God Cogs: Sweating it out

Great emails yesterday. I do appreciate your ideas so much, and one particular person’s thoughts have been rattling around in my head since.

“Why would I choose to die?” she wrote. “Why would Jesus make following Him so hard?”

GREAT questions.

I’m not sure I can be completely coherent, because I’ve only thought about this for one day, but let’s give it a whirl, shall we?

I don’t think Jesus intended for it to be hard. It is hard, that I will agree with, but the real problem is that the WORLD is not what Jesus intended it to be. There was a plan in place, originally, that did not include all the crap that goes on – the selfishness, the violence, the competition – you know, all the stuff that makes for good TV.

Resisting the flow of the culture (i.e. dying to desires) is like swimming upstream or trying to master the Wipeout course (Weds 8/7c on ABC). Dying to what I impulsively or logically think is right makes space for God’s thoughts and God’s ideas to fill me up. The new, eventually, becomes the norm.

Ah, but here’s the rub. The CHURCH is also influenced by this wave, and so she has gotten a little off course. In many places, she has forgotten the central message of Grace, opting instead for a behavior modification program. YES, my behavior changed when I became a Christian, but the difference was the result of a heart change that occurred when I encountered Grace. I could never follow a code of conduct, but I can love someone in order to realize the peace that Jesus dreamt of. Out of love for Him, I am learning to love others.

I know lots of folks who grew up going to church but are no longer interested. I most often hear phrases like, “It really works for my parents, but it’s just not for me.” Or sometimes I hear, “The church is too concerned with things that I don’t think God is overly upset about.”

In many ways, I agree. But again, God intended something different for the church than she is. He longs for it to be a place where you really tell the truth about what you think and feel – a place of safety. Too often, well meaning parents dressed their children for church and told them it was a place to “behave” out of reverence for God. Never did you speak of what was really going on inside you, because church was like a place where you were on your best behavior. Some of us got so good at modifying our behavior that we survived adolescence at church, but we became so weary and so tired of it in adulthood, that we no longer can muster the energy to sit in a pew. Funny, but none of our resistance is really about whether God is real or not – it’s mostly about finding a real way to connect with Him.

Remember that Jesus gravitated toward bad behavior. He longed to redeem not just the circumstances, but the person that was drowning in them.

Choosing to die, then, is more about opening space up inside me than opting for a martyr complex. Sometimes people say that they became a Christian because of the promise of heaven. Ok, I think heaven will be cool, but I embraced Jesus because I wanted real life – life that starts here and now. Dying to ideas and behaviors that are contrary to His ideal simply makes room for real life.

Help stamp out dirt

When I was in the 9th grade, I played the part of Cinderella in a play entitled, “The Truth About Cinderella.” It was a spoof of the well-known tale, and Cinderella suffered from an OCD – compelled to clean and clean and clean – a trait she had inherited from her late mother.

I don’t remember all the lines or lyrics, but I do remember a few bars of one particular song that revealed the life lessons that Cinderella’s mom had taught her:

Scrub the windows and the doors
Wash the hearthstone and the grates
You could eat off Mamma’s floors
Which saved dirtying her plates
She reminded me as I clung to her skirt
To help stamp out dirt!

It’s funny, but I’m pretty far away from 9th grade, but I still have the tune and those lyrics run through my brain when I am tempted to over-achieve. It’s interesting, but as I have gotten older, and stopped trying to clean up my own messes, I make less of them.

It’s the same truth we always talk about. If we try to yank up or weed out the things in our life that are dirty, we often end up experiencing continued failure. Continued failure ultimately leads to a sense of defeat – the place where we stop trying altogether.

God offers us a different way. He does the cleaning, the changing, and we just cooperate. And, amazingly enough, the less I strive the more I thrive (catchy, huh?).

Cooperating with God does require that I point my feet in His direction, which is an act of my will, but the power to be different does not come from within me. Determination and perseverance are not nearly enough, as anyone who has tried long-term inner change will admit. But my small and weak will, partnered with His big and strong power, can help stamp out dirt.

God Cogs - Joining the Resistance

While at children’s camp last week, the speaker created a top ten list of “ways kids can stay pure.” No, he wasn’t specifically talking about sexual purity, he was talking about heart purity – which I’m a big fan of. Naturally, the list made my head want to explode, particularly #5 which was, “Make up your mind to be pure.”

A large part of the reason that I think the church in North America is in the trouble she’s in is that we have taught people to join the Resistance. I have said it before on this blog, but “Where there’s a will there’s a way” is an out and out lie, but we keep teaching some form of it from our pulpits, to our children, and heaven help us, even to our teenagers.

Yesterday, we told ourselves the truth about ourselves (or asked someone else to). Many of the fill-in-the-blank obstacles we face are created by feelings and perceived needs. I feel left out. I need to be in charge. I need you to love me. I feel alone. I need to understand. I feel unimportant. I need to be right.

Most of us struggle with being mastered by our feelings – such as anger, fear, sexual attraction, desire for food, need to look good, rehearsing how victimized we are – you get what I mean here? And here’s the root of the problem since we’re not faking:

WE BELIEVE IN OUR HEART OF HEARTS THAT OUR FEELINGS ARE THERE TO BE SATISFIED. Some of us are better at managing the problem no doubt, but most of us live motivated by what we feel, even if we claim we don’t.

But here’s what I think Jesus wants us to realize: THE PERSON WHO HAPPILY LETS GOD BE GOD ACCEPTS THAT FEELINGS DO NOT NECESSARILY EXIST TO BE FULFILLED.

As a matter of fact, once we get our arms around the truth of it, we understand that the most satisfied among us are those who are not dictated by feelings.

So what, we resist them? We fight them? We stifle them? We deny them? How do we rid ourselves of our “fill in the blank?”

The more we open our lives up to God, and embody His gospel, the more His very Person fills us and permeates our insides, ultimately crowding out the feelings that are an obstacle to kingdom life. He both removes and transforms that which is out of control within us, and one of the fruits of His indwelling presence is self-control. Apart from Him, resistance is a myth.

And what feelings will dominate a life that has been inwardly transformed by Christ? Feelings of love, joy, patience – and the underlying peace associated with these feelings – will begin to mark our lives. Not overnight, but over time.

God Cogs - did you hear something?

Confession: this is not the original post that I wrote for today. As a matter of fact, there was another one up for almost 4 ½ hours before I took it down. Perhaps you read it.

There was nothing wrong with the first post, except for the fact that it kept haunting me. There was something I was missing or not communicating correctly and I had this nagging feeling like I had jumped the gun and need to think the issue through some more.

The internal restlessness produced another God Cog. If you’re new to the blog, every once in a while I get inspired to write about God’s ways, how He brings about relationship and transformation in my life.

Have you ever heard someone say, “God told me to…” or “When God spoke to me…” or “I felt prompted to…” or some variation of those phrases? I am often asked how it is I hear God or how does He speak to me, and last night’s twang of conscience reminded me of a few truths.

First of all, I have heard stories of people having WOW moments where lightning struck and a booming voice came out of the sky and gave them a clear message or instruction. I have never had a moment like that, but God has communicated with me, in my spirit, so plainly that it has been just as WOW.

If you want to hear God plainly, one of the best places to start is the Bible. It is the Story of God. We can get into a huge debate about its inerrancy if you want, but I believe it contains everything I need for the working out of my life with God. When I read the words of Jesus, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full,” He is telling me about His purposes and what He dreams for me – full life! If you’ve never read the Bible before, open it up to 1 John. John, the disciple that Jesus loved, starts by saying that he wrote all of these words simply because he knew Jesus personally and he wants to tell us what he experienced. It is very cool.

Once I chose to cooperate with God, I began to know Him. I began to see and hear everything differently. It became impossible to walk away from someone in need. I learned to listen beneath what people were saying, past their words right to their fears and hopes and hearts. Many times, throughout my life, God has directly spoken to me. It’s like an undeniable prompting or a thought I would not have had on my own, urging me to attend to something or someone. Often God just tells me how much He loves me (God is crazy about me, by the way) and I sense His pleasure and the deep peace of belonging to Him and having a life full of meaning. But I hear Him, in part, because I’m listening.

One more way that God speaks is through other people. Just this week, a beautiful woman that I met here in AZ, told me that I wasn’t really here to work on a video. Now, of course I am here to work on a video, but I have also talked with countless people about what they are feeling and how they are processing life around them while I’ve worked. When I was told that I was here to do more, I became alert to the possibility that someone may need my help AND that I may be here to be helped as well. God opened my mind through her words.

Communication with God is possible. God knows where you’ve been, accepts who you are, yet still, gently, invites you to grow. Step into grace and listen. I’ll bet He says something. He's crazy about you too.

God Cogs - proof of alien life

I have two friends who have told me about their experiences growing up in Catholicism. Now, I love to go to mass even though I am not Catholic. The language and ritual fascinate me and I find it to be beautiful and engaging, even though I can never figure out when to sit, stand or kneel.

One thing that my friends have told me is that they never read the Bible growing up. Their homes had the family show Bible on the shelf, but it was not a book that was opened. My family opened our Bibles, but far too often the evangelical church emphasized an adherence to rules, not an embracing of life.

Through the ages, Christians have labored their way through spiritual formation, almost as if becoming like Christ was a mysterious or hard to grasp process - one that was so above our heads that we either abandoned the notion or we made our way through with great difficulty - almost as if life was like constantly solving a puzzle that was too hard for us. Spiritual formation, the process of becoming like Jesus, is not random or magically conferred upon us in the midst of rituals AND it is not an adherence to rules.

So, why does it seem so hard and/or mysterious? Did God make it that way? Do we?

The kingdom life that we talked about in our last God Cog is possible, but when we read the New Testament, the kingdom life that we find there is so unlike our own experience. One of the biggest obstacles is our understanding of how to enter in - we just don‘t get it. In other words, I want to cooperate, but how? There is one particular Bible verse that I repeat inside my mind and heart a lot. It quotes Jesus and says:

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39

What feels like life, leads to death and what feels like death leads to life. Understanding this to be true, opens up a huge avenue to spiritual formation for us! For instance, when I have been intentionally hurt by someone, my gut reaction is to defend myself or lash out in anger, isn’t it? I want to discredit the person and tell others why his/her behavior is so bad so that I will not be misunderstood. It just feels right. It feels like the way to solve the problem. Jesus is saying to us that what feels right, the things that are our gut reactions, the logical courses of action that we embrace as human beings are distorted because of sin. Spend a day observing your children, your coworkers, your neighbors, your local news and tell me that it’s not true.

The completely non-mysterious, yet radical remedy, is believing that what initially feels like death, leads to real life. When I choose to LOVE the person who has harmed me, when I try to understand the hurt in his/her heart that has resulted in bad behavior, and when I forgive freely and without request - THAT IS SOME CRAZY AGAINST MY NATURE STUFF ("man, this is killing me")- but it leads me to real life and transformation. It leads me to the kingdom - peace, mutual love, joy. It also explains why the Apostle Peter said we were aliens and strangers in the world. To live like this is sort of paranormal.

Seem impossible? Next God Cog we will talk about the often quoted, but so untrue, cliché, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” Absolutely false. Until then, ask God to show you His ways, the kingdom ways, that are contrary to your impulses. Life will be different today - almost like living in a flying saucer.

God Cogs - More CHANGE than even Obama offers

After yesterday’s post, I received three emails asking me about this cooperation business and about how God works. SO – I have decided to start a new group of posts entitled, “God Cogs” that attempt to articulate this living by the Spirit that I talk about. They’ll pop up every once in a while.

I do find it interesting, though, that so many people see God’s ways as subjective, which offers us another piece of evidence to support the self-centeredness of humankind (as if we needed any more).

Our prayers are a good indication of how we view God and not just how often we pray, but when and how. I think there are many people who view prayer as a speech, or a bailing bucket (you know – what you grab when the ship is sinking) or a quick way to get a shot of good karma. Then there are the prayers that include, “Thy will be done” but go on to tell God what His will actually is.

OK – so our first God cog is to realize that God can and will actually change our minds about things. When I say change, I mean it in the most exciting sense. Not only can God change our ideas about Him and the world and ourselves, but He can actually CHANGE our minds – to the point where our thought PROCESSES are different. In other words, life needn’t be just a continual battle, fighting against my inclination to be self-centered and conflicted, but I can actually have a different mind - the mind of Christ – and God does all the work.

The Bible, in a book called Romans, says it like this: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

How do we begin to cooperate with God's work - this transforming? What is our part?

Let’s just start today with opening our mind up to POSSIBILITIES. I think we have become a little jaded in our culture. We sort of throw up our hands and feel helpless when we look at the world or look at ourselves. But that’s why Jesus kept talking about a kingdom. You know those movies that have some sort of knight love story going on? There is always a castle and a kingdom that surrounds it, and each kingdom has a community and a way of life. So it is with God’s kingdom. There is a realm where peace, genuine mutual love and joy exists. And I dare to believe that when Jesus prayed, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” He was blatantly telling us that the kingdom is possible here and now.

God can and wants to change my mind. I want my mind changed, too. So, in cooperation, I will open my mind to kingdom possibilities and I will dare to consider that God has the ability and power to change possibilities into realities. God will build faith, I just give Him a permit to do it in me.

Maybe today’s prayer can be different than the norm. How about, “Help me, God, to see things the way You do. Show me the possibilities. I am open to being changed. Amen.”