How Far Will He Go?

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?  If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
-King David to the Lord God

How far will the Lord go to have us?

The King James translation of the Scripture quoted above uses the word “hell” for “depths,” an accurate translation of the Hebrew word שאול (Sheol).  Sheol means “grave” or “pit” or “the abode of the dead.”  What David is saying here is really scandalous… that no matter where he turns, God is going to be there with him, that no matter where he takes his heart, his God will go with him to that place, only to be with him, only to have him.  (Proof of this is the hell of the Cross that Jesus went through.)

If I really make my bed in the depths of hell, really — meaning, if I really should run as far and as fast in the opposite direction of God and life and freedom and chain myself to soul-whores and lay my heart out on the alter of my idols that steal my life and breath and if I seal my mouth with a death-mask to suffocate myself — will He really still be there, “His right hand to hold me fast?”

The reason this is so obscene is that it shatters our comfy-cozy pictures of God, our flimsy perceptions that melt when the heat gets turned up in our lives.  The God that David sings to here — and no doubt David surely knows what it is to be in the deep, lonely dark of hell on earth — this is a bold-ass God, one with a heart that is merciful, resistless, fierce, and fiercely determined to have our hearts, no matter what we do with them or where we take them.

Imagine the implications of this.  Wherever we are, right now, God is holding fast to us.  God is a blink away, a turn of the head, a imperceptible whisper, a collapse, a stumble, a glance.  Certainly hell is not where God wants us to make our beds, but David knew a God who would reach that far to be with him, to be near him, to bring him back home to His heart.

The direction of our entire lives can change with the subtlest and weakest nod in the direction of life, the faintest heart-cry for rescue.  He knocks at our heart’s door — oh, does He knock!  And throw rocks to our windows and cry out for us to let Him in! — and we only have to muster the strength to turn the knob… and in He rushes, catches us, anchors us, and invites us to a table fellowship, a friendship, to be His companion through it all.

This is astounding.  It is a moonshine-grace so pure as to blind anyone who would dare sip it, and all the while give us eyes to really see the lovesick heart of this pursuing God who will have us, no matter what.

Nothing is beyond Him, including you and me right here, right now.  His life wins us back from death.  This is salvation, being saved by His life (Romans 5:10).

 

Losing Heart

I’ve been a believer for three days now, this time around.  For almost two days before that, a total agnostic. Thirty-six hours of godlessness.  I didn’t pray.  I didn’t even lift my head.  I didn’t want to hear from God.  I wasn’t even sure He existed.

I was angry and hurt.  Exhausted.  Pissed.  Something was seething underneath, breaking through like oozing lava, fiery hot and ready to destroy.  Cars on the freeway.  People in the office.  My family and friends.  It didn’t matter.  Everyone was a target.

And then, as quickly as it came on, it left.  God broke through with the words, “You’ve lost heart, my son.”

“What?  Lost heart?  What are you talking about?”
“Yes, lost heart.”
“Me?  When?”  But even as I asked it, I knew He was right.  He must have known, too, because there was no specific reply, only an invitation to reflect on the previous hours of marked change in my perspective, in my outlook on things.
“What happened, God?  Why?”
“You lost heart because you lost hope.”

I knew it was true.  There had been several things that happened at once in my life, several things that seemed to break at the same time.  News of friends’ dissolving marriage.  A close family member sick.  Disappointment.  Pain all around.  It seemed too much to bear.  I couldn’t hold onto all of it.  I couldn’t hold onto hope that God would come through in all of it.  It felt too easy to kill hope, since it was too painful to hold onto, embrace a kind of cynical despair.  I did it without even thinking, and the result could not have been more disastrous.

I was suddenly reminded of the scripture speaking of hope being the springboard for both faith and love (Colossians 1:5).  That reflected in my life that day and a half.  My walk with God was stunted, even paralyzed.  And I could not love well.

It’s not an unfamiliar place, I suspect.  There are more godless days in my life than I’d like to admit.  Less than there used to be, but they are still there.  Days when I don’t really expect God to show up.  Days I let him off the hook, and plan everything so that if He didn’t show up, I’d still be okay.  I wouldn’t expect anything from Him.  Most of the friends I’ve spoken with about this recognize it well, too.  In fact, searching the Scriptures, I find that the Bible is quick to point out that most friends of God at one time or another crumbled under the weight of a fallen world.  Abraham.  Moses.  Jonah.  Elijah.  All his disciples.  The list goes on.  We’re in good company.  In His mercy, God is quick to pick us back up, dust us off, and set us again on the road by His side.

But we must learn from the Master how to live well, how to “live a life worthy of the calling we’ve received” (Ephesians 4:1).

That’s why God reminds us constantly not to lose heart.  In Hebrews 12:3, for example, we’re told to consider Jesus — think on Him, think of what He endured while on earth — so that we don’t grow weary and lose heart.  He endured more than we can imagine.  We need to learn from Him how He did it.

For one thing, we are being transformed.  It’s not by our good deeds, but by Jesus’ love for us.  We are being made into His likeness.  All we must do is trust Him enough to make this happen in us (2 Corinthians 3:18, 4:1).  Trust that He will come through for us.  Trust that He is for us.

When the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, several workers fell to their deaths before it was decided, halfway through the construction to put a safety net underneath the structure.  The second half of the work was completed nearly twice as fast as the first half, since the men knew they were safe.  Several still fell; no one died.

We are not condemned when we fall.  We are free men and women, free in the love and life of our God.  Jesus is, in a very literal sense, our safety net.  Like He did me just days ago, He will pick us up, dust us off, and set us back again on the Way.  He is our light through this world.  He lived, more than any other man before or since, He was alive.  And His life is our light as well, too, come alive.  (see John 1:4).

 

Repentance

It’s not a popular word, repentance, even in Christian circles.  All kinds of images come to mind when you think of it: a grown woman crawling on hands and knees on cold pavement for hundreds of yards as she approaches the steps of a Bolivian cathedral; loud and embarrassing wailing from overly-dramatic congregates during the invitational at a “Spirit-filled” church; guilt- and shame-ridden self-flagellation.  None of it sounds appealing, that’s for sure.

But the repentance I want to mention here is more of a fainting than anything else.  It’s a collapsing, a kind of falling down, under the weight of things.  But it’s falling down before the God who catches us.  It has to do with rest, with quietness, with trust (Isaiah 30:15), an coming-to-the-senses and embracing the reality that all these things we do apart from Christ, we really can’t do (John 15:4).  Even if they are good things for the Kingdom.

Over the last few months, I’ve been there, coming back to the heart of God and the salvation offered through Jesus.  (Once again, all kinds of things come to mind with the word salvation.  Here, I mean a rescue, a shouldering of burdens, a kind of brother-like sharing in the experience of living, and at the same time a restoration in the heart of reality — of my place with God and my role alongside Him.)  Back in April of this year, I wrote

Over the last couple of months, I have been in a journey of repentance, of returning back to the heart of God and His life in subtle ways, of re-orienting my heart back to Him. A re-consecration of my whole being to Him.

So, I guess it’s been more than just a couple of months that I’ve been on this journey back deeper into the heart of my Father.  And maybe it’s just an ongoing process.  Maybe our journey to God is better described as a constant return back to God.  I think this is how C.S. Lewis thought of it.

Lately, I have recognized areas where I have tried to go it on my own, resulting in three primary effects in my life: pride, unbelief, and idolatry.  Man, even laying them out there like that is painful.  It’s hard to see those thrown out there like that.  But there they are.

And here’s what I mean, in brief… When I am really burdened with something, I rarely go to God and lay down my burden fully and abandon it to Him and expecting in return for the exchange an increased intimacy with Him.  Instead, I hide from Him, and hide my burden from Him, ashamed that I am not strong enough to carry it… or, I will go to Him with my burden, pray about them, and then leave shouldering the same heavy loads (not having laid them down radically at his feet), still thinking I am supposed to be strong enough to shoulder them on my own:

Pride.

I am fearful that Jesus will not meet me where I am and bring me into intimacy with Himself, will not bring me to life:

Unbelief.

And so I choose instead to find some sense of strength in something else, typically for me a false idea that I am more spiritual than I really am.  And I have to portray that to others because instead of being able to find my identity and sense of validity in Jesus’ present and immediate love for me, I have to find it in what others think of me:

Idolatry.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  -Matthew 11:28-30

This is what I’m returning back to.  I’ve come to think that the invitation Jesus offers is radically different than what we often do.  It’s not enough for us to come to Him, hold up our weakness and weariness, and ask for Him to help us with it.  He’s asking more of that.  He’s asking that we completely abandon it, lay it down totally, so that we are free to enter into discipleship with Him (take His yoke).   We can’t demand that God do something about your burden.  We can’t even fret about it at all anymore, even to look at it.  We must instead fix your eyes on Him.  This is the command of Scripture, repeatedly (Hebrews 12:2, 12:3; Philippians 4:8; Psalm 34:5; Colossians 3:1; 1 Chronicles 16:11; Psalm 105:4; Psalm 123:2; Matthew 6:33; Psalm 37:4).  Only then will we understand that the truer story of our lives was never really about the burden to begin with, but rather about the intimate relationship between God and us.

Michael Warden, in The Transformed Heart, has written about this process.  We abandon our heart to His strength and to His life.  That’s repentance.  That’s rest.  That’s trust.  And in that act is our salvation.  It’s not about doing more; it’s not about doing at all.  It’s about collapsing into the strength and love of Christ.  Once we are free to join with Jesus in who He is and what He is about (taking His yoke, becoming His disciple), He will teach us not how to shoulder the burdens better (remember, we have completely forgotten about them), but rather He will teach us about Himself, and about where real life is found — the life we have been looking for all our lives and only mistakenly thought was somehow tied to our shouldering the weight of the world.

None of this is easy.  Man, I know that full well.  That’s why it’s taken me some time for God to pierce through my fear and defenses to bring me into this journey.  Like everyone, I have a host of burdens — hopes and dreams that I still strive for, pains and hurts I still run and hide from, a life I worry will collapse around me, day-to-day details I fear won’t go well, and the list goes on.  How is it that Jesus could possibly ask of me to abandon these things to Him?!  Abandon them?! Meaning, no longer even think of them?  Yet this is what Jesus is talking about when He says that if we seek to save our lives, we will lose them, but if we lose them for His sake, we will find them (Matthew 10:39).

And I think it’s a harder thing for many of us Christians who have been walking with God for some time, not because we don’t have experiences where He has come through on His word and shown Himself good — for certainly He has — but because we think we are supposed to be doing all this good stuff we have going on and that surely God has expected that we shoulder it.  I mean, He has given us all kinds of opportunities and ministries and we see all kinds of needs, so surely we are meant to carry it.

But to take His yoke upon ourselves is to enter into the kind of life Jesus lives and live it the way He lives it.  It’s to come alongside of Him and walk in step with Him in the same direction as Him.  And He is always about intimacy with the Father and the ransom of our hearts back to His.  Always, every time.  That’s His singular stance.

There’s been a shift in my own heart through the course of even the last few days.  Even the way I’m seeing things has changed.  I’d say things feel lighter, and that my orbit is changing a bit as I am gravitating back to Jesus as the source of my strength and joy.  I’m learning again to seek Him first and to delight in Him — meaning that all my attention and affection that would have otherwise been spent securing what I need to continue on is now spent on Him.  It’s only in that place of truly abiding in Him will we have life.  Only.  He says that, very explicitly.

for more, see The 12 Most Profound Ideas I Ever Had, George MacDonald’s Self Denial , and the last paragraph of Mere Christianity.

 

How Near is the Kingdom?

How much is God on our side?  How much can we trust Him, I mean, to be our comforter and provider?  I often think of it as our being on His side, not He on ours (He is, after all, God!), but when it comes to mercy, we need Him to come to us.  But how can He?  Are we not too ungodly for Him to come near?  And then we cannot receive Him when He does come, as the Savior and the Lover He’s promised to be for us.  But does He come near?  Is He really that accessible?

When Jesus showed up in the flesh, John the Baptist warned those who came to see him to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”  It was not, notice, “Repent so that the kingdom can come near,” for it — He — was already close by!  It was, rather, a warning to change their mind about things so that they could receive the kingdom.

I think this is where many Christians find themselves now.  The longer we wallow in the “Woe is me.  I cannot enjoy the life of God because I am unclean,” the longer we cannot, indeed, enjoy the life of God — not because we are unclean but rather because we are unbelieving.  For not only is the Lord God the Life we need (the justice and mercy, the love, the connection), He is also the Water to wash us clean, ther tears of mercy weeping to wash over us.  Woe is me, for sure, if I had only my means to reach the Lord God!

But He is more for us than we must think.  This is the secret depth of His great love shown for us at the cross, in the death of Jesus.  He stood in for us!  We repent when we simply embrace that so that we can embrace Him.  Then we begin living in this kingdom, in the reign of the King Jesus, with full and complete access into His presence.  That’s why we can come boldly into His throneroom, because our failure and shortcomings are no longer an issue between us and God — at all.  He has come, bringing the Kingdom of God along with Him in the train of His robe.

There is so much deep, bewildering, astounding truth here that to grasp it in its fullness could kill a man by the sheer ecstasy that would follow, by the  unspeakably beautiful grace.  It’s like Moses seeing the back side of God.  Any more revelation and he would die.

Perhaps that is why I am slow to grasp even the most elementary of God’s provisions for me.  Maybe I must go it slowly, with He controlling the locks of the dam of His greatness and glory.  I have asked many times — begging on my knees — that He would release His full revelation to me.  Perhaps it is mercy that stays the flood.  And, perhaps it is persistence that will find me in the deepest end of it, conquered and overtaken.

I think that would be a cool way to die.  Someone finds my bloated, drowned body.  They notice a curious and out-of-place smile frozen on my face, and my eyes are stuck wide-open.  “Poor fool” is repeated again and again by those attending the funeral service, by the same who did not understand when I was alive what it was I was running after.  More true than they realize would be their comment, “He fell of the deep end.”  The simple phrase on my tombstone would tell all: “He cried out for rain all his life.  In the end, he got what he wanted, for ‘what the righteous desire will be granted’ (Proverbs 10:24).”

Righteous, not by my own merit, but because I embraced what Jesus has done for me, and entered into the kingdom at hand.

 

Letting Go of Guilt

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? -Romans 2:4

Guilt, originally uploaded by Grenen.

A friend, Joe, and I were recently discussing the prominent role that guilt seems to play in many people’s lives. In particular, Joe told me how much he’s lived his Christian life holding onto guilt like Charlie Brown’s friend Linus does his blanket. He had been told in church all his life that he was a sinner, and the message to him was that he was saved but he needed to cling to guilt. It became a kind of litmus test for those in his

fellowship: they knew they were “saved” as long as they felt guilty. If ever they questioned their salvation, they would only have to reflect a bit. As long as they discovered that they had a nagging sense of transcendental guilt clutching at their soul, weighing on them with its claws and talons sunk deep into their flesh, they knew they were safe.

I have often seen how we handle this in Christian circles, and I think that at core it comes down to a distrust in the heart of God. In some of these circles — not all, but some — we keep coming back again and again and again to the feet of Jesus to ask forgiveness for the very same sins. This return to seek forgiveness for the very same sins over and again seems to suggest that forgiveness is either all that is offered, or all that we receive. There is no deep, inner change or transformation that makes us able to live and not fall into the same patter of adultery against God’s heart.

But there may even be something deeper. I have often wondered if we receive forgiveness and even a measure of holiness from the Lord God, only to continue to clutch tightly our feelings of guilt, because we are somehow convinced that at least our guilt will keep us close to the heart of God. Right? If I’m miserable in my constant guilt, at least that misery will take me to the cross. Repeatedly. But what happens when we do not leave the guilt there and receive the life that Jesus offers in exchange? And is guilt the same thing as conviction, that deep work of the Holy Spirit to bring us back into the life of the Trinity? Are they one and the same? Does God condemn ?

Over the last couple of months, I have been in a journey of repentance, of returning back to the heart of God and His life in subtle ways, of re-orienting my heart back to Him. A re-consecration of my whole being to Him. I have often gone to the Lord to ask for forgiveness for not following Him “better,” for not being a better disciple. Well, recently God addressed this. Pointedly. Strongly. To the degree that I get the feeling He is very passionate about this.

Very plainly, He said to me, “Enough. I have forgiven you. You are holding onto your guilt thinking that it will keep you close to me. It will not. You must now let that go and follow Me. Come to me now for Me, and trust Me, not guilt, to be your Savior.”

Now what do I do with that? I realized at that moment that I cling to guilt because it is safe. To let it go means that I would be free. And freedom is a weighty thing. As Dallas Willard has said, “We are creatures given such diverse possibilities that they can actually lead us to heaven or to hell,” and our choices are constantly edging us closer to one or the other of those realities.

Friends, that is what we need God for. Oh yes, we need His mercy and forgiveness. Desperately. But we need that not as an end in itself, but as means back into His confidence. Back into the “sacred circle” of Love. And we need there so that God will be our constant guide and companion through this life, because if we are to find the “narrow way” that leads to life, it will not be by our cleverness or technological advances or religious dabbling, but rather by the very present and wise God speaking to us. Our hearts need the rescue that God has given us through Jesus, so that we may “reign in life” as He does (Romans 5:17). Our sin separates us from that life; God gives us the dignity of restoration back into it.

 

Treasures of Darkness

As I write this, I am in a café, sitting in the corner, trying hard not to make a scene. I am weeping, suppressing groans and cries and wails so that I won’t be asked to leave. I came to read and study for a class I have in a few hours. Instead, I am humbled and awed and stunned into… into weeping.

You will understand a bit better after I explain in brief what happened this weekend. I have a friend, a friend I have known all of my life (who I speak of here), who has lived a crushingly destructive life. The choices he makes consistently wounds those around him, and the closer they are, the more he is meant to love them, the more he cuts and tears at them. His wife and children come to mind.

A couple of weeks ago I came to the end of my patience with his actions and choices. I love him too much to be passive and watch as he destroys himself. I wanted to call the true man into the ring. I set up a time to meet with him. There were two things I needed to get across at this meeting. One was that I wanted him to begin seeing the damage he has caused, the hurt and destruction his life has left in its wake. I wanted him to take a serious, unflinching glare into it. And second, I needed to let him know that I would no longer relate to him on any level except the most authentic: his damaging lifestyle. I would speak to him on no other plane except to bring him to reality and then, to help him to change only if he so chose. But that would come later. First, I wanted him broken and humbled and contrite at what he has done to himself and others.

Not an easy task. I felt going into the meeting a bit like Jeremiah, the prophet of hard sayings, the weeping prophet whose message from the Lord to Israel was brutal and harsh, since she had turned from her Lover-Lord to pursue other bedfellows. Someone had to bring her back to her senses. I knew that chances of success were higher if he were to come to an autonomous decision and understanding of his predicament through exploration and insight into his life, rather than having someone thrust upon him in impotent explanation what he is doing. He needed to see for himself, from his heart, the effects of his choices.

I realized this was my desire for this man.

What happened the day the meeting came is hard to explain. I almost want to fall back on the mythic tone of Scripture to describe the nature of the events, the way that I participated in something already going on, that I had a front-row seat to some deep and mysterious and even mystical change in the core recesses of this man’s very soul. And I use the word “soul” in the most literal sense, as that aspect of the whole being “that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self,” as Dallas Willard defines it. The “life-center” of the human being. My wrenching and mourning heart calling his to the same.

But he was already there. It was breakfast. We sat down to eggs and bacon and coffee, this man and me. I was prepared for what I’ve come to see as his typical defense against seeing the truth of his life: manipulation, control, threats, escape. I imagined him decking me or stabbing me with the yoke-soaked fork or just walking out, unable to hear what I was burdened to bring him.

Instead, he choked on the first words out of his mouth, words that I could barely understand but heard as “I am a bad father.”

I was stunned. I sat quietly while he tried to regain his composure. I came to speak honestly, man to man, and so I only said, “Yes, you are.”

The next four hours – four hours – we spoke about the decisions he has made in his life, of the way he cannot do what he has sincere intention to do (Romans 7), of the demons that have gained control over various aspects of his life, of what it means to be a father and a son and a brother and a friend of God, of repentance and forgiveness, of wounds and the messages about life interpreted from them, of his growing up and about his God.

Somehow, through it all, I came to see that I wasn’t doing anything but observing what was already going on in deep places in him. Before I arrived, I wondered how I would possibly be able to speak to the real man, to the deep and true person underneath the defenses and walls erected throughout his life to protect himself from abandonment and rejection. But I never had to. His heart was already ripe for the harvest, so to speak.

Understand, I love this man deeply. I want him to change for his own sake and the sake of his family. But I knew that in order to do so he had to recognize the way he lives first. The prodigal only began the trek back home when he looked around him and saw himself eating from pig troughs and remembered his father’s home. I came to meet this guy at feeding time and wanted to invite him to look around himself.

James tells us to “grieve, mourn and wail” and to “change our laughter to mourning and our joy to gloom.” And this is why. To look honestly at our situation and predicament often calls for that: mourning. This friend this day was mourning. God was “cutting the bars of iron” in the rescue of his soul (see Isaiah 45:2-3). And I got to witness it. I got to plunder the “treasures of darkness and hidden riches” of his soul and the vision of it redeemed. I got to participate so that I would know that “the Lord called me by name.”

I am barely able to write through the tears. This is what it means to praise the Living God, to be so grateful that you fall before Him speechless.

What I wrote a month back (in this post) about this friend and his situation was that “the love my wife and I have for [he and his family] is not enough to ransom them from this snare. They need the unyielding ministry of Christ in the deepest places.” And this is, it turns out, a great picture of what is happening for this man now: Jesus painfully and violently breaking him out of the illusions with an unyielding intention to bring him into truth and life. It is a severe mercy, this ransom of the treasure of his heart from darkness.