Sweetest Frame

There are sweet idols in my life. Tempered steel overlaid with silver. Carved wood overlaid with gold (Isaiah 30:22). These are the things that bid for my time, my affections, my joy, and even my mourning. They care not what kind of attention I give to them, only that my whole attention is given. This past week we finished 11 weeks of studying 1, 2, & 3 John. We gathered one last evening in the sanctuary and a friend led us singing through The Solid Rock. My favorite line from the hymn comes in the first verse: I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus name.

It is my favorite line, but most times I cannot bring myself to sing it. It simply isn't true, and most of the time I doubt even my desire for it to be true.

The sweet frames in my life seem not so sordid as they really are when held against the surpassing beauty of Christ alone—and yet, oh how they make such palatable feasts.

Once someone told me my faith seemed like a crutch, a way to deal with a broken family, untimely death of my brother, and a move away from all familiar things. I carried those words with me for a decade, asking myself if this faith was less paramount and more crutch, something to buffer me while all around me the world gave sway.

It wasn't until the past few years I began to see, though, that if my faith was a crutch (and I believe it is), it was because without it I could not walk or stand at all. The sweet idols walk beside me but crumble when the slightest weight is laid on them—these cannot carry me through to the beloved face of Christ. Only He can do that and He promises He does—and will.

I can trust the sweetest frame, but that frame will falter without fail. But to wholly trust in Jesus name? It may be a crutch for a limping me, but it leads to the ultimate Healer and I limp gladly, trusting in the Sweetest Name.

Pretty Woman and Why You Judge "Prostitutes"

One of the most common questions I get about sex-trafficking is, "But don't some of the women in the sex industry choose that lifestyle?" I know at that point the questioner's knowledge of the sex-industry comes from Pretty Woman and other glamorized entertainment (including billboards & ads, no matter how air-brushed and smiling they are). There's a three year old girl who's been giving favors to her stepdad since she was old enough to talk. It might hurt, but it's as normal to her as eating Cheerios and playing with My Little Pony. When she's a teenager someone offers to pay her for doing something as normal to her as brushing her teeth, painting her nails. Her body has never belonged to her, why should it start now?

There's a 14 year old girl who's been bullied into giving her boyfriend's friend sex, or else.

There's a impoverished family in Asia with three young daughters to feed and so three daughters to give to the guy down the street who will sell them for an hour or two to the highest bidder. The family gets to eat one more day.

There's a 18 year girl in Moldova who's been in orphanages since she was six or seven, after her parents left the country to find better work for themselves. She's aging out. She's pretty and quiet and on the hunt for a honest job to provide for herself. She accepts a job as a dancer, a housekeeper, or a factory worker. She is tricked, drugged, and trafficked for use in pornographic material.

There's a 12 year old runaway from Grand Rapids. She's been abused at home since she was little and just wants to be safe. A guy finds her, promises to help her, feeds her, clothes her, and forces her to prostitute herself at night in order to keep herself fed and clothed.

There's a 13 year old girl in South America promised a job cleaning houses. She is beaten, raped repeatedly, her will broken, and then given addictive drugs so she will need her captor, even in her broken stupor. She is then transported across the border into the United States where she is brought to men in truck stops along the interstate that runs behind your house.

And yet:

There's a guy in front of his computer late at night watching images he thinks only affect him.

There's a group of men on a business trip taking their pick of a girl.

There's a man at a bar in Chicago leering at a young woman stripping.

There's a father touching his daughter late at night.

There's a traveler walking into a red light district out of a sick curiosity.

There's you, in your car, driving past a woman of the night. If you're judging her because you think she chose to be there, your moral compass has been calibrated to the Pretty Woman culture. No one chooses that lifestyle. No one asks to be raped, exploited, trafficked, paraded, blackmailed, or abused.

I never use the word prostitute because it doesn't matter to me how much money a girl, or her captor, pimp, father, brother, or trafficker, is getting for her body: she is not the one making a living there.

Fallen

I had a conversation a few months ago around my kitchen table. We were two kids washed up and battered around by a legalistic ministry in our teens. Both of us had stories, neither of us trying to outdo one another, but just sharing, "You too? I thought I was the only one." Of course we didn't think we were the only one, but isn't that one of the enemy's favorite ploys? To isolate and make us feel as though what we have experienced or will experience is singular to us?

The point of our conversation was to talk about leadership, charisma, the difference between preaching and shepherding, and I hope I was some encouragement to my brother.

This morning I read of the resignation of a man who was in leadership of a similar ministry. He admitted his failures, took responsibility, stepped down, and yet the consequences are still rife for him—and us, the Church. Even if I did not prescribe to his particular brand of faith or practice, the ache of a fallen brother sits deep in my stomach this morning. I did not celebrate him or his ministry, nor do I cast a judgmental finger in his direction. His sin was taking his eyes off Christ—for one moment or one month, it matters not. My sin is a constant same.

There will be three responses to his sin:

1. Some will call attention to it and cackle something like, "See? This man who espoused these doctrines with which I disagreed fell, therefore everything he espoused is wrong." The bible has something to say about this: "[Love] does not rejoice with wrongdoing (either the doctrine or the sin), but rejoices with the truth."

The truth is this man confessed and repented. We rejoice at that. His sin is not related to his doctrine except that anything can become an ultimate thing—and something did in his case. Something other than Christ.

2. Some who should say something will not say anything. There is this strange phenomenon within the Church. When someone falls on the other side of the fence, we write blogs, we tweet, we caution, we make a fuss—we are the pharisees who thank God we are not like those people. But when someone nearer to us theologically or ideologically falls or fails, we keep our mouth tightly shut. I think that closed-mouth tendency is good in some ways. Love covers a multitude of sins and all that. But what love does not do is ignore the level ground before the cross. Love acknowledges that none of us are exempt from taking our eyes off Christ. Love says, "He failed, yes. But for the grace of God, here go I..."

3. The third response, and I think the one we ought to do first and foremost, is to pray. If we are in a local church we have a pastor or more than one, and our minds ought to first go to them. Men who are in leadership are not exempt from failing, struggling, or fearing. I have written about this before, but more than opinions on how to handle this particular fallout, we ought to pray for our pastors and leaders. They are mere men. Real men, if you will. Made from flesh and blood and all the same things we are. You can cognitively believe any doctrine you want, but at the end of the day you are still a man or woman with a propensity toward sinfulness.

Pray for your leaders. In times like this when they watch a brother fall, they are praying more deeply and fervently that they would not fall, that they would stand accountable for us with clean hands and a pure heart.

Pray the same for them.

The Enemy of Good

I'm no liar so when someone asks how I am I rarely say, "Fine." My go-to answer, though, is just as distasteful: "Busy." It's been a season of life, going on a year now, where I've felt under the laundry pile of the life. I think to myself, "I really need to get out from under this stuff," but the truth is I've hardly had three days in a row to stop and take stock of what's keeping me busy.

This fall in particular I'm juggling four things that could be full-time jobs in themselves. And this morning I cracked a little bit.

Because I am not enough.

I cannot be a good friend, minister, writer, fiancee, blogger, thinker, designer, sister, daughter, and Christian. I pulled into my parking spot at work this morning, took a deep breath, tried to mentally prepare for another busy day at the office—and I cracked.

When I crack I don't make a scene, I don't cry, I don't get angry or shout. When I crack I shut down, I slump over, I feel defeated and want to quit everything but know I never will. I'm an internal processor so when I don't have time to internally process life, life processes me and it doesn't go well.

Charles Spurgeon wisely said, “Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.” And I not so wisely have turned myself into a pretzel trying to learn Latin. Not actually read Latin, of course, just do the mental equivalent of it. It takes its toll on my energy, my spiritual growth, my relationships, and my ability to do anything well.

I don't see life slowing down anytime in the next weeks or months. In fact, I know I'm on the threshold of what could be one of the busiest or deepest growth seasons of my life. I want to be faithful with the time, to redeem it, to rest in it, to rely on the Father through it. But this is my confession—busy is the other four-letter word for me. I hate busy. It is just as much a thief of my soul as being "fine."

I'm spending some time in the word this week specifically asking the Lord to refresh the right spirit in me, to remind me how to rest, even amidst the busyness of this next months. I'm asking Him to break the things in me that keep me running in my own strength and to restore to me the joy of simple salvation. Salvation that is not dependent on doing anything well or even doing it at all.

What refreshes you in seasons of busyness?

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

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.

Let's Take This Outside (your circle)

Challenge to Christian bloggers: read a blog you don't usually read, find good content, share it. Reach across the table & find the commonness of the gospel.

That's my status on Facebook right now and I mean it.

Last week there was yet another dustup in the blogosphere. You know how it goes. Blogger writes XYZ, Twitter erupts with 140 character-easily misunderstood opinions and all manner of logical fallacies, and 67 Bloggers all respond—many of them entirely missing the point of original blog or demonizing original blogger or making good points of their own which will undoubtedly be rebutted by another 67 bloggers.

Somebody hand me a paper bag and get me off this ride.

One of the ways I try to do damage control in the Christian blogosphere is to stare people in the face and tell them to slow down, breathe, be circumspect, trust Jesus is Who He says He is and that He is building His Church—with or without a troupe of bloggers all juggling their balls in amateur hands.

But one of the most helpful things, I think, a blogger can do is to simply read more than one polarizing post of one blogger. There's something about even reading the "About Me" section of a blog that humanizes a person, takes the monster out of him, or at least shows the monster to be only a suit bought at half-price after October 31st. Underneath they're real people with real lives who cook dinner with their spouses and stub their toes and probably really do love Jesus—even if He's revealed Himself to them in different ways than He has to us.

The beauty of the gospel is that it is for all men, Jews, Greeks, Slaves, Free, Men, Women, but it does not eliminate differences, demanding a dehumanizing clone-like Christianity. No. Instead it reaches inside all the differences and finds the beautiful sameness: broken people in need of a Holy God, and then sends us out to reach all kinds.

So if you're a blogger or a content creator of some sort, can I encourage you to do something radical this week? Go read that publication you shudder to think of. You know which one it is for you. Go read it and read it with the express purpose of finding the beautiful gospel woven through its threads and then share it with your followers. I think we'd be surprised at what might happen.

Bearing the Weight of Ten Thousand Sins

If I began this post with the words penal substitution, I'd lose half of you by the end of this sentence. Have I lost you?

If I have, that's okay, I'll talk to the rest of you.

The past few weeks I've been thinking of how easy it is for me to bear the weight of the sin of others. I feel it. It weighs me down. It drives me to my knees and to tears. The affects of it, and the effects of it, bear down on me, threatening to steal my peace, my joy, my hope, and my confidence. I feel the wrath of God, the just-ness of God in the face of sin. I tend toward mercy, but tremble under others' justice. My propensity is toward grace, but I see righteousness and holiness as endeavors worth pursuing.

But what happens when I can't bear the weight of your sin? When your unrighteousness soils my peace and your depravity wrecks my rest?

This whole week, as it makes national news, the refrain of In Christ Alone repeats in my head:

'Til on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live

For those of you left, I haven't got much to say, save this:

I cannot bear the weight of anything, not my sin or yours. I cannot satisfy the demand of a Holy God or even a demanding god. I cannot satisfy my idols or my cravings, my friends or their needs, my dreams or my desires. Christ alone can, and did. And He bears the weight of it on fully capable shoulders.

Selah. 

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.

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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?

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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.

Broken Bodies and Victorious Limps

It is raining when I wake. I stretch my legs, hooking my toes over the end of my bed. I have not been able to shake the brokenness I feel these days. There is good news and bad and it comes simultaneously. The world is broken and we are in the world, and sometimes of it too. A new niece was born yesterday and a man who is like a father to my brothers died last night.

I was brought forth in iniquity.

There are those who excuse those words as poetry. But what is poetry if not man's attempt to make sense of what seems senseless or too mysterious for simple words? What is poetry but God's way of making beautiful what seems ugly? When science fails me and theology is too wondrous for me, I take comfort in mystery, in poetry.

An unsettling verdict, a drug overdose—"this world breaks every one of us, and later we are strong at those broken places." Hemingway did not believe in original sin, I don't think, but even the best and worst of us knows the cracked and creviced face staring back at us from the mirror. Are any of us whole? Really whole?

A week of conversations on brokenness, where baggage on original sin and depravity and hope circle and devour—it leaves me feeling brokenness more acutely. No one is unscathed, and especially not the one who thinks he is. We all walk with a limp and better that we acknowledge it than try to hide it. You're broken? Me too. Let us walk more slowly beside one another then, the journey toward the kingdom is not a sprint or a race, there are no winners—or losers. His glory is our collective trophy.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, you will not despise.

Brought forth in brokenness, brought forth in wholeness—either way, what He desires is the cracked and creviced child. The one who knows her sin and her faults, her needs and her Savior. The one who knows his helplessness and his fears, his limps and his Healer.

What need have we for a Savior if we can find a scrap of wholeness on our own?

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 15:51-57

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."

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. 

A Few Thoughts on SGM, Silence, & Sayable

I'm loathe to take a camp, step off the fence, call my cards, or slap a label on myself, but all it takes is one quick glance through Sayable, a brief perusal of the publications for which I write, and the local church I call home for others to safely land me in with the neo-reformed. I won't reject the title, but in normal fashion, I will not lay claim to it. However, there's been something rotten in the state of Denmark recently and all fingers are pointing back at, well, I'll say "us" for the sake of this post. If you have no idea what rotten piecemeal is being bandied about, I have no interest in educating you. Others have done so much more thoroughly than I, with much more anger than I, with many more bones in the game than I. I weigh in today because May was supposed to be my sabbatical month and instead I have been peppered with more questions than ever on why I haven't written on the SGM civil suit.

Here are the main reasons:

1. I am not affiliated in any way with SGM. Though I may be affiliated with those who are affiliated with them, we can play that game all day in every which way. Kevin Bacon anybody? These days everyone knows everyone somehow. It is a small world after all.

2. I am not a lawyer, but I think I am a fairly intelligent person, and even I had a bit of trouble getting my mind around the legal jargon of all the documents. And I've been in my share of courtrooms, with my share of lawyers spouting legal jargon—two can play that game. All I'm saying is, someone wants to win and so it's hard to trust a system where winning is the goal. Last shall be first and all that.

3. I'm one of those fools who trusts the men who keep watch over my soul. Maybe that play isn't for everybody, but I figure the Bible spent a lot of time talking about it, so nuff said.

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Just because I didn't say anything about it, though, doesn't mean I didn't feel complicit in the alleged ongoing silence by "us." I was a bit confused as to why men and women I respected within the Church at large weren't weighing in on the suit at all, save from a post by Tim Challies. It is good to be slow to speak, yes, but not speak at all? It didn't seem right. I knew I didn't have anything to add to the civil suit conversation, but surely something could be said to acknowledge the situation period?

(Adding my voice to the cacophony of the Christian blogosphere wouldn't assuage those out for an admission of guilt, though, if you're wondering why I didn't say anything. I'm under no illusions—I might be affiliated with those affiliated with SGM, but I'm no Kevin Bacon, if you get my drift.)

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In the light of more recent occurrences, though, and now that some of "us" have issued a public statement, I thought a few things might be said. Take them for what they're worth to you. Remember comments aren't open on Sayable ever so I'm not shutting you down and there's no need to respond. They're just my simple thoughts for those who might need them.

If you are a pastor:

Please protect your sheep. I meant what I said above about trusting those who keep watch over my soul. I mean that because the Bible says it and I trust the words of God. However, you, by nature of your position and your God-given authority, help illuminate those words for your sheep. You can use or abuse your authority and position, and you can, unknowingly, be the voice of the accuser to people—even in your silence. Always protect your sheep. If one of your talented, seemingly godly, charismatic sheep turns out to be a wolf, go after him. If one of your sheep leaves the fold, go find her. Pastor your people, don't just preach at them.

If you were abused:

This case feels like the nail in the coffin, trust me, I know. Even if it wasn't the same as your experience, you can easily relive your experience every time someone dismisses the concerns of the victims, every time someone seems complicit with their silence. Your heart means well here. The grace of God for you takes a horrific experience and gives you the tools to minister to these issues in a way those higher-up might never be able to do. That is not your blight or your stain, that is the precious work of grace to take the broken and make beautiful. Now is your time to speak in and with grace.

If you were an abuser:

You did wrong and you know this. You ought to make recompense for what is considered a crime in the eyes of God and the judicial system. But this does not mean forgiveness is withheld from you, or should be withheld until you "pay for what you did." Forgiveness doesn't work that way. I pray you know the fullness of the gospel covers your crimes, but does not blot them from history. Repent, accept the judicial punishment, and if you are His Child, look forward to a lifetime of His grace and an eternity in His presence.

If you want to leave the church because of this:

Part of me wants to say, please do, and trust me, there's no snark in that statement. I'm fully convinced that no matter how far you run, you cannot outrun the wild, ferocious, loving heart of our God. If leaving the Church for a while helps you clear yourself of the clutter of its underbelly, please do. You have the freedom to leave abusive situations, Christ sets us free to do that, and you should. But I will also say this, as a child who has seen her fair share of the underbelly, if you're His? You're grafted in. You're knit so tightly into His body and flesh, his scars and blood-bought redemption that you can't leave the Church because you are part of it. And it's beautiful. Really beautiful when you see it like that.

If you are neo-reformed (or whatever it is called these days), but embarrassed by the silence or complicit responses:

Can I implore you to press in close to your leaders, your elders, your editors, and your pastors. Sometimes they know things about a situation that you don't know, isn't public knowledge, isn't on some legal document, and isn't widely known. Sometimes they're withholding comment because it could actually make it worse for the most helpless of the situation. You don't know. There's a lot of speculation, regardless of who you are and who you know and who you know who knows someone else. You aren't Kevin Bacon, you just saw one of his movies once or twice. Reserve judgement.

If you know someone who knows someone (who was abused, who went to an SGM church, or anyone at all):

One of the things I love about the Bible is there are all these portions where it's just one man or one woman and God (or the enemy). There are no eye-witnesses, it's just Moses and the burning bush, Daniel and the lions, David and the bears, Jesus and the enemy. We get this birds-eye view into the situation, but really, when it happened it was just them there.

So we have perceptions of how things looked or played out, but I'll bet you could poll any thirty of us and we'd all have a different setting in mind for Moses and his burning bush. There would be similarities, of course, but it would be different. This is how it is to hear any story second hand. We can know that some things are true, but some things are simply perceptions. Because of this, it is almost always better to reserve your own words about another person's experience. There may be truth to it (and in this case specifically, it seems like there is definitely much truth to it), but the retelling of it multiple times will never end well. Mourn with those who mourn, bring it to the authorities if need be, but keep silent about the specific matter unless you know you speak the canonized truth.

If you are a mere onlooker:

If you're just a casual reader, a blog reader, a curious atheist, a questioning agnostic, I am sorry. This entire situation, from twenty years ago until today is unfortunate and shameful. This is not becoming to the Church and I deeply regret it happened. However, let me say this, I am firmly convinced the Church tries to keep its wedding dress too squeaky clean, and this case is a perfect example of it. The reality is we're blemished and broken, spotted and wrinkled, and Christ is the only way we're getting presented cleansed. He's it. It's not through a denomination, a pastor, a friend, a court system, or a blog post that the resolution of all things comes, it's Him. Him alone. Be encouraged, there's room at the table and we don't mind if you're messed up. Really. We're messed up too.

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That's all. I know this is long, and I'm breaking sabbath to share it, but I couldn't sleep and I love to sleep.

Go in peace, brothers and sisters, pastors and sheep, abused and abusers, doubters and finders, He is faithful to complete His work. He seals it with His spirit.

The Hospital

I had a conversation with a writer friend the other day and he told me the main problem with many churches these days is they're more schools than hospitals. Which reminded me of something Jesus said once about coming for the sick and not the well. My writer friend said we have to see a return to the spiritual, the mysterious, and the beauty of the gospel. He might not have said it like that, but as he is a writer he understands poetic license.

We’re all stumbling bumbling idiots, aren’t we? The blind leading the blind, deaf teaching the mute, and all of us trying to make sense of our sins and secrets. It makes my head hurt to think through the issues of our day, homosexuals marrying, drone strikes, economic disasters, babies—all the babies maimed in their mother’s wombs. How can any of us make sense of anything with all the world’s answers shouting so terribly loud in our faces? But how can any of us make sense of anything with us shouting so angrily at ourselves?

Once when I was small I played a game with my brother and he told me to trust him. He took my hand and led me to a dark corner of our basement and we waited there for our father to come down and turn the light on. When he did, and the wait seemed forever, my brother whispered from one to three and we bound up with the energy we’d bottled in those ten minutes hiding. I don’t think we gave my father a fright, but he pretended we did. “Oh, my,” he said, “you surprised me!” and we rushed at him and asked him over and over, “Did we, Daddy, did we?” We had to know that we had surprised him even though deep down we knew we hadn’t.

All we like sheep have gone astray, after our own way, lurking in the dark corners, all bound up in sin sickness and death. Yet all we like good and faithful servants want to come back to Jesus and ask, “Have we done well, Jesus? Have we?” because I think we so desperately want to do well. We do. We don’t want to bring our sickness to the hospital, we want to bring our strength. We don’t want to bring our weakness to the table, we want to bring our wins.

This week, all of it, all I can feel and know is the sin sickness of my heart. I need the hospital. I need to be allowed to be sick, to not bring anything to Jesus when I come but my trembling hands and my tender heart. It is Holy Week and I want to meditate on the cross, but all I am thinking about is my sin and how I feel like a bound up pile of wrong-doing and wrong-thinking and wrong-living. But I want to make sense of it. I want to see Him in it. I want to pop out of my dark dank corners and surprise Him with my goodness and faithfulness.

But He didn’t come for people like that, did He?

He came for the sick.

And we, you and me and all of us, we are so awfully, terribly, beautifully sick in need of Him.

Tough Mud, Miry Pits, and Why God Won't Be Mocked

A blog-reader (and near friend) wrote me an email the other day containing these words:

l love the peace-speaking, life-giving nature of your blogs. You seem seized by your faith that the Lord can work out the differences in His Body—or at least help us live in peace despite them.

And then I read yet another diatribe about yet another divisive issue in the Church. And a biting tweet from someone who ministers effectively from an office about someone who ministers effectively from a garden. And then I heard someone snort behind me when a certain demographic was discussed.

Seized by my faith. Yes. But seized by my faith in a sovereign God. Yes.

Perhaps I'm simplistic, but I know how my brain works and the miles it runs every day, the questions it asks and the solutions it tries to find. I know how quickly I can survey the ground in front of me and how fast I can estimate the work to be done and the best way to do the work. So I don't think it's simplistic thinking that drives me to breathe deep at the factions, lift my eyes up and say, "But God."

We're all so concerned with defending truth, or at least our best white-knuckled version of the truth, that sometimes we forget that God guards His truth and He will not be mocked.

He will not be mocked (Gal. 6:7).

Westboro Baptist Church may seem to make a mockery of Him, but then Fred Phelps grand-daughter comes out and extols His name.

Chic-Fila may have walked into a hornet's nest, but then president Dan Cathy meets with GLBT spokesperson and puts flesh on the Gospel.

Mark Driscoll may tick a lot of people off, but Mars Hill Seattle is filled with hundreds of pastors who are on the ground, doing the work of the gospel and people are being saved.

But that's not all:

I have pounded my fists in the air and cursed God's name, and He still wants me.

He wants me?

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

God will not be mocked and He will use arms, legs, hands, and feet shod with truth to take the Gospel to doubters and dwellers, skeptics and seekers, askers and atheists, pharisees and philosophers. He uses you and me—and all of us fools.

So the next time we're tempted to write a blog post denouncing yet another brother or sister in Christ, or type 140 characters about how we know so much more about another person's life or ministry calling, let's take a second and a second look at the miry pit from which we came.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. Psalm 40.2

He wants you. And He might have used a fool or two along the way to get to you.

Because, don't worry, He knows His sheep and they know Him. And His name is safe.

Yet

The nations shall see your righteousness,and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.

A friend and I have an ongoing conversation in which we always decide we agree, but in which I usually come back later with some grievance. He says that a woman who doesn’t feel lovely before marriage won’t feel lovely afterward, and I say that God loved us while we were yet sinners so it’s not too much to expect a man to at least try to follow suit.

I think we are both lazy in our estimation of what loveliness is.

You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

It’s been a whole year since I’ve felt lovely. I know it exactly because it was the second week of Lent last year that the little lie crept in and began to strangle out the good and beautiful that grew inside of me. A year is a long time for a lie to fester, especially if you put off addressing the lie until 365 days later. Which I am now doing.

Last week one of my classmates read from Psalm 139. He read it through once, quickly, then teased it apart a bit for us, then asked us to close our eyes and imagine we were saying those hallowed words to God Himself.

Tears pooled in my eyes and I could barely breathe at the end of it all.

I could barely say those words to a friend, a roommate, myself, but to God?

Later that night I was telling a friend what happened and I was embarrassed, not to tell her, but to even confess it myself. Even before a word is on my tongue, He knows it. He knit me together in my mother’s womb. He hems me in, behind and before. I am fearfully made. I am wonderfully made? My days were formed for me?

My days?

Even the past 365 days?

You shall no more be termed Forsaken and your land shall no more be termed Desolate but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her and your land Married for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.

It’s hard to not feel wasted inside, overgrown with weeds of lies and weeds of wishes. But that He formed these days for me? Every one of them? Crafted in secret, hewn in His hands, for His glory, these days?

Today I will disagree with my friend yet again: Christ loved me while I was yet a sinner, dead in my ways, covered over by thorns and thistles and lies as big as years. He saw that and called it worth loving, not because I was lovely but because I knew I would never be.

For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. Isaiah 62.2-5