Relief Without Redemption

 

It happens almost every Bible study, every coffee date, every time I write a blog that is quickly labeled “relatable.”

Someone is honest about their sin, someone bares their soul, someone opens up about something they’ve been hiding for years.

 And it is good.

It is good to be honest and it is good to let each other know that they are not alone. It is good that the norm in many churches is shifting from secret sins and plastic smiles to one of openness and honesty.

But I am beginning to wonder if we have made an idol of honesty and turned vulnerability into a virtue in and of itself.

We’ve bought the world’s weird lie about our “authentic selves” – that they’re not just worth uncovering, they’re good enough to live in.

Which is weird, because we know the truth about our “authentic selves” – they’re broken. They’re sinful and broken and corrupted by evil. And the benefit in baring them is to realize the depth of grace required and come to the foot of the cross once again.

I am done with cathartic soul-baring without any real redemption. I can’t just be honest about my failures. I have to let conviction set in.

Being vulnerable is not enough. I need to seek more than emotional tell-alls, I need to seek true and powerful conviction. I need to be receptive to getting called out, whether the Holy Spirit works directly in my heart or through the words of another.

In the name of “being real,” we’ve started holding up the grittiest testimonies and celebrating the best admissions of sin. It’s a competition to admit the worst thing, as if the one testimony we all share could somehow be outdone: I was dead, and now I am alive.

I’m all about celebrating the work God has done in broken people. But I fear we’ve made vulnerability an end goal, instead of a pathway towards reconciliation and redemption. It’s relief without redemption – I can enjoy the emotional high of sharing my struggles without getting my hands dirty. I can talk a big game without earnestly repenting.

Conviction isn’t comfortable, especially when it comes through someone else’s words. But it’s so important. Otherwise we’re just a bunch of sinners talking about what is holding us bondage, forgetting that we have been set free. He has given us freedom from sin, but if we keep admiring each other’s broken chains without stepping away from them, we won’t experience it in its fullness.

So I’m praying that I’ll confront my sins – not just that they would be revealed to me, but that I’d have the courage and conviction to get up out of my pit and take the hand of Jesus.

I can’t “fix” my sin, but I am refusing the grace of my Savior if I continue to trade in true conviction for cathartic “authenticity.”

 

 

I Want to Be Scared

Lord, get me out of the way.

I’ve been writing a lot about fear. But I’m realizing there are some things I might want to be a little more scared of.

I want to be a little scared I might not be doing this right.

No, I don’t want to live in fear and I don’t want to think it’s all up to me. I don’t want to buy into the prideful lie that I can mess with God’s plan or that He’s placing the burden of His work solely on my shoulders.

But I do want to be a little bit scared that I might be too selfish, that I might fill up on others’ affirmation, that I might have my heart set on the wrong things.

I want to be brave and I want to run headfirst into the things He is asking me to do. But I also want to be a little cautious anytime His plans might involve some spotlight. Because I’m selfish and prone to seek my own glory instead of His.

So there are some things I’m learning to be a little bit scared of. Is the terminology wrong? Maybe, I’m still figuring this out. But it’s the words I have right now for the feeling and concept and attitude I want to have.

Here’s the thing: I know how sin most often creeps into my life. It’s when I let the warm feeling of human approval and the sound of applause overshadow that still, small voice.

I want to be cautious whenever pride creeps in and I face the temptation to stop listening.

I don’t want the kind of brave that ever stops waiting for direction and wisdom.

I don’t want a bravery that rushes past patient and faithful and barrels straight into foolish.

I want to be a little scared – the kind of scared that recognizes my own limitations and sinful tendencies, not the scared that doubts the ability of my God to redeem and rescue and make all things new, including me.

Really, I just want to be scared that I’ll get in the way.

Again, is that the right word? I don’t know. Maybe wary or cautious or guarded is better. But there’s something powerful about admitting that for all my flag-waving against fear, there are some things a fragile little human like me needs to be scared of, and then ask her God to guard her heart against.

I want to be scared that I’ll start making followers of a God of my own making, not the God who was and is and is to come. I want to be scared that people will see me instead of Him.

I want to be guarded against accidental self-promotion and wary of the kind of wandering glory that could end up shining on me instead of Him.

I want to get out of the way. Lord, get me the heck out of your way.

 

 

 

“Moral Decay” and Christian Alarmism

I’ve always been a little confused about what the phrase “evangelical” means, but never more so than during an election season.

It seems like every pollster and pundit has an idea about who is getting the “evangelical” vote, who is pandering to “evangelicals,” and who is more in touch with their “evangelical” base.

As a Christian deeply interested in politics, it’s always amusing and often confusing to listen to what the “evangelicals” are apparently saying and doing.

From transgender bathroom bills to the upcoming presidential election, there seems to be one reoccurring trend that Christians across denominational lines are embracing: panic.

Everything is lost, the apocalypse is upon us, and all our leaders are going to hell.

For the less extreme, it sounds more like this: crying “moral decay,” pronouncing God’s judgement upon a sinful nation, bemoaning the declining Christian influence in America.

But it all boils down to this: panic. We’re freaking out, and while our solutions are varied, our alarmism is not.

So what do we do with our mutual doomsday-prophesying?

We try to fix it all. We try and pass all the moral legislation we can sneak under the noses of our sinful leaders. We use every resource at our disposal to squash out the outwards signs of “moral decay.” We’re running around with a couple buckets, trying to stop leaks from every room of the house.

But here’s the truth: it isn’t working.

We know the God that gives life and we’re selling band-aids at the morgue.

We keep trying to patchwork holiness together in sinful people, instead of counting on Jesus to transform their hearts.

When are we going to wrap our heads around the fact that the world is going to act worldly?

No, everything is not getting worse. It’s always been sinful and broken and lost. There is nothing new under the sun, after all.

When we spend all our time criticizing the world for being the broken place we already know it to be, we forfeit the precious time we have to tell it about the one who can heal it, the one who is constantly in the beautiful process of redeeming it.

We are supposed to be about the work of bringing heaven to earth and being His hands and feet so His will can be done, but instead we’re bickering about which color to paint our rotting house. We can’t give it life, only He can.

Is this a reason to give up on politics? No. It’s a reason to pick our battles wisely.

I’m not saying there aren’t some battles worth fighting, I’m saying that maybe they aren’t even battles at all.

Maybe it’s time to lay down the weapons.

Jesus was all about bring change to His culture and questioning the power of the ruling government. But He did it in all of the weirdest ways. He hung out with the broken and the sinful, He didn’t wage a war against them. His model was one less glamorous than pundits arguing on TV and much less efficient than starting an online petition. He loved people and He gave them life. And then those people told other people. And they loved each other. Honestly, they hung out with each other. They kept loving and eating and talking and living together. And it happened over and over again for thousands of years. And it’s the only thing that has ever truly changed the world – people who love Jesus loving other people.

We keep telling a sinful world to stop sinning, but instead of telling them about the one who can free them from the bondage of their sin, we’re trying to ban as much of it as we can.

Am I advocating for a world with no laws against immoral behavior? (Nice try, I was a debater in college and I can smell your skepticism from a mile away.)

No. I’m advocating for political platforms to take a backseat to loving Jesus and loving people. I’m all about just legislation and good political involvement, but I’m sick and tired of us thinking it can truly change people. And I’m sick and tired of us acting surprised when a broken world is broken again and unsaved people keep on sinning.

We worship an omniscient and omnipotent God, but we act baffled when earthly solutions fail again and again.

We’ve bought into the lie that talking the loudest means we’ll be heard, that having the most powerful people on our side will give us influence, that “taking back our country” will be for His glory.

Our Jesus never launched an effective marketing campaign. He ignored crowds to talk to children and He warned people not to follow Him if they wanted an easy life.

Maybe it’s time we stopped fighting “culture wars” and started following the example of the God who became man – loving God and loving people, over and over and over again.

 

 

 

pretty sins.

I’ve been treating some of my sins with kid gloves.

Mostly fear, insecurity, doubt, and whatever combination of the aforementioned keeps me up at night, tossing and turning.

Maybe this is normal, but right after all the graduation celebrations, it hit me like a brick: I know nothing and I have no idea what I’m doing. I guess I just thought that once I had passed the exams, walked across a stage and had a diploma in hand, I’d suddenly have more control. I’d wake up the next morning, bursting with confidence and wisdom, and take on the world. Instead, I’m more scared than ever. I have no idea what I’m doing.

But instead of dealing with this fear, I’ve been treating it like a positive attribute or a badge of honor that proves I really know how broken and fallen I am. Somehow, women have been taught that insecurity looks good on us. So we pull it on like a sweater and wear it around for a while.

I always come to find that some of it has rubbed off on me a little too deeply. But I keep putting it back on, because the real problem is that I don’t think there’s a problem.

All this fear and insecurity and doubt have one thing in common.

They’re pretty sins. They look nice and presentable. They’re usually masquerading as strengths, and they’re very socially acceptable.

There are quite a few of these, but my particular brand of pretty sin seems to be a fake humility that I wash over everything to make sure I never try too hard and fail. I’ve convinced myself that as long as a keep a sufficiently low view of what God can do with me; I’ll be pleasantly surprised instead of crushingly disappointed.

I’ve been taught a brand of humility that looks strangely like uncertainty and insecurity. I’ve been taught to not take up too much space or make too much noise.

If we were talking about lust or pride or thievery, it’d be easy to call it like it is. But these pretty sins are masters of disguise.

He tells us over and over and over again: do not fear. And I keep doing it anyway.

In this year of brave, I don’t have time to dress up my insecurity as bogus humility and my fear as “common sense.” I’m naming names and calling it like it is, not like I see it.

I’m calling my fear what it is: a lack of faith.

It’s so easy to move from believing I’m incapable without Him (a beautiful truth) to believing I am incapable of being used by Him (a dangerous lie).

So I’m not treating my insecurity like a little kid that just doesn’t know any better, I’m treating it like the passion-squelching, joy-robbing, God-doubting problem it is.

I’m not going to harbor it like a well-kept secret or display it like a hard-won award. I’m giving it to the God who provides ability and wisdom and strength. I’m repenting of the sin that is a sin – the insecurity that is really a lack of faith in my God.

I’m not just going to clench my teeth and try harder to not be so scared. (I’ve learned that doesn’t work out so well.) But I am going to be honest with myself and the God who knew what was going on this whole time. I’m going to stop asking for confidence or a stomach with a few less butterflies, I’m going to start asking for the faith that only His grace can give.

I’m going to repent of my wavering heart and fickle faith.

I’m going to take the faith He gives and keep asking for more.

What Competitive Debate Taught Me

It hasn’t really sunk in yet that this time, I’ll be leaving for good.

 

So far, it’s ending the way every semester ends – dorm rooms littered with haphazardly packed bags and dirty paper towels. A few long nights, piles of books from the library, and a couple stressful exams.

And now it’s all over and I’m wandering a mostly empty campus.

Even that isn’t too unusual for me: debaters are used to being on campus when everyone else is on break.

But as graduation nears, it’s slowly dawning on me that this time, I won’t be coming back.

 

 

When I think back to four years ago, it’s hard to remember who that person was.

I remember my parents tearfully dropping me off at the main academic building for my first debate meeting. I remember slowly climbing the stairs to the entrance, terrified of basically everything.

Only a few weeks later, I would be spending long nights at that same building and walking back to my dorm full of dreams and goals for my debate career and my life.

 

I didn’t know how much I would change. I didn’t know how much I needed to.

 

I complained about debate a lot this year, unfortunately. I wrote about it a lot, too – about how it turned me into this overly competitive, success-obsessed person; about how it pitted me against my friends; and about how I was constantly frustrated with the way our community treats people.

 

I don’t think I was wrong about all of those things, but as I prepare to leave my undergrad behind me, I’m realizing just how much I owe to debate.

 

I was competitive before debate, and I’ll be competitive after debate. I still struggle with the idol of success, and I’m still learning how to love people. I can’t blame debate for my own sins or the sins of others.

 

I don’t give it enough credit for what it has meant to me or how it has shaped me into the person I’m still in the process of becoming.

 

The truth is, I have no idea who I would be without the Liberty debate team.

 

I bounded onto Liberty’s campus a naïve and mostly ignorant kid (not that too much has changed there).  I thought I knew all the answers. My beliefs, whether religious or political, had never been questioned. I could have spent the rest of my four years at Liberty constantly having my own presuppositions “confirmed” by an endless sea of nodding heads.

I could have ended up right where my freshman year Five Year Plan intended me to be, and more importantly, I could have ended up right where I started: with a distant and undernourished relationship with Jesus.

 

It’s entirely possible that all of the changes that occurred over the last four years would have happened without the debate team, because God was going to work in my heart with or without the mechanism He happened to use.

But the one He chose was so incredibly perfect. (Shocker there.)

Here are some of the ways debate changed me and the things it taught me.

 

Debate forced me to confront the deepest and most crushing sin in my heart: the idol I had made of success and the affirmation of others.

 

It had always been there, but I’d never had a name for it. Debate put a shiny trophy on the pride I was harboring and a crushing “L” on the insecurity I was concealing.

It took an amorphous concept and made it concrete.

I spent a good chunk of time blaming debate for my sin. It made me feel better to shift the focus from my sinful heart to the activity that had brought it to light.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to find something to blame than it is to fall on your knees in repentance.

But as I’ve watched the same patterns repeat themselves in other settings, I’m realizing that it’s not debate’s fault. I actually owe a lot to debate – I could have spent my whole life never learning the words to describe this sin. I could have suffered from its crushing hold on my life without ever understanding what was holding me captive. Debate took something silently driving my life and exposed how loudly it was calling the shots.

 

Debate taught me to think well.

 

It taught me to question. It taught me to consider the benefits of positions I couldn’t imagine agreeing with. It gave me friends who were incredibly intelligent and kind….and disagreed with practically every fundamental belief I held. It taught me that very little is as cut and dry as I had been led to believe. It taught me that “because that’s what I’ve always thought” is a terrible reason to think anything.

As a freshman, this whole process terrified me. The idea of constantly having my beliefs challenged was freaky enough to scare off quite a few of us. Perhaps the greatest lesson debate gave me was overcoming that fear. And I’m eternally grateful that debate squashed my fear of disagreement and often refused to give me the affirmation of my own ideas I wanted to hear.

 

Debate taught me to love well.

 

Loving any large group of diverse and different people is hard. Add in an argumentative spirit in all of them and it’s even harder. Add in competition? You’re toast.

Debate forced me to spend basically all my time with a group of people who fought for fun. We spent long hours on bumpy buses and empty airports together. We saw each other at our absolute worst – when we were stressed, hungry, and exhausted.

You don’t always get to pick the people He asks you to love. Our little ragtag group was not exactly together by choice. We all loved debate, but that didn’t mean we would have chosen to do it with this exact group of people. There were days all I could do was ask Him to give me the compassion I couldn’t muster on my own.

There were days when my only prayer was “Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours, because these people make me want to break something else.”

Debate made it so I couldn’t just pick up and leave people that were frustrating or difficult. I couldn’t just live with a different person or hang out with a new group of friends. I had to learn to love people that He so clearly was asking me to love. (And for the record, I’m sure they also had to learn to love me.)

There were times when this was easy – late night ice cream, playing Catch Phrase for hours on the bus, seafood in Boston and pictures by the Gold Gate bridge.

But there were also times that were hard and dreams that were crushed and feelings that were hurt. And those lessons were the most valuable part.

 

This all is pretty specific to me. Not many people “get” debate – how it works or why it matters to us so much.

But everyone has something like it – something you’re passionate about, something that you dedicate a significant amount of your time and energy to, and something that has changed you.

None of this was really about debate, it was simply the mechanism He used to teach me what I needed to learn.

So at the end of this season, I’m celebrating the weird and wonderful things He has used to mold me into the person He wants me to be.

I don’t know what He’ll use during this next chapter of my life, but I have confidence that He will continue working in me. Because if He can use the unusual things He has been using, He can work in anything.

So I guess if there’s one thing I’ve learned the most, it’s to look for the odd and unexpected things He is using in my life, because they’re always there.

God Doesn’t Need You

I was a terrible prayer leader.

For those of you that don’t know, at my school a prayer leader is part of the leadership structure. They have a group of 3-6 students from their dorm that they meet with on Wednesday nights, pray with, and encourage.

And I was a terrible one.

The reason is simple. It’s not that I didn’t love those girls, it’s not that I didn’t wholeheartedly want to serve them, it’s not even that some of the expectations made me uncomfortable (that’s another blog post).
It was this: I was stretched too thin. I had too much on my plate. However you want to put it, I was too busy.

I was trying to finish my last semester of undergrad, apply for scholarships for grad school, work 20 hours a week, travel to debate tournaments every other weekend, teach a weekly Bible study, plan community service activities every free weekend, mentor the freshmen, and write two blog posts a week. And then I added on a weekly campus event, prayer groups, and leadership meetings. It was too much.

I talked a big game this semester about choosing my “yeses” carefully and saying no to anything less than what my God was asking of me.

Psh.

That sounds nice, but typing flowery sentences and forcing a cramped “no” out of your mouth are totally different ballgames.

I wrote about my human limitations while nurturing a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that I was different. Other people couldn’t do all of this, but I was special. I could take on so much more than other people. I had this whole thing figured out, and adding any kind of ministry or spiritual thing had to be a good idea, right?

Wrong.

Now I know the words I wrote out of my smarty-pants attitude, gushing with wisdom and knowledge, were…actually right. Darn it.

Like so many other things, the words I spoke so confidently in the abstract were coming back to bite me in the real world.

(Now I’m a little more cautious when I come up with some great idea for a new blog post. What great idea is going to become a little too real in the near future?)

But here is what I’ve learned now that the fluff has hardened into biting truth:

God doesn’t need me.

I had heaped responsibilities onto an already-bulging calendar because I thought it was my job to save everyone. I had been so miraculously changed by my God, I wanted everyone else to experience what I had. But I had also twisted the good command to make disciples into a success-seeking desire to take credit for everything He was doing.

But it’s true: He doesn’t need me.

Seriously. It’s so hard for us to get this, because we are constantly playing the game of humanizing God, and we’ve never met anyone who didn’t have needs, especially for other people.

But it’s true – He doesn’t need us. And He sure as anything doesn’t need me. (It only takes a few fall-flat-on-your-face catastrophes to remind me of that.)

But after enough fiery Hell sermons, we think that if we don’t go out and save the world, no one else will. We think it’s up to us to be the savior.

Which is so unbelievably silly, because THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD HAS ALREADY COME.

He came. He conquered death on a cross and He tore the veil and He redeemed and restored and reconciled His lost people to Himself again.

He told us to go out and make disciples, but He didn’t tell us to save anyone.

He didn’t tell us to save anyone because we are small and sinful and we complain a lot. He knew that He would be doing the saving and we would be the ones either choosing to obey or to ignore the glorious invitation He so graciously offers.

He has commanded us to make disciples and He often asks a lot of us, but there is only one job that is ours: obedience.

(That’s kind of the theme of my semester, here’s more on that.)

It’s not a question of if the job will get done, because He will get His way.

We have far too small a view of our God and an oversized a view of ourselves if we think we can stop the plans of the omniscient, omnipotent, Creator of the universe.

We can’t.

It’s really just a question of if you’ll miss the opportunity to be a part of His plan. (And that is NOT an excuse to go right back to stressing, it’s a reason to get your booty moving and leave the heavy lifting to your heavenly Father.)

Him not needing you is good news. He isn’t a needy God, waiting on His people to do what He says. He’s not like earthly rulers, hoping the people follow their commands and nervously holding off revolts. This King of Kings is gracious enough to invite us into His glorious redemptive plan, but He doesn’t need our help.

 

This is reason for a sigh of relief, people.

This is reason for wholeheartedly tackling the dreams and goals He has placed in our hearts, because we have the freedom to make mistakes.

This is reason for a fearless fall into the work He has given us, without the strain of unmet expectations, the anxiety of finding your value in your work, or success-driven exhaustion.

This is reason for wholehearted worship of a God who does more than love us, He asks us to be a part of His glorious worldwide redemption.

I don’t know.

Sometimes I wish we wouldn’t lie so much.

We often bemoan the tendency of Christians to pretend that their lives are perfect and they’re doing “just fine.”

But I’m more concerned about our tendency to pretend that we “get” all of it.

I’m sick of feeling the pressure to act like I understand it all, like I don’t have any questions or fears or misunderstandings.

I’m done feeling like I can’t confess that there are some huge questions I have about the Bible. Or admit that there are portions that I just really feel uncomfortable with.

 

When I met Jesus in high school, I decided I wanted to know everything about this crazy thing I was signing up for. I started a plan to read through the Bible in a year, and with a Bible on my left and a journal on my right, I set out to find answers to every remaining question. I was bright-eyed and passionate. I wanted to journal what He was teaching me and keep track of the fresh discoveries I knew awaited me.

Instead, that journal became more like a long list of indictments.

Every time something didn’t make sense or didn’t line up with the suburban American Christianity I’d grown up with, I wrote it down. Every day became less like a diary entry and more like a speeding ticket – a list of all the things I didn’t like. I slowly stopped asking earnest questions and started listing “problems.”

I searched for answers to my questions, but my accusatory spirit was rarely satisfied. I wasn’t content to deal with partially-revealed mysteries. I wanted the whole truth laid out in front of me, and anything less was another chip off my faith.

 

I’m an inquisitive person.

I love solving puzzles, finding solutions, and resolving problems. But this beautiful story is a lot more complex than my little human mind, and my God is a lot bigger than the neat boxes I want to fit Him into.

 

I write a lot about being uncomfortable, but this is one thing I’m learning to be comfortable with: my box of mysteries. (Sounds a little trippy, I know, but stay with me.)

I’m learning to keep a little metaphorical box in my head, where I store all the unanswered questions, uncomfortable theology, and confusing passages of Scripture.

No, I’m not shutting all my questions away until the little box bursts and I totally freak out and abandon the faith.

This box is wide open – things get put in, taken out, studied, examined, and contemplated. Sometimes they get put back in the box and sometimes they get a little more “figured out” and taken out of the box.

The box isn’t there to ward off uncomfortable ideas or confusing questions, it’s there to give them a home. I don’t want to brush them aside or lock them up, I want to keep them safe – a place where it’s okay to pursue truth with passion, but where lingering questions, uncomfortable ideas, and confusing answers can find rest.

I’m learning to be uncomfortable in a lot of areas, but this is one area where my unease is actually really harmful.

I want to squash the uncertain and the complex and straighten everything out into neat lines and boxes. I want an answer to every question, leaving no room for mystery or unknown.

For some reason, I’m afraid to say “I don’t know.”

But there are some questions that aren’t meant to be answered (at least right now). There are some issues so complex and thorny that while I love analyzing them, I end up concluding that I’m okay staying in the camp of “I don’t know.”

My little box is growing, as things I’ve always thought to be true unravel before my eyes and questions I always thought had straightforward answers turn out to be much more complicated.

Don’t get me wrong, some of this is very simple – I’ve given my life to Jesus, and He has taken over all control. He died to save me from the eternal consequences of my sinful nature. He brings renewal, restoration, and redemption.

I don’t want to muddy up the clarity of the Gospel, but I also don’t want to oversimplify the mysteries and wonders of an ancient Book that still speaks to me today.

I’m also realizing that the Story I fell in love with isn’t a moral fairytale or a textbook – it’s a story. A beautiful story in the truest sense – it’s sincere and authentic and complex and lovely. So I don’t need to understand every intricacy or detail. I’ve fallen in love with a grand and masterful story that provides answers to the deepest desires of my heart, even if it doesn’t answer every mystery.

It’s fun and enriching and it’s good work to untangle some uncertainties and answer some questions, but it only stays that way if you recognize the limitations and accept that some mysteries will stay mysteries.

So my box is wide open and it’s carving out a comfortable space for itself in my mind and my heart.

 

When there are only so many chairs at the table.

Competition is built into the very fabric of my being. It takes a lot of prayer to breathe in His grace and exhale my own inner competition.

He is working in me, and I am learning to desire higher things than petty comparisons and trivial successes.

But there is still a part of me that sees everyone as a competitor and every opportunity as a chance to win.

Instead of seeing a friend’s success, I see a missed opportunity. Instead of seeing God working in others, I see my own failures.

I don’t see something profound and beautiful and God-glorifying, I see one less open place for me.

But our God is a God of abundance and there is always room for more.

He is the creator of a million colors, the complex human mind, and two hundred kinds of puppies. (Seriously, that’s the real number.)

He carved sweeping canyons with His words and filled world-covering oceans.

He took a bunch of lost and lonely humans and made them a people. And then He spoke to them.

And just when you thought they had turned from Him too many times, He became Emmanuel. Every time you thought He was fed up with His forgetful and selfish people, He gave more grace upon more grace. More and more and more.

He could have sent His Son to die and told us – “just wait on Earth, you’ll be reconciled to me eventually.”

But the veil was torn, and a weary world was given more than it deserved. More and more and more than it deserved. Over and over again.

He gave out this extravagant gift of hope and eternal life, but He also healed the sick and raised the dead right where they were.

He didn’t come to get the job done and wipe His hands of His silly, fickle people. He came to love all over the place, to teach us truths that enliven our souls this side of Heaven, to keep giving us more than we deserve.

I read the Gospels and its just one act of crazy radical grace after another. He heals the centurion’s servant and then he turns around and raises the mother’s son from the dead.

He teaches and teaches and creates disciples to keep on teaching.

Every time you think He’s done, there’s more.

Our God is a God of abundance.

He prepares a place for us and there is always more room at the table.

Someone taking a seat doesn’t mean there are any less chairs.

But this side of Heaven, sometimes there actually are only so many chairs. Sometimes there are literally only a few chairs at tiny Starbucks tables, and sometimes there are only so many promotions and publishing deals and spots in the show. We live in this world of harsh limits and awkward spaces where I always feel like I’m taking up too much room or talking too loudly. But even on this side of Heaven, He is abundance and there is always more room. It won’t always look the way I imagined and it might hurt more than I thought, but there is always room and He is always giving more grace.

So I’m learning that I only have this one job.

My job is obedience.

My job is to die to myself, and sometimes that means risking my own success to lift up my brother or sister.

My job is to do what He asks, even if it looks like I’ll fail and even if everyone else thinks I’m crazy and even if I have to help someone else “win.”

My job is to do the thing that I do, to do the thing that He keeps asking me to do and the thing He keeps providing the strength and inspiration for.

You also have one job, and it’s the same one I have, but there is no competition. I can’t do your job and you can’t do mine.

You have one job – obedience. Do the thing that you do, the thing that He keeps asking you to do and the thing that He keeps providing the strength and inspiration for.

Every beautiful created thing, every God-glorifying work of art and labor of love is waiting to be done, waiting to be created.

Your job is not to manufacture the results of that creation; your job is to say “yes.” Say “yes” to that thing He is asking you to do. He gives grace upon grace, and your only response can be “yes” upon “yes.”

 

Stop Saying “I’ll Pray for You”

The words felt awkward and insincere coming out of my mouth.

“I’ll be praying for you,” I said, handing over her smashed license plate.

It was about 45 minutes later than I had expected to be at the intersection of Wards and Harvard.

The girl had stumbled out of her crumpled car with panic in her eyes. She had fallen onto the side of the road, head in her hands. I was tapping my foot in the car behind her, unable to see why she had stopped so suddenly.

After some consoling, a few phone calls, and a couple awkward hugs, my friend and I drove away. She was thankful we stopped and she teared up when we offered to pray for her.

But my meager offer of prayers felt uncomfortably forced out of my mouth.

And I could have written a blog post about how loving people will always be awkward and messy and you do it anyway.

But when I honestly asked myself why the sound of my supposedly comforting words sounded so insincere, I realized it was because they were.

I was interested in being the sweet Christian girl that stops at the car accident, hugs the driver, and with hand draped over heart, promises to pray for her. I wasn’t interested in truly loving anyone.

I needed to love that girl, not play the part of “kind passerby.” I needed to stop my car and help – not out of obligation or to snag a little feel-good moment, but out of a genuine desire to love vulnerable and broken people.

I realized “I’ll pray for you” has become like “Bless you” or “How are you?” – it’s lost all meaning.

Instead of building a relationship with this girl, it actually worked like a barrier – the insincerity was palpable. Instead of a gesture growing out of love, it operated like flashing lights announcing my disingenuous religion.

If we really believe that prayers change things, saying “I’ll pray for you” accomplishes nothing unless you actually do it. It becomes an empty religious platitude that does more to distance than it does to unify. If we want to build genuine relationships with people, we have to stop going through the motions and saying the right phrases. It might just be one instance, but they build up until all your interactions with people are built on Christianese and forced smiles.

I’m talking to myself here.

Sometimes I let my identity get so wrapped up in my “good Christian girl” exterior that I forget how broken and depraved my heart really is without Jesus.

I forget how little I have to offer and I start thinking my best “good Christian” performance is all people really need.

I get so filled to the brim with constant violence and destruction I forget to let my heart break for the people right around me.

So I started praying for that girl today. I started praying for her broken car, her rattled spirit, and her financial situation. I prayed that she would come to know Him more through the difficulty of her situation. I prayed that my heart would be broken for people – the starving, the spiritually lost, and the ones stuck on the side of the road with a broken car.

But for my heart to be truly broken, I need to stop mediating my relationships with empty words and meaningless phrases.

So stop saying “I’ll pray for you.” Unless you’re actually going to do it.

Singing in the Scary

He hasn’t really asked me to trust like this before.

 

Usually when I think about trusting Him, it’s either for abstract things like “my future” or for fairly insignificant things like “this Constitutional History test.”

But lately He’s been asking me to trust Him for the concrete, the tangible, and the big.

This kind of trust is different. Next year is bringing a lot of new fears and this time, there are lots of people that think I should listen to them.

When I have a meltdown over a bad test score or a rainy day, my God asks me to trust Him and the world tells me to breathe and keep moving.

When I’m jumping into four years of expensive school and a very loosely sketched idea of what I’m doing, my God asks me to trust Him and the world tells me to run the other way.

Until now, trusting God was often indistinguishable in practice from the world’s advice – take a deep breath, calm down, and move on.

But this is real trust now. This isn’t the kind of trust that looks just like everyone else – making a plan, keeping my head on straight, and putting one foot in front of the other.

This kind of trust is a radical departure from the ways of this world.

Now trusting Him looks like signing up for something that scares me. It looks like diving headfirst into the unknown. It looks like staring the comfortable option in the face and saying “no.”

Oh how I’ve learned to treasure my “nos.” Each one carefully chosen and ready to deploy whenever the world’s obligations and temptations get in the way of the big fat “yes” I gave Him.

 Trusting Him is starting to look like a lot of “nos,” and scary “yes” after scary “yes.”

I guess that’s what the real difference is. In the past, when I would wax poetic about trusting God, I was really just putting spiritual dressing on a tactic I’d have used without Him – stay calm and keep moving.

Get the As, get into the school, get the job, have the kids, do the right thing.

Sure, I said I was “trusting” God, but does it really take trust to do the comfortable thing?

It wasn’t until He asked me to do something scary that I found out just how flimsy my faith was.

I trusted Him up to a certain point, but I wasn’t about to do anything that looked very different from conventional wisdom.

When He asked me to say “yes” to the scary thing, it was hard. But it’s been even harder trusting Him for the little details and the nitty gritty logistics. Saying yes to the big grand romantic vision was scary, but it doesn’t compare to the trust required to stay the course when that big dream starts to scrappily materialize.

I’m learning that trusting Him isn’t the take-a-deep-breath feeling. Trusting Him is saying “yes” to what He asks even when I’m scared.

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

-Psalm 13: 5-6

Trusting Him is rejoicing in the unknown and singing in the scary.

It’s planning and preparing with the knowledge that my pursuits are fruitless if I’m relying on my planning and preparing alone.

It’s letting my belief that His love is unfailing drive every decision I make and every step I take.

Psalm 13 has a nice little ending. But verses 1 and 2 are a little more ominous: How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Rejoicing in that kind of unknown is real trust, real faith.

Singing to the Lord with that kind of anguish and uncertainty takes a rock-solid, concrete faith. It takes trust that gets up and walks.

So I’m working on a faith that looks crazy and radical and downright absurd to the world.

I’m cultivating a faith that says “no” to a lot of reasonable options and chooses its very best “yes” for nothing less than the God of the universe.