Silent Sanctification

I've written here for 13 years, about doubts, fears, concerns, questions, deaths, divorces, heartbreak, joy, moving, lessons, and learnings. In many ways this place is the very public working out of my salvation. Were you to peruse the archives you would find much poor theology and even more straight up narcissism. This page was my heart splayed out for anyone to read and I bled myself dry for it.

Last night I said to one of my closest friends that sometimes silence is the best sanctification, and I gave her a numbered list of all the things happening in my life right now that I can't talk about publicly. At least not this publicly.

There's so much of the blogosphere that lauds transparency and authenticity, but even that is rife with trophy stories and humble brags and I am strangled by the fear that I will join their ranks if I so much as whisper the numbers aloud. The truth is that even good things bring with them deep breaths and open palms. I do not know how this or that will turn out and I can't even guess. And I don't want to give you the opportunity to guess. Because I am selfish? Perhaps. Because I am fearful? For sure. But also because some things are best worked out in quiet, gentle, and still ways. Sometimes our rest is found there, in the stillness, in the mind's sleep.

Sometimes writing in this place has been the best sanctification for me. But today silence might be my best sanctification.

In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30:15

Who Has Not Left the Church?

I have a short article up on The Gospel Coalition today on Millennials and who has not left the Church: 

There are times I wish we could capitalize letters verbally.

One of the main speakers at a conference I attended this week stated his case, including some lines about "the church shrinking these days." Did he mean his local church, lowercase c? Or did he mean the great, grand, beautiful capital C Church, the one encompassing millions of believers the world over, the one that has lasted for generations and generations, withstood dark ages and bright ones, the one Jesus said he would build and nothing would prevail against? I don't know, and the comment wasn't clarified. But recently I read an article about why Millennials are leaving the church, and my heart had the same reaction.

Whose church are we talking about here?  Continue reading.

Speak What is True

The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. Exodus 14:14

I cut my teeth on charisma, talk of tongues of fire and hands of healing. They said whatever I touched would be brought healing and it would be so natural I wouldn't feel the power coming out from me. I have never forgotten those words.

It has been months now since I felt the power out from under me. Not that it ever came from me, no, but I have felt it like a rug pulled out from under me. My pastor preached a sermon a year ago about getting under the faucet of what the Holy Spirit is doing and I am standing in its stream, drinking and sputtering from the wealth of water and I am dry as a bone.

Powerless.

I ask not for your sympathy, though I covet your prayers. I do not even say this because it has been a very long, long, long time since I have written here and been fully honest. Nor because it must be said—everything true need not be spoken.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Someone tweeted or retweeted this morning: Everyone tells at least four lies a day; one of which is usually, "I'm fine."

I don't know the scientific truth of that statement but I know how many times I said something akin to "I'm fine" today and it was more than four.

It is so common these days to always say what is true about self, to be honest, to be healed through telling your story, to be fully here, fully you. But I know myself to be the grandest teller of lies I believe. And if I lie even half as often to you as I lie to myself, then what does my story accomplish at all?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Driving for a conference kept me in my car much this week and I listened to sermons and songs and tried not to use coarse language at street signs, my GPS, and other drivers. David Crowder sung a small refrain repeatedly: Here's my life, Lord, speak what is true.

Tonight I'm overwhelmed with how much our culture, even our church culture, encourages us to speak what feels true. But—at the end of the day—He is the only one with the words of eternal life (John 6:68). He is the only one telling a story worth living. His story is the one that brings the power and healing and the hope. Tomorrow or next week or next month, I hope I will believe it more deeply. Until then,

Here's my heart, Lord. You speak what is true.

Signing My Life Away

The first time I signed a legal document I was 19 years old. The story is long and interesting and someday I will tell you the whole thing, but here is the short of it: I was raised to believe that my yes was yes and that was enough. Legalities shmegalities, best to keep yourself as unencumbered by law as possible, never know when you'll need an out.

So when I walked into that small office and "signed my life away," as it was phrased to me, I felt my every organ constrict and the bile rise quickly.

This is what fear does to a heart meant to be free, I thought. I signed my name Lore A. Ferguson and initialed elsewhere LAF and I was doing anything but laughing. I looked over my shoulder as I left the office, certain Big Brother had attached himself to me and my every move would be surmised and calculated henceforth.

That was 12 years ago and since then I've signed my name away. Leases, liens, school loans, "the borrower is the slave to the lender," and I feel my slavery to the system. I am grateful for wise parents who did not give an allowance for meager tasks, nor did they spend extravagantly on their children. "He who does not work, does not eat," was often quoted; "Go to the ant, you sluggard," was often sung. Work for what you eat, earn, and keep, for work makes you a better person—only do not sign your name on a dotted line or someone else will own you, free and clear.

This week I was given four separate and unrelated legal documents to sign. Each one varies in nature and term. Some present me with opportunities I never dreamed of and some bind me to a commitment my soul balks against. I feel a slave to a lender. Even if I borrow nothing, I borrow time.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In a series on the local church my church has termed The Dearest Place, we have been learning about contracts and covenants, commitments and communing and here is what I leave each week with: my time is not my own, nor are my resources. My money is never mine, my body is never mine, even my soul is not mine. Our good Father has stewarded every resource to us for our good and His glory and we are owed nothing from Him and owe nothing to others but love (Romans 13:8). The law has set us free from sin and death—but not the law alone—the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2).

I may be bound by school debt, contractual obligations, and legal documents filled with legalese, but I am fully free in Christ to steward what He has given me to steward. It is for freedom that we have been set free—and that freedom doesn't give me carte blanche to do as I please, but fully binds me to Him to do as He pleases.

He is my freedom and my Master, my lender and my giver, my full sufficiency and the one to whom I can never pay back what I owe.

He pierces my ear with his ownership and keeps me from harm. I can sign my name in confidence (with wisdom) on documents because they remind me I am but dust and He holds my days, my finances, my commitments, and my resources in His hands. I can sign my name with confidence because He has signed His name with His blood.

Whose Hearts are Set on Pilgrimage

I moved here with all my worldly possessions in a two door Honda Civic, sight unseen save for a week spent with a friend. No plan, no job, no home, and He made a way for me. Wherever I have gone, whoever speaks strongly into my life, they speak this verse, "A man's gift makes room for him and brings Him before kings." But the gift I have known here more than anything is the Gospel and the King I am before is the King of Kings. I know that's not what that verse means, though, so forgive my interpretation.

I have lived in this home for two years, and the one next door for one year before. Three years on Meadow Lane and it is the longest I have lived anywhere in more than a dozen years. I had forgotten how to live in a place long. Now I am afraid I have forgotten how to leave a place.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

This spring I quietly checked my options—almost all taking me back to the motherland of the northeast. I also considered a move south to our new church campus. In the end, over coffee with a friend who admonished me to let myself love Texas, even if that meant suburbs, I begrudgingly agreed I hadn't. To love these acres of homes, all identical, all brick, all trying their best to be different, to make a statement—meant somehow that I would lose mine.

I am not a suburbanite. I have lived in farmhouses and stone houses, brick houses and bungalows, cottages and apartments, but never the suburbs. I have felt my heart come alive with the gospel in this home and my soul wilt every time I walk out my front door.

A home is what you make of it, isn't it?

In this home, behind these doors, we have seen three girls fall in love, all in the span of one summer. We have planned weddings and showers. We have piled so many of us on my bed I fear for its life every time. We have warmed ourselves around the fire with mugs of tea and good books. We have had conversations deep about Jesus and God and whether He is who He says He is. We have strung two hammocks and made a raised bed garden. We have painted walls and gotten jobs and quit jobs and this week, one will finish graduate school. We have fully lived here and this gift of a home has brought us before one another, kings of a kind.

As they pass through the Valley of Baka (the place of tears), they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

Last weekend I packed all of our artwork and our kitchen. My books were next. We're sorting through belongings and trying to figure out who belongs to what and it feels like a divorce of my soul. These girls and this home. Even as they've made their exit with pomp and circumstance and wedding festivities, parts of them remain here and leaving this house feels like leaving this gift. Three years is nothing to most people, but three years of the same people has been God's best grace to me.

Sometimes my strength is my strength—and I know home is a place of strength to me. But sometimes my weakness is my strength and I don't fully know what that means except that God brings us through places of tears and makes them places of life, and surprises us by doing it.

We're leaving this house, and it's with the new roommates I'll take the next season. It feels like weakness and fear today, but God is the strength of my heart and brings me before Him.

They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion. Psalm 84

Worriers in Remission

I have a friend who worries she has "lost her salvation." I listen for long hours and ask questions because I had friends who did the same for me three years ago. My friends worried about me, but I want to go to bed without fear, so I lay my worry on the doorstep and cross over the threshold of trust every moment.

I ran into a friend while getting coffee this afternoon. Five minutes only and tears well up in both of our eyes—the world weighs heavy on shoulders not meant to carry it. Our Father is a better Atlas, rolling our globe on His fully capable back. We are worriers in remission. This is the life of the Christian.

I read an article today about a girl grown with Sunday School sashes and Memory Verse Answers. She doesn't believe in that god anymore and I see myself in her story. We didn't end in the same place, but there is time still. It is God who numbers our days and He knows every one of hers. My heart wants to worry about her, but my God clothes lilies and counts hairs—surely He has not fallen asleep at the helm of her life?

I don't mean to excuse trouble, but I know enough not to borrow it. Or to borrow it long enough to have it pierce my soul and my heart with empathy and then bring it to the throne with confidence—not that my plan will be accomplished, but that His will. And I don't mean to be lazy. Take my arms and my legs and my mind and my time, take it all, but give us Jesus, only Jesus.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Matthew 6:25

Home (or A Throwback to What Sayable Used to Be)

When I first met my ex-boyfriend's girlfriend we were six of us sharing a hotel room for a Thanksgiving wedding. I hugged her hard and I meant it. "Welcome to the Makeshift Family," I said, and I hoped she would be forever. And then she was. This morning I am lying on my hammock, my glasses pushed up on my head, staring up at the trees above me, an oak and one I don't know its name.

In the Impressionist era they would make paintings of small dots of color and this is what someone with less than twenty/twenty vision sees. I wonder if the Impressionists were really just suffering of poor eyesight, but nothing about my view looks poor. I am talking to one of my closest friends on the phone. We are talking about serious things and I stop and tell her about pointillism and Seurat, and how no matter how well I can explain what I see—small circles of color, all the same size, but different shades and lightness of color and sky—I cannot explain this to her. It is beautiful and tragic at the same time. Beautiful because it is, and tragic because my eyesight is poorer than 80% of the population and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Tonight at church one of our pastors shared about the Israelites complaining in the wilderness, "Take us back to Egypt!" they fussed and we all laughed but who of us doesn't wish ourselves back in what seemed sore but good enough for now?

I rolled over and hugged my pillow tight tonight, wishing for homes. College years with the best friends I've ever known. People who know me and who I know even though we're nearing a decade out. They all married one another, except me and one other. He lives in Colorado and is smart enough to find a girl to marry and get his PhD in bio-chemistry all at the same time. I haven't talked to him in a few months and it feels like longer. The rest—thank God for Facebook. They are having kids and moving houses and being family together and I am in Texas and Texas feels very far away from what I love and what is still not best for me today.

I have wished for their lives sometimes, the homes, the husbands and wives, the babies growing and toddling and talking. I know they're not perfect, but there is a togetherness they all have that I do not. I have wished myself back into that season. I have wished myself sick. I squint my eyes to see it clearly, but oh, what I see with my tilted vision, my clouded eyes. It is beautiful and tragic, this world. Beuchner said, "Here is the world; beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid," and I love it because it is true.

Here is the world, and it will mess you over in a myriad of ways. Beautifully and tragically and back again for good measure. Welcome to the family, it isn't perfect, but it's home, in a strange distorted way. You can't go back, you can't ever go back, your eyesight has failed you and still it's beautiful here. But I can't describe it to you, even if I try.

Hindsight is only 20/20 if you have perfect sight and I never will but it still looks like home from here.

The last time we were all together under one roof. I don't even know how many bodies are asleep in this picture. But I love every one of 'em. 

All that Matters

Whenever there is some politically charged event or theological hot-button topic making the rounds, it can be tempting to be myopic about issues, especially issues about which we are particularly impassioned. Same-sex marriage, pro-life initiatives, gender roles, church membership—just a few of the polarizing issues I've seen just this morning. I've been mulling on the second verse of Psalm 50 all week:

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

It's so short, so simple, so poetic—I wonder how there can be so much power in such a small bit of scripture. But these short lines tell me three things:

God is on His throne, out of Zion: He has not abdicated and will not. He is still King of Kings.

God is the only perfection of beauty: As much as we convince ourselves that a political majority or denominational thrust will move us into a more perfect society or Church, God is the only perfection of beauty.

God shines forward: He is the most progressive, forward thinking, eternal light we will ever need or experience.

A hedge of doubt

I woke this morning for the first time in weeks without the heaviness of condemnation on me. I haven't been able to shake those feelings lately, no matter how hard I've pressed myself against the robe, no matter how much I've bent my face over Jesus' feet. I'll be honest, I began to doubt some things. Even now, writing this, my mind is replaying a litany of doubts. Do you really believe that God loves you? Do you really believe you're worth something to Him? Do you really believe that anyone could love you at all? What makes you think He'll be happy with you? They pile up and attack what I know to be true. And so this morning when I woke up gently, quietly, I held my breath for a moment or two, waiting for the doubts to assemble and charge. But they didn't. And I couldn't figure out why.

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One of the greatest gifts God gave me was the gift of doubt. I doubt that many of us would see it as a gift, but I know it to be the deepest grace to me. He gave me the wide pasture of doubt and pleasant boundary line of truth. He wounds me with my doubt, but heals with me with His truth.

Like most who grew up in the church in one manner or another, I bought the lie that a fortified moralism would lead me to paths of great joy—purity until marriage, marriage by 22, children by 24, ducks lined up before me and behind me, I got them in a row. I organized my life to make sense.

And then life didn't make sense. Life dealt me, as one person called it, a bad hand. I'll never forget walking away from that conversation wondering how to play these cards. What do you do with a handful of threes and no partner in this game? I'll tell you what you do: you doubt.

You fall full into it, bathe yourself in it, wash your soul with sin and shame. When the answers you've been given by well-meaning people fail, when the theology you believe (that God responds when we pray harder, give more, seek deeper, and repent faster) proves you the fool, and when God does not seem good, I'll tell you what you do: you doubt.

And here's the thing about doubt: it is a seemingly endless plateau. God has given us the gift of reason and logic and thought, and so doubt will take us where nothing else can because there is always another question, another possibility. Even if we bump up against a wall of truth, we are like little squares in Atari games, bouncing for eternity.

Doubt doesn't seem like a gift.

This morning I read the first chapter of Job, the righteous man who we might also say was dealt a bad hand. But today I noticed a word: hedge.

"Have you not put a hedge around him and all that he has?" The enemy asked God before he unleashed upon Job the full fury of his minions.

God permitted the enemy to do what he would, only told to keep his hand from Job himself, and today I think about the hedge God has set around us. I want to believe that the hedge prevents the enemy from coming in, but that is not what we're told. No, the hedge prevents the enemy from going outside the bounds of what God has set for him. It is Job's hedge, but it is also the enemy's.

This morning I woke up and felt myself hit the hedge. Not my limitations, but God's. Not the end of myself, but the time when God holds up His hand and says "No more. This is the safest place I have for you. Within these boundary lines. Here. All the rest I have for you lies within these boundaries. All the struggles I have for you too lie within these boundaries. But do not worry: I have set this hedge around you and the enemy will not prevail."

Coffee Shop Confessional

We are lifting the tea bags heavy with Earl Grey loose leaf tea, setting them on the saucer between us, liquid spooling around them. I ask her if it ever stops—the assumption of being known. "You know," she says, her brown eyes lower, "I don't know if it ever does. Or if it should. Jesus hid," she says. She lifts her mug to take a sip, pursing her lips and blowing into the cup, the tea swirls and slows. I wait for her to finish. "I don't know if we're meant to hide when we're in public," she says, "I think there are times for hiding and those need to be intentional. But don't you think that Jesus felt everyone knew Him when even His disciples were wrong? Peter!" She laughs. "The most right he ever was was when he said, 'To whom else would we go?' No. I think we are meant to be only ever partially known. I think Jesus knew we wouldn't have the treasure of being truly known outside of heaven."

"I think it was CS Lewis," I say to her, "who said the only place outside of heaven where we can be safe from the dangers of love is hell." Now I'm the one blowing whirlpools of cool air into my tea.

"I wonder the same thing goes for being safe from being truly known," she says. "I wonder if all the dangers that come from being partially known, people's assumptions about us, if those are only gone in Heaven—or hell. In heaven or hell we know who you are. You're either saved or unsaved. It's across the board; no differentiation."

"This is what makes us all such fools here on earth," I say. "It's that we are so set on hierarchies and systems and compartmentalizing and celebrity. We can't keep ourselves from categorizing the whole world from blue collars to white collars to blue-blood to white trash—we can't keep our grimy fists off the identities of everyone else. Jesus knew though." I set my tea down and flip the pages in my bible til it lands on Luke 23, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do."

"He knew we were a bunch of fools, all laid out, splayed out, played out fools. Bare and ignorant, all of us. He leveled it for us right there. Forgive them, Father, the whole lot of 'em."

We shake our heads and laugh. I catch her eye and we both glance down quickly. To know a person is a difficult thing indeed. We hide, even in public places, across steaming cups of Earl Grey tea in busy coffee shops where tables are confessionals and the table between us is flat and equal.

A Life Full of Sabbaths

It's Wendell Berry all this month. I drink in his essays, turning words over and over in my mouth. I read him aloud, even when no one is listening. Last night as she spreads cornmeal on wooden boards, I read her three paragraphs to give context to the quote written on the chalkboard: Though they have no Sundays, their days are full of Sabbaths. He speaks of the cedar waxwings eating grapes in November. But he penned the poem The Peace of the Wild Things nearby then and poetry is meant to speak of the mysterious in the mundane and so he speaks of us, or the hoped-for us.

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This morning I read in Mark of Jesus healing on the Sabbath, the pharisees outrage, and the calm response of the Lord of the Sabbath: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

How we have forgotten that. How have we forgotten that?

She is leaving to get bread flour to bake round loaves in the brick-oven. Do you want to come with, she asks, dropping her prepositional phrase and picking up her purse. I am drinking coffee on the side porch and nothing could bid me leave the wild rushing of the river in front of me and the song of the orioles above me. This is my sabbath and I am made for it, I think.

The last time I was home was a year ago, in May, and I have waited a year for these few days. They are not exactly as I imagined in my mind, other duties and events capped its full breadth, but it is a few days at least of quiet and still. I was made for this week, I think. The coals burned hot in the brick-oven the other night and faces gathered around the tables, children everywhere, laughter lingering. A phone call from Malaysia from a globe-trotting brother: you always sound so happy when you're home, he said, and it is true, except when it hasn't been.

I have lived this year holding my breath, it seems, waiting for the mornings when I could sleep past 4:30 or when I at least didn't have to hit the ground running, literally, as soon as I woke. I have lived this year waiting for Sabbath, guarding it with a fervor I didn't know I had. If anyone came near it, I would square my jaw and shake my head: it's mine!

I preened myself for my Sabbaths.

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Whenever I rest and really rest, empty my head of expectations (yours and mine), listen, really listen, I remember there is nothing of my doing in salvation; that salvation is one long rest in the same direction. There is work too, obedience and sanctification, moments of weakness and moments of strength. But at its core and its very marrow, the work of salvation is rest, Sabbath. It is to say, again and again and again, I rest in You, Lord of Rest. I find my Sabbath in you, Lord of the Sabbath.

The work of salvation is to live a life full to Sabbaths, even when there is no margin and little space, when there is demand from every outside element and every inside emotion. This is to trust that a God who rested when His work was not done—even when it was good—to set an example for His people: You are not done, children, no, but it is still good. And so rest. You are not made for Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for you.

All of Us Strangers Sitting on a Footstool

Somewhere along the way I forgot I had a story. It is more accurate to say somewhere along the way I forgot I was living a story.

There's so much noise these days and I don't know how to shut it out and down and over and out. Our home is a quiet place, filled with simple things, but it is a small place, and there is no hiding from life's noise. The coming and going, the phone calls with family, the boyfriends, the dishes piling, and the laundry. Some have said the single life is simple, but I dare anyone to say that to me who has had 32 roommates in a dozen years. As soon as I learn the rhythms and graces of one, she marries or moves and I plunge into another lesson with another girl. I cannot complain and do not: these girls have been family to me, each one of them slipping into her new life while I mourn her leaving, she has been family to me.

One and I are walking yesterday and the sun is setting, "You're going to move with me?" I ask her, because we will close up shop on this house soon I think. She tells me she doesn't know how to process the invitation that I would want her to meld her life with mine. I feel a sense of Naomi in that moment and she my Ruth: where you go, I'll go; only I am the one saying to her: where I go, you come. (Ruth 1:16)

It is foreign to us both, the togethering that happens with strange people in a strange land. And we are all strangers, I think, we just haven't awakened to its reality yet. Or life has been kinder to you than to me. Or perhaps, after all, it has been kinder to me than to you. We shouldn't bother ourselves with such things.

I am scrubbing the laundry room floor tonight and I know I ought to feel at home in this place, but it feels more a placeholder to me, a dog-eared page, a bookmark: Don't Forget What God Has Done Here. And I don't know if He means this house or Texas or this world, but it could be any and is all. We are all so enamored with making a place for ourselves when it is He who has made a place for all of us. His thumbnail is the sliver of moon, heaven is His home, the earth is His footstool, dare we even imagine we could build a place for Him? (Isaiah 66:1)

The air catches beneath the tablecloth as it settles centered, dust particles float, and I put the broom in the corner. The dishwasher and the washer both run, their steady hum sounding steady with the air-conditioner. It smells like lemon furniture polish and maybe the grapefruit in the bowl on the table. We have made a home here, placed ourselves in the center of our story. The doors revolve around us, the world revolves around us, and I wonder sometimes how little idea we have of His grandness and this home a vapor, our lives a breath, our whole story His.

For the Weary Christian

It's been a few months of feeling discouraged and one of the effects of that is I simply don't want to write for you. I don't want to write at all, but I especially don't want to write for you. I don't want to be found out, so to speak. I don't want the world to know my first love feels likes seconds and my *gospel wakefulness feels tired. I don't want you to know I've been struggling with condemnation, fear, insecurity, uncertainty, and weariness. I am ashamed of those feelings—especially because I know they are anti-gospel and they are born in me as a result of not reveling in Godward affections.

Tonight I was remembering some of the things that set my soul free a few years ago. Not the sermons or books specifically, but the realizations:

1. I am the younger brother AND the older brother. I hate restrictions and I love approval, I hate poverty and love lavish attention.

2. God is not more or less interested in me because of my legalism or licentiousness: His provision is the same for both.

3. The gospel doesn't only carry the power to save me, but also sanctify and sustain me.

4. I cannot put God in my debt by being good, holy, or faithful enough.

5. All my righteous acts are like filthy rags.

6. God is not beholden to my view of Him. My concept of good is not His definition of good. My ideal of His faithfulness is not His attribute of faithfulness.

7. Man's approval is impossible to attain. God's approval is completely wrapped up in His Son.

8. God is not surprised by my lack of faith or my abundance of faith, by my questions or my fears, by my pride or my sin. On the threshold of His kingdom He will not deny access to me because I didn't understand an aspect of theology or walk in complete faith in certain areas.

9. The Holy Spirit is not tapping His toe waiting for my faith to be big enough or my ear to be tuned. He dwells in me, empowering me to accomplish everything God has ordained for me to accomplish with every gift He formed me to have before the foundation of the world.

10. God is for my joy. He is most glorified when I am most satisfied in Him. My complete confidence and joy in the Holy Spirit, through the finished work of the Son, to the honor of the Father, brings the triune God glory.

It was encouraging for me to simply write these things out, and so I thought I'd share them with you. Perhaps you're struggling too, or perhaps you've never experienced gospel wakefulness, and these points will help you along that way. Either way, I hope you're encouraged. Also, I suggest you take a few minutes to write out what the gospel means to you, or has shown you. Even just to remind truths or clarify errors in your thinking.

*Gospel Wakefulness is not my term, but Jared Wilson's . Jared wrote a book by the same title, but he has also written extensively on it on his blog Gospel Driven Church. Jared is one of the most Godward gazing people I know. His blog has been a constant source of encouragement in the past few years and I recommend every one of his books with full assurance you will be encouraged. Seriously, buy his books. All of 'em.

Reflections on a Year of Accidental Seminary

We just completed the pilot year of a hybrid-seminary-discipleship-program at my church. We were the guinea pigs—emphasis on the guinea because nothing makes you feel smaller than subsisting on an average of five hours of sleep a night for ten months while simultaneously realizing you are just not as smart as you think you are. Aside from reading and homework assignments, inclusion in this program required we:

Be covenant members at our church Be serving in lay or official ministry at our church Not show up even a minute late to classes each day (This one had consequences with embarrassing results—so much for sola gratia here...)

Going into the program I thought:

Getting up at 4:30am won't be that bad, plus it'll train me to wake up that early every morning: think of what I could do with an extra three hours awake on my off days!?

This much Bible reading will be the most concerted effort I'll have ever made to read straight through scripture. That can't be a bad thing.

Studying some key books inductively sounds on one hand exhausting (won't we get tired of the same book?) and on the other hand thrilling (18 weeks in the book of Romans? Yes, please.).

On this side of the program, here are some reflections:

My enthusiasm for rising early waned quickly because I am a morning person. However, my morning-person mornings break with sunshine, yes? Lacking sunshine I am apparently not a morning person. I desperately missed regular mornings at home, reading quietly over my morning coffee.

At the beginning of the program we were encouraged to read devotionally (the Bible as well as supplemental texts) instead of academically. However, the volume of required reading was so far out of my normal reading style, that I struggled to read it devotionally at all. I had to change the way I read, which wasn't a bad thing, and it helped me step back from the texts to see a more holistic picture.

I need sleep. I tried to do everything I normally do, plus this program (including the extra commute it added to my day), and do it on minimal sleep. I hit March and realized I just couldn't do it. It wasn't that I was doing too much, it was that I was doing it on not enough sleep. My relationships have suffered, my work suffered, my writing projects suffered, and my soul suffered under the guilt of what I wasn't able to do. Looking back, it would have been worth it for me to move closer to my church for this year simply to save on the amount of driving I had to do in the morning.

One section of the program required the students to teach through the book of Psalms. Rising early on those mornings was pure joy. To hear my fellow students wrestle with a text, the Lord, and their testimony every morning was a recipe for worship. We couldn't help but worship.

The most healing section of the program for me was studying the book of Acts inductively. I have a lot of baggage from that book and going through it start to finish was so completely complete. We studied it historically, geographically, theologically, and spiritually. It's a beautiful book.

The most challenging section of the program for me personally were theology classes. Every week I learned of more misconceptions and errors in my thinking and understanding of theology. This was challenging and relieving. We're all theologians, but we don't all have good theology.

The most rewarding aspect of the program was the opportunity to walk alongside about 30 other individuals (most of whom I knew or knew of already) who deeply loved Jesus, His Church, and His word. These were people who were chosen to pilot the program, who would give their all, and who were actively serving others. Coming together each morning and just extolling the name of Jesus together, shouldering burdens with one another, praying for one another, laughing, questioning, and wrestling with texts, theology, verbiage, and life together was a deep blessing for me personally. I don't know that there will be another opportunity in my life to walk alongside men and women of such caliber so closely for ten months.

Fin

As we finished our last class the other day, reflecting on what went well and offering feedback for future years of the program, I couldn't help but just reflect on what the Lord has done in my life in ten years. Ten years ago I participated in a similar program (though less rigorous) at my church in New York. It was the first real discipleship I'd ever experienced and the men who taught those classes shaped so much of my formative thinking in regard to theology and the word of God. Walking through this experience, ten years later, lent such perspective to what the Lord has done in me in a decade. He has been good to me. 

May Sabbatical

It's been a year since my last writing sabbatical and I wish, oh I wish, I could say this May will be spent much like last May was. It won't. But it will, however, be a sabbatical from this blog.

I always feel a bit guilty when I do this, but on the other side of a month away from the blog I am a healthier and happier writer. And this year I need it more than ever. I'm not sure what happened in the past year, but it still feels a bit like whiplash—a good kind of whiplash, but whiplash nonetheless. I'm writing regularly for multiple publications, trying to finish rigorous classes, coming off of an unbelievably busy March and April at work, still keeping up with 100 in 2013, prepping to co-lead a 12 week course this summer, and have a little more on my personal plate than I have stamina for.

I need a break.

And not only do I need it, God assures me there's much joy in taking it.

This morning we read Isaiah 58 in class and I loved this short section:

If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. 

I don't know about you friend, but I've been hobbling along in the valleys of the earth for quite a few months, riding on the heights sounds like a good plan. I'm grateful God designed our bodies to need rest and wish I was better about giving mine the rest it needs. But I'm going to just thank Him for the small ways we can step back and call the void of doing a delight.

While I'm gone I have a passel of friends who graciously fought all over each other to fill four weekly slots for the month. Why only four? Well, I suppose I figured a rest might be good for you too. These four ferocious friends are all steadies for me, men and women who love Jesus deeply and extol His name beautifully. I'm excited to share their words with you. I hope you'll enjoy their posts and you'll click through to their sites.

A post like this gives me an opportunity to just say thank you to all of you dear readers. It sounds a bit trite to say that, or I don't know, gushing, but I truly mean it. As truly as I can mean it. I would still write without you, but it means so much to me that you all just keep coming back and telling your friends about Sayable. I read all your emails and am constantly encouraged by how transparent and hopeful you all are in them. Thank you for sharing your stories with me, telling me how much you love good theology, how it changes you and is changing you. Nothing brings me more joy than to know the God of the universe has dipped his hand to you and brought you to ride on the heights of the earth with Him.

He's a good, good God.

See you on the flip side!

(I will have April's 100 in 2013 up later this weekend, but that's it. Promise.)