Sometimes I find it so easy to let my “used to be” (you know, the me without God) speak to who I am now. I wallow in my shame, sadness and loss. That’s not the greif that God desires for us or that Jesus made possible for us. Again, that’s the old way and the [...]
Representing God to the world. Now that’s a task. I was listening to a message from Francis Chan about grace and he said:
Even though I may say he’s a God of grace, if I don’t represent him and show grace to everyone, I’m giving a distorted picture of God.
When I first heard that statement I thought, “right on!” Isn’t this just what we, as followers of Christ need to be doing? How many people do I know who have been turn off a path towards God by the church misrepresenting who God is? Later that day I was discussing it with a friend and they brought up the issue that we can’t really do that – only God can, because of our fallen nature.
So, is it too much to take on, accurately representing God to the world? Ultimately, yes. We are all fallen and even at our best we do not give a true representation of God . . . whatever it is we do or say, He is so much more! So what am I to do?
Pray! Again, He can do so much more and He chooses to us in that doing.
Francis Chan is the Non-Staff Elder & Teaching Pastor at Cornerstone, Simi Valley, CA and author of “Crazy Love”. Message podcasts are available at their PodCast Page.
Every once in a while I will share more about me and my family so this becomes more of a community. Today I want to share about Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. My guess is you have no idea what it really is and it brings Memorial Day Weekend & Jerry Lewis to mind. After reading this, you will have a responsibility to share what you know, to get the word out so we can save our boys!
Duchenne muscular dystrophy is the most common fatal genetic disorder diagnosed in childhood, affecting approximately 1 in every 3,500 live male births (about 20,000 new cases each year). Duchenne results in progressive loss of muscle strength and is caused by a mutation in the gene that encodes for dystrophin. The progressive muscle weakness leads to serious medical problems, particularly issues relating to the heart and lungs. Young men with Duchenne typically live into their late twenties. Duchenne can be passed from parent to child, but approximately 35% of cases occur because of a random spontaneous mutation.
What’s my stake in Duchenne? In April of 2008 my 2nd oldest son was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Caleb is 9 this year and an amazing boy! He’s smart, dedicated, loves math & video games. He really cares for the people around him.
Caleb goes to the MDA clinic twice a year as well as going to a pulmonologist and cardiologist twice a year. Last summer he got a wheel chair that he has progressively spent more time in as it has become harder for him to walk. There are some scary prospects for the future that have to be address but he is also full of life and we are all about living. There are also amazing things happening in research right now. Here are a few of the cool things going:
Finally, “We will end duchenne, but we have to do it together.” Pat Furlong, Parent Project MD.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. – 2 Corinthians 4:8-10
This was the key verse in a sermon on Resilience at Mosaic.
I was caught by this verse from the very beginning because I so often think on just these things…
I am pressed on every side
I am perplexed
I am persecuted
I am struck down
I am defeated …
Whoa!! Is that really how I see my life? Not always, but quite often, it is. I must have a pretty hard life right? No, I have a good job, I have great friends & amazing kids and family. Is everything peachy? No, of course not, I live in the same fallen world as everyone else.
It really comes down to where I focus. Do I focus on the “bad deal” I’ve gotten or do I focus on the “amazing gifts” I’ve been given? Do I focus on what I can’t do or on what God is doing?
With that slight change in attitude I find:
I am NOT crushed . . .
I am NOT in despair . . .
I am NOT abandoned . . .
I am NOT destroyed . . .
I AM NOT DEFEATED . . .
Even through all of the pain and hardness of life I have victory because of Christ and even more. I have the privilege of carrying Christ crucified to the world, to all those within my sphere and even to be part of the “reveal” of Christ to those same people.
Not a bad deal if you ask me!
Mosaic is the church community where Erwin McManus (author of Soul Cravings & The Barbarian Way) serves as the primary communicator and cultural architect.
Mosaic is a community of followers of Jesus Christ, committed to live by faith, to be known by love, and to be a voice of hope. Most of their sermons are available through their podcasts. I encourage you to spend some time at www.mosaic.org and related endeavors.
I so want to be healed, to process/understand my feelings and how they relate to how I act . . . I’m really good at intellectualizing my feelings instead of feeling them. In some ways, it feels like another new journey.
I’ve been listening to a Michael Knott song lately, “This is the Healing”. You can purchase it here. It’s on LSU’s “This is the Healing” album.
“This Is the Healing”
You’ve been seen with a stiff lip
It’s happening to the best when the pain grips
You’ve been beaten by the bell
In all that you do
You thought Hell was a place one goes to
But your Hell on Earth is trueThis is the healing
Give me tears from all your bitter years
This is the healing
Salt the wounds, the healing will come soonYou’ve tried to philosophize your pain
But the hurts in your heart
And not in your brain
You could be hit by the Spirit
And be made new
You thought Heaven was a place one goes to
But this Heaven on Earth is trueChorus
Open your heart
As I think about the different factors that led me off the path God has been showing me it’s easier to speak to the externals (isn’t that always the case?), so I will force myself to deal with the internals first.
The work required towards healing wounds and walking the path God intends can be tiring, fearful and hard at times. With all the rest of life: family, work, friends, church, kids, etc., it can be easier to just look away and try to just make it through today. The short sightedness of this attitude is not lost on me. When I am exhausted and scared of what may be, it is an indicator that I’m attempting to climb a rock face by myself; without Jesus, without the fellowship He has put me in, without encouragement. Often, it has been with great reluctance that I have stepped back into the fray alongside brothers and sisters. Whether out of embarrassment or arrogance or fear the end result is the same.
I am one of those people that want it done now . . . I want to be done with this part of my journey (of walking into wounds and dealing with them) and on to the part that I am living out of wellness, taking my part in His story. This distraction is, maybe one of the worst. I get so caught up in wanting to be done instead of doing the work to be done, the work where I learn how to live.
Sometimes I just wasn’t ready for the next step. This isn’t really a hindrance in the way other factors might be, but it can still be frustrating because I want so much to be in a different place. I love that God has so much grace for me, that He does not want me to step out into what could be devastating for me and brings me along in His mercy. As I come to realizations and ask the question, “Why didn’t I see that back then?” the answer always comes clearly that I was not ready. This response is always acceptable to those walking with you and not being ready can become a hindrance for them. I’ve found that it’s best to be honest about where I am and count that my fellow travelers will be given peace – if not, then, in many ways, they aren’t walking with me and they are not allowing grace for my boundaries.
That’s a nice segue to the issue of how pressure from others have been a factor. The hardest part is I am where I am and just because others might want me to be in a different place doesn’t mean it should be. The best I can do is to communicate as best I can, give as much grace as I can and rest in the hands of my Savior and God. If those around me are working from their own expectations and can’t accept the path God has me on (and where I am on that path) there really isn’t anything I can do about that.
…baby step onto the elevator… baby step into the elevator… I’m *in* the elevator. [doors close] AHHHHHHHHHHHH! – Bob Wiley; character in “What about Bob?“
Just as we learned in the movie “What About Bob?”, there are steps we need to take to make changes in our lives. Often, just taking that first step is too much. I have found this to be the case for me, the down side is, things don’t just stay the same, they tend to go the opposite direction. Why can it seem so hard to take that first step?
Most of the time I did not understand why it was so hard to take these first steps. I really hadn’t done the work to understand all the answers to all my “whys.” I would read more, ask more people, dismiss the step, fight change, pray (plead) – anything to avoid that first step. When I finally would take the first step (if I did) I would find that it was like changing from trying to walk in water to walking on dry land: the following steps were so much easier and more natural. Looking back over the past two years I can see that some of the steps I “couldn’t” take were steps that I shouldn’t have been taking (and some of the ones I did take fell in that same category).
This journey has been long and choosing the side paths make it longer and harder to find my way back to the path where God wants me. There were many people pressing on me for specific changes, as well as me pressing myself. A combination of not being ready, not seeking God’s counsel, wanting to be “done”, and pressures from those around me who didn’t necessarily have healing in their agenda worked together to make staying on path difficult.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Confucius
My last post ended with the idea of having a testing ground for where God is growing me. I shared that often I was testing in unsafe waters and getting burned, but there is a way to test in safe waters.
The process of living in community with others began for me a few years ago, as I shared in this post, when I took the risk of sharing my issues with finances. That event is a good example of safe waters for risk. I met my friend, let’s call him Joe, through church. He was the leader of the small group my wife and I started attending at our new church and we had known each other previously through Boy Scouts. So, we had shared interests and had started the process of knowing each other through our weekly small group with our families and another small group revolving around mountain biking. Before I took the risk of sharing a big thing, we had both taken risks in small things – this laid the foundation.
When I shared with him about not handling my finances, Joe didn’t do any of the things I thought he would: laugh at me, make light of my situation, reject our friendship. He did do a few things that surprised me: he something, he understood my difficulties, he accepted me where I was. This was the start of a weekly meetings that have continued for the last 4 or 5 years where we have spoke into each others lives and been amazing support for each other through some difficult times.
The main lesson for developing “safe waters” is that you have to seek them out. You may need them right now, but if you have cultivated intimacy, transparency, memories in your friendships you will not have safe places to be yourself. Start today! One small risk can lead to all kinds of grace, understanding and good times.
All of us have habits, memories, thought patterns ingrained in our brains. It’s the way we were taught by the hard things in this world; how we trained ourselves to make our way through life. Some of those patterns in habit and thought are positive traits we learned from our families, peers, faith, schools that help us to live productive, happy, open & free lives. Some of these patterns are what we “learned” from interacting with those same groups – for example, I learned that if I was “vulnerable” I would be taken advantage of, used, hurt, so I taught myself ways to avoid being vulnerable with anyone while still giving the appearance of being/having close friendships that I so deeply desired.
I have all kinds of rules that I have learned and taught myself. As God has been growing me many of these “rules” have been confronted and I haven’t always liked my “rules” being messed with. I mean, these rules have good reason to be here, they protect me from a very ugly world and have kept me safe for 30+ years. True, they have kept me safe – safety by surrounding me and caging me in – keeping me from the life that I was designed for. I remained safe from the things that could hurt me, but I was also kept from all that could help me – life, love, relationship, grace, intimacy . . .
My “rules” were learned from the frame of reference that I had to make it on my own. What God was teaching me is that I can’t make it on my own . . . He is there at the worst and best to help me through; He has sent/ is sending His strength, His Spirit, His people to hold me up, walk with me, to live life to it’s fullest.
When I began to understand what God was teaching me, that the rules were what I came up with to help me survive on my own, I was able to take responsibility for how I chose to react to external stimuli. Then I was open to hear what God was saying and to walk in the direction He was pointing me.
I am speaking in the past tense. I have been through this process, but I am also going through this process each day. Sometimes it is easier to see what I have built as a jail cell and sometimes it takes much more to see the prison around me. The process is me, trusting in God to sustain & support me, stepping out of whatever “cell” I am dealing with and taking a risk. Sometimes my rules have been confirmed, I think because I am testing without using discernment and test in unsafe waters. The time for testing in unsafe waters will come, but it’s not the best place for testing in the beginning. What is the best place for testing? That will be the topic of my next post.
One of my favorite authors and great minds of the world is CS Lewis. While going through some of his works I came across this quote:
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship (Philia) naked personalities. – CS Lewis
It’s quite easy for me to think about the eros side of things – naked bodies, pretty easy for anyone to get the idea of nakedness and all that entails (I’m not trying to go down a sex, sex, sex road here), but Philia (friendship) doesn’t bring that same sort of image to mind, that image of nothing covering anything. Should it?
I say yes! For a person to be a “friend” there is a requirement of intimacy and intimacy means, Masks Off! If I can’t have a naked personality with my friends then I’m not sure they could be called my friends or rather, maybe I’m not able to take the risks required of friendship or choosing people who are able to take those risks either. Letting down my guard and letting all the things that I try to hide: weaknesses, the questions I have, not being up on the “cool” thing (sports, movies, etc), my inadequacies; is just what is required of both parties in a friendship. Not that full disclouser is required from the get go, not at all.
It is a series of risks that both people take and are either releaved that they were supported (or still liked) or dissapointed that they were let down. This process might be the norm for most people, but it’s a process I only really started to experience 4 or 5 years ago as I set out to share one of my most embarassing failings with a friend, finances. I just knew he would laugh at my inability to manage my own house and send me on my way, but I had to talk to someone, I was desperate!
He didn’t laugh, he understood. He didn’t send me on my way, he reached out his hand and pulled me up to a standing position. It was a milestone in our friendship, one that has brought on many more risks from both sides. Oh, and did I mentioned that we’ve both failed each other in those risks? We have, but more than those failures we’ve come through for each other many more times.
I’ll let part of a letter I received from a friend end this post:
But searching for the real is worth it because we want folks to be in relationship with ourselves, not with our masks anyways. And honestly, the closest people in our lives deserve that kind of transparency and truth. And we owe it to ourselves as well.
[note: blog post two for the National Blog Writing Month. Now I'm back on track.]
The past three years have brought much change in my life, some really good times and some really bad times. Through it all, God has been working on me; sometimes in a focused area and sometimes in many areas at the same time. Often the new that God has brought me came with great struggle and pain on my part. Other times the “new” that has come was not in line with the path God had me on.
As I look back and review the struggle and pain, I think there are many factors that contributed:
Another factor in the pain were externals that were pushing me in areas I just was not ready or able to begin striding in. It has often been difficult for me to think beyond the end of the day much less a year, or five years in some of these areas. Yet, I was continually being asked to commit in these areas and didn’t have the tools necessary to respond.
We’ll spend the rest of the week exploring these factors further.
[note: blog post one for the National Blog Writing Month. Had it in my head Monday was the 1st - oops]
