IF : GATHERING

I was 22 when I first wore mascara. In our home beauty was a scorned woman and adornment her harlotry. I asked for my first nail polish when I was nine and my father offered toilet water instead. I ran crying to my room and it was a family joke, but I still don't paint my nails.

My brains were my brawn and I was the first and only to graduate from college and twice over. I made a tent of my blankets, lit by a flashlight, and read Emily Dickinson, the plain and proper poet. Women are workhorses and beauty is fleeting; fear the Lord and the father, never be a robust and full and beautiful woman. She is the whore on the street stealing innocence from the eyes of boys.

Be smart, but not too smart.

A few years ago a friend told me what he appreciated most about me was my femininity, that I was wholly his sister and he my brother; that my femininity was trustworthy, and I wept from the backseat.

My womanhood is the biggest wrestle of my soul, every time I glimpse a peek at the beauty within, I convince myself of its vaporousness and it flees. Charm is deceitful, but it doesn't always say you are the most beautiful, sometimes it says you are the most unworthy.

My heart, more than anything, is to take the faces of women around me, wipe the black from the eye-rims and the red from their lips, point them to a mirror where their blemishes are bold and say, "This. This is the you He loves. This is the you He values. This is the you He came to redeem."

Because we are so hurried in our covering, so quick to fix, and slow to let bloom.

I have never thought myself as a teacher, but like Robert Frost said, "as an awakener." I want to awaken the worth in the heart of women, to show them their minds and hearts are as valuable as any other attribute, maybe more. I want to wake it in myself, but I know of no other way to do that than to do it alongside others. I want to ask the question: If, then?

If God created and it was good, then what?

If God knit us together, just as we are, then what?

If God formed our minds, our bodies, and our souls, then what?

If God, then what?

Will you join a generation of women in asking those questions?

On February 7-8, 2014 in Austin, Texas, we'll be gathering to discuss, dream, and determine what it can look like it we see God at the helm of us, and all of us poured out, blemishes and brokenness, and all to Him.

Sign up now for the IF Gathering.

Join Jennie Allen, Lauren Chandler, Ann Voskamp, Jen Hatmaker, and all of us as we work to awaken our generation of women to the beauty of God's goodness and design.

IF : LEAD We are gathering and uniting a team of women, who already lead our generation, and unleashing them to lead in their spheres of influence. Together we will create a community and foster an ethos – connecting, encouraging and collaborating together.

IF : GROW We are creating a blueprint for intentional equipping – reaching women with tools that are holistic, strategic and deep. By providing easy online access to a like-minded community and relevant resources, we will release women around the world to live out their purposes. // Online · 2014

IF : GATHERING A fresh, deep, honest space for a new generation of women to wrestle with the essential question: IF God is real… THEN what? This 2-day conference brings women together and wrestles out how to live out the calling God has placed on our lives. // Austin, TX Feb. 7–8 2014

IF : GLOBAL By partnering with organizations like Food for the Hungry, coming alongside women around the world, fostering relationships and utilizing our God-given gifts, our hope is that this movement will not only transforms hearts but leave a tangible impact on the world.

Sign up now for the IF Gathering.

Read what others are saying:

Jennie Allen Lindsey Nobles Jen Hatmaker Sarah Bessey Sarah Markley Logan Wolfram Kelly Stamps

My Camp, Your Camp, and Virtual Shunning

A few months ago I wrote an article that caused a bit of a firestorm among some of my writing compadres. Perhaps I gave it a provocative title, but I maintain its truth: Mark Driscoll is Not My Pastor. Amongst the backlash of that article there was also a curious phenomenon on the twitter chat: the affirmation of the virtual church.

What was being espoused by person after person was the reality that they considered their online friends their church. "Twitter is my church" and "You guys are my church and my pastors" were among some of the statements I read. The definition of virtual is "Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name."

Hear me out, one of the ministries to which God has called me is of the online variety. This blog and other publications I write for take a good amount of mental and spiritual energy. You are my ministry. But you are not my local church.

More and more I read articles lumping authors into clear and present camps. You have the Jesus feminists, the red letter Christians, the social justice-cause driven, the reformed, the story-tellers, the orthodox. There are these hard and fast lines boxing authors to a particular movement or theological framework, and once they have been flagged as such, they are blacklisted or embraced. There is little room for grace in this world because if I confess I agree with Rob Bell in this one area, that is a blight on my character to those who disagree with him. If I confess I agree with John Piper in this area, well, count me out of an entire sector of the blogosphere.

If we are in an age of the virtual church, then we are also in an age of virtual shunning.

You won't ever hear me disavow the importance of the global Church. That I can consider someone who lives thousands of miles from me one of my closest friends—that is the power of the bond we have in Christ.

But love for the global Church does not negate the biblical importance of the local church. Too often I hear great passion in my brothers and sisters for the health of the Church, without seeing evidence that they value it at its most local level. I see bloggers calling men and women to task, and shunning those who associate with them, without seeing any accountability to authority in their own lives. I see much concern for orthodoxy and discipleship and brotherly love, without seeing evidence of those things in their lives.

I am not saying those things are not happening, what I am saying is that I don't see it.

I don't see it because they are not my local church and I do not know them in the way I know the people alongside whom I walk. I don't see it because I am not privy to the conversations they have with their pastors (if they have pastors) or elders. I don't see it because I don't see them taking meals to new moms or visiting the sick or weeping with those who weep. Seeing those things is reserved for those who are not virtual, but real life, flesh and blood.

I'm writing this because too often the assumption is made that the virtual groups with whom I am associated are somehow the people to whom I am submitted. The assumption is we ascribe to the same set of theological ideals, we have discussions behind closed doors, spit-shake on how we'll handle certain situations, administer church discipline and the sacraments together. And it's simply not the truth.

I have pastors and a local church. I write for publications, enjoy friendships, but they are not my local church or my elders. Simply because a publication for which I write or a group of online acquaintances embrace a certain stance or ideal, does not mean I agree with them.

A year ago I had a conversation with one of my pastors. I met with him to discuss an opportunity put before me to participate in a publication where I would share the platform with some diametrically opposing authors. Should I do it? was my question. Yes, was his answer. Why? Because every opportunity we have to proclaim the gospel is good and we should prayerfully consider taking it. Some of the places I write, I write because I do disagree with their stance on certain issues. I write because it is my prayer that the gospel would go forth. My name doesn't matter, but Christ's does.

We proclaim Christ best by loving what He loves. What Christ loves best is the glory of His Father, and the Father is glorified when we are his disciples, when we love one another—at the most difficult, personal, beautiful level: right here, locally.

Love the Church, friends, but start by loving the church.

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. 

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.

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

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.)

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

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.

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

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.

Tin Foil Hats and the Mark of the Beast

You'd have thought I put on a tin-foil hat this afternoon when I tweeted, "Scuse me for being a little wary of conspiracy theories. I grew up thinking Keith Green was the antichrist & Social Security numbers were the mark of the beast."

I can remember the exact moment one of my parents removed a Keith Green record from the player and returned it to its owner under decided instructions to never play it in our presence again. I also remember the day I walked into the social security office at age 19, signed my name, and apparently my soul, over to the devil. The lump in my throat was surely the first sign I was hell-bent on hell. Truthfully I just wanted my driver's license and to stop getting paid under the table.

We cannot grow up unscathed by anything; we all carry the bumps and bruises of what our parents thought was best (Hebrews 12:7-11). Some will bear the presence of scars and some will bear the fruit of pruning—but we're all carved out, shaped through, and pricked by the reality of life in a post-fall world.

And we're all children of somebody broken by the same reality.

You don't have to look far back in my family history to see dysfunction; in fact, a good hard look at just me will probably keep you busy for a good long time. We're a mess, all of us, all the way back to Genesis. I don't write about my family often because I love my parents, I know they love me, and I'm convinced they were doing what they thought was right. And, trust me, the antichrist and the mark of the beast are a small fraction of the oddities we embraced while I was growing up (and also a small fraction of the beauties of growing up in my particular family).

A few weeks ago I had a discussion with someone who landed on a very conservative position on a tertiary doctrine. My soul and flesh blanched, and my first thought was for the children. The children! Adults can navigate these difficult matters with a decorum of sanity, but children? Children are simultaneously the most accepting and most polarizing creatures. The world is so black and white to us as children, right and wrong, good and evil. We accept what is good, abhor what is evil, and call spades spades.

At some point, though, introduction to gray areas must happen with children, and eventually we need to decide for ourselves where we land on gray areas. Open-handed theology, secondary or tertiary doctrines, even matters of finances or what is considered modest—these must be areas where we are given the freedom to wrestle and own for ourselves in light of gospel implications. We are exposed to violence, politics, death, joy, sex, divorce—some of us are exposed to all and all are exposed to how everything is broken in a sense.

But the very first brokenness we encounter as children is our parents—and that is so very difficult.

I'm not a parent, but I imagine how difficult it must be to have concluded ideals that broke my child and for them to see my own flawed nature so clearly. I know, as a child, how very difficult it was for me to realize the devil didn't reside in every song with a drum line; or that I wasn't going to hell in a hand-basket when I got my little nine numbered blue card. It wasn't wrestling with the music, though, or the number that was most difficult—it was the acknowledgement that Mom and Dad didn't know best even if they were doing what they thought was best. And that that's okay. Because God.

Every one of us has a story about our parents. We laugh about how over-protective they were, or under-protective. And for those of you who are parents, your children are crafting those stories about you right now. Some of them will be nostalgic "remember whens" and some of them will carry the weight of brokenness you tried to protect them from, but our prayer ought to be that these stories are told with greater perspective and deeper truths.

We pray we would not be like arrows kept in the quivers of our warrior parents, but that we would hit the mark, strong and true—even from broken bows.

Blemish

"It's just so messy," she said, and I nodded through the phone, tears making paths down my face. We're talking about a bride. A wanton, wayward bride who keeps soiling up her wedding clothes and back-handing the face of her groom. We're talking about a bride who wreaks havoc on the wedding guests and who is never satisfied with the direction of the aisle, the taste of the cake, the reception, and the feast.

We're talking about the Church and we're talking about us—because the Church is so grand and marvelous and becoming, and it is made up of messy, selfish, petulant us.

I've been covenanted at my church for a little more than two years now. Two years is nothing, a drop in the bucket, but when you have a shelf-life of two years, "a little more" can feel like an eternity. There's nothing I love more than the Church and so there's nothing I love more than us, the church local: the men who lead us, the ministries that serve us and fail us, the people who break and bless us. I love this mess. But you can't be around mess for too long before you begin to carry a bit of the mess yourself.

It's all fine, well, and good to have thoughts and theologies about how Church ought to be; it's easy to point fingers at all the ways Church has failed us; it's more common than not to leave when we feel the push of life against life, mess against mess, broken against broken. I know this because this is what I have done, more times than I know. I may not have left physically, but my heart unknit itself from the mess around me long before my body did.

I love the Church, but sometimes it is so very hard to love the church.

Because loving the church means mourning with those who mourn—the family who just found out their nine year old daughter has an inoperable tumor. Loving the church means standing in the hallway while a young girl grips your arm and confesses dark things that mirror your own heart. Loving the church means pressing close when you feel like pulling back, when you have been wronged and no one wants to right it for you. Loving the church means loving what Christ, the groom, loves, and He loves you and me and all of us soiled and broken.

I wake this morning, the sun streaming across my messy bed, and I feel the wrinkled mess deep in my soul. I feel the stains and the need to be washed in the water of the word. And I want to do it on my own, I do. I want to clean myself up, clean my brothers and sisters up, eradicate injustice and eliminate tumors.

But I cannot.

A groom sees past the irregularities and blemishes, he sees beauty beneath the strains and stretches of what life has done to his bride's body, he sees what he has chosen to be his—and He has called it good from the very beginning. And there, with that in mind, He presents us blameless, spotless, stainless to Himself. He reconciles what is broken and messy, and brings us whole to the Father for the eternal wedding feast.

And only He can do it.

...Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25-27

Sticky Substances and the Spirit's Work

Two Tuesdays ago I burned myself; my hand brushed the side of the cast iron pan while my eggs sizzled and spit. I jumped back and let a loose word slip out. First instincts kicked in and I wanted to thrust my hand in a bowl of icy water but I reached for the honey instead. In my family honey was the remedy for allergies and colds, burns and cuts. We bought it by the bucket. Gracious words, these are like the honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones (Prv. 16:24)

And this is what I meditate on today because my heart was burned this week. Unknowingly, unassumedly, words cursed across my heart, searing and scourging. I want to self-medicate with quick fixes or find comfort in the coldness of a hardened heart, but I reach for the honey instead.

Honey pulls the swollen skin in, keeps the bacteria out, lessens the scar, and soothes in the process.

Lord, I confess I need honey. And I need it from You. I need what is sweet to the soul and health to these bones. I have been cracked and crushed and this week I feel pressed from all sides, fearful of everyone and everything. And, Lord, I don't understand why you use sticky substances to seal the Spirit's work. I don't know why what feels most natural and right, is sometimes not what is best. And, Lord, I want what is best.

And I trust you to cover me over with it, bathe me in it, and supply me with it as often as I ask.

So I'm asking.

Drinking Often

I am thinking of the first communion these days, more part of the Easter story than the Christmas, but how can we love the birth if we do not love the death? I am thinking of that cup of wine, the sign of the new covenant, the blasphemous words of a man at a table with 12 friends: drink this new way of doing things, this new kindness of God. Drink it in remembrance of me.

"As often as you do it..." That's what he said. It's odd that a man who was saying, "I'm doing away with your rituals and sacrifices, your habits and your rules," was also saying, "do this often." But this is what I think about last night falling asleep: He has set for us pleasant perimeters. He says do it often, but remember it's not your religion anymore.

He knows us so well to use a word like often.

We need this, with our hearts so prone to attempting and trying, to sacrificing the modern lambs of our time, our tithe and our truant hearts.

We need this, we who do not understand that the kindness of God draws us to repentance and anything less is a marauder of faith and a shortcut to legalism.

I drink the cup this past Sunday with no resolve in my heart to do better next time or try harder tomorrow, no attempts to force a change of heart or fall into an apathy of my soul. I drink it with the freedom to drink it often, as often as I need a reminder of the new covenant, as often as I need the kindness of God drawing out my repentance. I drink it in gratefulness.

Someone said to me a few months ago: I'm only grateful for the Old Testament because it shows me where I'd be without the New Testament. I think about this often. That's really what Jesus was saying, drink this small cup, this sip of wine, do it to remember where you were and where you are now.

Doesn't that taste good?

(Published originally this past year on Grace for Sinners)

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.

Real Men & Real Women: Tough & Tender

The Young, Restless, & Reformed Complementarian crowd is often caricatured by a flannel shirt wearing bearded young man who gulps craft beers and talks theology from scribbled notes off his moleskine notebook. He quotes Piper and Packer and Paul. He opens doors for his sisters and uses the word "damn" with frequency, except when his simple fundamentalist Baptist mother is around. He never feels completely capable of leading anyone because he feels like he's playing catch-up for all his years of not. He drinks his coffee black.

Because the movement has historically been so stalwartly male, made of all things growly and gruff, there just hasn't been a similar caricature for the female side of YRRC. Though if you were going to attempt a one, she's probably an avid Pinner, crafting the perfect home for her bearded [future] husband, reading Proverbs 31 and feeling like she falls short of everything except being a wife of noble character (and only because the YRR guy wouldn't choose anything less than nobility of character for his wife). She probably shops at Whole Foods, or for the more frugal, Trader Joes. She writes Bible verses on index cards and tacks them to kitchen cabinets.

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

One of the enemy's favorite tactics is to take what God has not called ultimate and make it so. If he can confuse the Christians, get them to devour one another, well, he can call it a day. No need for the Crusades part deux, Jesus came to bring a sword, and by golly, the first people we're gonna use it on is one another.

One particular area of glee the enemy is basking in these days is the division he's bringing to the Church concerning gender roles. And he does it by making caricatures rampant.

Humanity is important, which means individuals are important, which means men and women are important, which means what men and women do is important, and if the enemy can make what we do (or have done) more important than what God has done, he will seem to have won this particular battle.

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

A concern of mine I see as I stand on the sidelines, and am being invited into the midst, is that we are taking caricatures of men and women and making them ultimate. For the YRR complementarian man, he thinks a principal way of Being A Man is fighting for his sisters: he wants them to be protected and flourishing—only he's a little clumsy at it sometimes and it can come off like he's being a chauvinist. For the complementarian woman, it's to find a husband as quickly as possible—not because she's half a person without him, but because how can she prove she's a distinct helper if she's not helping anyone? For the egalitarian man, he wants to serve his sisters by fighting to give them a voice where traditionally the most a woman can do in the Church is change diapers and hand out bulletins (Note: both tasks are valuable, I'm not knocking them, just how they limit the abundantly distinct gifts of women.). For the egalitarian woman, she has distinct powerful words burgeoning up inside of her and wants desperately to share them with the world; she wants to help, even if she ends up just sounding shrill.

Theologically we're not at all alike, but practically I think we are.

I don't think we all are. But I think we are sort of kind of maybe are.

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

Hear me out.

If the enemy's favorite tactic is to distract us by what is not best, so we would miss what is, wouldn't you say he thinks he's succeeding in some respects (Gen. 3.1-5)?

We have brothers who are fighting on behalf of their sisters, wanting to see their strengths utilized and maximized within the bounds of scripture, and we have sisters who want to do what they were created to do: help bring wisdom, counsel, a distinct voice, a feminine voice.

We're not so different after all.

But if we continue to get distracted by terminology, practicality, and sustainability, we're going to lose sight of the beautiful simplicity of the Gospel. I am not saying a theology of gender roles is unimportant here—I'm saying the world and its constructs are dead to us, we boast in the cross alone (Gal. 6.14).

Piper said, "We're not here to make men and women, we're here to make disciples." And my heart leaps inside of me when I hear that. Practice is important, but our practice should be to make disciples in the shadow of the cross, not to make mini-mes. "Come and die" is our mantra, "it's gonna hurt" should be our caveat.

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

Are you trying to fit yourself into a caricature of what your church or your theology deems you to be? Can I plead with you to not? You are doing a disservice to your theology, your brothers and sisters, and most of all the Gospel, if you make your position or personality ultimate.

Brothers, help your sisters. Fight for them when they are being marginalized. Fight for them not because you want them to lead you, or because you think it will make you more capable of leading them, but because the more you fight for your sisters, the more they will fight for you, and the more you will contend for the Gospel together as one.

Sisters, fight for your brothers. Help them see things in different distinct ways, help them with gentler tones and aspects of humanity that have been characterized as feminine. There is a deep need in the Church today for strong gentleness, ferocious lovingkindness, and articulate passion, and you are absolutely built to bring it to the table. But bring it for the sake of the Gospel, not your voice.

"Jesus is tough and tender, absolutely will get in the face of wicked, self-righteous leaders, and then hug a child. So when we come to Christ, men get appropriately tougher and appropriately more tender, and the same thing happens with women. It's like the last chapter, the end of a movie. There's a sense that my life makes sense, my experiences make sense. I am a female, but it's a bigger deal than that, I am a part of a greater story, I have a sense that I'm bringing to the table not just my femininity, but my spiritual gifts. I am not just a man, but I'm here to give my life away for the body of Christ. And that only happens when we come to Christ." —Darrin Patrick

For the sake of the gospel, friends, be like Christ. Tough and tender, both for both, all at once, all one in Jesus Christ.

Sucking on Stones

Sometimes we just need to stay hungry, she says to me through tears, and I remind her that Jesus said His food was to do the will of Him who sent Him. We are silent for a few minutes before thanking one another for being bread and fish.

Last fall I wanted to ask for something or someone and the Lord told me no or wait or yes or maybe but that He would sustain in the meantime. What I did not expect was the sustainment He gave. She lives on the west coast, in rainy Portland, she studies Hebrew and is a whole head taller than me. She's blond and beautiful and has a sleeve tattoo and we regularly cry through our conversations. I didn't ask for her—she was not what I asked for.

Sometimes, she told me once, we think we're asking for bread, but we're really asking for a stone, and when He gives us bread we don't recognize it because we're still looking for the stone.

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

I read a quote from Kathy Keller in the book she co-wrote with her husband, the inimitable Tim Keller, "Sometimes a pig doesn't know the worth of a pearl, to him it's just a pebble." I underlined those words, scribbled beside them, and cannot stop thinking about them.

Sometimes I'm asking for a stone instead of bread and sometimes I feel like a pebble instead of a pearl.

I find it a bit strange that Jesus said He would built His Church on the rock, crooking his finger at Peter, petra, Rock. On the backs of men who would deny Christ three times before He could forgive His followers saying they know not what they do? On the backs of those who sink after three steps out on watery faith? On the backs of those zealots? Those fools?

It occurs to me that God is the only one who knows the worth of stones, pebbles, pearls, and rocks.

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

If we don't ask for bread, we might feel satisfied for a long time sucking on the cold, hard emptiness of a stone—thinking it was all He had for us. Or perhaps we have ourselves convinced, like the old fable, that our stone soup is satiating and full.

And still, somehow, He's building His Church, accomplishing the will of the Father, on the backs of stone-sucking fools like us.

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." John 3:34

Rob Bell's New Book and Questioning Faith

It was a poor grasp of theology that led to me to confess in early 2010 I did not believe and could not believe, nor follow, the God I thought I knew. It was one particular line a few months later that turned me right around and into the arms of a Father unlike none I'd ever known: a simple line of truth about Who God Was and Is, and who I am not. Did I believe before that? Was there a moment of salvation in 2010? Did I need to get rebaptized? These were the questions I asked myself and others eventually asked as well. Questions that needed answers immediately, I thought.

Rob Bell is coming out with a new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, and I watched the trailer for it this morning. Guy better brace himself because I don't care if you're the Pope or the President of the United States, the backlash about to unleash on him yet again is gonna sting. Should it sting? Well, that's a question I'm not going to address here, so take your snark and stinky attitude elsewhere—regardless of how much you love or hate him.

Here's what I will say: in early 2006 I got my hands on a copy of Velvet Elvis. First, it was the design of the book that appealed to me—I loved the space, the use of graphic elements in the book, and the smokey blue used throughout it. It felt fresh in my hands. I hadn't read a word and already I knew something beautiful was about to happen to me. I was right. My copy of that book is dog-eared and underlined, scribbled in with pages falling out. Someone was giving me permission to think and to ask questions.

All my life, and especially all my Christian life, asking questions was out of the question.

In Velvet Elvis I was able to wrestle with concepts and thoughts that had never been presented to me as beautiful or mysterious. I thought faith was something you got once and never lost, and could never understand why faith had always been so elusive to me. I was [am] a chronic doubter. Bell's book let me stick my hands in the side of Jesus, poke fingers through God made flesh and flesh made God. 2006 began four years of wrestling for me. What I wrestled with was never completely clear, and I see now it's because I was wrestling with mystery.

I had flesh on my Jesus—He looked like me and all the Christians I'd known my whole life: a bit radical, a bit bland, and a bit pragmatic.

But now I had permission to not understand the fullness of Jesus.

And that saved my life.

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

At the end of those four years, sobbing on my bedroom floor, confessing I did not believe and could not believe, what I came to realize is that I did not believe and could not believe in the God I thought was.

This God who was black and white, clear and clean, four points and a poem, and this God who could not be understood at all, an enigma, a full-on mystery—neither God satisfied the deepest doubts and longings of my soul.

Slowly He began to reveal to me that He was both mystery and proof, solid and spirit, firm truth and full life. He was both/and, not either/or. He was stunning in His characteristics and humbling in His holiness. His beauty was in His immutability and His changelessness was in His triune nature, God in three persons.

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

This is important because heresy will always exist and we must be stalwart to point it out, but we also must let each generation come to a place where they are wrestling with very real, very actual, necessary battles with and for their souls. If we do not fling open the doors to what the world brings at us in some respect, we will raise generations of robotic orators with no grounding to their faith. Can I endorse the content of Velvet Elvis knowing what I know now? No. But can I endorse the wrestling with faith that Velvet Elvis encourages? Yes. Without reservation.

We finished the book of Acts this morning in class and several of us offered reflections on what we learned, how we were challenged or blessed. Here's what Paul taught me more than anything in that book: He was ready in season and out because he knew his audience, he knew the Word, and more than anything he knew his God. He, Pharisee of Pharisees, Hebrew of Hebrews, persecutor of Christians, and mocker of faith, was brought low and shown the beautiful mysterious light of his Savior on Damascus road.

We all will have our moment of beautiful mysterious light, some will have it reading Piper or Edwards, some while reading Keller, Chan, Kierkegaard, or even Bell. Maybe it will take longer than we'd like for someone, or even ourselves, to see a faithful work of service behind us and a hopeful path set before us. Maybe some of us will have to hide out in the house of Judas for a few months or days or weeks.

As for me, I take comfort in this: Every knee will bow, every tongue confess, that He is Lord.

There is no mystery or question about that. It will be full-on, the most spectacularly beautiful culminating moment we could ever imagine.

That God Doesn't Exist

Before I knew I would move a thousand miles from four seasons and local coffee shops, before I knew that my faith was going to fall apart on the threshold of spring and questions about tithing, membership, and provision, before all that. This all happened before that. I knew that God wasn't real and if He was real, He wasn't good, and if He was good, He wasn't good to me. What I couldn't wrap my mind around was why I'd been dragged through the whole charade in the first place. Why a decade of spirituality and suffering and questions and confidence? Why all that if He was just going to walk me into the desert, spin me around in circles, and tell me to sort it out from there?

One of the first sermons I heard preached after I moved down here was from a series about authority. In it my pastor, who was still in the middle of 18 months of chemotherapy for a brain cancer that kills most of its victims, said these words, "I believe that He did not cause my cancer, but He could have stopped it, and He chose not to."

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

There are all sorts of mental gymnastics in faith, right? In that sentence above you could spend hours and weeks and months trying to sort out what each word means and how it plays itself out. You might decide you cannot serve a God who doesn't cause suffering, but could stop it and chooses not to. But in that one sentence, my mind stopped the questions and just believed.

Because here is the truth about what God promises and what He doesn't:

He promises He is good and He promises His word endures forever.

He promises eternity to His children and He promises justice to us all.

He promises His character is inscrutable and generations will speak of His faithfulness.

And those promises trump. They win. They win because they pile these light momentary afflictions of cancer and unbelief, suffering and fear, and they place them in the hands of a Creator, an Artist, an All Good God, and He blows away the chaff, the things that feel like wasted time and wasted energy and wasted you, and He makes all things new.

All things.

New.

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.

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

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.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

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.

Middle of My Might

I wake in the middle of the night and this is my favorite time. The heater groans in still air and the traffic has ceased on the highway near my home. I read once that good writers and good theologians woke themselves in the night hours to pray and read, or write, and I know I fool myself that I am or could be both, but I still wake to pray, to read, to write. It's the disciplines of a godly life that fail me most. Because I am a recovering legalist perhaps? Or because the vestiges of licentiousness still breed in my soul with an alarming rate, I don't know. I do not discipline my body, nor make it my slave, so I am not pray-er, reader, or writer, if the truth is told.

I am only a pilgrim, a wayfarer, a sojourner, and my weaknesses, oh, they show in inopportune places and inopportune ways.

David is my comfort, that murderer, that adulterer. He bests my worst sins and still puts me to shame with his heart after God. Is Christ my water? My bread? My food? No? Seek on.

If redemption is the whole story of God, and I might argue it is, doesn't it make sense that we the redeemed need to be redeemed? And what is worth redeeming but that which has no worth? Green stamps and soda cans, cardboard lottery tickets and oh my soul. Worthless all, but if attributed worth by Someone, that is the whole story of God.

This morning I ache when my eyes open naturally in the dark and I roll over, turn the light on. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Will hard work? Determination? Discipline? Prayer?

Who is a Person and that Person is Christ alone. He is my bread. He is my water. My food. My redeemer and my help.

Seek on.