Interactive and Conversational

I was up last night praying through some things going on in my world. Not worried prayers, not praying with anxiety (which I can do pretty well at times), but more conversational, more "Lord God, I can't wait to find out how this works out." He led me to some amazing things in Scripture, all concerned with our actually having an interactive, conversational relationship with Him, where He speaks to us personally, actively, clearly, and may at times confirm or encourage but at other times directs specifically and expects our response back to Him, like the way Samuel conversed with God in 1 Samuel 16. God told him to go to Jesse's house in Bethlehem to anoint a new king over Israel. Afraid of Saul, Samuel doesn't immediately go , but asks God how he's supposed to leave with Saul on his back. He's not doubting God or distrusting Him. It actually is an incredible act of faith to interact with the Lord God and effectively say, "Okay, I'll do this, but how am I to proceed? I believe that you'll do this and that you're out for the success of it, so I want to be on board with it, too." So, God gives Samuel him a scheme: to take a heifer and say that he's going to go sacrifice for the Lord. And so he does it. That's pretty specific, you know? And it's scheming, I mean God doesn't tell him to lie, exactly, but God's directive never initially included anything about sacrificing to the Lord. He's leading Samuel to be as wise as a serpent and then he tells him how to proceed step-by-step to follow God, almost as if God is in front of him walking through a wood, across a creek maybe, and He looks back at his son following and says, "Place your foot right there on that rock. It's a bit wobbly, so be careful. And then on that bit of log -- careful, it's slippery, and then that last rock and then you're home free". I dunno. That's pretty awesome to me.

After reading that I just sat in my chair. It was late but I was too excited to sleep. Earlier I had asked God to let me rest, to help me sleep but "keep my heart awake" (Songs 5:2), but I couldn't. I was "swooning," in the words of John Bunyan. He wrote in "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners" that after reading of the reality of his new righteous life with God (no longer sinful as default, but rather made right and whole and good), "I thought that the glory of these words was then so weighty on me, that I was both once and twice ready to swoon as I sat, yet not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace."

Yup, same here.

"We stand within a community of the spoken to," says Willard. Whoa. I just... my heart beats wildly with that thought, with the experience of that. I can't believe (I can, but you understand the expression) that God would be that intimate with us and caring and desirous of interaction, of wrestling even, with what He says. I love this. I love this reality.

Reflecting or Deflecting?

"You are not one of his disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asked Peter. He replied, "I am not." "Didn't I see you with him…?” Again Peter denied it… (from John 18:17, 26-27)

When Peter denied Jesus, he was not only betraying his friend and Lord, he was betraying his own identity. For the last three years Peter had been walking with Jesus. Think of what a transforming life this had been for him: watching miracles and even taking part in them, hearing Jesus’ teachings, learning to pray and to love and to know God and to be known by God in a deeply personal way (remember that Jesus called him “the Rock”). To breathe the free air. To put it another way, he had become Jesus’ disciple, apprenticing himself after Him, learning of this new way of being in the world and of relating to God. The girl who approached Peter in the courtyard asked him whether or not he was one of Jesus’ disciples. His flat out denial betrayed his own identity. It effectively refuted all that he had learned and come to in the previous three years. All the life he had come to evaporated in that renunciation. He relinquished the new name God had given him. Turning from Jesus, he also turned from his own honor, his integrity, his character, his uniqueness, his seity. His own individuality God had given him.

This, of course, was nothing new for Jesus. Moses had done something similar after Mount Sinai. God had, per his request, shown him His glory. He had passed by him, and the experience left Moses's face shining, his whole body and spirit radiant, alive, awake, alert, aroused. It may have been a bit like a man just coming from a sexual experience with his beloved, his face and lips flush, his eyes open wide, his breathing heavy. Moses was beaming, gleaming, blazing, resplendent, like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion (Psalm 19:5). He then carried down the stone tablets and was unaware that his face was radiant like this. And he scared the people to death.

"When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him..." (from Exodus 33:29-30).

Even Aaron was terrified. And so you know what Moses did? He hid his face. He intimidated the Israelites by his having been so intimate with the Lord, and it must have frightened and embarrassed Moses, and so he hid it. By hiding himself, he hid the glory from the people that most needed it. He shrunk back and hid his association with the Lord God, just like Peter.

Nelson Mandela could have been speaking to the both of them when he said that “your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

He could have been speaking to me, too. “We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us,” Mandela continues.

Oh, yeah? We were? I suppose His glory is the gift He has given to his closest friends throughout history, a gift that He gives to us still. Recently my wife and I spent time with a local community of believers where we were asked to share something personal that God seems to be up to in our lives. I shrank back. I spoke, but only superficially, a rock skipping off the surface rather than going to the depths. Why? Because I think I am embarrassed of my place with God, of His intimacy with me. Perhaps I hide because I am in disbelief that He would have me in this way, fuddled and bashful that anyone would notice that I’ve just been with the Lord God, and afraid that others would reject me for it out of fear and intimidation.

But that is not letting my light shine, as Jesus asked that I do.

“. . . And as we let our own light shine,” says Mandela, “we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Holy Shift

Something has shifted in my heart this morning, an important shift, toward hope. It was brought on by several things that ultimately brought me again to the realization that I am in process, that I've only barely begun. There is so much more for me -- more of everything God wants to do, came to do. I'm not done yet -- and God is not done with me! The full presence and reality of Christ is still being formed in me. "Until Christ is formed in you" is I think how the Scriptures have it (Galatians 4:19).

The heaviness of the fall evident in peoples' lives -- people I know and love as well as my own-- can be an unbearable weight at times. The despair had thickened like a dense fog settling in, hopelessness like thorns underfoot. But it's lifting today. Oh, praise God. Jesus has reversed the curse and the effects of it, truly He has, by His work in redemption, in His obedience even unto His own death. In His resurrection. In His authority. And He is in me. In Him, we have victory! It's really true!

And so now it is trust that counts, that and obedience. To really put my confidence in the entire person and God of Christ -- Creator, Redeemer, Master, Teacher, Captain, Healer, Counselor, Loving and Living One, all of that -- to really put confident trust in the full and entire identity of Jesus, then I am saved from the thorny snag of hopelenssness and the blinding disorientation of despair. Jesus crafts a crown from the thorns, destroying in ultimate finality the effects of sin and the fall against me, against us all. The fog lifts, a fresh wind clears the air today. As The Message has it,

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is
resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have
to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in
operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has
magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal
tyranny at the hands of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)

At lunch I was drawn to sit alone in a quiet corner of a local McDonald's with my iPod, to actively engage in solitude with God, to worship and to journal. A song by Jeremy Camp was playing, called This Man. The lyrics capture the invitation I am offered through the work of Jesus for me: "And the veil was torn so we could have this open door. And all these things have finally been complete." All these things of reconciliation to God (2 Corinthians 5:18), of disarming of the foul powers (Colossians 2:15), and of restoring us back to His image (Colossians 3:10). We now have only to "embrace what God does for you" (see Romans 12:1-2, especially in The Message).

Covered in Dust

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

-Psalm 91:1

The Jews have a blessing they give to one another that says something to the effect of "May you get dusty by walking with your Rabbi." The thought is that you would walk so closely behind your teacher that you would get covered in the dust left by his steps. I think this is the place we are called to still, and I think this is what we as lovers and prophets of God are to do: to walk so closely with Jesus that we are hidden in His shadow. It sounds like a pretty intimate adventure with Him.

That seems to be what He is continually inviting me into when I wake. He turns and asks, "What is it you want?"

What is it I want? Is he serious? Are you ready for this, Teacher? Here goes... I am fractured; I want repaired. I am a ruin of what I was meant to be; I restored back into it. I am ash; I want to be all flame again. I am impotent of love and ignorant of life. I have lost the story, forgotten my role, made my bed in the depths of hell and opened my sheets to demons that have raped and plundered and stolen. I want found and healed, my wounds dressed by leaves from the tree of life. I want sheltered. I want to remember my true name – Sought After (Isaiah 62:12). The Pursued. The Found. The Son Who Returned Home. And I want more than this. I want character of heart – nobility and honor and dignity and strength. I want the new to be greater than the old could ever hope to become. I want to be dressed in white, purified as if I had never been a whore. No, more. Purified so that my having been a whore is not a shame or a burden, but what brings great glory to the Holy One who chose me, sought me out, ransomed me, and brought me to his side. I want to know this God like I have known no one in my life. I want to work alongside him as a comrade-in-arms, a friend, a fellow warrior in battle, a lover and a be-loved. I want his friends to be my friends. I want all of this. I want restored.

All of this swirls in my tired head, wearied of all hoping and striving toward this end. And then I see this One who asks the question, this One who seems to know all of this in me, and looking into His eyes as they pierce me I am brought to my knees in the agonizing hope that He might be the answer to all this biting and burning desire. I grasp for an answer, but my response is a stuttering and stammering and stupid reply, "Uh, wh- whe- where are you staying, Teacher?" If only I could be with Him, just be near to Him. I must.

He only smiles, his heart swelling with joy that He has caught my whole attention and with anticipation of what He has yet to show me. His reply is the invitation into Mystery and a life "that is the business of life," as George MacDonald put it. He says only, "Come, and I will show you." (See John 1:35-39).

And I am covered in his dust.

Jehovah Rafa - God the Healer

"Christ was sent into the world to heal the broken hearted. " -D.L. Moody

"On hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'" -Mark 2:17

So many we know are hurt, so many ill, so many torn to shreds by the affect of the Fall, by sin, by the work of the Evil One. We are a fractured people, all of us. We are all of us the broken-hearted, in need of healing.

But the modern approach to healing (since the era of "modernity") is to try to fix only the outer shell. It's like taking a truck that's been totaled to an autobody place. They may be able to fix the external body for awhile, but the engine (the heart) and the frame (the soul) may remain a wreck. Eventually, the truck will be back in due to more damage. The bent frame will force it back into the ditch, or the damaged engine may throw a piston through the hood. Or, the outer shell will be unfixable because the frame or engine is protruding out of the truck and it will be deemed "terminal." "There's nothing more we can do." The thought of opening the hood and dealing with core structure of the frame doesn't even enter their minds.

The church, instead of being "central to the world and the world peripheral to the church," has taken on this incomplete reality and has largely approached people in the same way in our era, seeing them mostly as body only and not recognized, not really, not in practice, the soul or heart. That is why therapy and psychological sciences have only been around for the past 150 years or so. Before then, the church largely took care of the soul. For all his loony-ness, Freud at least recognized a gaping hole in the culture's ontology and began dealing with the unseen, deeper reality of the soul (what he termed the "subconscious" and mostly misunderstood and misrepresented, but at least tried to recognize.)

We now have the "medical models" in the healing professions that seek to diagnose a "disorder" and seek to fix it, typically through medication. It's a product of our culture, really. We are used to television shows that wrap up in an hour, to microwavable meals that are ready to eat in 2 minutes, to quick-drying glue and instant messages and packages that arrive to us expediently. The thought of an involved process is not new, but it is neither desired. And why is that?

To speak of process is really to speak of a journey, and in terms of the healing of our souls, it is a lifelong process. It is a journey, really, of becoming. Becoming whole, becoming holy. Jesus has provided us all we need for this life and all we need to become fully healed and fully whole, just like Jesus is (Philippians 4:19).

That is why the labels we use to identify "disorders" and those with them are so often unhelpful and even harmful. "He is bipolar." "She has attention deficit disorder." For one, it implies that the treatment must call for the use of drugs, which implies that the problem is biological. Second, it sets the person with the condition like a post is set is concrete -- it solidifies the two together, making it rather hopeless for the one with the problem. Usually their best hope is to find a medication that will "work" for them to "fix the problem." But the real problem is that the problem is not usually resolved, and the deeper issues of the heart not addressed, brought up, and exposed to the Light of day so that God may bring healing and wholeness to that person. The condition you see is always, always, a symptom of a broken heart due to the fallen world, sin, the work of the Evil One, or a combination of the three, which is usually the case.

I am taking a graduate-level psychopathology class in which we study the various mental disorders that are detailed in the DSM-IV, the psychiatrist's handbook and bible. I need to know the labels and the disorders listed here simply because it's the terminology that's used and so many have been diagnosed with these various illnesses. And make no mistake, these problems are real, for sure. It is what we do with them, how we go about discovering the real problems and treating them that is lacking.

I promise you, attention deficit disorder is not the core issue. It never is. I know of a high school student who has been on Ritalin since he was 5 years old. Why? Because his mom is a single mother, trying her hardest to balance full-time work with being the full-time and only parent for her children. He was an active child, a creative one. The quick fix? Put him on medication that slows him down, keeps him calm, keeps him controlled. A pseudo-parent. He is now 17 years old and has no idea how to be a man, no idea what to do with the manly and creative energy and passion of his heart. Not only is he broken-hearted -- no doubt due in part to the absence of a father in his life and now to the reality that there is no man around to lead him into true godly masculinity and manhood -- he has doctors and other adults around him telling him that his real problem is that he is too active, too "onery" and wild. Too wild?! But he is a young man! Wildness is his very nature! That is being medicated out of him, all the while the wounds go unaddressed and untreated.

Psychopathology is another way of talking about psychological abnormalities. But what is "normal," anyway? Seriously. Conformity to a standard? What standard? What one culture defines as normal is viewed as outside the range of the average acceptable behavior by another. It seems to be culturally defined. Jesus definitely did not fit what the culture of the time viewed as "normal." For this, he was misunderstood, rejected, thought to be "out of his mind" (Mark 3:21), and of course eventually crucified. In our day, he probably would have been diagnosed with disassociative identity disorder, fancying Himself to be Immanuel and all. He would have been placed in an asylum, given electroshock treatments, and dosed up on high amounts of reality-altering drugs.

But "normal" is not so relative as we would like to think. A friend of mine had a brilliant definition to the term. He said "Normal is the image of God displayed in His people." The "standard" of confirmity is to His image! Jesus, as the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), is the ultimate standard and definition of "normal"! He is the one we are to become like. It is His image we are to bear. It is His image, His heart, His attributes, that we are growing by grace to inherit, to express, to extend even unto "the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). We are on a journey to becoming like God. We are being "fully trained" (Luke 6:40) in righteousness, which is to say, in full living (John 10:10). He is showing us the Way.

Do you see how that definition of normality is so hopeful? It is because all the ways we are abnormal, all the ways in which we miss the mark, are redeemable. The healing and restoration of the broken places of our hearts is the very mission of this Intimate Savior (Luke 19:10; Isaiah 61:1). If I have problems that point toward something like attention deficit, maybe it is because I have lacked a father in my life. Well, let me be introduced to the Father of all fathers! If I have issues that relate to obsessive-compulsive disorder, let the deep waters of my heart be explored, the broken pieces found and set back together, that I may become "whole and holy" by the love of God (Ephesians 1:3, The Message).

I am not trivializing the problems we face or trying to over-simplify them. They can be horrific and quite complicated. I'm actually recognizing them as much deeper and tragic than what we typically believe. We will not be able to treat them without the Healer Himself, the One who has come that we might have life to the full. Nor am I saying that medicine is a bad treatment option for some "mental" disorders (are they not "heart" disorders?). I am saying that it is not enough, and it never will be. The deep ministry of Jesus to our hearts is a grace, a gift. The Spirit that we are given is a Counselor, and He has come to stay. God must think that we need a lot of therapy. How great it is He has come (John 16:7). And how great it is God has given us men and women with compassionate insight and godly wisdom (Proverbs 20:5) that through their help as well we might discover and bring to light the lost and broken places of our hearts, that they might be fully healed, made whole, and set free.