Giving the Lion His Just Desserts

It is a strange thing to be grateful for sight, but all this week I grovel low and weep at the sight of sight. It comes in waves and it comes slowly at seemingly inopportune moments, but it comes just the same, warning me of paths ahead.

In this past weekend's sermon my pastor spoke on the difference between worldly sorrow that produces death and godly sorrow that produces a life without regret (II Cor. 7:10) and I couldn't write fast enough. Pencil to paper, ear to the word, I watched the sorrow I feel take form. Godly sorrow has sight. It sees.

Drunk on accountability partners and unspoken prayer requests, it has kept me from naming my sins, giving them phrase and confession. I "struggle" with sin or "war against" that which would devour me, but name the sin? Name more than the grotesque shape shrouding the war that wages within? No, not that.

But sight is a beautiful thing. And, my pastor said, beating the enemy to the truth about who I am delivers me from the power of his accusation. And fear not, that accusation will come. We will see our sin or our sin will see to us. Our enemy is a lion roaming for his kill and is no respecter of person, plight, platform, or performance.

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There's a song I've been listening to much in recent weeks. Her whole album is a treasure, but this song in particular pushes the specific confession I am going for here. It is not enough to know the struggle, but naming it, giving it verbiage and placement puts the enemy in his place. I seek not to train this lion, I seek to kill him. The first way I do that is to starve him of the pleasure of deception, his favorite dessert.

From the love of my own comfort From the fear of having nothing From the life of worldly passions Deliver me, Oh God

From the need to be understood From the need to be accepted From the fear of being lonely Deliver me, Oh God

I shall not want, I shall not want, When I taste your goodness, I shall not want

From the fear of serving others From the fear of death or trial From the fear of humility Deliver me, Oh God

If it is true that His goodness is better than life, and I would stake my life on its truth, then His goodness satisfies my wants. It satisfies the needs I feel, even the most acute demanding ones, the ones that set me on a slippery path of sin.

In the newness of the gospel, and there in the everyday of the gospel, the painful, agonizing sight of my sin is His first goodness to me.

Still Discipleship

When I was in my teens, before I knew much about the gifts of the Spirit, I heard about a church that was offering classes on how to speak in tongues. It was right there in the bulletin, alongside classes in how to train up your children in the way they should go and five secrets to a healthy marriage. Those classroom doorways were portals, keyholes really, through which the unlocked troves of Christianity sat waiting for our eager minds and hearts. Do this, then that. But I did this, and then that didn't happen. I tried to put God in my debt and all I got back was a cold, hard heart that loved pragmatics and hated the Lord. It took years of course, a lifetime really, but winter came slowly, binding me in fear and mistrust, the death of my faith.

Discipleship is a baggage laden word for me. It smacks of mathematic certainty and promises that never seem to deliver. Yet I can't run far from the call of Christ to his disciples to make disciples. If I am his follower, I am to make followers. But like the poet, Emily, I dwell in possibility. There is no formula, no key or keyhole, no class or potion to create a disciple—there is only a grand expanse of faith and all its possibilities.

After decades of wringing my hands and white-knuckling my sin, attending classes to unlock the secrets to everything good, I live with my palms open these days. Finances, friends, future—it is better that I not have a plan for where they head. And discipleship is much like that as well.

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Here is what I know about following: following means there is someone who is leading, and every follower is a leader of sorts. And even leaders must trust the one they're following. There is a great deal about discipleship that is nitty gritty, hand to the plow, but there is also much about discipleship that comes in the mundane, the day by date, the monotony of life as normal, being still, being quiet, trusting the process rather than the principles, trusting the questions will be answered by a sovereign God who leaves nothing undone.

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I have been thinking of Jesus these days. We see him at age 12 in the temple and then at age 30 with the onset of his public ministry. But what was he doing in those 18 years? Son of a carpenter was sweeping sawdust, learning his father's trade, learning Torah, serving his mother, serving his siblings. He was the Son of God, yes, but he was also the Son of Man and he humbled himself to the humblest things. He did what he saw his Father doing, his food was to do the will of him who sent him. He, the leader, followed.

Following is unpopular these days. We Christian kids either got washed up on mega-churches and tongue-teaching classes, or we seek hope in a messiah-pastor type thinking maybe he has the words of eternal life.

The truth is Christ alone has the words of eternal life. The real work of discipleship is believing that and then being faithful to keep believing it, every day. The real work of discipleship is trusting that beyond all the classes and books and soundbites and blog posts, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the only perfect leaders. And will be until the end of the age.

The Pornified Mind and the Glory of God

A new film is set to release this year; the protagonist is a guy who values, “My body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls…and my porn.” As best as I can tell from the trailer, when he finally encounters a girl who meets his porn-infused standards, he’s surprised to find out she has some standards of her own. Her porn, though, is chick flicks—stories of tender, strong, fictional gentlemen who will meet her emotional and physical needs; needs which our principle guy finds he is hardly qualified to meet. I'm over at Project TGM today. Continue reading  The Pornified Mind and the Glory of God. 

If you're interested, I also wrote at The Gospel Coalition this week.

Increasingly, doubt and doubters are given platforms in church culture, and I see some good reason for it: arrogant certainty in rules and principles has led into a legalism of culture and spirit. The only answer for many dechurched or post-evangelicals is to circle their doubt like the drain in a bathtub. The problem with it, though, is the only place it leads is down.

Continue reading Doubt Your Doubts. 

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. 

Perfect Provision, Perfect Protection

No one has to be convinced that something went wrong somewhere in the bodies and beauty department. Stand in a grocery aisle and figure out how to beat those pesky inches, woo your disinterested man, and find more perfect clothes for perfect bodies. Something has gone wrong. So where?

It was at a tree. A food laden tree. Something good, beautiful, and delectable gone horribly wrong.

(Will Deutsch)

It began at the beginning of beginnings, Genesis, where food was made, food was eaten, and where all of our food issues began.

Strange, isn’t it, that one of our principles struggles is still there? With food?

We starve from it, binge on it, measure it out, disgust ourselves with it, pride ourselves on it, obsess over recipes, and TIVO our favorite cooking shows. Rarely do we see food as the perfect provision and perfect protection that it was designed to be. Provided for our health; protection from death.

God created food: a perfect provision for His creation. Then He clearly defined it as right or wrong: a perfect protection for his children. He set up His boundaries, endlessly good ones that felt good too, until they bumped up against the one ‘don’t’ rule: don’t eat of this tree.

Yet this is the tree from which they ate. First the woman and then the man.

Ignoring the plenty and subversively skirting the mandate by a subtle legalism, “God says don’t eat of it AND don’t touch it,” she fell the boundaries that God so lovingly placed on her and him and all of us.

Don’t we do this too? Don’t we see the plenty and choose instead the smaller portion, the lesser good? We add to the boundaries given. Sinking deeply into diets or delectable feasts, feeling helpless against the siren call that is food.

God calls out: Where are you? And we hide, behind exercise, behind enhancement, behind extra weight. We hide.

We hide because it is easier to hide than to be known. We’ve eaten off the tree of knowledge and now we think we know.

Yet still He seeks us. Pursues us. Finds us, shivering and scratching under the weight of man-made garments and expectations. I’m there. Are you too?

And all this because we added to what God said. He gave good boundaries and we made them smaller and tighter, thinking that more rules will keep us safer. God has said don’t eat of the fruit, but we think that it’s safer to just not touch it at all?

This is our great sin. This is our great fall. We add to what God has said and the boundaries become cages. We imagine He is a harsher God than He is.

We eat the fruit thinking it will make us like God and really all it does is make us into our own god. And we are powerless gods, always trying to find things to bulk us, beautify us, fix us.

All the while He is still giving perfect provision and perfect protection. The second time was in a much less beautiful environment. Dark, though midday, the place of the skull. A broken, bleeding, and bruised man. He is saying it is finished and we can hardly believe it is true.

So we are still adding to it. Principles. Practices. Helping God, we think, with clearer expectations on His people and on us. Don’t eat it, we say, or touch it. Or surely you will die.

The truth is that we are finished. Perfect in Christ’s eyes and through His provision. Nothing can be added or removed from you to make you more of who you’re intended to be in Christ.

He looks on you and sees clean, pure, perfect righteousness and beauty.

A Squeaky Wheel Comes Clean

It's strangely easy to be brave when nobody expects you to be. You are the deus ex machina, sweeping in and rescuing with your words, your actions, your bravado. But then the standing ovation comes and who can take a bow without feeling awkward and out of place?

Maybe you've noticed, or maybe you haven't, but it's been a little quiet around here. Or rather, it's been a little less than deep around here.

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Here's what happened: a year ago this month I started working on a book and when you start writing a book people in the know start talking about your platform and your reach and whether there will be a market for your words. So instead of scribbling your words on scraps of paper and in the margins of life, crafting sentences while you drive and wait and walk, you instead start working on an author's lifeline: readers.

Did you know that the real worth of an author's work is not in her bound or published words? It's in how many people read those bound and published words. No one wants to say that of course, except the publishers when they're squabbling over whose mark will be on the binding. Everyone else still wants to talk about your words and how they are needed and unusual and pretty and pithy and such. But deep down you suspect the real worth of your words is what someone will pay for them.

Sometimes they will pay for them with their emotions and sometimes their pennies, but pay for them, they will.

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A few someones have told me I am courageous and I look down at my person: can't they see this? This frail and fearful lot? Can't they see that whatever worth I have is not what I can do but Whose I am? I can put on a show, but the Author is the Finisher and the Principal Player.

I am studying Romans 6:13 this week, "Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness." The chapter is about sin and how we, like Christ, have died to sin—but what is sin if not the full spectrum of brokenness touching our every part? Hear me when I say I struggle to say fear is a sin, but whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, and fear is the lack of faith. See?

A year ago I took what had previously proceeded from faith and continued the work in fear: would I ever measure up? Would anyone important ever read me? What constituted success? Would I know it when it came? Would anyone care about a book if I even wrote it?

And now here I am, people expecting me to be brave and confident, to have the words and the theology and the answers, and the truth is, dear readers, I spent more time presenting myself to you than to God this year. Or at least more energy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not discouraged. I can trust He is actually the God in the Machine and I am simply a gear or a bolt, or more likely a squeaky wheel or rusty washer, and we can move on from here (hopefully). I am not brave and I am not strong and I am not whatever good thing you think I am.

I'm just one person with words inside of me about a God I love and Who loves me and that's the only story I have to tell.

And for His glory I want to tell it well.

Confession and Repentance

One of the best spiritual disciplines of my life, aside from regular time in the word and journaling, has been the rewriting of prayers from Valley of Vision —at the suggestion of my faithful mentor and friend. In the darkest seasons of depression for me, these prayers have brought clarity to my sin and to Christ's sufficiency; and in the seasons of rich joy, these prayers have been reminders that growth I enjoyed on the mountain has happened most often while in the valley. Rewriting them in my own words only increased the clarity and joy.

Here is an original prayer and below is my rewritten attempt. I highly recommend this exercise.

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My sin is a black hole, deep without end,

Guilty: Of the thought that I am capable alone And that You are not enough; Of disobedience to seeing Your Gospel Spread in every word of your Word; Of pushing You to my peripheral in my everydays.

All these things mock me, accuse me, stand around me and stare me down.

But they cannot win, and so I bless You.

Crush my corruptness. Give me grace to crush it as well.

My skin, my organs, my heart, my thoughts: these long for things that cannot satisfy; Only You can satisfy and give me the right heart, the right thoughts.

I'm grateful that you have not answered all of my prayers (for purpose, for people, for prizes) I've asked for good things, but not the right things--and so I don't have them. I've asked because I'm selfish and because I feel orphaned. I've asked because being a slave seems better than being a nomad.

Continue, Patience, have your perfect work, Pity my errant prayers, ask instead for me to Hope. Fling open the windows, air out my soul from false desires, All the dead dreams, All the things which are contrary to Your Kingdom.

I (try to) thank You for your wisdom. I (try to) thank you for your love. This foreign tasting mouth, words repeat: I thank you for your discipline Your cauldron which makes me into a perfect metal, without errors.

There is nothing more difficult to swallow, Lord, Than knowing that we are not communing (because of sin, because of fear, because of disappointment).

If you let me live through this, if I come out on the other side, Let it not be in pleasure, keeping my soiled securities. Give me holy suffering, only.

Lift the strangling of flesh I feel Everyday. Deliver me from boasting weaknesses Everyday. Keep my eyes unclouded by the lust of my flesh, my eyes, and my life, These things which make You small in my eyes.

The evidence of this in my life is that I will bless You, With my mouth, Upright One. Because, Helper, You have helped me.

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Here are some other helpful tools if you find good encouragement in Valley of Vision.

Joe Thorn has put together a reading guide for VoV that I've used regularly for years.

A few years ago I began tweeting VoV snippets and since then asked Joe Louthan and Bliss Spillar to join in the effort. If you'd like to follow us here, feel free! @valleyofvision_ 

Bliss Spillar is also accumulating a team of people who might be interested in contributing to a scriptural guide for VoV. More info here.