She just kind of shrugged her shoulders…looked away…and mumbled something about liking her. Maybe Makenna wanted to see what she feared over and over again so that she could conquer it, and have control over when it appeared and when it didn’t…and so that she could share the experience and talk about it with someone, therefore making it more abstract and not so overwhelmingingly scary.

I do this also, when I tell people about the massive spider sneaking around my room, or the horrible news that broke my heart, or when I look over to laugh with my friends when the movie makes me jump.

Do we do this with God and His word to tame them down and make them less invasive? It’s one thing to go somewhere and talk about the Bible while I munch on cookies (which is good, of course) and it’s another for me to sit in my room in the middle of the night and get extremely uncomfortable with the Spirit of God pushing a truth deep into my heart until it starts to burn and I feel sick with a reality check of sorrow and humility.

Eugene Peterson’s book, “Eat This Book,” has some provocative quotes:

We are fond of saying that the Bible has all the answers…But the Bible also has all the questions… The Bible is a most comforting book; it is also a most discomforting book. Eat this book; it will be sweet as honey in your mouth; but it will also be bitter to your stomach.

We are accustomed to thinking of the biblical world as smaller than the secular world. Tell-tale phrases give us away. We talk of “making the Bible relevant to the world,” as if the world is the fundamental reality and the Bible something that is going to help it or fix it. We talk of “fitting the Bible into our lives” or “making room in our day for the Bible,” as if the Bible is something that we can add on to or squeeze into our already full lives.

He also tells the story of a scholar questioning Jesus’ story of loving a neighbor:

There was nothing wrong with the scholar’s knowledge of Scripture. But there was something terribly wrong in the way he read it, the how
of his reading. This becomes evident when the scholar quibbles, “wanting to justify himself.” He asks, “And who is my neighbor?”

Why does the scholar ask for a definition? Clearly, because he needs to defend himself against responding to the text personally. Defining “neighbor” depersonalizes the neighbor, turns him or her into an object, a thing over which he can take control, do with whatever he wants. But it also depersonalizes the scriptural text. He wants to talk about the text, treat the text as a thing, dissect it, analyze it, discuss it – endlessly. But Jesus won’t play that game.

So instead of inviting the scholar to join him in a Bible study of Deuteronomy and Leviticus under the shade of a nearby oak tree, Jesus tells him a story, one of his most famous, the Good Samaritan story, concluding, as he had begun, with a question, “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man…?” The scholar is impaled by the question: the words of Scripture can no longer be handled by means of definition, “who is my neighbor?” Jesus insists on participation. Jesus dismisses the scholar with a command, “Go and do…” Live what you read. We read the Bible in order to live the word of God.

It is by our actions that we know we are living in the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before the Lord, even if our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
1 John 3:19-20

If you are ever curious about what should define those who claim to follow the risen God, read the letter written by John. The repeated use of the word “love” is almost annoying. And it’s so easy for me to read it and just check that off, thinking that yes, I love people, got that done. CHECK!

I guess I have a pretty pathetic definition of love. I wish I could understand it more, but then again, that is a scary thought, asking the God of all creation to teach me about love. The entire Bible rips into this unending definition of love. What is it? If we’re supposed to be “known by our love” and the primary definition of God Himself is love, what the heck does that look like and mean?

I really don’t know.

All I can think of is maybe my definition of love needs to be punched in the face. It needs to get a little more dirty and a little more angry - or a lot more. Love has somehow become a passive word, an enabling word, a word I use to talk about diet pepsi (which actually might qualify as a deep and passionate love). I just finished reading “Wild at Heart” again, and I was so thankful for John Eldredge’s definition of love in the book. I’m not sure if he ever literally defined it, but I find it unlikely that you can walk away from the book without a defintion of love seeping through the pages. It’s a dangerous, pursuing love. The love of a man that isn’t afraid to face pain and humility and sacrifice in order to love his bride. A love that is willing to be gentle and vulnerable, and also incredibly tough, leading, and resilient. Can you imagine if all men began to love their brides this way? And what if the women were supporting them and responding in this love? What a revolution.

I also read that Godly women should be known for three things: being valiant, vulnerable and scandalous. I like it. I will do my best to embody that.

I don’t really know what the point of this post is. There’s a lot to say, but it’s more like internal dialogue that isn’t too revolutionary to society in general at this point. But hopefully someday.

I’m stumbling across this reality that perhaps God wants to redeem us. And, maybe in more ways than we realize.

I think I’ve always had this thought about redemption, that when we begin to engage in this crazy life-shaking transformation through God’s grace, our future is new, redeemed, and our past just kind of blanks out into black and white dead-ness. But, I’m starting to understand that God wants all of me. Not just the “new life” I was thinking. Why would He want that? Why wouldn’t He just toss the crap aside and whisk me off to newness? Does God really want me to go back and face my hurts and my wounds and my fears and my failures…and to redeem them unto Himself?

Why in the heck would he do that? And what does that look like? That just is too much for me to think about, it’s taking me weeks to comprehend this new thought. Is it possible that there are treasures in my past that I thought were broken pieces? If I let Him will He take me back to those in order to free me from them and to show me His glory? Is it possible for God to be glorified through broken pasts? Amen, yes.

Can He truly love us that much, that even when we were dead to Him, DEAD (do we even comprehend this??) He was working out our future glory in Him? How great is this love, can we even understand it? What would this do to my definition of love, and to my understanding that I have been crucified with Christ, and yet I live…He has made all things beautiful. Maybe I should weep more for my past of selfishness, pride and moralistic judgment in order to give it back to Him to be redeemed. Or do I still think that my past wasn’t that bad…

“Even if our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything…”