Rended

"Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Joel 2:12-13

Rend (verb): To lacerate mentally or emotionally

Six months ago, Jesus showed up.  And then...everything changed.

I didn't know Him before.  I only knew what people told me He was.  He isn't that.  I don't know who He is exactly, but it's not that.  He is completely other.  You know another word for other - Holy.  Yeah, I've heard that word a lot before.  But the people who were telling me about Holy - well they didn't quite get across that "other" idea.  In English, Holy means religious, moral, divine.  In Hebrew - it means totally other, separate, set apart.

Jesus isn't religious - He is other.  He is not like us.  His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways, and His perception is nothing like ours.  That has been a truth that is sinking in deep to me lately.  I have what you might call - shattered sight.  They way I see things are not the way they truly are.

I am starting to get this weird sense of Him.  Or rather, things that are of Him, and things that are not.  Ideas that come from Him, and ones that are lies.

I have also been feeling, what I now understand this morning, as a complete rending of my heart.  The last few days have been horrible.  I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but reading Joel this morning, I can see it was a weeping, fasting, and mourning over what I have been chasing and calling my God.  

You see, God has clearly called me to leave the current local body I have been attending and even helped start seven years ago.  And I haven't obeyed.  I have rationalized, made excuses, and just plain stubbornly stayed - and then called it being a "good Christian".  I even made it in my mind "bad" to obey God.  "Good" Christians don't leave churches.  You never leave your church.  

I have wrestled and even plain ignored God all weekend.  Seriously.  I didn't even crack my bible.  I gorged myself in TV.  And when Sunday came around I snoozed the alarm and didn't go to the new church that I clearly know God wants me at.  And the next two days I spent mourning.  Mourning my stubbornness, my disobedience, and my idol.  My idol was my church.  Not His church, my church.  The church I helped build.  The church I worked so hard at.  The church where I have "paid my dues" so to speak.

Even the enemy was shooting arrows at me - planting thoughts in my head that Jesus blasted through this morning:

Enemy:  You're an instigator!  A trouble maker!  I thought good Christians were supposed to be peacemakers.  What kind of person leaves a church?  You're sowing unrest!

Jesus:  You have only shared your thoughts with one other mature Christian in your current body.  Everyone else you sought for counsel has been outside the local body.  You have done anything but sown discord.  To everyone else you have been positive and uplifting about the body.  You can leave well, knowing you are not making this choice lightly.  In fact, you aren't making it at all.  I AM.

Can't argue with that.  So I'll end with this

So let go my soul, and trust in Him.  

The waves and wind still know His name.

The True Lens

Anxiety...I would say that would be my word for the decade.  I have struggled with it my entire life.  As a child, growing up in a home where love depended on performance, and as an adult, pressured by the constant internal drive to prove my worth, I have lived in the clutches of anxiety.  And what is anxiety really?  Just fear.

My lens in life has been fear.  Fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of letting others down, fear of other's perceptions of me...fear, fear, fear.  Everything I've said or done has been because of fear.  When I read the bible, I read through the lens of fear.  Do this or that, or you're not truly saved!  Good Christians do this!  Bad people do that!

I never read the bible and received the message of love, beauty, hope, and joy that the cross brings.  My version read more like - "look what you did, now look what I had to do to clean up your mess, you better clean up your act because I'm not saving you again."  Even now, as I tiptoe through the shallow end of hope, I catch myself reading fear into His Word.

It seems to good to be true.  Why would He love me?  With all the ugly, unspeakable things that I know about me?  The things I've done, the words I've spoken, the things I've thought. 

And yet, dear beloved, He loves me.  He loves me anyway.  He loves me because.  He loves His creation.  He sees me as I should be, not as I am.  When the Father looks on me, my sweet Jesus is standing in front of me, filling in all the black holes of my soul.  He refreshes those dark places and pulls them into the light.  His "lens" is the only one that matters.

I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life ~John 8:12

 
My "ticket" on this ride of the Jesus life is not dependent on me or how much I have to offer for it in my earthly pockets.  It cannot be bought with earthly deeds or trinkets - it is completely holy - other- it exists not in this world but in His World, and therefore nothing I have could ever purchase it.  That would be like taking monopoly money to the mall.  No, my passage has been paid in ways I can't even fathom.  I just need to board the train.

Waiting Expectantly

Patience...I can honestly say, it doesn't come naturally to me.  And a life with God is most definitely a life lived in patient expectation.  Abraham and Sarah waiting for Isaac, Joseph enduring slavery and even prison not knowing where his path would take him, the Israelites wandering in the desert, 400 years between Malachi and Christ, Christ's life of perfect timing and waiting, and now as we wait expectantly for His return.

As I wade through this period of complete inner overhaul, I also find myself waiting patiently in His cocoon.  I am waiting for His call.  My first instincts are usually either the emotional overreaction or passive avoidance of conflict and change.  But lately, I find myself in this place of expectant waiting.

I find myself pausing in the midst of my emotional turmoil - being still...quiet.  For the first time, I am looking to my Father and trusting in His care and love for me.  When something stings, instead of stinging back, I look up to Him and ask - "What should I do? This hurt."  I can tell Him honestly, openly, that it did hurt, but also wait patiently as I trust that He will guide me through the choppy waters.  I also am owning my bitterness and ugliness in that pain.  This hurt and my heart is oozing the sin that You knew was there all along...and yet You still love me.

It's ok not to be perfect.  I can stop pretending to feel the "right" thing.  I can stop stuffing the ugly back inside.  Locking it inside me is not letting Christ renew me - it's hiding my sin from Him.  It is the ever present story of Eve.

Then the man and his wife heard the sounds of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ~ Genesis 3:8

But God doesn't let us stay there - He woos us out to Him, in His gentle, soft way - the way only He knows - He penetrates that ugliness, the darkness that we hide in.

But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" ~ Genesis 3:9

He finds me in my dark places.  He coaxes me out of my little cave of pain and protection.  He tells me sweetly...

Keep your eyes on me.  Don't look down...just look right at me.

And then I move forward.

In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. ~Psalm 5:3

My Journey

A first post can be so intimidating - where to begin?  At the beginning?  So I was born...haha no.  That's not the beginning.  No the real beginning is about 6 months ago...

I was leading a ministry, doing God's work, or what I thought was His work.   I was awaiting my relief, someone to take my place as I tagged out due to mental and emotional exhaustion.  I had worked myself into a spiritual emptiness, ran my family into the ground, let bitterness and resentment dig deep into my heart, and lost my love for His Church.  I was at the proverbial rock bottom.

I had spent the last seven years lost in the Gospel of works.  I didn't know the real Jesus.  And I couldn't imagine sharing the Jesus I thought I knew to anyone in my life.  He was a harsh task master, a condemner, and a guilt layer.  Why would anyone want to join me in that? 

I would sing the songs of His grace and mercy, and then push myself to the brink of a meltdown trying to earn my keep.  It was like living a double life. 

My identity was wrapped up completely in my ministry.  My worth and value found only in my position of leadership.  Losing that cost me everything.

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. ~Matthew 10:39

My closest friends kept telling me that this ministry was poison to me.  My husband would shake his head at my stubbornness.  How could I give up the one thing that made me have any value?

Finally, a dear friend gave me an ultimatum.  You need to step down.  This month.   Her bluntness shocked me.  But it was true, I couldn't keep talking about how much this ministry was hurting me and then do nothing about it.  She had endured my confessions for a year and it was time to deal with it.

I prayed that day for God's leading.  If I was supposed to step down, then the conversation would present itself.  I wasn't going to force it.  And...it did.    It took 6 months to fully transition out, but it did happen.  In the end I was left empty.  The gradual training and mentoring I had expected to do didn't happen.  We had a couple meetings, and that was it.  I was left like a well-wisher watching the ship sail away.  And I realized that I had nothing left.  I had no faith apart from works.

That place of complete emptiness, barrenness, is a horrible and beautiful place.  Horrible because you have nothing to cling to and you feel worthless...but beautiful because that's when Jesus can begin to fill you.  It was like He was saying, "There you are...I couldn't get to you before because of your wall of works.  Now come, follow me."  How could He fill me before when I had already filled myself with my accomplishments and service for Him?

And that's where my journey began - in a place of complete emptiness.