I am not, by natural inclination, given to letting my emotions rule me. I joke with my cousin that I am “dead inside,” which always elicits a reproving look from her. She feels that such is a self-fulfilling prophecy; if I think of myself as dead inside, then I shall truly be dead inside because I will behave as if I am dead inside, so it won’t make a difference whether or not I truly am dead inside because for all practical intents and purposes, I will be dead inside. Confused? Good. Let’s press on.
I say this as a preface to a recent realization. As with many things that flit about in my mind, it involves God. And Sex. Not that I constantly associate God with Sex; quite the contrary. Usually the things of Sex appear in direct conflict with the things of God. But, in thinking about my relationship with God as a marriage, I was struck by the analogy of Sex as a climactic experience, a visceral rapture, an emotional high that adds an exclamation point to the sentence of marriage.
I enjoy experiences. Should I ever have the chance, I will no doubt enjoy sex a great deal. It is easy to understand why humans pursue sex so ardently, why they place such a premium on the associations with sex: physical beauty, stamina, etc. The easier and more pleasurable sex is to enjoy, the more fruitful and successful one’s life will be deemed to be.
And I think that often times Christians have a similar attitude toward God. We want a transcendent experience of God, a burning in the bosom; the “mountaintop experience” as it has become known in church parlance. We want such an experience because it reasserts our conviction that a) God exists, b) He loves us, and c) we are progressing in our relationship with Him.
This seems awfully similar to sex in the context of a relationship, doesn’t it? The quantity and quality of sex serves as a benchmark for their connection to each other, how much they love each other, and how well their relationship is going.
In this context the skyrocketing divorce rate becomes much more understandable, since part of the allure and pleasure of sex is the exotic discovery of something new, something hitherto unexperienced. And as the newness fades, so too must the conviction on each part of the other’s love and devotion, as well as their assessment of the relationship. “You’ve lost that loving feeling,” the Righteous Brothers crooned, and that becomes the excuse for jumping ship on marriage; the sex isn’t good, thus the relationship is floundering, and "I’ve grown accustomed to her face” (to complete the bizarre cultural references). I keep returning to Lewis’ essay “We Have No Right To Happiness,” but it continues to offer relevant commentary upon not only daily life but spiritual matters as well, and this is one of the main themes he outlines. Familiarity breeds boredom, and this spurs the search for the new experience, unavailable within the confines (a telling designation, is it not?) of the marriage.
Not incidentally, the “divorce” rate of Christians from a transformed, vital, and impacting effect upon the world directly relates to their divorce from a true understanding of their relationship with God. They want the mountaintop, and if they don’t experience it they think their relationship is flawed and needs to be fixed.
Once you experience that mountain top experience, the natural tendency is to reproduce it. But real marriage doesn’t work that way. As we established, sexual attraction fades over time. But in true marriage, it is replaced by a comfortable affection, a deep love and appreciation for the other person, an ever-increasing wonderment and humility as you understand more and more the other person, and as you are revealed more and more to them. That is the heady draught that a truly rich relationship graduates to: love that is patient, kind, long-suffering, faithful, never remembers wrongs, never stops hoping and forgiving, never fails. This draught doesn’t dazzle the taste buds like the first drink of experience did, but it satisfies and endures in ways the other could not.
But if the relationship is built upon the experience of sex, then when the sex disappears, usually one or both go looking for it elsewhere and doom the relationship most of the time. And here’s the kicker, fellow Christians. Get ready.
God doesn’t want to base His relationship with you on spiritual Sex. It’s okay for a towering experience early in the relationship, at the consummation of His Spirit entering your heart, the glory of salvation and redemption being applied to your spirit. It’s good, it’s holy, and it helps you to appreciate the wonders and promise of joy and pleasure that the relationship you enter into brings and will bring. But just as a marriage has to progress beyond sex, so the relationship between God’s heart and yours has to progress beyond that first experience, that anointing of the Spirit, that “mountaintop.”
The term “mountain top experience” refers to the passage in Matthew 17 where Jesus and the 3 closest to him ascend on a mountain and Jesus is transfigured into a glorified being. Peter is astonished and enraptured and wants to prolong the experience, to stay on the mountaintop with a transcendent Jesus and the specters of Moses and Elijah. But Jesus never meant to stay on the mountaintop; if he had, he wouldn’t have fulfilled his mission on earth and brought about salvation.
That first rush, that rapture of new birth seems so foreign and joyful that we want to hold on to it, to prolong it, to preserve it. In the river of life we want to stop the flow, to freeze the experience and dwell in it perpetually. But if you freeze a river, you have a block of ice; you have stasis, not life. Suspended animation.
On the contrary, the successful marriage consists of a daily exploration and deepening of the relationship between the couple as they travel the rest of their lives together. They come to know the other’s habits, faults, strengths, insecurities, arrogances, and desires. They know the best and worst of them, as much as is possible for one person to know the heart and mind of another. But it’s a process, a journey only accomplished by continuous experience, a daily, unspectacular (for a large part) existence. You don’t learn everything about them all at once, and you can’t learn everything about them ultimately. But your covenant with them keeps you together, keeps you coming back and plumbing new depths of self-sacrifice, patience, cooperation, honesty, and humility. But from this comes an intimacy that surpasses anything on earth. When you experience nothing as constantly and as deeply as your spouse, you reach a level of understanding and acceptance that is impossible in any other way. It’s a product of time, given the right circumstances from the beginning.
This is what God desires from His relationship with us. He may include a few spectacular and tremendous experiences, like the occasional sex of a couple in later years, but the relationship has shifted away from experiences that transcend to experiences that unite and create intimacy. As you go through your daily walk and include the Lord in everything, every decision and thought and word, you gain a deeper understanding of who He is as you see His impact upon you and upon the world through you. And as your interactions with your spouse reveal aspects of yourself that you were unaware of, so too does your walk with the Lord allow you to see yourself more clearly, to recognize areas in your life that still must be rendered unto Him, to celebrate victories and new life in areas of spiritual bondage and death. And as the peaceful comfort and deep intimacy of the successful marriage replaces the ecstasy of sex as the pinnacle of the relationship, the benchmark by which you measure the health and progress of the relationship, so to the increasing surrender and understanding of the true meaning of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” in your daily routine becomes the most precious and indicative aspect of your life with God.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Old Farmhouses
I have always been fascinated by
farmhouses, old abandoned wrecks that huddle
along the sides of backroads,
stare mutely as progress flashes by
on fresh Goodyears.
Like the skeletons of long-
dead animals
the ramshackle memorials hearken back decades
to when they were filled with life and activity,
when they mattered. Windows edged
with broken glass peer out at me,
seeming to cry a warning:
“enjoy your life while it is yours, take every opportunity
that comes your way,
sink your teeth into the succulent rind of experience,
savor the flavors that run down your chin, the blood of joy. Once
we were as you are, vibrant and young,
clear-skinned and well-groomed, home to
families and friends, center of commerce and communion.
Now we rest in repose, gray-hued and gaunt, a decrepit memory
that fades from relevance and hovers on the edge of
oblivion, only
flashes of the past in the windows of time flying by
on fresh Goodyears.”
farmhouses, old abandoned wrecks that huddle
along the sides of backroads,
stare mutely as progress flashes by
on fresh Goodyears.
Like the skeletons of long-
dead animals
the ramshackle memorials hearken back decades
to when they were filled with life and activity,
when they mattered. Windows edged
with broken glass peer out at me,
seeming to cry a warning:
“enjoy your life while it is yours, take every opportunity
that comes your way,
sink your teeth into the succulent rind of experience,
savor the flavors that run down your chin, the blood of joy. Once
we were as you are, vibrant and young,
clear-skinned and well-groomed, home to
families and friends, center of commerce and communion.
Now we rest in repose, gray-hued and gaunt, a decrepit memory
that fades from relevance and hovers on the edge of
oblivion, only
flashes of the past in the windows of time flying by
on fresh Goodyears.”
Saturday, January 2, 2010
1.1.10
Well, here we are, the end of a decade, the end of a year. The new annual opens before us like a virgin field of snow, full of white possibilities and the certainty of cold, wet disappointments. But that’s the pessimist in me talking. New Years Day is the moment for renewal, a resolve to do better, to be better. Reform bad habits, revise prejudices, revamp your expectations and insecurities for what the future holds. It’s a cliché to say so, but how long does this ever last? The dedication to lose weight, to eat right and exercise carries us through a few weeks, a month tops, but even the largest wave eventually succumbs to the land. The workout clothes and diet plans slowly or suddenly sink into lackadaisicality and the old man (or woman) pushes back to the forefront of our lives from whence it patiently waited for our resolve to falter and our dreams to fade.
Why? Why is change so hard to sustain? What is the catalyst for real, fundamental alterations in the fabric of our lives? Well, usually it comes with a tear, a rip in our life fabric, a crisis or a tragedy. We suffer a heart attack or hear a dire diagnosis, and suddenly the impetus to eat right and lose weight that eluded us for years comes as easy as breathing. We careen into a fence post or spend a night in jail, and that nasty habit of one too many drinks suddenly gets revealed for the danger it always was. We sunder a relationship with a friend or significant other, and all the things we took for granted or that we refused to change about our personality and practices become a priority to address. The change is in the mending, repairing the damage done.
But does it have to be? Do we have to suffer a loss or an arrhythmia to jolt us out of complacency? Can change happen because we want to change?
On the face of it, no. I’ve been trying to change for many years now. What exactly I wanted to change has, well, changed over the years (not much of it, but some). The fact that most of what I’d like to change hasn’t changed tells you just how much change has changed. That is, very little. Many people genuinely want to change, to be different people, to look different, act different, eat different, relate to others differently, without ever succeeding unless acted upon by an outside event. Some people are gifted with an iron will and self-discipline, and can change themselves by dint of desire. They are the exceptions, or exceptional perhaps. Maybe I and those like me who cannot change through will alone are the exceptions, and they are the standard. Either way, I am not among them. I enjoy some things too much to stop doing them by a simple act of will, and even if I could, the habits are too deeply set.
Which brings me to a ray of hope. For me, and for those like me who find themselves desperate to change but unable to accomplish this change without some help, some force greater than themselves lending a hand: the hand of God.
The hand of God is me. And you, if you are submitted to His will. I mean truly submitted, not with lip service or an intellectual agreement, but actual, literal, visceral submission to His will in your life. We are the bodyparts of God. When Jesus walked the earth, he walked in perfect submission to his Father’s will. The will of God was perfectly expressed through the Son, through the Son’s perfect submission. When Jesus rubbed mud in a blindman’s eyes, God was rubbing the mud using Jesus’ hands. When Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, God was using Jesus’ voice to call out Mary and Martha’s brother. Jesus was the perfect Body of God: Hands, Feet, Lips, Eyes, Mind, Will, Emotion, Faith. And now, right now, this very instant, Jesus lives in us.
Remember that we accepted Jesus into our hearts. That wasn’t a metaphor; it was a spiritual reality. Jesus lives in our earthly tabernacles. And as Jesus was the Hand of God through his perfect submission to the Father’s will, so too are we the hands of Jesus through our submission to him.
Paul calls us part of the Body of Christ, and what he means is that as God used Jesus’ body to do His will, so Jesus will use our bodies to do his will. Depending, of course, on how well we submit to his direction in our lives. Jesus submitted perfectly to God’s will, but he doesn’t expect that of us. He asks it, he holds it up as the goal to aspire to, but he doesn’t reject us when we fail to do it. The only consequence we suffer for imperfect submission is that we don’t get to participate in the body of Christ. If a man was playing the piano, and one of his fingers decided not to participate, not to be a willing and submissive part of the man’s body, then that finger misses out on playing that particular piece of music the man was trying to play. The man still plays the piano even if his finger refuses to cooperate. You may rightly object, “if a man’s finger rebelled against his will, how could he play the piano?” All analogies break down at a point, and since the man in this analogy is God, and God can’t be thwarted, His will still shall be accomplished with or without our help. But we as his body parts on earth miss an opportunity to be a part of the music He is about here on earth.
This is one of the major revelations that the ministry of Ian Thomas emphasized, and there is adequate Scriptural support to back it up. But more to the point, it dovetails with the character of God. God never seems to do things the way we expect Him to, and He takes great pains to wean us from the attitude of our self-sufficiency and pride in doing things on our own adequacy. He didn’t give us a list of instructions to carry out to get saved; He outlined the standard and when no one could meet it He fixed the problem in such a way that all we had to do, and all we could do, was to accept what He did through His Son, and trust that He is able and faithful to do that which He promised to do. Likewise, when He tells us to live like Jesus did, to participate in the new life, to be new creatures, to preach the gospel to all the world and make apostles of all people, what He’s asking of us isn’t difficult—it’s impossible! It can’t be done by any means man can devise! It’s a sheer and utter impossibility, completely beyond our capacity. And again, He did this on purpose, and provided a way to do it that requires from us nothing more than faith in Him and surrender to Him that allows His will to be expressed through His Son and His Spirit.
And I don’t know about you, but what I’d like to accomplish in the new year, I’ve decided, is impossible for me to accomplish. I can’t do it. Jehovah, You will have to do it. Amen.
I said He did this on purpose, and that wasn’t an idle comment. He did it on purpose, like He accomplished the salvation from Hell and death and sin in a particular and peculiar way on purpose. See, man, left to his natural predilections, wants to do things his way. That way, the glory and credit for success goes solely to him when things turn out well. And what does this do to the man but make him ever confident that he doesn't need help? That he can do “it” on his own capacity? Well, if God wants to save man, and man is unable to save himself, then before God can save man He has to break man of his delusion that man can save himself, can do anything of worth to God through his own abilities. So God does things that takes all the opportunities for man’s pride to kick in out of the equation: He sets standards impossible for man to follow perfectly; He engineers salvation so that man’s only option is humility and accepting a gift without any merit on his part; and then He bestows a new life to man that requires man live on the resources and ability of God, and not himself. Why, you may ask? Because God wants our hearts. He wants our dedication and love. That's why He created Creation in the first place, why He bestowed a likeness of deity upon man, and why He went through such pains to bring man back to Him after everything went wrong. He wants to share His life and love with man, and if someone doesn’t need you, and you don’t need them, then it’s that much harder to gain and keep their attention in any meaningful way.
God wants our dependence upon Him to be constant, unwavering, and absolute. He wants us looking to Him for our daily bread, the clothes on our backs, the shelter over our heads, the money in our wallets, the people in our lives, all of it. He wants to walk with us day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. He wants a true relationship with us. Did you ever stop to consider the full import of the words “I will never leave you nor forsake you”? It’s not only to encourage us in our salvation; it’s an expression of God’s undying devotion to us, His desire to ever and always be with us and in us. He is sharing His life with us, and that means not only does He impart His Spirit to us to give us spiritual life and resurrection, but also that He wants to share each moment with us. What an awesome and humbling thing this is, that God wants to hang out with us forever! What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
“God needs to get a life,” the cynic might jest. “No,” you answer. “We need to get God’s life,” And here’s the conclusion to this, which brings us to our original point. If God is with us and in us constantly, if we are walking in faith and submission to Him and His leading, then what possible stronghold on our lives could ever conquer us? What trials that buffet us could ever defeat us? What minions of Hell could ever deceive and destroy us? Can a habit of overeating withstand the presence of the Spirit of God? It is so laughable as to be insane! Can a lack of job or prospects depress one who has the Inexhaustible living in his heart? Can loneliness or heartache overwhelm one who has the Comforter and Lover of his soul?
Turn your eyes upon Jesus…look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Amen.
Why? Why is change so hard to sustain? What is the catalyst for real, fundamental alterations in the fabric of our lives? Well, usually it comes with a tear, a rip in our life fabric, a crisis or a tragedy. We suffer a heart attack or hear a dire diagnosis, and suddenly the impetus to eat right and lose weight that eluded us for years comes as easy as breathing. We careen into a fence post or spend a night in jail, and that nasty habit of one too many drinks suddenly gets revealed for the danger it always was. We sunder a relationship with a friend or significant other, and all the things we took for granted or that we refused to change about our personality and practices become a priority to address. The change is in the mending, repairing the damage done.
But does it have to be? Do we have to suffer a loss or an arrhythmia to jolt us out of complacency? Can change happen because we want to change?
On the face of it, no. I’ve been trying to change for many years now. What exactly I wanted to change has, well, changed over the years (not much of it, but some). The fact that most of what I’d like to change hasn’t changed tells you just how much change has changed. That is, very little. Many people genuinely want to change, to be different people, to look different, act different, eat different, relate to others differently, without ever succeeding unless acted upon by an outside event. Some people are gifted with an iron will and self-discipline, and can change themselves by dint of desire. They are the exceptions, or exceptional perhaps. Maybe I and those like me who cannot change through will alone are the exceptions, and they are the standard. Either way, I am not among them. I enjoy some things too much to stop doing them by a simple act of will, and even if I could, the habits are too deeply set.
Which brings me to a ray of hope. For me, and for those like me who find themselves desperate to change but unable to accomplish this change without some help, some force greater than themselves lending a hand: the hand of God.
The hand of God is me. And you, if you are submitted to His will. I mean truly submitted, not with lip service or an intellectual agreement, but actual, literal, visceral submission to His will in your life. We are the bodyparts of God. When Jesus walked the earth, he walked in perfect submission to his Father’s will. The will of God was perfectly expressed through the Son, through the Son’s perfect submission. When Jesus rubbed mud in a blindman’s eyes, God was rubbing the mud using Jesus’ hands. When Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, God was using Jesus’ voice to call out Mary and Martha’s brother. Jesus was the perfect Body of God: Hands, Feet, Lips, Eyes, Mind, Will, Emotion, Faith. And now, right now, this very instant, Jesus lives in us.
Remember that we accepted Jesus into our hearts. That wasn’t a metaphor; it was a spiritual reality. Jesus lives in our earthly tabernacles. And as Jesus was the Hand of God through his perfect submission to the Father’s will, so too are we the hands of Jesus through our submission to him.
Paul calls us part of the Body of Christ, and what he means is that as God used Jesus’ body to do His will, so Jesus will use our bodies to do his will. Depending, of course, on how well we submit to his direction in our lives. Jesus submitted perfectly to God’s will, but he doesn’t expect that of us. He asks it, he holds it up as the goal to aspire to, but he doesn’t reject us when we fail to do it. The only consequence we suffer for imperfect submission is that we don’t get to participate in the body of Christ. If a man was playing the piano, and one of his fingers decided not to participate, not to be a willing and submissive part of the man’s body, then that finger misses out on playing that particular piece of music the man was trying to play. The man still plays the piano even if his finger refuses to cooperate. You may rightly object, “if a man’s finger rebelled against his will, how could he play the piano?” All analogies break down at a point, and since the man in this analogy is God, and God can’t be thwarted, His will still shall be accomplished with or without our help. But we as his body parts on earth miss an opportunity to be a part of the music He is about here on earth.
This is one of the major revelations that the ministry of Ian Thomas emphasized, and there is adequate Scriptural support to back it up. But more to the point, it dovetails with the character of God. God never seems to do things the way we expect Him to, and He takes great pains to wean us from the attitude of our self-sufficiency and pride in doing things on our own adequacy. He didn’t give us a list of instructions to carry out to get saved; He outlined the standard and when no one could meet it He fixed the problem in such a way that all we had to do, and all we could do, was to accept what He did through His Son, and trust that He is able and faithful to do that which He promised to do. Likewise, when He tells us to live like Jesus did, to participate in the new life, to be new creatures, to preach the gospel to all the world and make apostles of all people, what He’s asking of us isn’t difficult—it’s impossible! It can’t be done by any means man can devise! It’s a sheer and utter impossibility, completely beyond our capacity. And again, He did this on purpose, and provided a way to do it that requires from us nothing more than faith in Him and surrender to Him that allows His will to be expressed through His Son and His Spirit.
And I don’t know about you, but what I’d like to accomplish in the new year, I’ve decided, is impossible for me to accomplish. I can’t do it. Jehovah, You will have to do it. Amen.
I said He did this on purpose, and that wasn’t an idle comment. He did it on purpose, like He accomplished the salvation from Hell and death and sin in a particular and peculiar way on purpose. See, man, left to his natural predilections, wants to do things his way. That way, the glory and credit for success goes solely to him when things turn out well. And what does this do to the man but make him ever confident that he doesn't need help? That he can do “it” on his own capacity? Well, if God wants to save man, and man is unable to save himself, then before God can save man He has to break man of his delusion that man can save himself, can do anything of worth to God through his own abilities. So God does things that takes all the opportunities for man’s pride to kick in out of the equation: He sets standards impossible for man to follow perfectly; He engineers salvation so that man’s only option is humility and accepting a gift without any merit on his part; and then He bestows a new life to man that requires man live on the resources and ability of God, and not himself. Why, you may ask? Because God wants our hearts. He wants our dedication and love. That's why He created Creation in the first place, why He bestowed a likeness of deity upon man, and why He went through such pains to bring man back to Him after everything went wrong. He wants to share His life and love with man, and if someone doesn’t need you, and you don’t need them, then it’s that much harder to gain and keep their attention in any meaningful way.
God wants our dependence upon Him to be constant, unwavering, and absolute. He wants us looking to Him for our daily bread, the clothes on our backs, the shelter over our heads, the money in our wallets, the people in our lives, all of it. He wants to walk with us day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. He wants a true relationship with us. Did you ever stop to consider the full import of the words “I will never leave you nor forsake you”? It’s not only to encourage us in our salvation; it’s an expression of God’s undying devotion to us, His desire to ever and always be with us and in us. He is sharing His life with us, and that means not only does He impart His Spirit to us to give us spiritual life and resurrection, but also that He wants to share each moment with us. What an awesome and humbling thing this is, that God wants to hang out with us forever! What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
“God needs to get a life,” the cynic might jest. “No,” you answer. “We need to get God’s life,” And here’s the conclusion to this, which brings us to our original point. If God is with us and in us constantly, if we are walking in faith and submission to Him and His leading, then what possible stronghold on our lives could ever conquer us? What trials that buffet us could ever defeat us? What minions of Hell could ever deceive and destroy us? Can a habit of overeating withstand the presence of the Spirit of God? It is so laughable as to be insane! Can a lack of job or prospects depress one who has the Inexhaustible living in his heart? Can loneliness or heartache overwhelm one who has the Comforter and Lover of his soul?
Turn your eyes upon Jesus…look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Amen.
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