Cultivating It

Kathi and I have been spending the last couple of days talking about safe places of grace – those churches, homes, families and people you long to be with – where it is ok that you can’t bring anything to the table, where you are listened to and not condemned for your unbelief in the gospel to help in that moment of struggle, where agendas don’t exist, where your true identity in Christ is affirmed,  and  laughter and silliness abound – a place where grace pours out on others because it has been poured out on us.

We all long for those places and are continually seeking them out. We look for people who can be that for us, we look for churches and communities where the atmosphere is thick with grace. The problem comes, though, when we can’t find it. What do we do? How do we cultivate that where we are?

It isn’t top-down, grass-roots, or programmatic. It is doing it right here, right now with where God has you. It is rooted in humility and an outpouring of thankfulness to God for the mercy and grace that He shows us. Out of that, grace will begin to seep through our phone conversations, our talks at the dining room table with our spouses, our listening to the teenager struggling with performance, and the single person battling loneliness – all because we have the Gospel at the center of who we are and everything we do.

If we desire safe places of grace in our home, church, work place, communities and friends, we have to begin by being that safe place for others. We look in to others eyes and listen to their hurts. We ask them questions about how their struggle with contentment shows an unbelief in the gospel and then point them to what Christ has already provided for them. We laugh with them. We drink wine together. We watch movies together and then talk about them. We desire to drive beneath the problem presenting itself to what is really going on within their soul. We ask them questions about where they are getting their value and significance. We don’t hold each other accountable – we remind each other that our identity is found in Christ and not in our failures – now go live like who you really are and stop believing the lie.

Psalm 3 contains some powerful imagery; but, as I was reading this morning, verse 3 showed me God in a new way: “But you, O Lord, are…. the lifter of my head.”

• a nurse lifting a patient’s head to give him water and medicine
• a mother gently caressing her child’s chin, lifting their head, speaking assurance into their eyes
• a father lifting his son’s head to speak strength and encouragement to his soul
• a friend lifting another friends head, reminding him of who he is in Christ

These are all pictures of God – our healer, our encourager, our strength, our identity. He is the one who touches and is the one who lifts.

Driving across the front range of the Rocky Mountains is one of the most beautiful drives there is. Rolling hills, wild flowers, winding roads, trains hauling coal, and ranches nestled between bluffs – all set against the backdrop of towering mountains offering unique perspectives at every turn.

It was against that backdrop today that I began pondering what it really means to trust God with myself and how that practically plays out in the day to day. My stomach gets queasy just thinking about it. Oddly enough, though, it is also where I long to be.

Trusting God with myself means that things won’t quite work out the way I expect them to. Like a kid waking up early Christmas morning, sometimes I’ll walk down stairs and peer into the living room hoping to see that bright red bike. Yet, it won’t be there. Tucked away behind the tree, though, is something richer that I never thought to ask for, yet He knew I needed.

Trusting God with myself means I’m trusting that He’ll be there to help me work on those sin issues that keep nagging away at me. I’m trusting that when He says He loves me regardless, He really means it and that He isn’t secretly belittling me behind my back. It means trusting that Grace really is real.

Trusting God with myself means desiring what He wants for me more than what I want for myself.  It means that the promised pleasures of sin are a grain of sand compared to the Joy He says I’ll have in Him. It means remembering that even in the midst of prolonged pain.

Trusting God with myself means letting go of fear and performance and, instead, holding on to my identity. It means my standing with God isn’t based upon what I did today, how I screwed up, whom I helped or how badly I spoke. It means when He sees me, He sees Christ’s perfect obedience and that He really is madly in love with me.

Trusting God with myself means extending mercy and grace to others – because they have been so lavishly poured out upon me.

photo credit: rmrider.com

I shared on Facebook the other day that my pants called and said they wanted their old belly back.

It’s true. I’ve perfected the art of avoiding going to the gym at 5:00 am and thought I’d share my insights with everyone:

1. Convince yourself that you really didn’t get enough sleep that night and the extra hour would make all the difference

2. When the alarm goes off, open up the Weather app on your iPhone and take a look at the temperature. 23 degrees is enough to keep anyone in bed

3. Remember that you’ve missed the previous four days and you wouldn’t want to mess up a good thing. If it happens to be Monday, remind yourself that Mondays are never a good day to do anything unusual. The need to prepare for the unexpected is paramount.

4. Forget to set the coffee schedule the night before. Trust me – you’ll remember that there is no coffee when that alarm goes off

5. Begin your Read Through the Bible in a Year schedule. It’ll buy you a good 30 days before you’ll need to employ another tactic

6. Plan on going at 3:00 pm instead when things are quieter at the gym and you are more awake

7. Convince yourself that you “need” some quiet time all to yourself to think and reflect

8. Stay up late the night before trying to get three stars and a new high score in Angry Birds

9. Convince yourself that your tummy ache really is real

10. Write a blog post at 5:00 am about how to avoid going to the gym at 5:00 am

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I talk a lot about how pain and trials are just as much God’s blessings as laughter and joy. We tend to equate good things with blessings and trials as something we must endure to finally get to the “good stuff”. What I’m learning, though, is that the “good stuff” is the journey. God’s blessings don’t always come with a pretty red bow. More times than not, they come with a tear, some anger, and a gentle tug from God reminding us of who we are in Him.

I experienced that yesterday.

I was asked to speak for about 5 minutes during our Sunday School class on a topic I love – ministering mercy to the needy and poor and how God’s grace is our pattern for doing so. I knew my topic and was passionate about communicating it to the class. About 15 minutes before I was supposed to speak, though, a crushing feeling of inadequacy and fear overcame me.

I prayed. I popped extra pieces of gum in my mouth. I asked people to pray. I drank some water. I slowed down my breathing. Nothing was working.

As I stepped up to the mic, everything began to fall apart. I stumbled over my words. I looked at every word I was supposed to speak with fear that they wouldn’t come out.  I felt the un-comfortableness of the class and that made me uncomfortable for them. Fears of being judged overwhelmed me even though deep down I knew they weren’t. I started off on the wrong foot, and, as I hard as I tried, I couldn’t communicate what was on my heart. I was an utter mess. Every raw nerve was on display for everyone to see and I felt abandoned by God for allowing it to continue.

I was out of control and I hated every minute of it.

Eventually it all ended and I sat down next to my comforting wife. And that is when the real battle began.

Anger. Tears. Silence. Embarrassment. Out of control. Exposed. Why did those things matter to me? What did those feelings say about what I believed of God? Why was I blaming God for what happened? Why didn’t he help or protect me? I needed affirmation during this dark struggle – why do I need affirmation? God and I worked through those questions all afternoon and all night; and, I am still working through most of them with him right now. In my anguish and feeling of abandonment, He’s showing me himself.

Before, during and after that whole debacle, I had forgotten who I was. Even as I type this, I’m having to remember who I am.

I have the DNA of Christ residing in me and I’m made in his image – not in an image I can control or a situation I can remedy. I’m made in his image. I’m loved and desired by the one who calls himself “I am”. Am I still frustrated that God the Protector didn’t show up? Absolutely. But had he shown himself in that way, I wouldn’t have the privilege of working through these issues with him and knowing him deeper as a result.

That’s the real blessing – God coming along side us and saying “hey, let’s take a look at what happened today and work through that together.” It is him reminding me of who I am in Him, even during what I perceive as my worst moment ever.

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

As I sat around our fire pit last night with my wife, kids and some great neighbors handing out candy to Dora the Explorer  and various characters from Toy Story,  I was fighting an inner compulsion to share what a great time we were having with all my Twitter and Facebok friends while we were having that great time.

Here’s a sad, but ironic picture: while posting a picture, sending a text or sharing a tweet about great conversations and laughter we are enjoying, I’m only grabbing bits and pieces of continuing conversations, jokes or stories. After “liking” someone else’s fire pit photo, I ask “Sorry, what was that? I didn’t hear what Jimmy said.” As I listen to my buddy tell an insightful story about how he grew up, I’m mentally processing about how “blessed” everyone else would be to hear that story and I totally miss what he was actually trying to communicate. While my daughter is roasting marshmallows and letting them fall into the fire pit, I’m thinking “I need to grab a picture of that so I can share it with my friends back home” instead of immersing myself totally in what is happening right before my own eyes and ears and enjoying the look in my daughter’s eyes as she loses yet another marshmallow to a fiery inferno. While packing everything up, I’m thinking about the various blurbs I can share on Facebook  and what a great night we had, rather than reflecting on the smiles of all those kids as we loaded them up with real candy bars and caused their bags to overflow with more candy than the dentist would ever allow.

In my effort to be social with twenty other people who are not physically with me, I’m emotionally disengaging from the people I’m actually with. How sad is that?

I wonder how more deeply connected I would be with those around me if I viewed my social network spiritually and physically rather than virtually?

My wife Kathi and I attended the TrueFaced Intensive Conference this weekend. It was about grace, sanctification, removing masks, and trusting God and others with who He says we are in Him. It was the most impacting event we have ever attended.

The following is John Lynch, one of the co-authors of TrueFaced and presenters from the conference, on the New Testament Gamble speaking from the perspective of God. I highly recommend the book.

So God supplies perfectly measured grace to meet the needs of the godly. For daily needs there is daily grace; for sudden needs, sudden grace; for overwhelming need, overwhelming grace. God’s grace is given wonderfully, but not wastefully; freely but not foolishly; bountifully but not blindly. ~John Blanchard