The Power of the Church

A few months ago I attended an AA meeting as an exercise for a class. I went as an "observer," though my experience drew me to understand I was more than that. I wrote the following afterwards:

I wasn’t sure what to expect as I entered the room. I had just met one of the regulars to the recovery group outside. I’ll call him Tom, a man who seemed joyous, whose friendliness and genuine interest in others was contagious. A man who reeked of alcohol. That had been, he explained, his addiction of choice, and he spoke of it throughout the time in the past tense as if it were something he had beaten. His conviction was so compelling that at several points I found myself wondering if maybe I had taken a whiff of something else, maybe a hint of alcohol wafting on the air from some other source. Maybe it had been on his clothes or even on his skin. Could it do that? Could years of abuse with the stuff cause it to meld somehow into the skin so that years later other could still detect it, I found myself wondering. A worse thought came to mind. Maybe I had imagined it. Maybe I had expected it and my mind had created the smell for me. I was repulsed at the thought. Throughout the meeting, though, Tom’s stumbling and slurred speech confirmed for me that he had not yet found his freedom from the clutches of the disease as he had so passionately declared.

Tom’s declaration of complete freedom from his illness seemed an exception rather than the rule. For the others, the tug-of-war between freedom (and life as its fruit) and imprisonment (and death as a result) would become the kind-of mantra of the evening, the theme to the lives of each of members who came. Addiction for the majority of them was not something they had completely overcome, but rather they had braved the journey away from it, and “addict” was not an identity they were quick to shed, aware of their propensity to return to its lair when the temptation came. It seemed to be an ever-present reminder for them of their desperate need of grace and strength from Christ. Nowhere before had I encountered such an immediate and practical appreciation of the Apostle Paul’s impassioned intention to “boast about my weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:5) and his understanding that Christ’s strength was made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Two ladies greeted me as I entered the room, Jane and Cheryl. Jane was quick to tell me that she had been a heroin addict for twenty years of her life. Cheryl’s addiction had been alcohol, though she said she had tried a variety of recreational drugs as well. They had both been sober for some time, but returned weekly to these meetings as a way to remind themselves that they are only a puff or a bottle away from destruction and that they needed the fellowship with others who could empathize with their weakness as well as remain authentic enough with them to challenge any inflated sense that they had it all together.

I took my seat beside a man reading his Bible. He seemed young, maybe in his late thirties, though his eyes and face, his numerous tattoos and scars, defied his age and seemed full of old secrets and stories. He introduced himself as Brad, and I came to see very soon that he was the elected teacher for the group. Whether he had been elected by the group or by God to teach I was never sure, for he was amazingly knowledgeable of Scripture and handled the Word of Truth with deep wisdom and passion. He spoke of addiction in terms of both disease of body and disease of soul, of both the assault from the Evil One and the assault from the flesh within. And he spoke of the real design and result of any addiction: the stealing of peace and joy, the killing of the deep heart and soul, and the destruction of relationships and purpose.

I later learned that Brad had once been a pastor, though it was unclear whether or not it was before or since his battle with addiction. For the benefit of everyone in the room, he was quick to tell his story and detail both the horrors of his addiction as well as his battle for freedom from it. And he was not alone in his gut-level honesty. It had seemed perhaps a requirement for the group, a kind of unspoken rule, that there would be no posing or pretending, and that each one would have the freedom here – if only here in all of the world – to be real and to share in the naked tragedies of their addictions as well as the unabashed triumphs as they came.

How Tom’s pretending fit into all of that I was never sure. No one called him on his obvious use of alcohol that day. He had seemed comfortable to share his struggle, though always in the past tense. Perhaps that was another stipulation of the group: that each member was free to be where they were on the journey, without fear of judgment or manipulation, the group itself acting as a kind of safety zone, a reprieve from the weight of others’ eyes and prejudice. Maybe Tom had needed this more than anything else, and he had found it here.

Nearly an hour had gone by as Brad led the discussion on the topic of knowing God and obtaining freedom from the imprisonment of addiction when the counselor brought in a well-groomed middle-class-looking couple and introduced them around. They took their seats across from me. The woman was pretty, well-dressed, and young. The man was tall, handsome, and fit, looking more like he belonged on a golf course or a basketball league than in a recovery group. The look of embarrassment on his face betrayed his discomfort. It was obvious that his wife was in distress, as if she would burst into tears at any second. After the introductions, the leader of the group, Shawn, asked the man simply and directly, “Alcohol or drugs?” The question dropped at the man’s feet like a lead weight, and he remained motionless for a few seconds trying to figure out how to answer. I had a picture in my mind of a trapped animal running back and forth trying to find a way out. He found none, and quietly answered, “D-d-drugs.” It was enough to burst the dam of his wife’s pain, and tears poured from her eyes. The man explained that he had smoked pot for years, and had hidden his addiction from his wife since their wedding a year ago. Devastated, she felt not only the pain of his addiction but also the betrayal of his secrets. It was Shawn, I think, who then said pointedly, “You’re only as sick as the secrets you keep.” We spoke more as a group to the couple, and the wife was given room to cry and to tell a bit of the story.

The entire meeting lasted an hour and a half, and then everyone got up, prayed together, said goodbye, and left. The introductions, the conversation, the teaching, and even the farewell had all been very simplistic, non-manipulative, easy. The regulars seemed to genuinely care about one another, and yet there were no attachments, no dependence upon one another outside of the concern within the meeting. Each, it seemed, had their own lives to attend to, to rebuild, to work at. And all gave room for each one to be human, full of weakness as well as glory.

What struck me perhaps more than anything else was this notion of “addiction.” Why is it that, though I do not have and never have had addiction to drugs or alcohol, I felt very much a part of the members’ stories, their lives, their teaching. Sharing with them I realized that we all have our whores that we run after instead of our One True Lover. My favorite bedfellows of resignation, of cynicism and noble despair – these are no less potent than those of drugs and alcohol, no less defining, and no less deadly. The power of the recovery group laid in authenticity with one another and desperate dependence upon the rescuing and sustaining grace of Jesus. The power of the church lies in the same.

The Stormy-Hearted

The sea is never still; it pounds on the shore, restless as a young heart,
hunting. The sea speaks, and only the stormy heart knows what it says.
-Carl Sandburg

The community Jesus has invited us into as we share fellowship is the company of stormy-hearted ones, who have set their faces toward the Wind. The sun sets past some distant land, and the haze and glow of twilight settles first over the mast, and then the trim, and then our faces. The rope that once rested in our hands, with one end tied firmly to the dock, floats now on the restless sea. We have let go, deciding to let the breeze that's kicked up this evening give its all into these sheets. The wind of God's passion for us has taken us out onto the High Seas. We have set sail away from predictable, "responsible," organized, sanitized beliefs and lives, pushed out into deep waters, because we are ready to walk humbly with our Lord. We are ready to push toward and pursue others' hearts, just for the sake of their hearts, for freedom, and because we know they are worth it and they matter, because we matter and have mattered to God and we really believe and set our hope in that.

We have decided to trust in this wild, unfettered, unflinching, humiliating kind of love and model our lives after it. We are ready to move with the Spirit of Christ -- to be motivated, to be changed, to be daring enough to live in freedom and bold enough to believe it for others even when they can't believe it for themselves and love even if it doesn't immediately change things and to be meek enough to rejoice in inheriting something great from the Kingdom... maybe even, maybe even Christ Himself. And maybe, just maybe He is after all our hearts' greatest desire, underneath everything else. Maybe He really is our hearts' true home, the Lifter of our Heads, the Joy of our Salvation.

This kind of believe can be hard -- hard enough to take all the guts and violent faith within our hearts. The Kingdom advances by these violent and stormy hearts of ours.

Fathered

A week ago a friend and I canoed a portion of the Buffalo in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. One of the few remaining rivers in the lower 48 without dams, it snakes its way through the wilderness, buffeted on its sides by massive vertical limestone bluffs. Riding atop its waters is like something out of an epic tale – The Mission, maybe, or Lord of the Rings, with its strong currents, its green-and-blue glass-water pools, its quick turns and deep forests flanking its beaches. It’s a compelling beauty.

Usually.

We chose to go on this particular day because the waters were up, and the trip promised to be more demanding of us. We would barter leisure for the adventure of stronger currents and swifter waters – an opportunity for us to roll up our sleeves and be challenged a bit against the claim the Buffalo has on this land. Sometimes we need to be overtaken by beauty, to let it reach us and fill us with wonder and awe. And there are other times when we need to struggle and subdue physically as a way, perhaps, to wrestle with and prevail over something within. Passivity. Comfort. Safety. Ennui. Indifference. Dispassion.

We had checked the weather before we left. It would not be a hot day, or a sunny one, but overcast. A front was moving in, but was still far enough away that we felt like we could beat the thunderstorm coming on its heels.

We were wrong.

Very wrong.

In fact, we were barely a mile into our 9-mile excursion when the rain came. It was at first almost nice, refreshing. But within the hour the heavens opened and we found ourselves in a monsoon, at times so thick we could barely see in front of us. The blast of thunder reverberated and replied against the bluffs and cliffs. Other canoers had beached and were waiting it out under canopies and cliffs, but we continued on. Paddling hard, strategizing our way on the rougher waters as well as we could in limited visibility, we finished the course in just over two hours, cold and soaked to the bone, battered by the wind and rain, racked with aching and tired muscles, and feeling very much alive. We couldn’t have been happier with our journey. Something in us felt… stronger. I think you could say we felt honored, even, to have had the chance to battle with the wilds of the river and weather. And to be defeated by it.

And I knew that this is so much what God is up to in our lives. This is what He had planned for us that day, to be tested and called out of our safety and comfort into the wilds of His passion and life. To come alive as men.

Robert W. Service in his poem Law of the Yukon gave voice to the Canadian wilderness, to its demand of those who would brave its earth and rock.

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat…
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat…

The same could be said of the Father’s intention for his sons and, dare I say it, for his daughters. When Job speaks of this in 23:10, he says “when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” In other words, God will prove him true. It was what God was about in Job’s life, and it is what He is doing in our own: giving us the dignity and honor of a place with Him. He knows who we are, and who we are to become, and He is ruthless in bringing that out in us. We will, indeed, come forth as gold.

It was over soda the evening of the trip that I asked another friend, “What would you do if men that you loved and respected showed up at your door one day and said, ‘Get your clothes packed and come with us. We have something planned for you,’ and then they just turned and waited for you. You had no idea where you were going, but you trusted these men. You went with them to find out that they had planned something very specific for your training and for your initiation. You didn’t pay for it; it wasn’t like going to a retreat where others were receiving the same thing. It was for you, personally. You knew for certain that their only motive was one of belief and anticipation and gut-level courage; believe in who you are and are to become, anticipation to see it fulfilled, and the guts to pursue your heart and speak into your life with theirs to make it happen. What would you do with that?”

Because, you see, that is a picture of fathering, of invitation into manhood, of a fellowship born not only out of “nurturing” friendships as brothers, but also look-you-in-the-eyes recognition of your truer name and identity by those in some way gifted with the wisdom and sacrificial love to help take you there, by fathers.

We live so much in a fatherless culture, and so this sounds foreign to our ears, strange even.* The mystery of initiation is something the systems of this world, in cooperation with and under the influence of the Evil One, has all but destroyed. But it is needed… at any age. 10. 14. 25. 36. 49. 62. 77. 88. We need to be fathered like this, and we need to know what this means. How, if we do not experience fathering, can we know who a father is to be, and if we do not know who a father is to be – our Father – then how are we to know who we are to be as sons and daughters? The entire rich tradition of father-son language and expression in the entire Bible becomes, then, cute, cuddly, nice, a happy illustration in a Sunday sermon. It remains only a metaphor, but never becomes reality.

Nothing that Jesus ever said was or is to remain a metaphor. “Heal the lame,” he preached – and then He did it. “I am the Son of God,” he proclaimed – and he was born of his Father’s life into a woman. “Seek me, and I will show you great and unsearchable things that you do not know.” And then He does. In Him, all things exist, as rock-hard reality (Romans 11:36).

I think the Father is up to this more than we may realize in our lives, this very intentional and pseudo-self-destroying, poser-shattering pursuit, this look-you-in-the-eye engagement in which He refuses to treat us as anything less than His sons and daughters – children that are less and less still suckling the breast and more and more tearing the meat off the bone; who less and less crawl and wriggle and more and more stand tall, walk upright, and run without growing weary; who less and less cry and demand and pout but more and more gather our growing strength to work alongside our Father and enjoy with Him the fruits of our labor. Men and women girt for combat and grit to the core. We are growing to inherit this Kingdom, where all is ordered by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and where life to the full – the lush greens of the field, our lungs bursting with free air and the fresh fruits bursting from the vine, and the laughter and joy of shared intimacy and the adventure of it all beyond our wildest imaginings – is ours not by right but by spoils, by victory, and the winning of this life by battle has made it all the more glorious because now we know beyond any and all shadow of doubt how great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God (1 John 3:1).

And I think that as we grow up in Him we are to turn toward one another and offer the same invitation – not an invitation to simply repeat a prayer or to walk the aisle and confess your sin through shameful tears, but an invitation to become the men and women we have been destined to become, won for us through Jesus. Beyond repentance into genuine, steady growth by the disciplines of a loving Father (Proverbs 3:12) and by others maturing in their journeys to the point that they can offer to the less mature something of wisdom and counsel and, believing enough in the treasure that Jesus came to rescue and free, recognize the weight of love and desire and delight the Father has for His sons and daughters (Proverbs 6:20) and go after others’ hearts in this way – seek them out, pursue them, give themselves for others as Jesus does and lead them into.

I think the Father is raising us up into that – fathering us and teaching us to naturally father others. We are not alone, for certainly He is our teacher in it all. And He is also our example. This is what it means to love, because He loved us this way (1 John 4:19). And this is how we know what it is to be brothers as well as fathers, brothers who stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the journey and back-to-back in the battle (Hebrews 2:17).

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless,” says James, is “to look after orphans and widows” (1:27), those left after fathers and husbands have gone. Those remaining after fathers and husbands have been taken out through war and disease and the cancers of this world. My friends, that describes us all. We are all in need of real men who can lead us to become fathers and husbands again. If we are to practice the “pure religion” that God recognizes as right and if we are to grow to become men and women ourselves, friends of God for whom He can entrust the keys of the Kingdom, we need to be led there.

It is for hope of this that we remain authentic with and true before God (1 John 3:3).

In The Man Watching, Russian poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote,

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names…
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us…
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

That day on the river God was out to decisively defeat us, and we came away “proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand,” as Rilke goes on to say.

The Father is raising us as sons. “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons... Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ‘Make level paths for your feet,’ so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” -Hebrews 12:7, 12-13

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*In “Healing the Masculine Soul,” Gordon Dalbey tells the story of a common initiation rite for a boy living in Nigeria. To our mostly Western ears it sounds uncivilized, something our advanced culture has moved beyond. But notice the efforts of nearly every religious group to in some way offer what was missed through initiation (the process of growing up). Learning from a father what it means to be a father has been replaced by books full of parenting tips. How we “do” the spiritual life, too, has largely been cataloged and chronicled as a set of steps and procedures, mainly because we have so few who can lead us by experience, example, and wisdom. We have few fathers. Biblical stories will only make sense if we see them as one generation passing down something crucial to the next, an older to a younger, even (and especially) God to his friends, to those He wants to relate to face-to-face (gasp, heretical!).

Here is the account from Dalbey:

“In the rural village where the son lived, the father, who often has several wives, lives by himself in his own hut, while his wives each have their own hut nearby. A boy lives with his mother until he reaches the proper age, usually about eleven. Then, one evening the village elders and the boy’s father appear outside the mother’s hut, together with a drummer and a man wearing a large mask over his head. The word for ‘mask’ is the same as that for ‘spirit”; so as the masked man steps out first from among the men both to call the boy out and to usher him from the mother to the men, the spiritual dimension of manhood is understood from the outset as primary and essential.

At the signal of a sharp drumbeat, the mask/spirit approaches the mother’s door, dancing and shouting, “Come out! Come out! After several retreats and then thrusting forth to announce his presence and intention, the mask/spirit rushes the mother’s door and beats upon it loudly: Bam! Bam! Bam! “Come out! Son of our people, come out!”

Eventually – perhaps after two or three such “approaches” by the mask/spirit – the mother opens the door tentatively, shielding her son behind her. At this the elders and the father join in the chant: “Come out, son of our people, come out!” Significantly, the mask/spirit does not enter the mother’s hut to seize the boy, but rather waits for him to step out on his own from behind his mother. Louder the elders chant, sharper the drum beats sound, more feverishly the mask/spirit dances, and more firmly the mother protests – until finally, she steps aside. It is the moment of truth for every boy in the village.

Standing there before the threshold of his mothers’ house, he hesitates. Beside and behind him holds all that is tender and reassuring and known and secure. Before him, and within him, cries out all that is mysterious and sharp, and true. “Come out!” the men shout. Hesitantly, wanting but not daring to look at his mother, the boy steps forth from the dark womb of his mother’s hut into the outside – born again, this time the child of the father. At once the mask/spirit seizes his wrist and rushes him over to the father and the elders – lest in his fear he have second thoughts – where he is joined with the other boys called out for that year’s initiation. Behind him, a wail of mourning breaks forth from his mother; the men around him burst into a victory shout. The drummer picks up the sharp and decisive beat, and the group moves on to the next boy’s hut. Once gathered, the group of boys is led out of the village to a special place in the forest, where they are instructed for the next two weeks. Manly skills from thatch roof construction to hunting are taught first. Then the boy enters into a period of fasting for several days, thus turning the focus from physical satisfaction to spiritual discipline. During this time, the boy is circumcised and while he is healing, taught clan history. Upon returning from the wilderness ordeal, the boy is regarded as a young man; when he enters the village, his mother is not permitted to greet him. He proceeds directly to his own house, separate from his mother’s; that evening he receives from his father a gun, a piece of farmland, and a hoe – his stake with which to establish his manhood in the clan” (p 51-52)

Feel the Heat

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking... They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God... and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing. -A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Ice lays thick on the streets and in the yards and on houses and cars and everything else in sight right outside my window. The Midwest has been hammered with an ice storm this week, and we are among the lucky few that still have electricity.

As beautiful as it is, there’s something smothering about the ice. It’s... weighty. It’s heavy. That is, literally, what’s caused the power outages – power lines buckle under the weight of the ice, or are snapped by fallen tree limbs. Travel becomes treacherous. Moving becomes difficult. Everything slows to a frozen standstill.

Such often is the case with our own hearts. What is this reluctance, this gravity, this freezing up, that keeps us from rising up and shining and seeking after the heart of God? Why is it we can often go days or even weeks on some kind of spiritual momentum after contact with God, but then we soon slow up, our joints freeze, we grow cold, and frigid wind finds its way in through the cracks in our souls and snuffs out the fire within? Our desire is stolen. We quit our hope and courage. We lose heart.

I don’t want to use a very real and very prevalent and very painful phenomena as fodder for poetry. I don’t want someone to read this post and leave and think, "That was a nice bit of wording to express that little problem." There is something as sinister and intentional in our spiritual inertia as there was behind the 100-year winter in Narnia before the Pevensies showed up on the scene, if you remember the story from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. There are in this world real enemies bent on snuffing out our desire for God in any way that they can. As Thomas a Kempis said, "The devil sleepeth not; neither is the flesh as yet dead; therefore cease not to prepare thyself for battle; for on thy right hand and on thy left are enemies who never rest."

If the promise is true, and I believe it is, that we will find God when we seek Him (Jeremiah 29:13) and that in finding and knowing God we will have life (John 17:3), then it is equally true that we will not have life if we do not know God by seeking Him. It all begins with desire. Right? That’s what Jesus said, after all, that "blessed are those who hunger and thirst." Speaking to this character of the Father’s heart, George MacDonald said that "surely he may keep his plans in a measure unfixed, waiting the free desire of the individual soul!" Desire does, indeed, play a crucial role. This desire, says Gerald May, is our truest identity, "our reason for being."

I’ll never forget the night I ran across that verse in Jeremiah 29:13. I had worked for a ministry at the time, and we had traveled to Africa to film a video documenting the plight of Christians in Sudan. It had been an exciting journey, but a challenging one. Among other things, the disconnection from technology and the whirring and buzzing of television, telephone, mp3 players and the like brought with it both a welcomed relief and a unsettling silence, a space in which God could speak and I could hear.

Our compound had set on a clearing on the edge of a small sub-Saharan village, surrounded by the deep greens of teak forests to the west and open bush to the east. The days had been full of hiking and filming and interviews, and the nights had been hot and sticky.

It was late on the last night of our stay, and I had been unable to sleep. Weary of staring at the mosquito netting tented over my bed, I flipped through some pages of Scripture until I landed in Jeremiah. My eyes fell on the portion of the sentence that I’d always passed by before, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

I left my tukel and took a walk underneath a brilliantly massive starlit sky. There was no artificial light whatsoever, but the sky had enough to illuminate my way. I lingered over the verse and found that it had a strange effect on me. I had felt... despair. I felt as if I would never find God, or at least not find him in a deeper and more authentic way than I had known Him before. I had wanted God, or at least wanted to want Him. What that verse had to say must have been it, I thought. It had to be the reason why it had felt so difficult to engage with God, to pray, to read his Word, to offer life to others as he had said that I would, at least over the course of the previous few months. Because I had been trying to do so without all my heart in it. Even finding God was impossible without my full heart.

But instead of hearing it as hopeful, as in "Ah! Now I know what the problem is," I found it frustrating, defeating. I thought it was a set up for an automatic loss of heart. How could I ever have hope of finding Him if I didn't even do anything with all my heart? Enraged, I balled my fist and told Him what I thought about it. I cried to the heavens, "How can I seek you with all my heart when I don’t have all my heart?!" But there alone in the middle of a foreign continent, Jesus came to speak that night, and with a single word answered my dilemma, "Exactly." I came to see that all my efforts to get to him were futile, that only his work first on my behalf would enable me to find him. He would, as he promised, give me an "undivided heart" (Ezekiel 11:19), so that I could then find God, and live. He had been waiting for me to simply see that I could not know Him without first His restoration of some large pieces of my heart.

These years of walking with God since have been just that, a journey of restoration and reconciliation, and alternating cycles of deeper healing and more intimate communion with God, and usually an odd and beautiful mixture of both. Coming to Christ first gives you a beachhead, a place from which the kingdom will continue to advance. But there is more. There are new avenues of freedom and joy and even ecstasy to have. Even after the children came into Narnia, it took some time for blossoms to appear on trees and the rivers to unfreeze and run wild once more after so long dormant and cold.

So much of our life now is a process of both healing and of learning to walk in the new way of the kingdom of God. It’s what being a disciple of Jesus is all about, since he’s the One to usher in this new way of living. It’s him and his disciples and friends that Tozer was speaking of when he said to draw near to them and feel the heat of their desire after God. As we walk in this New Way, God sets our hearts free more and more vibrantly so that we may enjoy in constantly fuller measure what it is to really know God, to really love, and to really live.

I’m taking Tozer’s counsel to heart. I’m opening up the Scriptures to find the men and women who were delirious in the desire after God. I’m discovering that passion in David’s psalms and in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. In John’s gospel and in Peter’s epistles. And I’m not stopping there. I’ve discovered George MacDonald, St. Athanasius, Dallas Willard, and Tozer himself. And so many other saints that have gone before and a precious few that are still around. But that’s not enough, either. Because God has given us community, where together with other glorious hearts we encounter the Living One and rediscover with forgotten joy His true intentions for us and through us. Don’t forsake that fellowship; it is vital for your heart and memory, to keep before your eyes the real gospel, that "in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing."

It Must Be Intimate

I came across today the following exerpt from John Eldredge's book Waking the Dead. It is what is what I need now, and must have, in a fellowship and community. I have come far with God, too far to turn around, and to continue on in any authentic way, it is fellowship with others "one in heart" that my wife and I must have...

Of course, small groups have become a part of the programming most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are disappointing and short-lived—by the very admission of those who try them. There are two reasons. One, you can’t just throw a random group of people together for a twelve-week study of some
kind and expect them to become intimate allies. The sort of devotion we want and need takes place within a shared life. Over the years our fellowship has gone camping together. We play together; help one another move; paint a room; find work. We throw great parties. We fight for each other, live in the Four Streams. This is how it was meant to be.

I love this description of the early church: “All the believers were one in heart” (Acts 4:32 ). A camaraderie was being expressed there, a bond, an esprit de corps. It means they all loved the same thing, they all wanted the same thing, and they were bonded together to find it, come hell or high water. And hell or high water will come, friends, and this will be the test of whether or not your band will make it: if you are one in heart. Judas betrayed the brothers because his heart was never really with them, just as Cipher betrays the company on the Nebuchadnezzar and as Boromir betrays the fellowship of the Ring. My goodness— churches split over the size of the parking lot or what instruments to use during worship. Most churches are not “one in heart.” (Waking the Dead , 193)

From The Ransomed Heart, by John Eldredge, reading 270
Ransomed Heart Ministries www.ransomedheart.com

All Eyes, All Ears

I've been thinking about a Bible study I went to several weeks ago per a friend's invitation. I was excited to go, excited to really dig in and learn some things. More than that, though, I wanted to go for this friend of mine. He hungers for God, but he came into the church through fear of his own flesh and never really got past that. The meeting took place in a man's garage (so far, so good). There are 6 others, my friend, and myself. Great guys. We get to know each other a bit, laugh, tell some stories. And then we get all serious to read a chapter of Ruth and go down this list of questions like "Why did Naomi tell Ruth to go to Boaz?" "What character traits does Ruth possess that are good?" "Have you ever given up something you wanted in order to server God? Explain." And the whole time we're going down this list of questions all serious-like, I'm getting the feeling that we're really missing something amazing here. One man, Rich, pipes up and says sort-of out of the blue in a real moment of honesty, "I don't have faith in God like Ruth did in Naomi." Seems like that made some men uncomfortable. I was like, "Hell yeah! That realness sets me free! Way to be done with the religious bullcrap!"

Then, something awesome happened. God showed up. Several of the men kept taking these rabbit holes to talk about hearing from God, discerning His voice, all that, which had nothing to do with the topic at hand. The leader was trying to get everybody back on course, but couldn't evade the desire set out there to talk about walking with God and hearing from Him. There was a lot of weird stuff said, like, "I know when God talks to me because what he tells me is the very thing I most don't want to do in the world."

Huh?

Then I decided to pipe in. To one guy's thought, "Wouldn't it just be cool if God would just speak to us? I wish He would." I said, "But isn't that exactly what Jesus promised? I mean, check out the disciples. These guys walked intimately with Christ for three years. Granted, most of the time they were dumbfounded, but they walked with Jesus, learned from Him the art of living. Jesus taught them to live in the Kingdom and to be His own. He called them his friends. To Peter, he gave a name and a place and restoration to his heart. To John, he invited him to recline against his breast. And Matthew - this scalawag got to leave all his money-minding hustling on a dime and follow the Living God up and out and into all that was real and true and most alive. And Jesus Himself said it was better if He go so that the Spirit would come and be with us, teach us, remind us, counsel us. That sounds pretty damned intimate!" And then I talked about how David walked with God like this. One of my favorite Psalms says, "Lord if you wake me in the morning with your loving voice, then I'll go to bed at night trusting in You. I'm all eyes, all ears before you." And then again in Psalm 119, something about "God, I'll remember ever word You've spoken to me about life; I'll treasure them; I'll not let go of them." Finally, I just talked about some of my own experiences with hearing from God and how intimate it gets and how inviting it becomes. Yeah, I'm taken by Him. Yeah, I want to go down to the village. Hell yeah.

It was a thrill to see where God wanted to take things, and then just go with Him there. Other men started speaking up about the same thing, about their own experiences walking intimately with Christ, as if they had permission finally to actually desire communion and friendship with God.

I love pushing past the religious bull that I see around me most days, push past that into something Real.

These things I want - a letter to my men

There are some things in me that I need to process, that I need to just express. Phillip Yancey once admitted that a large part of his desire to write comes out of a need to work through some of his own discoveries and doubts and beliefs. And that’s what this is for me. I need to put words to some things going on in me. But, I realize, too, that I need to express them to you all because you are my allies and because I’ve seen the violent hearts that beat within you men, the fierce passion and burning desire that is set within you. I love A.W. Tozer’s catch-phrase for the men in the early church after they had received the fire of the Holy Spirit, “Men of the Flame.” That’s it. That’s who you are.

And so how do you go about putting words to the movements of the heart? It feels sometimes absolutely impossible. They are “deep waters,” indeed. I can only hope that God can reach even deeper than the stars are far and draw out what is down there.

There’s something about expressing your heart that seems all the more important as it is awakening and coming alive. Expressing your love for God and your love for others. A friend of mine was killed in a car wreck last Friday. At his funeral on Monday, I glanced over at his parents. They are disconsolate. They are crushed and devastated. I saw it on his dad’s face. And his dad is a man that I’ve known all my life, a friend that I love and respect. What in the world do you do with the death of your 22 year-old son? My heart broke for them. I wanted to open up and wail, to grab something and throw it against the wall. I wanted to rage for their sake and cry out above the nice sentiments of the priest, “It’s not supposed to be this way! Oh God, come for us! Come for Ryan’s family!” I mean, I get a little better now why some of the Old Testament folks would rend their clothes in agony and mourning. But, just then, I turned to see some of Ryan’s closest friends. I remembered them from school, and they’ve since grown up into men. They stand stoic and seem unaffected, concentrating more on their gum-chewing than on the hurt and disorientation of it all. And I know that some men don’t express themselves as much or in different ways, and that’s great. But what I heard from the Enemy was, “You don’t really want to cry. You’ll draw attention to yourself. They’ll think, ‘What are you complaining about? I knew him better than you ever did.’” Right then, right then, I heard God speak. “Mourn with them (Ryan’s parents and brother). That is my gift to them. And your freedom of heart to do that is my gift to you.”

The men in my family have very seldom lived from their hearts. They are largely silent men. And from my dad I’ve come to understand that when a man offers silence, he offers death. There are only two things he can offer into his world: life or death. To offer nothing is not to offer nothing, it is to offer death. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when He said, “If you are not for me, you are against me.” There’s no “no contesto” there. It’s either “Yes,” or, even in silence, it is “No.”

I was reading the other night the story of David and his son Absalom. Remember the story? Amnon, David’s firstborn, raped his half-sister Tamar. Absalom, Tamar’s full-blood brother, was furious. But David, bound to favor Amnon because of Hebrew custom, did nothing. Amnon got off almost completely scott-free. I mean, David didn’t even address the issue with Tamar or with Absalom, and in so doing, he basically told Absalom, “I don’t care what you feel. It is irrelevant to me.” His silence was deadly, and it stayed in Absalom for years, only to become bitter resentment and eventually hatred. Four years later, he raised up a coupe to overthrow his dad. A war began, a war that divided a nation and cost so many lives. A war that would rival most Hollywood portrayals, with spies and counter-spies, factions, disloyalties, evasion and death. A war between father and son.

What blows me away is that David still cared deeply for Absalom. He did. Just before his victory, he told his men not to kill the commander of the invading army – Absalom! Naturally, Absalom ends up getting killed anyway. And David is so overcome with grief that he can only cry that it should’ve been him that died and not Absalom. He can tell his men how much he cares and treasures his son, and he can wail to the wind of his deep love and delight in him. But he cannot express it to his face. Once again, all he can offer is death, “It should’ve been me that died.”

I read the other day that male sparrows sing to mark out their territory. Their song is their declaration to the world, “I have found my place, and I announce my kingdom here.” I love that. If they remained silent, neither the world nor they themselves would understand their place. Their voice gives dimension to and domain over their corner of the world. They do not rest in others’ songs, though they may be inspired by them to begin their own chorus, or be awakened by them to remember they do, in fact, have a voice and a reason to sing.

Something else about them. Birds of almost every kind will sing even when sick. It’s their defense against predators, who often stalk the weak and dying. Even caged birds will do this. I’ve heard stories of pet parakeets who will be singing strong and beautiful one day, and the next morning will be dead on the floor of the cage. They refuse to give their enemies an opportunity or a foothold. It reminds me of the Princess Bride scene when Montoya, wounded and bleeding, finds his courage and strength to declare his name and wield his sword fiercely against his father’s murderer.

I want to live fully. I want to express my heart – to love, to open myself up to deeper and more authentic relationship with both God and man, to offer life –oh, God, to offer life and not death! I want to really mourn with those who mourn and to really rejoice with those who rejoice. I want to live courageously from my deep heart in conviction and reality, flinging myself violently and wholly into the love of God. I want to live out my calling and from my giftings – not to offer those alone, but certainly to offer those as part of me, as a part of the song I have to sing. No more hiding in shadow and shade. The promise that I will soar on wings as eagles speaks so deep.

I want to be healed more deeply. I want the truth of the heart-stopping love of God to reach to the deeper places within me. I need that grace so desperately. I want to live a life worthy of my calling, and do come to the end of my days having walked so intimately with the Lover of my Soul, having fought valiantly alongside the Great Commander, having loved to death and given until there was nothing left to give.

I want to have enough breath left in me in my last seconds to exhale, “What a ride,” and then find myself home at last – the home I had for so long yearned for and clung to like a man in exile lusts for his native country, remembering the promise that I had already been “a citizen of high heaven.”

And between all the days from this day to that, I want to journey well. I want to ride with you men. I do. I want to remain in your troop with the lasting honor of fighting beside you and for you, of red-faced laughter and known stories, of scars and glory and living in the Kingdom, of experiencing it, of expressing it, and of extending it to others. I want my wife to be vibrantly alive because of the strength I offer her and the passion with which I pursue her.

And that’s it. That’s all I want. And I guess for those things to be true in me and about me, I need Jesus to come through. Just a bit.

Tozer suggested that we "draw near, and feel the heat" from those who walked close with God. I do that with you, Men of the Flame.

Lord, where are your friends?

Divide and conquer. It's a first strategy of the Enemy. Separate them, confuse them, cloud them over with a fog until they wander from each other in search of a clearing; or better, pummel them, blast them with cannons of fire so dense they hunker to the ground in defense, slowly losing heart as the shadows of fear or indifference have advanced upon them like an invading army.

I've felt this today. It starts subtle, but the lie goes along these lines, "You are alone. Look around you; no one 'lives from the heart' or seeks God or desires Life or loves or lives in the Reality. Just give in. Just take it easy and let loose your guard. Hakuna matata. No worries."

In the only way I know how, I'm coming against that lie. Like Elijah, I need to remember my allies... my friends and His. I’m so grateful for those I’ve been given to journey with who answer the following questions with a resounding, “Here I am.” Their response is a signal flare on the battlefield telling their position, giving me courage to remember in whose company I battle and journey.


Lord, where are your Friends?

Where are those girding themselves with the armor forged in the fires of passion to fit Your waist, Your breast, Your arms, Lord?

Where are those who have yet to beat their swords into plowshares, and whose weapons are crimson with the blood of war?

Where are the crying, the wailing, the sick and broken pouring out tears of rage against the accuser for their own?

Where are the mourning and rejoicing travelers to the heavenly kingdom who pause long enough to help those too tired to walk?

Where are those thirsty, hungry, desirous and sensuous men and women who are preparing to take their place as the Bride in the eyes of her Lover,

And those who have made their beds, never to lie in them again until the return of their Groom?

Where are the seeing who know they're still blind and the wise who know they've understood so little?

Where are the weak and rejected, the poor among us longing for a better Home?

Where are those who have felt the heat of the Fire and who have crossed over the line to jump into the burning flames?

Where are the wobbly-kneed who have felt the earth give way beneath them and know it is passing so soon?

Where are those who have heard the Summons and are removing their sandals with the thought ringing in their minds, “In light of this, what else could I do?”

Where are those faces set link flint, whose unblinking bleary eyes are ready, waiting?

Where are the passionate, the consecrated, the holy lovers that have gone down to the village to meet with the one for whom their hearts were made?

Where are those searching their hearts for the answer to the question, “What is it you want?”

Where are the brave and foolish that have tasted and are wasted now for Life?

Are they doing their day-to-day duties, alone, under the scorching midday sun – carrying water home to one of their many bedfellows?

Are they peering from their view in the fork of a tree through the crowds, stretching to hear, pressing in to catch a glimpse?

Do they scream in the streets for knowledge of Who it is among them?

Do they clamor and tear without caution at the roof to find an opening so they can be near, and so their own friends might live?

Do they walk up, wet with weeping, to the feet of the Fearer to tell of their dying daughter, remembering with what authority He came?

Do they sing? Do they know their breaths are the exhalations of the One so close, of the One within?

Do they peer now, with hearts laid waste by Love, into the souls of those near them, just for the joy of knowing the greatest of all creation and the beauty placed their by the Master?

Are they alive? Do they work and journey and fight with conviction and compassion because of some deep joy set before them?

Lord, where are your Friends?
©2005, Brian Fidler