Category Archive

Chapter 5: A powerful SUV (on Discovery and Learning).  For most of us who own SUVs, it’s just enough to know we could do something like the commercials if we needed to.  While just knowing we could explore unpaved territory may be okay for literal suburbia, it’s not okay for the landscape of our spiritual lives.  We have a lot of knowledge about God, but are sadly lacking in vibrant experiences with God.  Once very two years or so, I have an encounter with God that makes me fell “saved” all over again.  I fall into a spiritual rut, and then find myself sinking in the quagmire of my own self-preservation.  Those of us who live in spiritual suburbia have become experts on what we don’t experience.  We attend meetings, listen to others, and can critique sermons, services, and sanctity–without ever having to interact with God ourselves:

The short-term mission team and I were performing street dramas, preaching the gospel, and being all-around ethnocentric, upper-middle-class Americans.  Still, God was at work in Budapest, Hungary, and lots of people were committing their lives to Christ and capitalism through us.  As I was wandering a public square, I noticed a weathered and aged man playing a violin that had only three strings.  His knuckles were knobby, and his fingers appeared to be as beaten down as his violin.  As I apprached, he screeched a tune that sounded remarkably like two cats in heat. 
          Clasping my hands together, I pantomimed my question regarding whether I could pray for him.  But as I knelt down, the man extended one of his withered hands to my shoulder and raised the other one up to heaven, and began to pray for me instead.  I felt a tingling rush sweep over my body and then, Wham!, I hit the cement sidewalk, face first and weeping uncontrollably.  I thought, Get a grip, you’re making a scene out here in public!  But my body would not submit to my pride.  Instead, I lay there listening to an old man pray in a language I didn’t understand, hoping no one was noticing me.
          Another tingle went through me, and I found myself sitting at a colossal banquet table that stretched for hundreds of feet and seated hundreds of people.  I was sitting on one end of the table, and Jesus was way, way down on the other side.  I could hear him laughing and talking with those seated around him.  Then I zoomed in on Jesus.  Though we were still at opposite ends of this great expance, Jesus and I were looking eye-to-eye–and he wasn’t happy.  “How many times have I told you that the first shall be last and the least shall be the greatest in my kingdom?  You are kneeling before one of my most holy servants,” he said.
          Then like a hyperspace jump in Star Wars, I was back.  Two Hungarian students who attended the American univeristy told me they had been watching for about ten minutes.  “He was praying, thanking God for sending such a holy man to his city so that many might receive God.  He must think you’re a priest or something.  Then he went on to pray about the poor and needy around the city.”  The students went on to explain how Frank plays his violin every day in order to raise donations so that he can buy bread and distribute it to the poor and addicted who suffer without hope in the backalleys.  If Frank had any bread left over after his rounds, then he’ll eat.  Rumor had it that there had been times when Frank had gone seven or eight  days without eating so that others would have enough food.
          What a world of distance between my Christian suburbia and Frank’s urban wilderness.  Oh sure, I may have been able to dance doctrinal circles around him regarding God’s heart for the poor and broken.  I probably could have helped him set up a more effective and efficient way to collect money and distribute bread to the poor (all in the name of godly stewardship, of course!).  But I wasn’t the expert on ministry to the poor; Frank was.

• How do you connect with God?  Jesus wants to be the master of our lives, and this puts us in the position of becoming his apprentices.  The way to get closer to God is not to study about him, but to participate with him.  “Follow me” surely implied that Jesus was going somewhere.  Reading the Bible for knowledge alone is like going to a restaurant and eating the menu but not the meal.  Now don’t reak out on me.  I’m not about to go all anti-Bible on you.  I know and firmly believe that the best way to know where God is and what he is like is through his holy Word.  However, the meal is in relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, not in simply reading about what he offers.
• In Matthew 6:9-10, Jesus used the Aramaic term Abba.  Abba was a nursery term, and in today’s vernacular it would be “Papa” or “Daddy.”  With this word, Jesus is inviting us to experience the Father’s complete, safe, and radical tenderness toward us.  Our conversations with God need to start with our understanding of God as our Abba.  If we don’t get this, if we don’t let him function in that role, we will always come up short in regard to what he wants for us in prayer.  Has this information changed the way you actually connect with God?  Knowing and actually experiencing and trusting this information are very different things.
• For example, I first ran into Madame Guyon while studing Richard Foster’s Devotional Classics.  She wrote about a profoundly simply way to turn our hearts toward the presence of God (find a Scripture to use to help focus on God, continue to read those words over and over again slowly until you sense God’s presence, shift from the Scripture to conversing with th Lord, then if your mind wanders just go back to the Scripture to get you back on track).  Since then, I’ve gotten pretty good at talking about prayer, but I know God is still waiting….
• Julian of Norwich wrote, “For the highest form of prayer is to to the goodness of God.  God only desires that our soul cling to him with all its strength, in particular that it clings to his goodness.  For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking about his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our soul.  For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it.  No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them.”  I could drink from God’s goodness and love all my days, and his well would never run dry, and my thirst would never be quenched.  The invitation goes beyond understanding to truly clinging to the tangible nature of God’s goodness.
• Brother Lawrence wrote, “I imagine myself as the most wretched of all, full of sores and sins, and one who has committed all sorts of crimes against his king.  Feeling a deep sorrow, I confess to him all of my sins, I ask his forgiveness, and I abandon myself into his hands so that he may do with me what he pleases.  This king, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastening me, embraces me with love, invites me to feast at his table, serves me with his own hands, and gives me the key to his treasures.  He converses with me, and takes delight in me, and treats me as if I were his favorite.  This is how I imagine myself from time to time in his holy presence.”  Let God pour his emotional, reckless, and prodigal love on you.
• While pursuing my PhD (Debt Piled High and Deep), I used to think it was to my advantage to buy used textbooks that already had lots of highlights.  But that was frustrating because previous colleagues didn’t seem to know which things I would think were important.  A couple of times a year, I go back through my selection of books and read the highlights.  I see so many great insights that I wanted to apply to my life.  Some I have, but most remain yellow. 
• Also, most of the highlighting occurs in the front half of the books, with the amount slowly drying to a trickle by the three-quarter mark.  I have a bad habit of not finishing.  I’ve realized I need to apply what I have been learning.  I need to follow through on the commitments I have made, especially the things that Jesus has brought into my life.  Jesus may have been speaking to me through those books, but have the words worked their way into my being (2 Peter 1:3)?
• Escaping suburbia means aligning our behaviors with our beliefs.  The divine power he offers is called grace, God’s empowering presence in our life that helps us turn knowledge into experience (Luke 2:40, 1 Corinthians 15:10, Ephesians 2:8-10).  You get more grace by living it.  The more of God’s grace you allow into and through your day, to work out in and through you, the more he will pour upon you.  We aren’t endued with such power mrely to attend church meetings.  God has equipped us to charge over the gates of hell, to drive straight into the Enemy’s camp, and to live a life that finds itself right smack in the middle of God’s story in the world around us.  Step on the gas, I see a mountain to climb.

Chapter 6: A really big house (on Intimacy with God).  I got to thinking about the types of homes people return to.  Not just the physical structures, mind you, but the relationships behind the brick and mortar walls.  When you live in a large home, you have plenty of room for a variety of activities to be happening at once, but it also means you don’t have to be very close to anyone if you choose not to be.  This book is about the home located inside of you.  As Jesus spoke in Revelation 3:20, he was talking to those who havealready professed to have a relationship with him.  Jesus wants to be invited into deeper, more meaningful relationship than just standing at the door will allow. 

• (1)  Yet, that’s about as intimate as we often get with him, like with the pizza delivery guy.  Secretly, we hope that our plastic Jesus’ head is bobbing up and down. 
• (2)  Or, we plateau at the relatively stable symbiotic business/working relationship where we mutually benefit each other.  We know God by name and commit to working for him because we believe in the vision and values of his organization.  We hold marathon PR meetings to develop plans to sell his product (salvation) to others.  We raise money for the poor.  We get his peace and fire insurance, and he gets our busy bodies.  The temptation to settle in this land is powerful; it is, after all, the Land of Good Things (eg.  it is good to focus on evangelism, it is good to serve others on Sundays). But we can forget to stop and asky why.  Why am I so busy?  Far too many teeter around the edge of burnout.  They signed up because they loved the Boss and grooved with his vision.  The benefits were out of this world and the coworkers were friendly.  Then something began to happen.  Their external busyness dried up the internal goodness.  Once motivated by the Master himself, they are now only motivated by the machine itself; they are simply a cog in the wheel of the business called “churchianity.” 
• That’s what happened to Jonathan.  He grew up street smart and tough, but God grabbed hold of his heart, held it in his nail-pierced hands, and turned this six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound, Hispanic, Hollywood punker into a gentle giant for Jesus.  Early in his walk, his passion often outweighed his wisdom.  He invented the ministry of evandelism.  On other occasions, he’d flatten tires and wait for the owner to return.  He promised to fix their flat for free if they’d listen to his message of God’s love.  He then soon found himself playing the guitar for crowds and leading worship teams.  People gathered around his fire and warmed up in his glowing.  A subtle shift began to happen.  He started playing for the effect of worship and was no longer playing to an audience of One.  Slowly, subtly, and surely, this once radcal, passoinate, no-holds barred, worshipper of Jesus had turned his ministry into a business relationship.  Before he knew it, the goal was to create and perpetuate the sense of God’s presence for others though that presence had long since waned in his own heart.  He found himself growing bitter and resentful.  He realized his worshipping heart had lost its center.  What he’d once done for the love of Jesus, he was now doing for the works of Jesus.
• (3)  The difference between being a servant/business partner and a friend is in the intimacy, not the action.  We are called to do the things that Jesus did.  We can be religious and do these things out of a sense of duty, or we can be intimate and do these things out of a sense of friendship.  I, for one, want to be in a cooperative friendship with Jesus, where he shares with me not only the task at hand, but his heart’s desires and motivations as well.  My team and I were working among the children who were living and working in the desolate and polluted environment of a garbage dump on Bohol Island in the Philippines.  One of the local leaders brought a guitar, and everyone was singing.  Under my breath, I muttered, “God, this song isn’t right.  Look at the deprivation.  How can we be singing you are gracious?”  It was as if Wisdom was standing next to me, for I heard a voice as clearly as if I were talking to my friend Marty, saying, “I sent you, didn’t I?”  It’s hard to explain, but I felt as if god was saying that he was allowing me to be a part of his heart and love for these kids and the Philippines.  I was participating in a cooperative friendship with Jesus, not just a partnership.  And as such it seemed he felt open enough to share with me his heart for those kids and for me.  Conversations like this can turn something hollow to something hallowed.
• (4)  Just as I don’t critique the art my children make for me, neither does God critique our heartfelt worship works for him.  But if we didn’t grow up in such a home, we will often draw a line, buil da fence, and decide to experience Jesus’ love on the cross, but we won’t risk trusting the love that sent him there.  In doing this, we are negating much of the reason Jesus became a man in the first place (John 5:19, John 14:9-11, Luke 11:2).  Jesus came to make God’s love tangible to you and me.  But for many of us, the tainted love of our earthly fathers has poisoned the love we experience from our Father in heaven.
• In Psalm 18:7-15, we wonder what David did to make God that angry.  God was indeed angry, but not at David (5-7).  What really makes God angry is when the Enemy is picking on his kids!  David got brutally honest and cried out to God for help.  God heard and came with the full force of his might to help him.  This same love sent the full force of God’s mercy and forgiveness to the cross to conquer the enemy of our souls, once and for all.  But God doesn’t just love humanity that much, he loves you that much.  I meet people almost weekly whose fathers are terrible representations of what God intended dads to be.  But we must risk believing in a perfect Father’s perfect love.  As we explore God’s love, I believe he begins to restore a sense of wonder, awe, and childlike trust to our desolate spirituality.  Not only does wonder develop intelligence as children grow, i belivee it also helps kids maintain their sense of innocence.  We must ask for it, and then slow down to look for it.
• (5)  When Jesus says John 14:6, I believe he is inviting us to enter into a passionate love relationship with him.  I believe he is telling us that it is possible to know him, and for him to know us like husbands and wives know each other, not sexual or erotic but emotionally intimate and passionate.  God invites us into a relationship of such trust and closeness that we feel completely safe with him, willing to be “naked” in his presence, with nothing to hide, willing to bridge any barrier in order to find complete oneness with him.  To experience this deep level of intimacy with God, we need to risk feeling a little undignified and unruly in the presence of the lover of our soul (Psalm 69:6,9, Matthew 26:7, Joshua 6:7, Matthew 2:9). So step out, do a little dance, and make a little love toward God tonight.
• Worship should declare the joyous celebration of God’s presence in our lives, the awesomeness of his sovereignty over the whole universe, and the tangibleness of a transparent, unashamed, and intimate love–just like God wants expressed through marriage.  The ways that I express my affections for my wife are quite diverse, but my love for her should be evident every day that I celebrate her love in my life.  We should view worship as a lifestyle as well as a part of church meetings.  In both instances, it is choosing to give all honor and thankfulness back to God for his presence in our lives.  Although some contmeporary religious styles often interpret reverence to God as something quiet and somber, scriptural worship is quite diverse.  Biblical worship connotes freedom, ranging from standing, raising hands, or dancing, to kneeling or lying prostrate; from quiet, reflective listening to loud, passionante praise.  Rekindle the romance.
• That’s the beauty of plumbing the depths of the unfathomable.  The adventure never ends.  “When you want God as desperately as you wanted air, you will know him as I do.”  How far can this joureny take us?  Deep…desperately deep.  The devil does not want you going deeper.  If you did, your love for God might become contagious.  Others might become more thirsty and hungry for substance in their relationships with God.  There could actually be revival.  So the Devil work hard tokeep you and me busy.  Just enough so we don’t feel like we are failing.  But many of us are stirring.  Suburbia has lost its appeal.  Our souls are hungry for more of the real presence of God.  We don’t just want him to deliver the pizza to us, we want him to come inside our souls and share the meal with us.

“Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Ghost descended on me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. 
          I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me.  Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love….
          No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart.  I wept aloud with joy and love…. The waves came over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, ‘I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.’  I said, ‘Lord, I cannot bear any more;’ yet I had no fear of death” (Charles Finney).

Chapter 7: A perfect lawn (on Brokenness).  Brokenness and pain are not pretty.  They are like a throbbing sore, constantly aching and oozing until we medicate or anesthetize them.  Brokenness causes God’s presence and power to fade like an echo in our soul.  The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way! The truth is, the area of our deepest pain often has the potential to be the source of our greatest joy and the launching pad of our highest callings.  Indeed, those who have been forgiven much tend to love much.  Suburbia gives us shame in our brokenness; Jesus gives us hope.  The church often says, “How could you?”  The Holy Spirit ays, “I still love you.”  Our culture finds no value in broken things; God finds redemptive value in them. 

• In Mark 14:3-6, almost all placed value on the jar before it was broken.  But Jesus placed value on it after it was broken. This woman was broken before him, and he was pleased.  This is a story of worship that God likes.  The same story he wants us to live today.  He is drawn to people who admit and invite him into their brokenness.  I am convinced that is why the Father had Jesus be born in a manger.  He wanted his Son to be born in the brokenness of poverty.  But even being born in one of the lowest cities of the day was not low enough, for Jesus was born in a stable that housed only animals.  There is no place on earth he will not go to reach us with his love.  But what if God the Father was trying to tell us his life can best be born out in the lowest, most shameful places of humanity?  What if he was not only talking about the physical but the hidden stuff in our souls as well?  When God’s life came and invaded darkness, the world got the blessing and the Father got the glory.  We work so hard to prop up the exterior of our decent Christian living that we fail to attend to the hurts, hang-ups, and decay within.  If we long to escape, we can no longer hide our brokenness.  We must offer it to God as uncharted territory and be willing to explore it with him, beginning with surrender.
• Often brokenness is masked by addiction and addiction is masked by secrets.  Many who struggle with the continuous ache of brokenness first try all kinds of things to anesthetize it: drugs, alcohol, shopping, cyclic relationships.  We may try yoga, yogurt, or Yoda, popularity, power, or porn, dressing up, dressing down, or complete nakedness.  But soon we find that those things only serve to widen the chasm created by brokenness.  So we make a promise.  Sin, repent, commit to change, and round and round the cycle goes.  When we will crash and burn, nobody knows.  But herein lies the problem–commitment.  As long as we are committed to overcoming our brokenness, we won’t be able to do so.  What we need is to surrender (Romans 7:18-25).
• Surrender is not losing the battle; let Him fight for you.  Surrender is not periodically giving in to your hurt and/or brokenness (not to binge and purge).  Surrender is not giving up a part of your life (He knew what he was getting, but did you know what you were giving?).  Look at the desolate territory of our soul and ask him, “Can you redeem this land?”  If he says yes, then surrender it to him.  Give up trying to fix it to impress him or trying to hide it to protect him. 
• One of the hardest areas for me to surrender was my idea that I needed to have it together in front of those I pastor or lead.  You know, the whole “live above reproach” thing.  The problem arises when living above reproach becomes synonymous with hiding behind dishonesty.  During that early season of my walk, God gave me an opportunity to have lunch with Tom Stipe.  During our chat, he said, “There are no Cinderella stories in the kingdom of God.  Every authentic leader bears the scars of brokenness.  If they don’t walk with a limp, they probably aren’t worthy to be followed.”  Walking with a limp is not only an indication of struggle and past brokenness, but also evidence of healing and perseverance.  The Bible tells us that God’s gift and his call are irrevocable (Romans 11:29), but so is the path to get there.  There is no short cuts on the way to holiness and healing.  One way or another, I was going to have to learn to surrender.
• The movement of posers are restricted.  Instead of exploring, posers are forced to keep up the appearance of their glittering images.  Every life needs to look the same so that no difference can be felt or recognized.  “How are you?”  “Fine.”  Or rather, FINE (Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional).  We must give up our rights, privileges, and personal expectations.  Vertical honesty, and then horizontal honesty.  I see a Wonderbra spirituality.  We use whatever contraption we can to puff up what little substance we atually have to impress others, even if it hurts us in the process.  Then later, they find out we really weren’t as attractive as we made ourselves out to be.  Perhaps the ultimate irony is that by enhancing our weaknesses, we may be distracting others from our strengths.  Psalm 136 says that his love for me has remained consistent, pure, lavish, purposeful, and powerful over all these years.  Vertical honesty doesn’t only mean that I am transparent with God about who I am, but it also means that I’m receptive to who he is in all his love.  Just because I don’t deserve his love doesn’t mean I can’t have it.  It is his gift to give and only my choice to receive.
• Coming clean with a bunch of addicts is amazingly freeing in AA, NA, etc., but when people come clean in the church, the response is often quite different.  After a friend of mine talked about her eating disorder (and the initial under-our-breath gasps), the group piled on her like a school of well-meaning piranhas.  Everyone wanted a piece of “helping” her find the way to healing.  After about a half-hour of counsel and storytelling from the group, she sheepishly piped up again, “I was just asking for prayer.”  The church needs to follow the recovery group model.  The group simply responds, “Thank you for sharing.”  No judgment, no critique, no shaming.  Just genuine thankfulness that someone was…well…honest.  Now no one has to pretend anymore, which is the first step toward healing.  What they do next is up to them, it is their journey, we are just there to help.  The place where honesty on the horizontal and vertical meet looks remarkably like a cross.
• Not long ago, I had the privilege of facilitating a group of twelve spiritually hungry and brutally honest seekers.  I affectionately dubbed our ragamuffin group the “Red Pill Forum,” alluding to the first Matrix movie, and the scene where Neo had to choose either the red pill or the blue pill.  Choosing the red pill meant discovering the truth and following it despite not really knowing just how far that journey would go.  Choosing the blue pill meant erasing the question and going back to pretending everything was FINE.  This group’s version of choosing the “red pill” was swallowing a weekly reading from Brian McLaren’s challenging but noncondescending book Finding Faith.  We had two simple rules and one goal: (1) a commitment to honesty about our own life and (2) a commitment to honor the honesty in each other’s lives.  Our goal was exploring God’s story in Christianity, without manipulation or pressure to convert.  It happened about the seventh week of our weekly gatherings.  I was talking about how Jesus invites us to live from a whole new perspective–one in which life is lived from a “God-ward” orientation and not a “self-ward” orientation.  Then someone said, “That’s one thing I don’t understand.  Christians talk so much about abundant life, but it seems all your decisions are based on fear.  Fear of hell, fear of punishment, fear of displeasing God or others, fear of sharing your faults.”  Ouch.  Indeed, that’s not abundance, that’s avoidance!  She risked honesty bcause she felt safe enough to be honest.  I received her honesty because I felt safe enough not to be defensive. 
• God doesn’t invite us out of suburbia and into the land of brokenness so that we can become fixated on what is wrong in our lives.  He invites us into that dark, unexplored place so that we can see his re-creative power at work.  He doesn’t want us focused on avoiding pain.  He wants us focused on pursuing wholeness.  Maybe it’s time to invest some time, energy, and money on the inside.  After all, that is where we really live. 

Conclusion: Rethinking suburbia.  Most seminaries do a better job of teaching eschatology than they do teaching brokenology.  “The problem with suburbia is that it’s perfectly designed to anesthetize us from pain.  It puts a veneer of wholeness on the outside, and allows hollowness to thrive on the inside.”  But there is no barrier that the power of God cannot overcome when we give him permission–regardless of whether those barriers are from within or from without.

1. Have a clear vision of what you really want out of your relationship with God.  Students with declared majors seldom had many choices between classes.  Their course was mapped out for them on a timetable.  When they graduated, they not only had a degree on a piece of paper, they had a substance to their education.  One student thought that if he just took enough classes, sooner or later he would qualify for a degree and then he would graduate.  He said he liked my sexuality course a lot; he enjoyed various art classes and had taken a number of the fisheries courses.  I told him if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up with a job drawing pictures of fish having sex, and that was a very narrow career field.  If you have a clear vision of where you are going, you’ll seldom get stuck and disappointed with where you’ve been.
2. Give yourself permission to not be perfect.  Sometimes I find myself trying so hard to be something I’m not that I begin to not be something I want.  What I am is God’s beloved.  What if, every day, I just accepted the fact that I’m not going to be perfect in anything I’m trying to accomplish in God’s purpose and plan?  Some might use this as an excuse to be sloppy with their faith, but from where I’m sitting, God’s love deserves my best effort.  I don’t have to earn his love today–I just have to live in it and through it.  Llike when my daughter plays soccer.  She can play her best, and I can expect her to represent her family name well, but I don’t have to expect her to be Mia Hamm.  Living in this reality will release in you new freedom to fail, but fail in a forward direction.  To eternity and beyond.

Exposing the Hollowness of Comfortable Christianity
by Eric Sandras

Chapter 1: When suburbia loses its appeal.  “Suburbia is depicted as a comfortable but somewhat vacuous realm of unreality: consumerist, wasteful, complacent, materialistic, self-absorbed, sprawling, shopping, disneyfied.  They’ve cut themselves off from the sources of enchantment.  They have become too concerned with small and vulgar pleasures, pointless one-upmanship, and easy values.  They have become at once too permissive and too narrow, too self-indulgent and too timid.  Their lives are distracted by a buzz of trivial images, by relentless hurry instead of genuine contemplation, information rather than wisdom, and a profusion of superficial choices” (David Brooks, On Paradise Drive).  We’ve been duped into thinking the perceived safety of predictable ignorant bliss was more rewarding than the risk and joy of discovery.  At best, such a lifestyle is maintenance.  At worse, it is counterfeit Christianity.  We are at a crossroads (Jeremiah 6:16):  Stand, look, ask, and listen. 

Chapter 2: Keeping up with the Joneses (on Identity).  Why do we immediately ask people what they do for a living?  Most of us ask because the answer helps us size a person up.  It enables us to make all kinds of assumptions about a person’s value and potential.  We are tempted to believe that we are what we do, what we have, and what others say about us.  This has been around since the Garden of Eden; the fruit was DoToBe.  But God invites us to eat from the Tree of Life, BeToDo (Galatians 6:4-5 MSG).  Anything in the kingdom of God that is worth doing–is worth doing poorly.  It doesn’t mean doing it apathetically or irreverently but doing them humanly (which includes failures).  Chasing bubbles (Eccelsiastes 2:11) will eventually lead to a bad taste in our mouths and dissatisfaction in our guts.  People have opinions; God has truth.  People have attitudes; God has perspective.  People have brokenness; God has wholeness.  People have loud mouths; God has a gentle whisper:

1. When God said this about Jesus (Mark 1:9-11), Jesus, the man, hadn’t done anything yet.  Yet, the Father makes a huge deal over him.  The Father’s total love and acceptance for Jesus wasn’t based on performance but on relationship.  Jesus was loved because of whose he was, not because of what he did.  When we are rooted in God’s total acceptance, we are like toddlers secure in their relationship with their parents, whch frees us to take risks and explore the spiritual realm because we know we aren’t going to lose God’s love.  Secure kids know they have a safe place to come back to, and that if they get lost, mom or dad will come looking for them.
2. In the parable Jesus tells in Luke 15, the story is not just about a prodigal son (who represents us) but also about a prodigal father (who represents God).  God and humanity both are lavish and wasteful, one in a life-stealing way and God in a life-giving way.  God’s kingdom, by his very nature, is marked by diversity.  God’s communities are built by multiplicity and creativity, and kingdom spirituality seeks to be lavish and diverse in its gifts.  But suburbic spirituality settles for conformity, uniformity, and efficiency.  Too many of us have convinced ourselves that we are narrow and limited in our scope of influences.  For instance, take the church’s use of spiritual gifts surveys.  We identify one or two primary gifts then spend the next ten years defined by what we were on that given day.  But what if we have an entire fruit salad of spiritual gifts?  Sometimes I sccop out more grapes than peaches.  Other times I scoop out more raisins than bananas.  Either way, I know it will be good because my grandma made it.  Each of us has a plethora of gifts and abilities within us, just waiting for the Creator to call them forth.  How do you root yourself in God’s prodigal nature and find a whole new identity? By magnifying the Lord, as if through a magnifying glass, and taking a closer look.  As you ponder God’s prodigal nature in the Word, in the world around you, and through your senses, you will begin to magnify him and see this aspect of his character in everything.  His abundant goodness, overwhelming creativity, and lavish love will seem to permeate every portion of your life.  Next thing you know, you will have restored a sense of wonder and will no longer be a slave to routine.  You will realize that you are a reflection of God’s prodigal nature, and you will become more lavish in your love, compassion, generosity, and creativity because you have found your identity in him.
3. God never gives up on me, but I naturally default to me.  But it’s as natural for God to pursue us as it is for us not to pursue him.  In Psalm 23:6, the word “follow” is translated in most every other place in the Old Testament as ”pursue,” a military term indicating relentlessness, passion, and purpose.  Goodness and Mercy-Love, like sheepdogs, are nipping at your heels every time you being to move away from God’s presence and protection.  He has give you free will, so you can choose whether to love him back.  But God is still pursuing you.  Even if you and I never find all of him, we should not stop looking.  Just like God never stops, never gives up, never falters in his love and pursuit of us, we can find our very identities when we do the same in our relationship with him.  I’m still seeking.

Chapter 3: A promising career (on Calling).  At the close of LOTR: Return of the King, Frodo and Sam are struggling to climb Mount Doom.  They are so close to their destination, but Frodo has reached the point of exhaustion.  Sam, his lifelong friend and companion, says, “I may not be able to carry the ring, but I can carry you.”  With every bit of strength he has left, Sam stands up, puts Frodo over his shoulders, and begins the final ascent to fulfill the destiny for which they were created.  My friend Sonny identified with Sam, a servant leader who didn’t bear the burden of the ring but the burden of the ring bearer.  I identified with Frodo, the reluctant hero who often struggled with the feeling that, although he had clearly been given the task of destroying the ring, the job was too big for him to accomplish.  Frodo was doing what he was called to do, and whenever he was about to fail, “destiny” had someone or something help him fulfill his calling.  However, God doesn’t want us to live vicariously through mythical characters like Frodo, or even through biblical characters like Joshua and Esther.  He wants us to live our own story in the here and now.  Gandalf said to Frodo, “All you have to do is decide what to do with the time given to you” (Joshua 1:5-6, Esther 4:14). 

• Calling is something that comes from within us.  I used to work with developmentally delayed children.  We constantly were looking for ways to connect with one child in particular, Jonah.  Then one day, I was sitting next to him while playing telephone with another child.  The play phone rang, and before I could pick it up, Jonah grabbed it and said, “Hello, this is Jonah.”    Aparently the ringing of the phone triggered something within him, and he responded.  Something similar happens when we are exposed to our God-given calling, whether it comes through the form of a sound, a character, or an opportunity.  But if we’re not careful, our other responsibilities can disconnect taht call and force us back to living life the way we have always lived it.
• Not long ago, I was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt that I had purchased from Goodwill.  Someone asked me for the truth, and the person was no longer impressed.  The whole episode got me thinking about how many jerseys and sweatshirts I wear that represent other people’s callings.  Christians who are living in spiritual suburbia “just wear the shirt.”
• One of the great dangers of living in spiritual suburbia is the temptaion to enjoy the stability of a consistent paycheck at the cost of fulfilling our calling.  Some of us have bought the lie that calling is only for the skilled and seminary-trained.  And so we live life by default, often doing good things.  Churches always have more needs than resources.  Oh, how easy it is for leaders to see the people as commodities that exist to serve the machine called “church,” regardless of whether the job fits their calling or not.  Because of this, many are doing acts of service in the church but aren’t following their calling.  We never become fully alive in our souls because we never fully become what God has created us to be.  The weight of responsiblity presses us down and buries that nagging sense of dissatisfacion and the hope of something more.  So we settle into the safety of the good things we are already doing, and build a fence around it to keep it contained.  What if we grabbed life by purpose and not by default?  What if we sought a calling instead of simply earning a living? 
• When we live out our calling, we sense that we are fulfilling our purpose, that we are in the right place at the right time, “moving to the rhythms of God’s grace” (Eugene Peterson).  Few of us discover our calling by accident; we only find it if we look and pursue it.  But because it comes from within, we can’t just take some personality or spiritual gifts survey and-voila!-idenitfy our calling.  Nor can we just drop all our responsiblites and routines, like we are in some spiritual midlife crisis.  In order to find our calling, we must explore and risk believing Ephesians 2:10.
• One of the challenge of discovering our calling is that it’s often plural and not singular.  Maybe that’s why we have call waiting.  So we took the most important step toward disocvering a call: prayer.  In Numbers 9:15-23, there is (1) God’s presence, (2) the people, and (3) the wilderness.  they didn’t know where they were or where they were going!  all they coudl do was follow God; where they were going wasn’t important.  There I was, wandering in the wilderness of calling, with numerous options with no idea which way to go.  Like the Israelites, I also had a choice: to pursue God’s presence or to stay in the comfort that we’ve built for ourselves.  So there I was, still in the Wilderness of Wondering, but wanting the presence of God more than anything else–even if it meant we would never leave the wilderness.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. 
          But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.  
          Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever wth me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone” (Thomas Merton).

• Leviticus 10 tells the story of Aaron’s sons getting consumed by fire.  According to the passage, God had anointed Aaron for a specific task, and God wanted him to fulfill that call before Aaron got on with his own personal business.  Later, Aaron does get to take care of his sons’ funerals, but at this moment (10:6-7) his brother is reminding him that he was anointed to be a priest, and that he had to fulfill that calling first.  It was then that the Shekinah glory hit me: “You can do all kinds of things and be fruitful.  But you have always sensed that I have called you to ___.”  So that’s what I did.  When we follow God’s calling, all the pieces come together to reveal the glory and purpose of God in our lives.  Sometimes we’re anointed for a season, sometimes for a lifetime.  But when it happens, the comfort and predictability of redundancy give way to the adventure and passion of intentionality.  So calling is less about what you do, and more about who you are.  Just because I didn’t end up at Focus on the Family doesn’t mean that those who do work there are not called.  “We are all just God’s pocket change.  The honor is not in what he spends us on, but in that fact that he chooses to spend us” (John Wimber).  Of course, when you surrender, God may not only lead you on some adventuresome roads, where you’ll get a God’s-eye-view of humanity, he may also lead you down some rocky roads, through the valley of disillusionment and despair.  Following your calling doesn’t guarantee the three Ps of success as defined by suburbia (popularity, prosperity, and personality).
• As my friend and mentor, Marty Schaffer, taught me, wait aggressively.  Do everything you know to do at this time and place in your life.  Some things are just obvious, such as honoring developing a heart of worship while others are equally important, such as standing against injustice.  It means not walking away from responsibilities but purposing to keep in harmony with the will and Word of God.  Pride, fear, and comfort often keep us from experimenting.  Experimenting often enables us to discover the callings that are lying dormant within us.  Don’t go “oughto-matic” either.  Submit every “yes,” “no,” “ought to,” and “should” to Jesus the Master.  As you slow down to do only those things that seem right to you and the Holy Spirit (good at a few things rather than mediocre at a bunch), you may find that you are already walking in your calling.  But if you still feel you are living in suburbia, the way out is by stumbling forward and pairing up with a good mentor.
• Eli helped Samuel learn how to trust both voices (I Samuel 16), and to live out his calling.  If you discover that you are in your calling, but not walking in it successfully, you may need to find a mentor.  Find a person who genuinely has the voice of the Good Shepherd.  Every community of fatih has folks whose calling is mentoring (and not just managing) others.  And you will know you have found such a person when s/he is more concerned with your character than with your gifts.

Chapter 4: A television in every room (on Doubt and Discouragement).  Silence used to scare me.  I’d turn on the television to distract my soul to keep from thinking.  Maybe it’s a form of denial.  Maybe our pretending happens because we don’t know or don’t like who we really are.  Regardless, we keep ourselves so busy, so preoccupied with things that don’t really matter, that real growth and real life get stymied.  Ironically, ignoring only feeds them, while facing them head-on cruches them and turns them into fertilizer for our faith.  It’s easy to start preteding and stop growing, to distract ourselves with things happening outside of us so that we can neglect the things inside of us.  But God knows just how wisdom could enter my haert, how much knowledge I would need to be able to walk in a stronger and more stable sense of faith (Proverbs 2:10).

• Pretending may be okay for children, but it’s not okay for adults, especially for a pastor.  Here I was, on a Sunday mroning, asking myself, “Am I even saved?”  My son had his stuffed Grover doll, my daughter had her Polly Pockets, and I had what felt like a plastic Jesus.  My kids could invite their friends over to play house or Sesame Street, and I thought that was cute.  But I had invited two hundred friends to come over and play church in two hours–and that stressed me out. My morning would be filled with people asking me questions about God, life, and religion.  I felt I had a responsibility to my “sheep.”  After all, they couldn’t see a shepherd who struggled, who doubted, who this very day was asking many of the same questions they had.  Perpetuating the image of authenticity had become more important than being authentic.  I was sincere.  At least, I sincerely wanted to be sincere.  Actually, I sincerely wanted to be sincere about my sincerity.  I was acting, filling a role, trying to be more than I was–and in so doing I had become less than what I was.  Can you identify?  Have you been busy pretending to believe?  Because you are afraid that once you stop doing, doubt will stalk you?  Now don’t go abandoning all those activities just yet.  It may not be the activity that is the culprit, but you.  We have to stop distracting ourselves and pretending to have more of a relationship with him than we do.  What’s the difference between faith, obedience, trust, pretending, and what makes the difference (experience, intellectual understanding, and so on)?
• Holy sacred cows, Batman!  “Mother Teresa was afflicted with feelings of abandonment by God from the very start of her work among the homeless children and dying persons in Calcutta’s slums.  From all available evidence, this experience persisted until her death five decades later” (Richard Ostlin, “Mother Teresa’s Private fears Told”).  What a relief!  She was a real person.  But unlike those stuck in spiritual suburbia, she didn’t try to distract herself from that pain.  Instead, this godly woman allowed it to draw her closer to God.  She said, “We cannot long for something that is not intimately close to us.”  Saint John of the Cross coined the phrase “dark night of the soul,” referring to those times when we can not understand what God is doing and feel distant from him.
• What Saint John calls “dark,” Luke the apostle calls a “gap” (Luke 18:9-14, 7:7, 5:31-32): God honors the person who recognizes the gap but shuns the person who doesn’t, the centurian kept the gap, and Jesus came for those who see the gap but still trust in God.  In other words, Luke affirms that there is a disparity between what i believe to be rue and the actual reality I walk in.  I am caught between two wrolds–the kingdom reality that Jesus invites me to live from and the broken world the Enemy wants me to stay trapped in.  They all expressed frustration with living in the tension of mystery but longing for the security of understanding.  Frustration with believing in something they couldn’t see, but also doubting that it even exists.  They wondered if the labor of pursuing Christ would indeed reap the life-giving rewards he has promised.  One thing is clear, these saints also became aware that such disparity between where we live and what we long for can actually be a part of God’s plan, part of his plan to set us free from suburbia and move us into his purposes.  They solidify our faith and keep us from becoming hollow.  We must be willing to walk in this gap.

My team and I were ministering in the small river village of Porto de Moz, Brazil.  We’d been there for a week.  I preached what I thought was a powerful word for the community at the final evening meeting.  I can’t recall ever feeling so much in “the zone.”  I felt like a spiritual Shaquille O’Neal posting up against the Smurfs.  The Enemy’s defenses in this city and church were being shattered.  Then it happened.  “Please ask that God would heal my son.”  She showed me the boy, who was paralyzed down the entire left side of his body.  As I knelt down to be eye-to-eye with this precious child, he moved to hide behind his mother’s hip.  His life had been six years of hell.  But a mother’s love had brought him to a place of worship that night.  I reached out my hand and took hold of his good one.  Immediately something began to surge through me like liquid love.  It’s hard to explain, but I loved this boy as my own.  He felt it also, because he immediately stepped away from his mother and moved toward me.  Oh, my faith was so high at that point.  And so I prayed.  I could still feel the waves of liquid love flowing through me, but there was no physical manifestation of healing occuring in his body.  My faith thermometer dipped just a bit.  
          …At that point, the negotiating ceased.  I knew the healing wasn’t going to happen, though I didn’t know why.  I stood up and let go of the little boy’s hand.  All of the incredible things God had been doing that night were being crushed under the weight of my burgeoning disillusionment and embarrassment.  I wanted to run and hide, but my heart made me turn and say onelast thing to the mom.  “Look, I don’t know why God didn’t heal your son.  I wish I did.  But I can tell you one thing: He loves your boy.  I have never felt so much love and mercy flowing through me from God toward an individual as when I touched his hand.  I’m sorry.”
          As I turned to leave, the mother burst into tears.  “God loves my son!” she kept saying.  As I found out later, when she had been eight months pregnant, her brother and another guy got into an argument and her brother was murdered right in front of her.  The horror of that sent her into premature labor.  That crisis, coupled with poor medical procedures, seemd to have caused the paralysis her son has lived with ever since.  She had thought God had abandoned them both.  Perhaps more than healing of the body, they both needdd healing of the heart and Jesus met them at that place.  Their deeper questions had been answered–but mine were just beginning.
          I decided to be transparent with my team and share with them my frustration.  But, despite their counsel and prayer, I just couldn’t stop the disillusionment from mushrooming wihtin me.  The 28 hours home only fertilized the fungus.  I wanted so desperately to hear why.  The gap between what I knew in my head and what I felt in my heart was much wider than the 18 inches.  When asked to pray for the sick, I stepped aside so “others could participate.”  I was dealing with a growing wave of doubt, discouragement, and disillusionment that was drowning my calling.  Some well-meaning Christians offered me verses (Romans 8:28, Isaiah 55:8).  Now I’m not saying the Bible is not true or helpful.  In fact, when God finally did speak, these same verses suddenly found new substance for me.  But the attitude in which these pat answers were given only proved my point.  I needed Jesus to talk with me–thorugh his Word, through his ways, through my heart.
          In our culture, we have been taught that disillusionment is a bad thing, but in reality it can be very healthy.  After all, it helps us understand that we have been living with an illusion.  God wants us to walk in reality and life, not some beer commercial.  He invites us to live life from his perspective, not from some politically correct, poll-driven, hyper-genderized, extremist center (whatever that is).
          One day I realized I may never hear from God about that situation.  Even though I didn’t understand why God hadn’t answered our prayers for healing, I understood that I had to choose to trust him, and not allow discouragement to cause me to stop praying for the sick or caring for the broken.  It came through re-evaluating many of my preconceived ideas regarding how God should work on my behalf.  It came through remembering all the times on my journey when I had seen God act in me and through me.  As a result, I was not willing to let the acid of disillusionment eat up my faith.  So I chose to trust and let God’s way be a mystery and not a misery in my life–and then God spoke, “If you want the thrill of victory, you will have to learn to live with the agony of defeat.  I am more concerned with your trust in me than your understanding of me.”

• Indeed, there are times you and I must simply choose to follow God’s Word, even when it doesn’t feel right.  We must listen to God’s Word, to God’s words, to God.  We must take God at his Word (John 14:1, Jeremiah 29:13, Isaiah 58:6-7).  I encourage people never to make a big decision when in a crisis.  If we wait a little while, until the dust of circumstances settle and our emotions are a bit more stable, the path God wants us to take is usually clearer.  Obedience and discipline do something for us.  They give us rails to ride on, even when the way seems unclear.
• We must admit not everything is kosher in our souls.  While the spirit of suburbia says insulate yourself and pretend everything is fine, we must choose to walk in the opposite spirit and pursue the God of our understanding.  Sometimes God hides because he wants us to seek!  During my season of discouragement and doubt, I tried to remain faithful to what I was called to do.  I tried to talk to God over and over again about it, even though his silence was sometimes deafening.  Still, I knew there was a reason for the silence, and for the time being, that had to be enough.  I had to choose to believe.
• Struggling with the “whys” and “where are yous” of faith puts us in good company.  The common denominator in all those biblical saints (David, Martha when her brother died, John the Baptist in prison) is what should be common in us–they asked hard questions.  They pursued God.  They were brutally honest with their struggle.  They were not afraid to ask what was difficult. And sometimes they got a hard answer.  To learn, we must get up and listen through the silence to the voice of the Holy Spirit.  Richard Foster, in his book Celebration of Discipline, offers tools (not magical formulas or legalistic codes): simplicity, silence, and fasting (replace the space with seeking and listening, thus it can include technological fasting).
• It’s not like he doesn’t know about your frustrations already.  But when you express them to him, your heart and mind stop trying to figure stuff on their own.  Too many questions and doubts live rent-free in our minds, taking up space that Wisdom wants to fill.  When you create space to get honest with God, you may not get answers immediately, but you will get peace.  You may not have understanding right away, but you will experience faith.  You may not see circumstances change right away, but you will gain perspective.  The story is not so much about where you began, but about the roads you follow, and where you finish.

I’ve been trying to incorporate more exercise into my daily routine in order to better focus on studying (and combat depression and be healthier overall).  I asked Lisa Leu (she lives about five minutes away) to run with me at the Dulles track (so as to prevent knee erosion) and today was our first time.  We met at Mamie George Branch Library so I could show her where to go.  When we arrived, there were a lot of African-American people (and some other ethnicities).  It appeared they were there for a race.  I wanted to turn back (can I blame social phobia?), but Lisa asked one of the men if we could use the track.  He was a jokester and teased us saying we could run many kilmeters.  Apparently they had just finished a race.  We walk a lap to warm up (and wait until everyone left) before stretching and starting our first lap jogging.  Nearing the end, Lisa asked to stop, but I said we could at least finish one lap.  Then we started walking.  And talking.  She is on HCC BASIC’s steering committee this year (along with Andrew, James, Jesslyn, and Robert).  A large part of our conversation turned to community and inclusivity.  I ask her about her past (she left Taiwan at the age of 12 to Virginia, then California, then Dallas, then Houston).  I ask her her testimony (she’s one of those “always believed” kind of gals), and she asked me mine.  She offered to pray for me regarding studying, taking, and passing my NBCOT exam.  

Oh yeah, and she’s also one of those gals who tend to be very..”girly” she describes herself, and…hopeful, trusting, steadfast in her faith.  In other words, very different from someone like me who more readily identifies with “Doubting” Thomas.  Not that it’s a bad thing of any of us, as long as by the end we all proclaim, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).  She basically attributes anything to God, and after a few “explanations” to her I found myself saying “It was all God’s doing” and related statements.  I felt kind of funny about it because I’m not used to that (and was I also trying to “keep up” with her?), but also I think because a part of me really likes to suck the awe out of many phenomena.  Positively, to point out all the facts and then view it with a better understanding, for me it’s even more amazing on God’s part!

One of the things we talked about last last week was our experience(s) in dating.  Amidst the discussion, I was asked why I’ve only had one romantic relationship though I reported feeling comfortable around guys.  Up until maybe a few months ago, I’ve only been asked by guys who don’t believe in God (yes, my options are becoming better, just need to hold out a little longer, eh? lol).  Nonetheless, I think perhaps that is due to me being around hanging out with so many guys.  And deeper still, I’ve come to realize that I may be pretty closed off, not to guys (because I love guys) but to feelings in general:

friend:  i like the romanticism
me:  i’m turning around to it
friend:  you dont like it?
me: kinda cynical, i guess?
  or
  the other night we had dinner
  and i think “feelings” are very foreign to me
friend:  hm why do you think
  or… i mean, well youve dated before
  did you not have feelings then?
me: but then, i was all depressed
  so when ___ came along, i basically decided to throw myself into it
  regardless of the consequences
friend:  so whys it so foreign to think that you could feel the same way for another person
  you would rather not try at all than to try and risk getting heartbroken?
me: well, i wasn’t conciously doing it back then
  like, “amy, build wall so i won’t get heartbroken”
  but right now, i realize i really didn’t give “feelings” a fair chance in anything
friend:  lol
  well…feelings are fleeting
me: probably a big part of how i ended up becoming depressed
  yes, they are, but they have their rightful place
  and i wasn’t giving them the credit due them

This not only includes limerance but also anger, anxiety, sadness, disappointment, even happiness, amusement, you name it!  So much so that I don’t know how to handle them at all; I deny that I feel them.  Only recently have I accepted the challenge to process and put them into words.  You know how it is with the immigrant Asian parents (most of them that I know).  You try to ask them about their past, or how they’re feeling, and it’s like I’m talking alien.  So having copied that, and adding a good dose of my own tendencies, I’ve gone too far on the end of the spectrum.  Counseling was fail, so I took things into my own hands and am slowly figuring things out:  “As stress increases, ‘learned behavior’ tends to give way to the natural style, so the ISTP will behave more according to type when under greater stress, such as withdrawing from people, sorting out detailed points that could perhaps wait, and ignoring their feelings.  Under extreme stress, the ISTP’s shadow may appear, a negative form of ENFJ.  Example characteristics include displaying intense feelings towards others, insisting on things being done without any logical basis, being very sensitive to criticism, having a gloomy view of the future, and attributing unrealistic negative meaning to others’ actions or statements.” 

When I flew to New Jersey without telling anybody to see my first..boyfriend (haha, what a weird label), I was at one of my lowest points in my life.  After I confessed to my parents and friends, I still felt “not right.”  The entire time I tried to convince myself out of doing it, even with my fellow spiritual brothers and sisters’ help, but the truth that it didn’t work is because part of me would do it all over again, and that scares me.  Being so vulnerable at the time (and foolish, headstrong, and impulsive), let’s just say that if he wanted to have sex, he would’ve gotten in.  And oh my, the shame I would have to deal with!  I thank God every day that He didn’t let me put myself in the hands of someone who didn’t care about me, someone who could’ve taken full advantage of me.  I was pretty reckless, so I knew I’d be caught eventually, even though I think I felt bad for being caught (reputation?) and not for doing what I did (grieving God, my family, and my friends). 

I brought up my concern with my brother, who said, out of experience, that the remorse will come in due time.  I’m not sure what I was looking for, but I sure don’t look forward to that time, because who wants to feel guilty?  Even if it is godly (2 Corinthians 7:8-10), not many people I know wants to go through the fire to the purified part (Malachi 3:2-3).  But the part that wants to do it all over again is getting smaller and smaller.  And yes, my knowledge that I will reap the consequences of those actions in my marriage is growing because I did indeed “arouse or awaken love [before] it so desires” (Song of Solomon 2:7, 3:5, 8:4).  Right now, I’m so glad that the way God let me fall forced me to be open with my close family and friends (interesting that some who are depressed only tell their families, and others only tell their friends) so I won’t have to go through trying to tiptoe around them until I break (again).  I hope I’ve learned the lesson well this time around so that there won’t be some even more drastic fall in the future for me!

Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time.

The problem is not that we have emotions–they are a gift from God.  The problem si that our emotions (unlike God’s) are tainted by the Fall.  The challenge is to let the Spirit of God sanctify us in the realm of our emotions so that they can be expressed in godly ways.

32.  “If I feel something, it must be true.”

The Enemy wants us to believe that if we feel unloved, we are unloved.  If we feel we can’t cope with the pressure, it must be true that we can’t make it.  If we don’t feel saved, then maybe we aren’t.  If we don’t feel forgiven, then we must not be.  The Truth is that, due to our fallen condition, our feelings often have very little to do with reality.  In many instances, feeligns are simply not a reliable gauge of what is actually true.  When we allow them to be tied to our circumstances–which are constantly changing–rather than to the unchangeable realities of God and His Truth, our emotions are prone to fluctuate wildly.

In the midst of the roller coaster ride our emotions sometimes take us on, we have to constantly bring our minds and thoughts back to the Truth.  The Truth is, through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ on my behalf, I am forgiven, whether I feel forgiven or not.  He is with me all the time, even when I feel alone and forsaken.  If we want to walk in freedom, we must realize that our emotions are not necessarily trustworthy and be willing to reject any feelings that are not consistent with the Truth (Philippians 4:4-9).

33.  “I can’t control my emotions.”

While it may be true to some degree that we can’t help the way we feel, the Truth is that we don’t have to let our feelings run our lives.  You may not be able to help feeling apprehensive about an upcoming medical exam, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stop worrying and fretting about the outcome.  The Truth is, regardless of what emotions are whirling around inside, by God’s grace, we can choose to fix our minds on Him and to “trust and obey.”  When we do, we will experience His peace and the grace to be faithful, even though our circumstances may not change.  Hannah Whitall Smith writes:

We must choose, without any regard to the state of our emotions, what attitude our will wil take toward God.  We must recognize that our emotions are only the servants of our will.  Our will can control our feelings if only we are steadfastly minded to do so.  Many times when my feelings have declared contrary to the facts, i have changed those feelings entirely by a steadfast assertion of their opposite.  Surging emotions–like a tossing vessel, which by degrees yields to the steady pull of the anchor–finding themselves attched to the mighty power of God by the choice of your will, must sooner or later give allegiance to Him.

The Scripture is filled with divine promises (Matthew 28:20, Philippians 4:19, Isaiah 54:10, John 14:27, Philippians 4:6, 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Matthew 5:44, Mark 11:25; Colossians 3:1-2, 2 Corinthians 10:5b, Isaiah 26:3).

34.  “I can’t help how I respond when my hormones are out of whack.  (It’s understandable to act like a shrew at certain times.)”

If we accept the lie that we can’t control our emotoins, we will also believe we can’t control how we act when we are feeling emotionally vulnerable or out of control.  Not only are we too quick to believe our feelings, we are also far too quick to obey them.  So if we feel like staying up and watching a late-night movie, we do so.  If we don’t feel like getting out of bed the next morning, we pull the covers up over our head and call in sick at work.  If we don’t feel like cooking a meal that night, we call for pizza delivery.  If we don’t feel like cleaning our house, we let it go until the mess is so great we are really depressed.  The problem is, if we cater to our emotions and let them control our actions in these kinds of of daily routines, we wil be more vulnerable to being controlled by our emotions in the major transitions and difficult seasons of life.

Certainly what happens in our bodies does affect us emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually.  We cannot isolate these various dimensions of who we are–they are inseparably intertwined.  But we fall into the trap of the Enemy when we justify fleshly, sinful attitudes and responses based on our physical condition or hormonal changes.  “Don’t let tiredness be an excuse for carnality.”  One of the consequences of the Fall was that childbearing would be accompanied by sorrow and pain.  Childbirth is not the only time those consequences are felt.  For example, the difficulties some women experience associated with their menstrual cycle are a practical reminder of our fallen condition.

But every monthly cycle is also a reminder that God made us women, and that with our womanhood comes the capacity for being a bearer and nurturer of life (Psalm 139:13-16).  He ordained the day you would start menstruation, when and how many times you would be able to conceive, and exactly when you would stop ovulating.  Long before anyone had ever written a book on the subject of menopause or estrogen, Francis de Sales wrote:

Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life in fear; rather look to them with full hope that, as they arise, God, whose you are, will deliver you out of them.  He has kept you hiterto,–do you but hold fast to His dear hand, and He will lead you safely through all things; and, when you cannot stand, He will bear you in His arms….The same everlasting father who cares for you today, will take care of you to-morrow, and every day.  Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it.  Be at peace then, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.

Paul’s prayer can be claimed by women in every season of their live (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

35.  “The answer to depression must first be sought in medication and/or psychotherapy.”

Could this be genetic?  Could it be somethign organic or chemical?  Could some kind of demonic activity be involved?  Is there some spiritual truth not grapsed that accoutns for the turmoil and bondage?  Depression is a particularly major issue for women, and the number of sufferers is only growing.  A study of depression and despair in the Scripture reveals that, in some cases, the pain we identify as emotional depression is simply one of the unavoidable consequences of living in a fallen world (Romans 8:22-23).  Much research has been done, but we still have much to learn.  What we do know is that in many cases, physiological symptoms connected with depression are the fruit of issues that are rooted in the realm of the soul and spirit–issues such as ingratitude, unresolved conflict, irresponsibility, guilt, bitterness, unforgiveness, unbelief, claiming of rights, anger, and self-centeredness. 

If these root issues are not addressed God’s way, the consequences will inevitably show up in our bodies and souls, creating very real physical and emotional problems.  Properly administered, medication may help a severely depressed person get stabilized enough to think clearly, providing a window of opportunity for the individual to begin dealing with the issues that created the problem.  But there is no prescription drug that can “fix” the deeper issues of the spirit.  Unfortunately, far too may people view medication as a “solution” for their problem.  If the sufferer does not address those inner heart issues, she cannot hope to ever be truly free.

King Ahab became depressed because he couldn’t get his own way, and Jezebel attempted to pull him out by promising to help him get what he wanted (1 Kings 21:4-7).  The story of Jonah illustrates how depression can be rooted in anger against God’s choices (Jonah 4:1-4).  Hannah was a godly women who became depressed when she had to deal with a combination of unfulfilled longings and a strained relationship over a prolonged period of time (1 Samuel 1:6-7).  King David’s life illustrates that sometimes depression is caused by our own sin (Psalm 32:3-4), while at other times it is simply the pain caused by living in this fallen world (Psalms 55:2-5; 42:3-8).  In his classic book, Spiritual Depression, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones uses this passage to address those who are depressed:

You must say to your soul, “Why art thou cast down”–what business have you to be disquieted?  You must…exhort yourself, and say to yourself: “Hope thou in God”–instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way.  And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do.

We discover a passage that provides practical help (James 5:13-16).  The first Truth that stands out is that regardless of how we are feeling or what we are going through, our immediate response should be to turn to the Lord.  After all, It is easier to call a friend for sympathy than to get on our knees with an open Bible.  It is easier to try to mask the pain with excessive food than to choose to deny our flesh.  It is easier to pay for a refill of Prozac than to ask God to show us if we have an ungrateful, demanding, or bitter spirit.  This is not to say that all those other things are wrong.  Physical exercise can be tremendously beneficial.  A physician may be able to detect and help correct a physical problem that is impacting our emotional condition.  But our tendency to look to professionals and pills to solve what, in many cases, are problems of the soul and spirit has left millions of women overmedicated, financially broke, disillusioned, and no better off than when they started.

The second Truth James emphasizes is the importance and role of the body of Christ in ministering help and healing to hurting hearts.  In the last several decades, we have developed a mind-set that only “professionals” are qualified to help people who are plagued with various emotional or mental disorders.  Even many pastors have been made to feel incompetent to deal with these issues and therefore routinely refer troubled counselees to “the experts”–professionally trained psychologists, psychiatrists, or therapists.  I am not suggesting that there is no place for people who have been trained in these fields, if their counsel is rooted in the Word and ways of God.  However, let’s not forget His Word and His Spirit.  We need to learn how to take the ointment of the Word of God.  Confess any sin that may be causing emotional weakness, and be willing to be accountable to the body through the process of healing and restoration.  “Feeling good” is not the ultimate objective in the Christian’s life.  God does not promise that those who walk with Him will be free from all difficult emotions.

AFFIRM the Truth:  Philippians 4:4-8, Colossians 3:1-4, Isaiah 26:3-4, Isaiah 50:10

• allegiance–the loyalty of a citizen to his or her liege, in this case, Christ.  Pledging to any other is treason.
• alter call–an evangelist preacher’s invitation at the end of the sermon, asking people to come forward to acknowledge a commitment to living an alternative culture (see culture).
• detergent church–a church whose sole purpose is to purge the skid marks sin has left on man’s soul and our society.
• follower–a believer who demonstrates support and allegiance to a person, a doctrine, a cause, with implications of a personal relationship, acquiescence and active championship.
• chicken poop for the soul–Christian clutter in our storage spaces and in our souls.
• culture–the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular religion or sect often considered to be extremist or unorthodox, with members living outside of conventional society under the direction of their Leader, Jesus Christ.
• evangelist–from the Greek evangelion meaning “bringer of Good News” that there is another kingdom, another economy, another leader who is the Savior.
• faith–from the Greek pistis for “duty for fulfilling one’s trust”(Matthew 19:14, Isaiah 11:6d), loyalty.
• false profits–false prophets
• Jubilee-redistribution, release and rest, as in redistribution of wealth, a release from any bondage that holds individuals captive, and a rest and freedom from work.
• rebelution–a cross between rebellion and revolution, an uprising against social norms of apathty and indifference, a rebellion against rebellion.
• spiritual midwife–a person trained to aid another in producing something spiritually new and different with God.
• orthodoxy–belief, practice, and character conforming to the Christian faith as represented in the creeds of the early church.  Further known as orthopraxis.
• politics–from the Greek polis meaning “city, civil, citizen, civic, to be a society of people.”  This new city is the New Jerusalem.
• practicing resurrection–to follow, observe, exercise, train, perform, and pursue habitually or customarily the kingdom we are to “incarnate now,” the one that is “within us,” “among us,” and “at hand,” “on earth as it is in heaven.”
• prophetic imagination–coined by Walter Brueggemann, this refers to the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts, of what is not actually currently present but can be consistent with reality in order to face and resolve difficulties, the opposite of which is redemptive violence (see below).  Arsenal may include the elements of laughter, surprise, and humor due to their “disarming” quality (Colossians 2:15).
• radical–from the Latin rood radix for root, the root for discovering what it means to be Christian disciples.
• redemptive violence–an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights, laws, and beings.  The damage done by this intense revenge communicates that some are beyond redemption, such as with the death penalty.  Example: ”the government that had trained McVeigh to kill, killed him, to teach the rest of us that it is wrong to kill.”  Please see prophetic imagination above (”violence is for those who have lost their imagination”).
• spiritual bulimia–a habitual disturbance in consumption behavior linked to identity and image.  It is characterized by frequent episodes of grossly excessive intake of Christian industrial products followed by self-induced vomiting to avert appearing unspiritual.  Inadvertently, the consumer experiences malnourishment from never properly digesting “our daily bread.”
• spiritual leprosy–a chronic, infectious disease characterized by numbness and loss of feeling for others.
• spiritual masturbation–the stimulation or manipulation of one’s own faith in order to be emotionally charged but never give birth to anything.
• totemisim–coined by Emile Durkheim, the human tendency to form our conception of God in our own image
• vocation–from the same root as voice, a strong impulse, inclination, and calling to follow God’s service, function, and station within the Christian station of life.

And what would Satan do?  And what would Linton do (sometimes)? LOL.  I finished reading Evangelism For the Rest of Us: Sharing Christ Within Your Personality Style by Mike Bechtle that I started reading at Chris Sun’s apartment’s common area (yesterday I ate dinner wtih James, Jonathan, and Linton at Yantze.  They bought some alcohol from Kroger next to Tapioca Express then played pool with Braden and Chris.  James watched cable, Linton downloaded antispyware, and Jonathan looked at the Vegas wedding pictures.  Jonathan won and then Chris won their 3:3 “cutthroat” games).  It was one of those books that I bought in a frenzy after quitting counseling, trying to find anything related to personality/temperament/type and hopefully spirituality/Jesus/God along with it.  Curiously, I only found a few books so I ordered and bought them all.  Now, searching again, there has now turned up twenty-some extra books.  I don’t know how I searched before and missed them and how this time it’s different, but I certainly can’t order and buy all of them….

I could summarize the book here for you, since I enjoyed it and found renewed enlightenment and encouragement for sharing God with others.  But I usually do that when I don’t plan on keeping the book.  The author just expresses how he transitioned from loving to guilt in witnessing, how before it was like a doctor prescribing without examining, more focused on his solution than your illness.  He says probably most methods we were taught were more ideal for extroverts (solar panels) than introverts (rechargeable batteries), and like guys and girls, may never really quite get the other side (although of course we’re not either extreme, and we still try to understand).  He dismantles 7 myths (e.g. “you shall be my witnesses is a command”) with the truths (e.g. “it’s a description of fact, whether we feel qualified or not”).  The chapter that really helped me was when he told us the function (what needs to be done) is spreading the Gospel but the form (how the function is carried out) is to be tailored to how you were made and where the person is spiritually.  We’re to be salt, light, and seed to the world (all centered on influence rather than control or coercion), helping others move a notch or two along in their spiritual journey (for nonChristians, toward finding God; for Christians, toward maturing).

For the past couple of years everything seemed to be slowly falling apart, but now they’re building back up.  I’ll just quote from Real Life Preacher, a pastor in San Antonio:

Always there will be breaking and disillusionment. Always I will be building, and never will I achieve understanding…Tomorrow I will tell you the story of a time when I was terribly disillusioned…I will tell you this story because on the spiritual journey, disillusionment is as important as enlightenment (”The Disillusionment Chronicles“).

Friday.  Christina Tam and I met at Borders so we could carpool to watch Slant.  Craig Wen and Brian Thao-Huane were there, too.  I skipped out on FBCC’s monthly social: Iron Chef!  The secret ingredient was mango, and I heard the results were better than expected.  Jacky called at around 9pm to ask if I could watch their belongings while they did a run the next morning.  Uh..sure….

Saturday.  Christina and I again met at Borders to carpool to Jacky’s apartment, where Ted drove us four to be at Minute Maid Park at 7am.  They prepared, clipping on their running numbers, drinking water in the small cups being passed out, and stretching amongst the air “people” that would occasionally hit us (the way the air was blown and all).  We saw a man on stilts pretend he was a super-tall person, making balloon animals.  The girl and guy bunny suits wearing Astros attire came around to take pictures with the kids and whoever else wanted.  I’ve never participated in this sort of thing, so Jacky explained how it worked.  He paid $25 to participate, but they would get two free Astros tickets with an option of choosing from four games in the future (June 10, 11, 24, and/or 25).  They give you a timer that will start as soon as you step onto their carpet they have at the starting line and would stop when you step on the carpet at the finish line.  Some runs ask you to return the trakcer/timer, but this time they said the runners/walkers could keep it.  This is Ted’s first time, and afterwards he looked pretty winded (was it his knee, since he had a brace on? didn’t ask).  Jacky ran ahead.  Denver stayed with Ted. 

Christina needed coffee, so we walked around downtown.  We saw the “oasis” in front of Christ Church Cathedral–Christina couldn’t believe such a nice place in the middle of downtown.  She said she’d still feel unsafe walking around by herself, if I wasn’t with her.  I also saw some people waiting outside the Urban League.  We finally found this free-standing building all by itself on one side of the street to be Starbucks (good thing we used the map that the city provides atop the sidewalk, thank you Houston!).  At 8am, I bought her a drink (a grande mmchip frapp for $4.50), then we rested for a few minutes (she was carrying her papers to be graded in a backpack, then she volunteered to also carry Jacky’s, Ted’s, and my belongings–heavy!).  We headed back, realizing the run had pretty much ended (that was fast).  We had to walk all the way around since the doors were locked.  When we entered, a wave of stench (sweat and gym) hit my nose (never liked that smell).  Denver saw us, and Jacky encouraged us to get some food (he had his shirt off–not that it was attractive because I barely glanced, but that always makes me feel uncomfortable for some reason).  I stood in line for some lettuce wrap with meat on top (reminds me of that Chinese dish).  Jacky said there were also kolaches, so I stood in line for that.  They lady said, “Ham and cheese?”  Sure.  “Two?”  Sure….  JT said hi, and I think his girlfriend is Heidi.  She looks really familiar but I don’t know why.  Khon-Whey Tay was there with his two friends (they’re a couple of..Asian Indian descent?).  I wanted some fruit and found a pear within the tubs of water/ice/water bottles.  Was it supposed to be there?  I put it back, unsure of it’s cleanliness.  Later, after seeing many runners carrying fruit,  I realized I could use the water from the bottled water to clean it, but the pear was not there anymore.  Ah well.

I was so incredibly tired, even though I didn’t even participate, but since I wanted to have a somewhat normal sleeping pattern, I was determined to stay awake and not take a nap.  Christina and I went to Lowe’s to check out movies and their times.  Nothing particularly interested both of us, so we went to Fuddruckers at 11am.  By the time we arrived at her apartment, we would’ve completely missed the beginning of the movies we were debating on (sure bad at estimating time huh?).  We watched Stardust on her computer while eating lunch (I ate the big dog with chili and cheese while got the burger/fries/shake combo).  Phoebe called to watch the new Narnia movie.  So Christina quickly reviewed through the first Narnia movie on her computer, supplementing with verbal summarizations.  Then I browsed her books (she’s an English teacher at Kempner).  I asked about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  She has no idea why the play references that; she was famous in the literary world and the title is a play on “who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?”  She took a nap while I looked Woolf up: “Dreadnought Hoax was a practical joke pulled in 1910 by Horace de Vere Cole and five friends, including Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf)…Modern diagnostic techniques have led to a posthumous diagnosis of bipolar disorder…The ethos of Bloomsbury discouraged sexual exclusivity, and in 1922, Woolf met Vita Sackville-West.”  She committed suicide.

Christina suddenly got up and realized that it was time to go.  Good going, Christina.  She, Phoebe, Linton, Hannah, Tina, James, Jonathan, and I watched Prince Caspian at 4:30pm at Lowe’s (barely missed the matinee price for movies before 4pm on Saturdays).  Christina left because she was pretty wiped out.  Chris was at work.  I joined them (and Ariel came, too) at Avalon Diner for dinner at 9pm.  I got the turkey/avocado omelette for $10.  They ran out of the recommended-by-the-waitress dish of steak and eggs.  Hannah’s order was right, but James and Jonathan’s dishes were a bit mismatched–Jonathan wasn’t bothered much, just got the pork version.  The main question discussed for the evening was, “If you didn’t believe in Jesus, what religious would you follow?”  Here’s the breakdown: Phoebe said Unitarian Universalism (or Ba’hai or whichever incorporates getting along with all religions, obviously none of us know much), Linton said Mormonism (he arrived back today from Utah for business), and I think the rest of them said atheism (or James said burning incense to ancestors).  I said atheism/agnosticism.

We walked to Borders and sat for a bit (Hannah checked to see if there were any sales).  Then Tina jumped on another’s suggestion to walk to the water, “Yes, Tina needs to walk.”  The girls chatted about clothing (I think Ariel’s going to a wedding), then Tina suggested we get ice cream since Hannah regretted not ordering a shake.  Cold Stone Creamery was near Lowe’s, so we spanned the entire complex I guess.  James is always asking if something is junk food or not, or making explanations that it isn’t junk food.  Yeah….  “Not today” says Jonathan, since he got some.  Hannah got coffee with heath (yum).  Hannah mentioned a quarterlife crisis, which James somewhat related.  Linton says he hasn’t reached there yet, that he is still on the way up/forward to something.  LOL, it was funny how James said that he loved it when he resigned.  I got home at midnight and crashed.

Sunday.  Charles and I drove to Elliot’s house, where the three of us met up to carpool.  (Elliot couldn’t convince Ed to come, and so Pepsi didn’t come either.)  Charles drove us to pick up Henry from his apartment then headed to Jack In the Box at 1212 for lunch.  I ordered four grilled chicken strips for $4.64 (felt like a ripoff).  Then we got to MFAH at 1pm.  We browsed around until 1:30, when they started seating us to watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.  The guys talked about having dirt on each other (and Ed Ly) and using it against each other, revealing it, etc.  We looked at the pamphlet they gave out for this Target Free Sunday (comparing the pictures of plants to their names).  Christina suddenly appeared and sat to my right right when the lights dimmed at 2pm.  I liked the movie because she was really going for understanding.  And she was amazing in all her abilities, as Lord Yupa already professed at the beginning of the movie.  Indeed, “What are you so afraid of?”  A lot of violence is borne out of fear of “the other.”  Henry says she should’ve died (there were Christian undertones), but Elliot said, “No, she has to live, so I can marry her” LOL!  Hey, she’s like Rocky and Gandhi put together, as Dave would say it, haha!  Who wouldn’t find her attractive?

Afterwards we went around to the exhibits (Pompeii wasn’t free).  Elliot teased Henry when he tried to explain one of the drawings on the wall, that the explanation didn’t exactly match what was written on the author plaque.  One artist painted Egypt abstractly (I don’t ever get it, so they make me annoyed).  We spent quite some time in the Korean exhibits.  Henry said he really liked the small wall-mounted plaque statue of the elephant in the other Asian exhibit.  Lastly, we observed the poles that important people carry/use.  Each had something on the top, so there were explanations.  Elliot really liked the one that went like, “Holding a kingdom is like holding an egg; hold it too hard and it’s crushed, hold it too loose and it will fall and break.”  Henry said he liked the quote that went something like, “A crab doesn’t give birth to a bird.”  The one that got me thinking was, “The hen knows it is dawn but lets the rooster crow.”  Christina found it to be anti-feminist.  Jacky called, so I called Wilson about football.  We sat around discussing the next step (board game?  buy Ziggity?  eat?).  Christina suggested we eat, Elliot of course suggested Fuddruckers (to which Christina got all excited about), Henry suggested Niko-Niko’s, and Charles jumped on that and made the decisive push to leave (5:30 pm).  I got the Hercules Plate.  Then we all left for home.  Charles stayed with Elliot to help him with his Microsoft Word.  I end up napping from 7:30 until 9 pm (sigh, so much for trying to stay up until nighttime).  Lil goo-goo took the trash out and left for her workplace.  I watched Dead Like Me because it was the only thing on and then went back to bed.