Not About Me

The sermon yesterday was called, "It's Not About You".

 I tend to forget this simple little fact.  Especially when life is not going the way I think it ought.  I needed the reminder.

Simply put, the pastor pointed out that taking up one's cross means dying to self which equates to the peace which surpasses all understanding.  Well, that sounds good.  So, why is it so hard?

"He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." John 12:25 NKJV

And:

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of bondservant...and He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death..."Philippians 2:5-8 NKJV

That's the mind we're to be in.  The mind which is willing to be of no reputation, the mind which will take the form of bondservant, and be humble enough to die to self.  The Greek word for reputation means 'to make empty'.  Wow.  I empty myself of self so Christ can live within.

This dying is how we know and how we show love

The pastor said that there is an outer shell to each of us which is our 'self' and inside is the Spirit.  But often the Spirit is not witnessed by others through us because the shell covering of us is hard. We need to allow God to break that shell and then people can see Jesus rather than us.  And we ought to allow this breaking happily.

And often, the best Christians do with this notion is create a religious hard shell.  Rather than dying to self, we just become religious.  Which is probably why the religious are not overly liked by the nonreligious. God still cannot be seen.  Hey look at religious me!  Oh, you want to see Jesus?  Well, look at religious ME!

"I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I might gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness...that I may know Him and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death." Philippians 3:8-10 NKJV

The King James Version says, "I count it dung".

Yeah, I should count it such but really, I've been holding onto my petty desires in this life,well, pretty much my whole life.


2 Corinthians 4 says that we are jars of clay, "always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh."

Always - that.  Always - that.  Daily.  So that....

Sounds like there's a connection between Jesus within me and me dying to self.

Here it is point blank:

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me..." Galatians 2:20 NKJV

Tall order.

Sounds like total surrender.  And many times, I don't even want to lose a stupid argument, let alone my whole life. He asks if I will give over my rights. If I will see that He has abundant life to give to me if I will just  turn over my will.  He doesn't say it will be easy.  He knows it won't.  But He knows it will be worth it.

Lord, I do not know what to ask of you; only you know what I need.  I simply present myself to you; I open my heart to you. I have no other desire than to accomplish your will.  Teach me to pray.  Amen.

-Francois Fenelon in Little Book of Prayers

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Not In Charge

So Wednesday, I'm driving to the grocery store to pick up items for a Fourth of July party we were going to that night and it's raining.  In Arizona. And I'm wondering if the store will not be packed as it usually is on a holiday.  I arrive and find that it is, in fact, crowded.  And I suddenly recognize what a hopeful people we really are whether we realize it or not.  All of these people at the store, purchasing their holiday goods refusing to accept the fact that barbecues might be cancelled, swimming might be called off.  And I started to observe stranger's faces.  One man sort of wandered in the rain with a look of wonderment as he gazed at the sky.  A woman walked with a soft smile on her face.  The store was busy but not frenzied.  Going to and from the store to cars, people strolled rather than hurried....in the rain.  Because it's Arizona.  We don't get much rain, you know.  And I felt like most other places, people would be grouchy about the turn of weather.  They would be irritated that the one day it decides to rain, would of course be a holiday.  But we wouldn't dare do that here.  And I just felt this sense that people were sort of confused. How were they supposed to feel about the rain?  They didn't have the right to complain but then again, they have plans tonight.  I sensed a sort of resignation.  A, "well, that's the way it goes" attitude.

I probably read way more into all this than was really there.  And the rain stopped before the evening celebrations.  And fourth of July went off wonderfully and much cooler than we could have anticipated.  And it was a gift.

God is in charge, people.  It rains.  On the righteous and the unrighteous alike.  Well then.  Okay.  He is God and we are not.  And look at that - He just might know what He's doing.

I'm going to try to remember this when the rain comes in my life.  When it looks like God just wants to ruin my little plans, I'm going to try to recall that the rain might be a gift.  That if I just walk slowly and trust, cooler temperatures and a nice breeze might accompany a firework show that blows my socks off.

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Keeping Calm

"Lord, I have gone to you for safety.  Don't let me ever be put to shame.  Save me because You do what is right. Pay attention to me.  Come quickly to help me. Be the rock I go to for safety...Lead me and guide me for the honor of Your name...Into Your hands I commit my very life.  Lord, set me free.You are my faithful God....I will be glad and full of joy because You love me...My whole life is in Your hands...Let Your face smile on me with favor." From Psalm 31 NIRV

 Today marks a new beginning and the range of my emotions is vast.  I feel both relieved and scared. I am believing that the next six months will be better than the last. I am finally trusting that God has made the path clear and yet, I know that though I have been set free, this is an inexplicable knowledge not easily translated and if I've ever needed to cling, it is now.


The 'today' I spoke of was Monday.  Today it is Wednesday.  Happy 4th of July!  

I've been doing a lot of this lately - starting a post and finding difficulty in finishing.  It could be writer's block but I suspect the block is more circumstantial than anything else.  I still find it a bit challenging to not only know what to reveal during these times of change, but also to just allow myself to feel it enough to write it.

But today, I woke up....happy. It's a feeling I haven't fully experienced in a bit. I've felt moments of peace and serenity, I've been able to laugh and I've attempted something close to hope but happiness has somewhat eluded me through this process.

But here it was this morning!  

"Weeping may remain for a night but rejoicing comes in the morning."  Psalm 30:5 NIV1984 

Maybe, it's that today is a day of freedom. While we celebrate our country's freedom, I'm also celebrating my freedom in Christ- freedom from the bondage of sin.  It could also be the weather.  I was up early and it is cool and breezy.  It even sprinkled for just a few minutes.  

"Be glad...rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness, He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before."  Joel 2:23 NIV1984

Summer showers, too!  There is a fresh season settling, and many changes already underfoot. I have that slightly giddy sensation that flutters to the stomach when you know everything's going to get turned around.  

It feels like a new year.  So, happy independence day and happy new year!

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I Might Become A Nun

"And when we can say to God, 'O, You my joy!' or when you can say, 'O you the pain of my life, O you who are standing in the midst of it as a torment, as a problem, as a stumbling block!' or when we can address Him with violence, then we have established a relationship of prayer."

- From Beginning to Pray but Anthony Bloom

I read this as good news.

In many ways, it's difficult to understand speaking in such a manner to He from whom all blessings flow....and then again, there are times when ranting is our only language with a God we cannot understand.  Far better to rant than to ignore.  I believe that these crying out times are healing times as well as times of purification.  To be honest and raw means we care, that we have not given up the search.  That we recognize that there is meaning to life and we want in on it.

I got off the floor this last week.  I decided my tantrum had gone on quite long enough.  But this does not mean, I've felt no disturbance toward God.  And yes, it's been toward God.

I think that when much has been stripped from us, we come to a place with God where we say, "Fine...but now what?"  And then there's often silence.  "O, You the pain of my life!  Can't you give me a little glimpse of how it's going to be all right?"

My faith tells me that it will be.  My mind grows anxious wondering how it can be.

Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.-Philippians 4:6-7

A lot of Christians jokingly say that they're afraid if they give over their entire life to God, He'll send them to Africa.  Confession:  I'm afraid He'll call me into nunhood.  I probably get a little ahead of myself in my worry.  Rather than staying in today I obsess over the Teresa's.  I remember saying when I was twenty that I wanted to be like Mother Teresa, dedicate my life to helping those in need.  And then I worry that God was recording that wacky statement to use against me later.  And now, reading bits of Teresa of Avila's story, I'm hoping God is not calling me to anything similar.

And, oh yeah....I'm not Catholic and I have children.  

But this is how my brain works.  It likes to take things to the extreme.  It has me plotting a premeditated resentment toward God for causing me to be single for the rest of my ever living life. O, You the pain of my life!  That's what you want for me?  That's what I do- take my fear and escalate it to the nth degree. 

But another confession is that I've always been drawn to the idea of complete devotion to God.  Which is ultimately a good thing.  And so I relate this week when, for class, I read,A New England Nun  and Long Day's Journey into Night. 

But how much of this comes from true reliance on my Maker rather than frustration with and fear of man? 

 In a way the whole thought process is somewhat silly and humorous but in another way it seems to prove how very small my speculations might be in comparison to what all God really has planned for me.

Therefore Lord, not only are you that than which a greater cannot be thought but you are also something greater than can be thought.
-Anselm of Canterbury

And yet still, it's proof that in my very heart of hearts, I know Jesus is the one for me.  This very longing for Him even pitted against fleshy fears shows me how deeply in love with Him I have always been.  That ultimately I am His.  And whether He truly calls me sometime in the future to sacrifice the notion of marital love or bestows upon me an earthly man equally in love with God, today I know that God's love is sufficient.  Today I will rest on the image of Christ as bridegroom.

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Rants and Silence

"In the states that confront the world at this time the confusion is augmented if you have within you a spirit of anger and resentment...."

-Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood


Anger and resentment.  Dangerous places to be.  For me, these emotions or feelings can become places.  Places where I get comfy.  Where I take up residence. My confession is that I did not know this until recently.  I think I used to be under some deception that I was a person who forgave easily.  God has allowed such to occur that that fallacy was straight stripped. I was 'thinking' about forgiving someone recently and found myself saying to God, "How can I forgive this?"  The smallness of this question was shown me immediately.  Am I kidding? As if this person has done to me anymore than what we all have done to God.  How prideful must I be to assume that the wrongs done me are greater than the wrongs which brought the crucifixion.  Seriously.  In this perspective, I was able to see that if Jesus forgives us for all that then who am I to hold onto the petty grievances I think I've endured.  This sort of compounds something I realized while sharing at a meeting last night.  I spoke of how easily I can drift into self-pity, woe is me, my life is worse than anyone else's, no one understands, whine, complain, etc.  Sheesh. Embarrassing.

In, My Utmost for His Highest - Deluxe (DELUXE CHRISTIAN CLASSICS), Oswald Chambers asks, "How long is it going to take God to free us from the morbid habit of thinking about ourselves?  We must get sick unto death of ourselves until there is no longer any surprise at anything God can tell us about ourselves. We cannot touch the depths of meanness in ourselves.There is only one place where we are right, and that is in Christ Jesus."

That guy tells it like it is.

And if you want to read about another guy who wallowed in self-pity, check out Lamentations.  I read chapter three from that book today and got the distinct feeling that Jeremiah was placing a lot of blame on God. I tried to read some commentary but all I found were statements like this:   " As an individual expresses the grief of the community, hope and consolation are sustained by a knowledge of God’s compassionate love."

Read it for yourself but I found that only about one in twenty or so lines, expressed hope.  The rest just sounded angry and bitter.  To me, it reads like a pissed off letter listing injustices and yet one of the best verses finds its way into this litany:  "...for His mercies never end.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!"Lamentations 3:23 HCSB

Maybe the point is that we're allowed to rant to God.  Not that we should but that sometimes in our limited human knowledge, it can look like even God is against us. And far better to rail at Him for a time than ignore Him. And maybe it is in this honesty, that He will find an avenue to finally still us, hush us, where we can see more clearly who's really to blame. And in His presence we can face that truth about ourselves and accept His mercy.  Then, we can ask for the ability to extend that mercy to others.

Am I Done Yet?

Rereading Hinds' Feet On High Places, because I need those hind's feet and I need to leave the fear behind.

Realizing the need to just call on the Shepherd and cease fighting in my flesh.  Because that's exactly what I've been doing.  Fighting principalities with faulty flesh and wondering why I'm being wounded.

In Hurnard's allegory, The Shepherd asks Much-Afraid if Love has been planted in her heart. Because she knows that He sees her heart, she chooses to answer honestly, finally saying, "I think that what is growing there is a great longing to experience the joy of natural, human love and to learn to love supremely one person who will love me in return.  But perhaps, that desire, natural and right as it seems is not the love of which you are speaking?"

This is not a page I noted when I read this book first three years ago. But this passage seems very truthful now of the delusion of love I have been holding in my heart.  The mistaken notion that I can settle for human love and keep divine love on some sideline.

And too, I have not yet accepted the thorn which must be planted for True Love to grow.

I'm coming to realize that in my own quest for this human love, I was also somehow not giving love. Because though I knew God, I had not acknowledged certain truths. I was trapped in a cycle of self-protection which blocked me from loving people outside of my own frame of reference, without conditions.  It's what Walker Percy refers to as 'the great suck of self'.

"...in turbulent times when your mind is image making, you whip and drum up the issues to such an extent that  the excitement gets out of control and the mind and emotions race hysterically."

-Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood

I have been switching from this frenzy mode to a kind of despondence. I can feel it.  And it's a dangerous place to be.  It means that I'm caving to self-pity and then letting that woe-is-me thought life to propel me into that futile flesh fight for my own rights.

 Talking to a friend the other day, she gave me a great image of a Christian slumped in defeat on the floor but then with a mighty roar  rising victoriously.  This, she said, is when the angels rejoice.  It was a powerful image, but I see myself slumped on the floor, or alternately kicking and writhing on the floor in tantrum mode, not really wanting to get up yet.

I am wallowing a bit in that hazardous hole.  I am grading tragedies. In that absorption of oneself, I read on Facebook that someone is battling breast cancer....her husband is taking her to the hospital. I focus on the word husband and promptly decide that I would rather have cancer and a husband than be divorced.  A few statuses down I read about a man with a spinal cord injury and decide that well, at least divorce is better than being paralyzed.   And so my own pain is now the source by which I judge everything.  And this is not good.  This lacks true compassion and even true perspective.

My friend says that God observing heap that I am on the floor, only smiles and says, "Are you done yet?  We have stuff to do."

I should get up.  I'm thinking about it.

Anticipating

My devotion this morning convicts.  Perhaps, I read as many as I need to per day until I find one which does. I am searching desperately these days. And this one, it speaks of the silence I've been experiencing. And it suggests that maybe, when in the past I felt closer to God, thought I could hear Him clearer, it was because I was fervent about what I was praying about - but not truly fervent about God Himself.

I think about Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir and how I had become a gold-digger with God, crying that He ought to give me the desires of my heart.  And when He said no, rather than submitting, I replaced one false god for another.  I tried to include the real God in my faulty plans, asking Him to bless my waywardness.  But it doesn't work like that.  And so I have learned that God can and will pull the rug out from under me, when necessary.  And that this can actually be an answer to prayer.  The problem is only when I refuse to see it as such.  When God is answering with a less than desirable answer and I cover my ears, and like a child, chant, " I can't hear you", well, sometimes He will take drastic measures to ensure that I do hear.  This, is in reality, true love.  It is the allowance of His truth to prevail.  It is protection and provision.  The assurance, once again, that He is in control, not me.

There have been some mighty tough lessons, of late.  But I'm feeling like I'm beginning to get the message.  Beginning to understand that I cannot lean upon my own understanding.  That all I can do is for real cling.  Not cling to my own demands and self-righteous prayers but cling to the God Who works in mysterious ways and with a timing not subject to my wishes, Who sees the beginning from the end and asks me to trust that though His ways are not my ways, they are better.  And that all will be well.

Count it all joy, my brothers,^[b] when you meet trials of various kinds, ³ for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴ And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.-James 1:2-4 ESVUK

I have not been counting it joy.  And if it's been a test, I've gotten a C- at best, thus far.  Steadfastness as defined by The Free Dictionary means, steady: fixed, firmly loyal or unswerving.  Well, I've swerved under this and I have not been slow to speak nor slow to anger.  In fact, there are so many ways I have refused to accept this trial as a blessing or as a learning opportunity.

But the amazing thing about my God is that He remains faithful even when I do not. He is unchanging while I waver.  And His mercies are new every morning. And today, I am standing on His promises.  I am receiving His love and His provision. I am refusing any longer to align my thoughts in agreement with condemnation because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  I am believing that He will turn my mourning into dancing and that I am stepping into a new season, leaving tears behind. I have to say it here because I have to say it everywhere.  I know the truth and I am not ashamed of the gospel and the good news is good news because it means that I am loved and that I am forgiven and that all things will be made new.

We sang last night at service:  "We anticipate the inevitability of the supernatural intervention of the Lord"

I have to anticipate this, stand on His word, hope, believe and share because it is the only thing which has the power to save and if this trial has brought me to that realization and these words then I will count it all joy.

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