Moving

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Processed with VSCOcam with t1 presetWhen I first moved to Texas, it was hot. It was 100 degrees the mid-September day I crossed into the metroplex of Dallas-Fort Worth. I was on a mission. The church I knew I'd be calling home was holding a quarterly event we call Group Connect and I knew if I wanted to make this place home, I'd need a group. I drove ten hours that day and got there late, didn't find a group, but talked to a person who put me in touch with Jen Wilkin who taught Women's Bible Study. I only wanted to know one thing: is this the kind of women's bible study where weepy women cry and complain and take prayer requests that sound like gossip? I was assured it wasn't and so I went.

And God, that hidden man, the monster of my heart, the one I feared, at times hated, and rarely trusted, split the veil in two. This temple, for the first time maybe ever, knew what it was like to approach the throne with confidence, to be full of the Holy Spirit, to cease sacrificing the lamb of self and to trust Him. I was home.

It was a new kind of home for me, the vagabond pilgrim. I've always been the girl who moved a lot. Comfortable with risk and averse to complacency, I'll nomad my way through life if it means more treasure in heaven and less on earth. But this kind of home, in Christ, in the gospel, it was new and different. It fit. I never liked Texas, but I was home. Inside the doors of my church I found a people who became my family.

This past week my pastor had a few of us stand during Elder Led Prayer (a once a month prayer meeting at my church, mostly attended by covenant members and staff) and receive prayer. I didn't see all those who had hands on me, but I felt them. I felt the hands of my family and the prayers of the saints. I left that night and felt so full and so at home.

But, dear reader, all has not been right in this temple-home of mine. Some of you know all the details, some of you have suspected, some of you guessed, but this year has been hard. Hard in hard ways. Ways that make me wonder daily what I'm doing wrong, or what God is doing right.

I have known since I moved here that Texas wasn't the long-term plan. I moved here with the intention of staying six months. Six months has turned into four years and they have been four good years. But it has become increasingly clear to me that my heart is back in the northeast, that my soul yearns for four seasons, for the darkness of winter, the light of spring, the death of fall, and the life of summer. Even more than that, my heart yearns for the people of the north. I love those people. I love their wild eclecticness, their independence, their fierce can-do-itiveness. I love their ideas and philosophies. I love how hard they are, and how soft, how welcoming and how hard to win they are. I can't get the northeast out of my blood, out of my soul. I get them because I am part of them.

When I moved here four years ago it was a fluke. Texas was nowhere on my list or mind. A certain mid-sized city in New York was my aim and then one day I knew it wasn't, couldn't be. I have never regretted that decision. He brought beauty out of the ashes. He taught the pilgrim how to pilgrimage.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baka (Valley of Weeping), they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.

That was the verse God gave me to meditate on before I moved to Texas and I have seen how he has taken my weeping and turned it to joy, a dry land and made it bear fruit. He has given me strength after strength, given me men and women who have pushed on those strengths and called me to deeper and stronger places. Everything he has done with the gifts he has given me, has surprised me. He has shown me his character in a fullness I never knew possible, he has put a new song in my heart, a song of praise to our God. That is a blessing I know I will never understand fully. All I can do is be grateful.

And I am.

And yet I am leaving, heading back up to the northeast, to the people who I love with my whole heart, to lilacs, rivers, lakes, and mountains, small churches with great needs, to gospel-dry places with gospel-rich people.

Will I be home there? I don't know. But I know for sure He is at home in me.

Grumbling & Complaining

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My heart has been a grumbling one recently. I could give you a few reasons I think why my grumbling is necessary or warranted, but the truth is that even talking about those situations would invite more grumbling. People talk about it being necessary to say how we feel, but I usually think there is more merit to say less about how we feel, and more about who God is in spite of our feelings. Disagree or not, I don't think the Bible makes a case for us to all sit around and talk about our feelings to one another.

Paul, however, does have something to say about grumbling. In his letter to the Philippians, he says:

Do all things without grumbling or complaining, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Philippians 2:14

Do: It's an action word. Often we want to passively let the disciplines of the Christian life just happen to us. But Paul is saying, no friends, you gotta do this. It's not going to happen without some elbow grease.

All: It's an encompassing word. It's inclusive, including all things. Not just hard things or bad things, but good things and seasonal things. It means in every situation—hard or not—this verse applies.

Things: It's a noun. A person, place, or thing—which, I'll betcha is where most of your grumbling is directed. Who's bothering you? Where is it hard to be? What is rubbing against you in a difficult way? That's exactly the thing Paul's talking about.

Without: It means an absence of. It means no sign of, zero, zilch, none. There shouldn't even be a hint of this in your life.

Grumbling: Murmuring, even under our breath, to ourselves. This is what grumbling is. It's preaching a gospel, a false gospel, to ourselves about ourselves. It's heresy—the opposite of good news.

Or: I like this "or" right here because I'm usually guilty of one of these, but not the other. I don't know about you. I usually think it's okay to grumble to myself, even if I don't complain to others. But Paul is saying, nope, neither is okay.

Complaining: Sounding off, letting off steam, gossip, sometimes even "asking for prayer about this particular situation"—these can all lend to complaining. Is there some situation of discomfort in your life? Seek encouragement from others, but don't let it terminate on idle negative talk.

I'm challenged by all those words today. Challenged to shut my mouth, even if it means awkward silence around others. Challenged to guide my heart, even if it means I don't get to entertain or indulge my thoughts toward another person or situation.

Let's hold fast to the word of life—Christ's words and what they offer—for they far outweigh our momentary grumbling or complaining.

The Good Ground

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It is a good place where one can say, "I do not trust you," to God. These are the places where God becomes real. Realer than theology books and good sermons, more real than dark nights and soul talk, realer than heaven and hell and all the variances in between. To stand barefoot by the burning bush of your life—or the Spirit—and to say, I do not, I can not, even maybe I will not. These can be good places.

There is a realness to the God of that moment, a reckoning with all the ways in which we have felt the realness of life hurt and bruise us. It is, in some ways, the moment of coming to our senses. It is touch, sight, sound, scent—the aching reality that this is hard, so hard. Harder than it was ever meant to be, and yet, the only way we could come at last home.

Whenever I find myself in the company of one who doubts, I know I am on hallowed ground. Holy ground. I want to take off my shoes and stand there with them for a while. The ground is often a pigsty: it smells, it is muddy, full of animal waste and the rottenest fares of the richest feasts, but it is the place of coming to.

To say, "I do not believe, but God, I want to," can be the first step toward coming home.

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United in One Thing at Least

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My friend Trillia Newbell's new book United has hit the shelves this week. Trillia is a wise and kind woman whose words regarding race and unity are much needed in the church—especially from a woman. After reading her book, I watched The Loving Storyon Netflix, which I've highly recommended several times this week. I am also partway through Letters to A Birmingham Jail, edited by Brian Loritts, with contributions by Piper, Chandler, and more. This week I have been so struck by the importance of ongoing conversations regarding the Civil Rights movement and how they affect current movements in our culture and world. As I read and watch these stories, and learn to how parse this ongoing history (because that's what it is and will be for a long, long time), I am having to consider freshly what our response to things like gender roles, same sex attraction, homosexual unions, abortion, and even Church and non-profit polity needs to be. These words will be recorded someday in biographies and documentaries. Whether we like it or not, our words matter and they do hold weight.

One thing I was deeply struck by while watching The Loving Story was the original content, first person narratives, film of actual an actual couple being persecuted for their marriage to one another, young and eager lawyers making history in 1968 regarding interracial marriage. In 2014, more than ever before in history, we are content factories.

Some day, and not very far in the future, our children and their children WILL use our words for better or worse. That makes me want to be very sober-minded and slow to speak, slow to give opinions, especially ones that have not been tried or put through the fire.

There are a number of polarizing situations at play in the world, just today I can think of three huge ones concerning religious liberties, homosexual unions, and abortion—oh, friends, let's be careful, very, very careful of how we respond. Not in fear of what will someday be used against us, but in wisdom for the sake of future generations.

These are not simply ideals and ideas—they are people, real people.

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A Seat at the Pulpit

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pulpit The popular euphemism for "can't we all just be friends" is to give folks "a seat at the table." I've used it. It's helpful. It reminds me that people are people and everyone around the table is coming with different presuppositions, stories, layers, and theologies. It evens the playing field.

More and more, though, what is communicated is that everyone gets a seat at the table and the table is a pulpit for everyone to preach their message. It's the church of all peoples and thoughts and ideas—and it's a veritable mess.

Paul warned the Corinthians that hanging with those intentionally sinning was corrupting the purity of the gospel. Here's what's interesting though: he used the words of one of their own to deliver the warning. The Greek poet Menander first used the words, "Bad company corrupts good morals." Paul contextualized the line for gospel purposes.

What often happens with all these seats at the table is we end up attempting to fit the gospel to sinners, instead of fitting sinners to the gospel.

Bad company does corrupt good morals, and one of those morals is that the gospel cannot be so contextualized that everyone at the table agrees.

If that is difficult for us to swallow in an age where everyone wants meritorious rightness, we're in good company, the disciples once grumbled to themselves, "This is a difficult thing, who can believe it?"

And Jesus, sweet Jesus, gives that wide berth and narrow path: It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.

Sit with sinners, eat with everybody, welcome all to the table—but remember Jesus is the only one who offers words of spirit and life.

Hearing and Being God

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Since the beginning of December I have been thinking about what it means to "hear" God's voice. I cut my faith teeth in Charismatic circles, so hearing from God for ten years was commonplace in my life. I have pages full of things people heard from God about on my behalf and I am in Texas today because of a small feeling I had one June morning on my back stoop. He said, "Move to Texas," and I said, "Hell, no." But then I did. I don't handle His voice lightly, but I think I have handled the hearing of His voice lightly.

Because we are His children and He is our father and we know this with our heads—even if we struggle with it in our hearts—we want to believe that He speaks and He speaks to us. This is why we have books like Jesus Calling given back and forth at every holiday gathering and as last minute birthday gifts. Who doesn't want to hear Jesus Calling?

But what happens when what you were sure that you were sure that you were sure that God said, turns out to be, well, not?

What then?

I don't have an answer to this question. The only answer I have is to go back to His infallible, inerrant word, and trust His character to be true. Jared Wilson posted a blog today that might be the most important thing we'll read online this week, or month.

Something happens when you stop submitting to the communal listening of congregational worship and start filling the air with your own free range spiritual rhetoric. Your talk of God starts to sound less like God. He starts sounding like an idea, a theory, a concept. He stops sounding like the God of the Bible, the God who commands and demands, the God who is love but also holy, gracious but also just, et cetera. He begins to sound less like the God “who is who he is” and more like the God who is as you like him.

Read that twice if you need to. I needed to read it three times.

Now think, just for a few moments, about the times in our lives where what God says sounds an awful lot like what we'd like Him to say, or God help us, an awful lot just like us.

The truth is I don't need that god in my life because I already am that god.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I've had some good, good people pressing back on me in recent months, asking the same question the enemy asked in Eden and again in the wilderness to Jesus: Did God really say?

Strange how the enemy can ask a question and a friend can ask the same question and we still get their intentions flip-flopped.

I want to ask you the same question today: Did God really say?

If you don't have an answer to that question, that's good because it means you can go back to His word and instead of listening for His voice, you can read exactly what He does say (about you, about others, about His character). If you're hung up on something you think He might have said or you wish He would say, there's great comfort to be found in knowing for sure He did say.

If you don't know where to start, start here, in Isaiah 45. It is packed, full and brimming over with what God says.

I am the Lord, and there is no other. I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain. I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right. Isaiah 45:18-19

Know that I am praying for you today as you and I both relinquish what we think He's said, and submit ourselves to the truth of His character and word.

Copying the Creator

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It was the his third strike. He was a baseball player, so he and I both knew what that meant. Out. I was a TA for an English class in college. It was my first semester as a transfer student. I hardly knew my way around campus and I'd been tapped on the shoulder by the chair of our department to assist one of the English professors.

The first inkling of plagiarism seemed innocent, an uncited source; the second instance seemed lazy; but with two warnings under his belt, he handed in his third paper full of paragraphs I found in their entirety in a few minute google search.

I don't know what happened to him when I reported the situation to the administration, though I knew they didn't handle that stuff lightly. Looking back I wish I'd been more careful to explain why this wasn't acceptable. I had plenty more opportunities in my years as a TA to do so, but I never did.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Allegations of plagiarism by Mark Driscoll are all ablaze right now and they seem justified in some ways. Whole ideas or outlines have been lifted, slightly altered, and used as his own material. I would flunk a student for doing that, and yet—haven't I done it a thousand times?

In recent weeks I chew on John 3:30, "He must increase. I must decrease."

Whether you're a college student trying to get a passing grade or a pastor churning out books written by a ghostwriter, there is an element of "increasing" present that I'm not sure is healthy. I would argue too that even bloggers must wrestle with this dichotomy. If it is true that we must be ever decreasing and increasing Him—what does that say about all our platform building?

We may not be building a tower of Babel to reach God, but what have we made our god in His place?

This isn't easy wrestle through. God gives gifts to men and finds joy when we use them for His glory—but I wonder sometimes how many of us are like my college student: trying to get a passing grade. It doesn't matter who we seek approval from—if we seek it from men, we're in sin, and if we seek it from God, we do so in vain. If we are His children, we have His full approval in the righteousness of Christ.

I have one finger pointed at you and three back at myself here. I seek the approval of so many other than God and I want less of it. More than ever, I want to shrink my footprint—or at least my byline. More of Him, less of me.

God help us, we are all guilty of plagiarism. The wise man's words "there is nothing new under the sun," assure of us that. You are the author of all truth and we merely regurgitate it, chewed and masticated, hardly a form of its original beauty and intention. Help us to copy you, emulate you, take our truth from you—and if another steals words from us, let us hand them over willingly because we truly own nothing apart from You.

Believey

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When I was in my early twenties I had someone in my life who was *believey for me, for all the things about myself she knew to be true and all the things I doubted. I knew if I could ever get over the funk that was my life in my twenties, I wanted to be that sort of believey for someone else. That someone else lives in the bedroom next to mine now and she is in her early twenties and she has been a lot of things to me in the past seven years. But today she is one of my very favorite persons in the world. I believe all sorts of crazy things for her and sometimes I crawl into bed with her in the early morning hours to tell her all the things I believe for her. She grunts and groans. But sometimes she writes things like this and I bust with belief.

When you’ve lived in so many different houses and so few homes, its tempting to stay on the sidelines. Sometimes a house doesn’t feel like a home because it just doesn’t. Sometimes a house doesn’t feel like a home because I hesitate to let it. Just about the time a place gets the comfortable pulls and tugs of home, life always seems to send me somewhere else. Which is always easier when you're leaving a house and not a home.

Read the whole thing. It's a beaut.

I guess I want to share this with you today because maybe you're in your early twenties and life is a funk. Or maybe you're in your forties and you know someone in a funk. I'm not into psycho-mumbo-jumbo "Believe in yourself, achieve anything," garbage. But I do think there's something beautiful about believing the promises of God on behalf of someone. I was the half saying, "Help my unbelief!" but my person was the half saying, "I believe." And at some point in the past three years I could say both with confidence.

Don't underestimate the significance of encouragement, of saying to someone, "With God in you, I think you can do it."

*Nan's word, not mine.

Silent Sanctification

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still I've written here for 13 years, about doubts, fears, concerns, questions, deaths, divorces, heartbreak, joy, moving, lessons, and learnings. In many ways this place is the very public working out of my salvation. Were you to peruse the archives you would find much poor theology and even more straight up narcissism. This page was my heart splayed out for anyone to read and I bled myself dry for it.

Last night I said to one of my closest friends that sometimes silence is the best sanctification, and I gave her a numbered list of all the things happening in my life right now that I can't talk about publicly. At least not this publicly.

There's so much of the blogosphere that lauds transparency and authenticity, but even that is rife with trophy stories and humble brags and I am strangled by the fear that I will join their ranks if I so much as whisper the numbers aloud. The truth is that even good things bring with them deep breaths and open palms. I do not know how this or that will turn out and I can't even guess. And I don't want to give you the opportunity to guess. Because I am selfish? Perhaps. Because I am fearful? For sure. But also because some things are best worked out in quiet, gentle, and still ways. Sometimes our rest is found there, in the stillness, in the mind's sleep.

Sometimes writing in this place has been the best sanctification for me. But today silence might be my best sanctification.

In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30:15

Before You Say I Believe for Another Day

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daily "Every morning, when you wake up," he used to say, "before you reaffirm your faith in the majesty of a loving God, before you say I believe for another day, read the Daily News with its record of the latest crimes and tragedies of mankind and then see if you can honestly say it again." He was a fool in the sense that he didn't or couldn't or wouldn't resolve, intellectualize, evade the tensions of his faith but lived those tensions out, torn almost in two by them at times. His faith was not a seamless garment but a ragged garment with the seams showing, the tears showing, a garment that he clutched about him like a man in a storm.

—on Union Theological Seminary professor James Muilenburg by Frederick Buechner in Now and Then, pg. 16

Worriers in Remission

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worry I have a friend who worries she has "lost her salvation." I listen for long hours and ask questions because I had friends who did the same for me three years ago. My friends worried about me, but I want to go to bed without fear, so I lay my worry on the doorstep and cross over the threshold of trust every moment.

I ran into a friend while getting coffee this afternoon. Five minutes only and tears well up in both of our eyes—the world weighs heavy on shoulders not meant to carry it. Our Father is a better Atlas, rolling our globe on His fully capable back. We are worriers in remission. This is the life of the Christian.

I read an article today about a girl grown with Sunday School sashes and Memory Verse Answers. She doesn't believe in that god anymore and I see myself in her story. We didn't end in the same place, but there is time still. It is God who numbers our days and He knows every one of hers. My heart wants to worry about her, but my God clothes lilies and counts hairs—surely He has not fallen asleep at the helm of her life?

I don't mean to excuse trouble, but I know enough not to borrow it. Or to borrow it long enough to have it pierce my soul and my heart with empathy and then bring it to the throne with confidence—not that my plan will be accomplished, but that His will. And I don't mean to be lazy. Take my arms and my legs and my mind and my time, take it all, but give us Jesus, only Jesus.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Matthew 6:25

A hedge of doubt

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I woke this morning for the first time in weeks without the heaviness of condemnation on me. I haven't been able to shake those feelings lately, no matter how hard I've pressed myself against the robe, no matter how much I've bent my face over Jesus' feet. I'll be honest, I began to doubt some things. Even now, writing this, my mind is replaying a litany of doubts. Do you really believe that God loves you? Do you really believe you're worth something to Him? Do you really believe that anyone could love you at all? What makes you think He'll be happy with you? They pile up and attack what I know to be true. And so this morning when I woke up gently, quietly, I held my breath for a moment or two, waiting for the doubts to assemble and charge. But they didn't. And I couldn't figure out why.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

One of the greatest gifts God gave me was the gift of doubt. I doubt that many of us would see it as a gift, but I know it to be the deepest grace to me. He gave me the wide pasture of doubt and pleasant boundary line of truth. He wounds me with my doubt, but heals with me with His truth.

Like most who grew up in the church in one manner or another, I bought the lie that a fortified moralism would lead me to paths of great joy—purity until marriage, marriage by 22, children by 24, ducks lined up before me and behind me, I got them in a row. I organized my life to make sense.

And then life didn't make sense. Life dealt me, as one person called it, a bad hand. I'll never forget walking away from that conversation wondering how to play these cards. What do you do with a handful of threes and no partner in this game? I'll tell you what you do: you doubt.

You fall full into it, bathe yourself in it, wash your soul with sin and shame. When the answers you've been given by well-meaning people fail, when the theology you believe (that God responds when we pray harder, give more, seek deeper, and repent faster) proves you the fool, and when God does not seem good, I'll tell you what you do: you doubt.

And here's the thing about doubt: it is a seemingly endless plateau. God has given us the gift of reason and logic and thought, and so doubt will take us where nothing else can because there is always another question, another possibility. Even if we bump up against a wall of truth, we are like little squares in Atari games, bouncing for eternity.

Doubt doesn't seem like a gift.

This morning I read the first chapter of Job, the righteous man who we might also say was dealt a bad hand. But today I noticed a word: hedge.

"Have you not put a hedge around him and all that he has?" The enemy asked God before he unleashed upon Job the full fury of his minions.

God permitted the enemy to do what he would, only told to keep his hand from Job himself, and today I think about the hedge God has set around us. I want to believe that the hedge prevents the enemy from coming in, but that is not what we're told. No, the hedge prevents the enemy from going outside the bounds of what God has set for him. It is Job's hedge, but it is also the enemy's.

This morning I woke up and felt myself hit the hedge. Not my limitations, but God's. Not the end of myself, but the time when God holds up His hand and says "No more. This is the safest place I have for you. Within these boundary lines. Here. All the rest I have for you lies within these boundaries. All the struggles I have for you too lie within these boundaries. But do not worry: I have set this hedge around you and the enemy will not prevail."

 

For the Weary Christian

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It's been a few months of feeling discouraged and one of the effects of that is I simply don't want to write for you. I don't want to write at all, but I especially don't want to write for you. I don't want to be found out, so to speak. I don't want the world to know my first love feels likes seconds and my *gospel wakefulness feels tired. I don't want you to know I've been struggling with condemnation, fear, insecurity, uncertainty, and weariness. I am ashamed of those feelings—especially because I know they are anti-gospel and they are born in me as a result of not reveling in Godward affections. plant

Tonight I was remembering some of the things that set my soul free a few years ago. Not the sermons or books specifically, but the realizations:

1. I am the younger brother AND the older brother. I hate restrictions and I love approval, I hate poverty and love lavish attention.

2. God is not more or less interested in me because of my legalism or licentiousness: His provision is the same for both.

3. The gospel doesn't only carry the power to save me, but also sanctify and sustain me.

4. I cannot put God in my debt by being good, holy, or faithful enough.

5. All my righteous acts are like filthy rags.

6. God is not beholden to my view of Him. My concept of good is not His definition of good. My ideal of His faithfulness is not His attribute of faithfulness.

7. Man's approval is impossible to attain. God's approval is completely wrapped up in His Son.

8. God is not surprised by my lack of faith or my abundance of faith, by my questions or my fears, by my pride or my sin. On the threshold of His kingdom He will not deny access to me because I didn't understand an aspect of theology or walk in complete faith in certain areas.

9. The Holy Spirit is not tapping His toe waiting for my faith to be big enough or my ear to be tuned. He dwells in me, empowering me to accomplish everything God has ordained for me to accomplish with every gift He formed me to have before the foundation of the world.

10. God is for my joy. He is most glorified when I am most satisfied in Him. My complete confidence and joy in the Holy Spirit, through the finished work of the Son, to the honor of the Father, brings the triune God glory.

It was encouraging for me to simply write these things out, and so I thought I'd share them with you. Perhaps you're struggling too, or perhaps you've never experienced gospel wakefulness, and these points will help you along that way. Either way, I hope you're encouraged. Also, I suggest you take a few minutes to write out what the gospel means to you, or has shown you. Even just to remind truths or clarify errors in your thinking.

*Gospel Wakefulness is not my term, but Jared Wilson's . Jared wrote a book by the same title, but he has also written extensively on it on his blog Gospel Driven Church. Jared is one of the most Godward gazing people I know. His blog has been a constant source of encouragement in the past few years and I recommend every one of his books with full assurance you will be encouraged. Seriously, buy his books. All of 'em.

Fear and the Monsters Under My Bed

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I'm a born fearer but I wear the mask of bravado well. If there's a risk I'll plan for it and if there's a plan I'll risk it. But there are knots tied up inside of me these past few months and I don't know if I'm more afraid of what's out there or what's in here. The old presidential adage, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," comes to mind these days because what I fear is not out there so much, but what arrests my soul, captivates my mind, and plays chicken with my heart. I fear the fear of a fear, or at the very least I fear the fear.

I'm reading a book about preaching to oneself and today's chapter is on fear. I close the chapter and I receive a text message: "The truth is that God will do what He will do and provide what He will provide. Don't be shackled by fear!" I look over my shoulder to see who else is following me, who has their finger on the pulse of my heart.

A week ago I sat across from two of my pastors and one asked, "What are you afraid of?" Not, "Are you afraid?" but "What do you fear?" We all fear something, one said, so what do you fear?

When you name the monsters in your closet and under your bed, you can personalize them or demonize them. This is what I am learning.

To name the fears is to say them right out loud: of being hated, of being unloved, of being alone, of being not enough, of being too much, of being misrepresented, and of misrepresenting. And their power is released in the naming, or the shackles cling tighter still. There seems no perfect potion for fear-loosing.

I am reading II Timothy this morning, the favorited passage: for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but power, love, and a sound mind. But further up it is Paul commendation to Timothy, his mother, and grandmother of their faith.

So often I think the opposite of fear is courage, but that is not it at all. Courage comes from within, daring comes from the belief that one cannot fail, bravery is the belief that even if one fails, it was a battle worth fighting.

But faith? Faith comes by hearing and by doing, but there is nothing of self in it. And I think on that this morning. All the questions of my heart are variations of can I? will I? should I? am I?

And all the answers of Him are finished: I already did.

For by grace you have been saved athrough faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8

notetoself