Tonight was the second week of a new Bible Study I've started going to. It's a Beth Moore study (love those) called "Believing God" and it's really stirred my heart, even though I've only been going to it for a couple nights.
Anyone who has done a Beth Moore study knows that she is STRICT and gives out homework for every day of the week and dives DEEP into scripture, regarding translations from the Greek & Hebrew, etc. All very, very good stuff. And deep - very deep.
Anyways, this week's homework had to do with faith - and tonight's video sermon from her also had to do with faith, and I must say it's really spoken to my heart.
Confession Time: these past few months have been SO challenging for me. God has had different people speak into my life that has really literally DRAMATICALLY CHANGED the way I feel and view things regarding Jesus and how the truth about Him intersects with my reality. Like, in huge, huge ways.
God has revealed to me SO MUCH the pride, selfishness, and Pharisee-like ways in my heart. I'm sure I've blogged about this before, but bear with me because honestly, whatever I've talked about before has been NOTHING like the experiences and revelations I've had in the past few months.
I was blessed to have a dear friend from WAAAAAY back in my junior high days, named Danny, speak into my life. Danny served as the interim youth pastor for my church youth group and though we met only a few times, my older sister and I immediately noticed & admired his wisdom, love for God, and recognized the anointing from God on His life.
My advice: when you find a person like that in your life that can give offer you a friendship showered with wisdom, I suggest you grab on tight.
That's what I did with Danny - and even though I met him in the Spring of my 8th grade year, we've kept in touch and I can honestly say that knowing that he will be there for me whenever I have a God/Jesus/Theological/Opinionated question makes my heart breathe a little sigh of relief.
Anyways - so a few months ago I had a semi-meltdown.
After pondering several events in my personal life/relationships/beliefs/society that had happened over the past few years - I came to a huge realization that SOMETHING WAS SO WRONG.
I tweeted (yes, tweeted. I love twitter. Haters hate.) to my friend Danny in desperation one night & asked if I could email him about some questions I had. He responded promptly & I immediately proceeded to email him a R I D I C U L O U S L Y long email that hardly flowed well and probably didn't really make sense. That's ok though; Danny wrote me an equally long message in return and so began the apparent, tangible change in my thinking & in my life.
Ok. So what was this meltdown about? In a (HUGE/not too too personal) nutshell... I had finally come to the realization that a few things in my life; a few thought patterns, convictions, worldviews, etc - were just NOT working. Not working in regards to the ultimate goal of my faith, and not working in some personal day to day societal relationships.
I was realizing that THINGS ARE NOT BLACK & WHITE! I had realized that God's grace, TO THIS DAY, after EVERYTHING I've learned & done & been through with Him... His GRACE meant literally NOTHING to me in my life. Seriously? At age 22? After committing my heart to the Lord and trying to live for Him everyday... and I'm JUST NOW learning about this grace thing?? Ahh, SO frustrating people!! And I had never before let it hit me like it did as I read that email.
I'm not going to keep going on forever, but I just want to quote you some of Danny's Responses that shed light on SO many questions and maybe you can guess what questions I was struggling with:
- "If you simply take a step back it is not hard to detect even just by simply surveying the different kinds of churches there are in America. Who is right? Or maybe a better question is "who is MORE right?" The Baptists do mission well, the Presbyterians do theology well, the Charismatics do prayer/praise well, the Anglicans do liturgical corporate worship well, the liberal mainline churches do social justice well....who is right? Which tradition pleases God most? Tough questions."
- "Those who know church history know that every time the church has been in power it has been disastrous. But every time the church has been on the fringe/margins, with no political power, no rights, and ostracized and persecuted is when the Church has absolutely flourished. I for one think that our bull's-eye should not be acquiring political power, but being a faithful expression of the kingdom of God across the country. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that the Church is neither the servant nor the master of the State, but rather ought to be it's moral conscience."
- "The conservative American church has climbed into bed with conservative politics and ruined both I'm afraid. There is NOTHING in the new testament that instructs us to do what the conservative right has been promoting for the last 40 years. I think that the idea of trying to "take America back for God," even though it is a very popular and noble-sounding idea, is actually rather naïve. The national interests of America are often contrary to the interests of God's kingdom. We are never instructed to fight for our "rights" or strive to acquire political power...quite the opposite actually. America by no means has exclusive claims on God or Jesus or the Church."
- "In C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity he has a chapter on Pride. In that chapter he describes pride as the chief sin-it is the complete and most anti-God of all sins. Pride is what got Satan kicked out of heaven. Pride is the most serious, heinous, and wicked of all sins, and yet it also happens to be the most subtle and pervasive sin. Lewis said that things like adultery and murder are mere flee-bites in comparison the sin of pride."
- " Jesus never instructed anybody to clean up there act first, AND THEN he will accept them and listen to them and love them. No, what we see in the gospels is Jesus loving and accepting the worst of sinners because the Father loved them in spite of their sin and unworthiness, and because they are still bearers of the image of God. " (My pastor, Andy Stanley, talked about this EXACT issue in the midst of danny & I emailing back & forth, he said that "The only people worried about 'guilt by association' in the Bible were the Pharisees - Jesus was NEVER concerned with 'guilt by association.' - WOW!!)
- "The Pharisee is more concerned about pointing out what is wrong, the Christ-follower is more concerned about loving his neighbor. "If I don't have love I'm just a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal." Billy Graham once said "It is God's job to judge, the Spirit's job to convict, and my job to love." Jesus acquired the nickname "friend of sinners" because he was always going out of his way to hang out with the worst of the worst people in society. In almost every scene in the gospels, we see the tax collectors and prostitutes (or in our day in age it would be the druggies, alcoholics and gays) were always magnetically drawn to Jesus and followed him everywhere...and simultaneously we always see the conservative religious leaders of his day right there judging/criticizing him for hanging around such terrible people. If I were to insert myself as one of the characters in those stories, I hope that I would be more like Jesus and not like the Pharisees."
It's NOT BLACK & WHITE!!
It's NOT JESUS VS. GAY PEOPLE/NON-CHRISTIANS!!
It's NOT CHRISTIANITY VS. DEMOCRATS!!
It's NOT WE'RE RIGHT & THEY'RE WRONG!!
Like... WOW. I don't know if this speaks to you at all - but I MUST say that this absolutely DEMOLISHED me in so, many ways.
At first, I went through my guilt/self-hatred phase. As I mentioned earlier, HOW have I gone THIS LONG w/this skewed, prideful, pharisee way of thinking?
Then, I went through INTENTIONAL trying to change my mindset in different situations.
Eg: I used to get SO FIRED UP about different news stories sharing how they were taking prayer/God/Christianity out of schools, etc. You know all those stories. :) I used to get SO freakishly upset about it, I took on the THEM VS. US ("us" being "the Christians") attitude - so now, when I heard those stories I tried to take a step back and actually REALLY think, what would Jesus do here? How would He react? Danny responded to this question with a response that I absolutely LOVED:
- "God doesn't NEED someone to stand up and defend him...the day will come when EVERY knee will bow and EVERY tongue confess that he is Lord.
My job is not to judge - EVER.
It's not my job.
My job? To love!
How cliche, how seemingly simple yeah?? ahh SO far from it.
I'm amazed at this. This is where I'm at... this is where I've been. Trying to hard to not care about results but rather focus on being faithful to God's commands. He is GOOD. He is LOVE. Just what this world needs. BE THAT!
"Be different. Become the friend of sinners and enemy of the hyper-religious. It got Jesus murdered, but Jesus said "blessed are you when they revile you, persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely ON MY ACCOUNT, for great is your reward in heaven." And who was it that hated and persecuted Jesus?...it wasn't the secular pagans, it was the conservative religious leaders of his day."
Danny's Diagnosis of me:
-"I understand completely your struggle with grace. The problem with many of us who grew up in church is that we were instructed in moralism rather than the gospel. We were taught how to be good and act right so that God will love us rather than being taught to trust fully in what Jesus did on our behalf. I grew up in church; went to VBS; went to Sunday School; was active in my youth group; received my entire education from a private Christian school; went to Bible college; got my degree in pastoral ministries; worked for a church; attended seminary, but it wasn't until I heard a couple of sermons by Tim Keller that I TRULY began to understand the full scope of the gospel of grace. I believed it the whole time...I was a Christian...I understood it all in my head, but FUNCTIONALLY my heart had yet to really comprehend grace. Before I lived in such a way so as to earn God's love and favor. Now I know that God's love and favor over me were secured for me because of what Jesus did on the cross. Now there is nothing...neither height nor depth, nor angels or demons, neither the past or the present...NOTHING can separate me from the love of God that is IN Christ Jesus. I like to think of myself as a recovering Pharisee. So nowadays I feel very much like a former addict-I'm now walking in this amazing freedom no longer imprisoned to the old laws/rules...but from time to time, the memories, behaviors, and old temptations for being a Pharisee still chase after me.
- D.D.
Where I'm at. Where I'm hoping to continue growing towards. So so thankful for friends who are wiser than I am... and especially thankful for a God who, after 12 long years of being in a relationship where I've MISSED THE BOAT - after ALL this time - He gently and lovingly draws me back to truth. It makes me cry, really. I love truth. I love the truth that has NOTHING to do with me and EVERYTHING to do with Him. His grace is overwhelming and without it, I now understand that I'm literally nothing. LITERALLY.
Thank You Jesus for doing it all. Jesus is good. If you don't know Him, you really should. He's mostlikely nothing like you would think He is - based on many churches/Christians/political agendas of today's society - NOPE.
He makes all things new. He's the God of second/third/twentieth chances. He loves extravagantly and is so slow to anger.
He loves new beginnings and even if you've had SO MANY THINGS BACKWARDS in your life after 12 LONG YEARS of Him trying to get into your heart... He persists.
He's a lover and He wants me to understand that literally, my righteousness is like FILTHY RAGS and my FAITH in Him is what is counted as righteousness. I'm so so grateful.
Ahh. I love Jesus. Finally something real to latch on to. The end.
