SHHHHH

“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).

Those are the words with which David concludes his Psalm.  He has described an enemy that is dead-set on “devour[ing] my flesh.”  His enemy is not just one but an army.  Reason to fear, trouble and violence have become his normal.  He is so accustomed to the feelings that a child must feel when rejected by his own parents that he actually asks God not to do the same to him. 

How wounded must one be to feel like God too would hurt you if you do not ask that he not?  How forgotten one must feel that he must remind himself that God would never forget him?  How many lies must be told about a person that he actually is tempted to believe the lie that God would turn you over to your foes?  Whatever it requires, David was there.  As one reads Psalm 27, you can feel his desperate attempt to convince himself that God and not his enemies will have the last say.  You can almost see his turmoil.  You can smell his fear.  You can see him clinging to what might be his last strand of faith. 

And then suddenly…abruptly…he ends the Psalm at verse 14:  “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”  In that one verse not only does the Psalm end, but so does his struggle.  The whole Psalm, he has went back and forth between fear and faith, hope and despair, truth and lies, but suddenly the inner storm ceases.  The wind dies down, the rain stops and dark clouds give way to rays of sun light.  There is no longer need to run for cover because a place of calm has been found.

When our children were babies and they would be fighting the rest they needed, I would often hold them close and simply repeat not a word, but a sound, “SHHHHHHH…”  It’s as though while David is pacing the floor in anguish, the Father puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “SHHHH!” He has been looking for thunder; he’s been asking for a sign; he’s been begging for deliverance, when what he really needed was, “SHHHH.” It’s amazing what we can hear when we “SHHHH.” 

“Oh, I see, Lord,” you can hear David say.  “You are right.  I am frantically searching for hope and peace and it won’t be found there. What I need to do is quit looking for you and wait for you.” 

Wait…I don’t like to wait…I never pick the longest line in the grocery store and I get frustrated when the short line I pick ends up taking longer than the long line I avoided…I don’t like to wait.  Waiting feels like a waste of time.  Waiting does not come natural to me.  I think David might have felt the same way about waiting, too. 

But when you have paced the floors all night long and realized you’ve made it no farther than where you started, you might just then be ready to hear God say, “Wait for me.”  It’s not just any kind of waiting.  It’s a specific kind—“Wait for the Lord.”  This waiting is not idle, but active.  But by active it does not mean busy, but focused.  Like a child looking out the window for the car of his Grandma and Grandpa to arrive, so we wait for the Lord…looking and longing for God to show up where we need him most.  It is in this place of waiting for the Lord that David says one can “be strong and take heart.” 

This is one of the important themes of Lent—learning to wait.  As I give something up these 40 days, I am asking God to teach me to wait for him all over again.  As I crave what is being denied, I pray for God to make me long for him even more.  And in this waiting, there really is a strength and heart-renewal that can be found no place else.  I have no problem admitting that I especially need his presence in my life right now.  I don’t have a chance without his nearness.  I can’t make it…O…wait a minute…I’m sorry…I have to go, you see…what’s that, Father?  SHHHHHHH….

Don't Want to be Daddy

“How about you be the kid today and I be the Dad?”  Asked our son Seth one day a few years ago.  You see he had determined that he had had enough of all my rules.  This idea that I would require him to do such awful things as bathe, brush his teeth, not have candy for dinner and not aggravate his sister was just too much from his point of view.  He thought I might see things better from his perspective if we could switch roles for even one day. 

Well, I agreed to his proposal (I tell you sometimes as a parent I feel like it would be easier to negotiate with a terrorist than a child).  “OK, Seth,” I said, “I will be the kid and you will be the Dad the rest of the night.” 

He smiled.  I had played right into his manipulative little hands.  O, yes…now he would show me what it is like to live under the rule of tyranny. 

I quickly turned into a 4 year old, which according to Kimberly, was a little too easily done.  At first he thought it was funny.  He bossed me around and made me do some ridiculous things and I responded ridiculously making the “game” all the more delightful.  But when it came to bed time, he suddenly did not like the game.  You see, he enjoyed our bed time routine of stories, laughing, singing and prayer.  But “I was not the Daddy now…I was the child and I needed someone to put me to bed…kids, like me, did not put adults, like him to bed,” I explained. 

“Daddy,” he said, “I don’t want to be the Daddy any more.  I want to be the kid.  I will do what you say.”

Well, of course, that would not be the end of Seth’s attempts to overthrow parental control, but for that one moment he seemed to get that submission is not just about what you lose but also about what you gain.  And, as you know, that is not only true for four year old boys, but also for the sons and daughters of God no matter what our age.  Submission to the Father is not only about loss but gain.  I believe that is one of the many meaningful themes of this time of the church calendar.

Today many of our brothers and sisters in Christ, including me, will pause to reflect on the meaning of Ash Wednesday which begins the Lenten season (Lenten is an old English word for Lengthen which points to the lengthening of the days this time of year).  This Christian tradition was developed to encourage the Christ follower to walk more deliberately in remembrance of Christ’s cross that we might more fully have eyes to see the full hope of the resurrection.  Many of us will voluntarily choose to give something up this season.  The spiritual discipline of fasting is always a meaningful way of allowing our cravings to turn our hearts, minds and bodies upward, but it seems especially appropriate during the season of Lent

The path to the cross ought to not ever become unfamiliar to the Christ-follower.  It is in Jesus’ submission to the Father’s will for him to suffer and die on the cross that has made possible our reconciliation both to God and one another.  It is spiritually healthy for us to look upon his suffering not in a morbid way but so that we might see more clearly how great is his love for us which he demonstrated even while we were yet sinners. 

Furthermore, in a culture in which we are bred to believe we have a “right to demand our rights” which, frankly, goes way beyond the “certain inalienable rights” our forefather’s had in mind, a season of submission may not only be spiritually healthy, but critical.   The examples of demanding rights go from the serious to the absurd.  It’s pretty serious when people think they have a right to take life simply because “I wanted sex but not a baby” or because a “person’s life is no longer determined to be of sufficient quality”.  And on the other hand, it is pretty absurd to think that every person has a right to own a home or a new car or the internet, which has been advocated in recent years.  And there is no way that we can live in such a “rights driven” culture and not be influenced by the same.  We are not only influenced by it, but we drag it to worship with us.  While Jesus is calling his body to deny self and take up the cross we are fighting about what we want, like and prefer as if it were our right to have it.  And while we are fighting for our rights in the church and in the world, lost people are hurting, broken and dying both in body and spirit.

But it is in the dark that even a single candle shines most brightly.  Each year the Church lights the candle called Lent and invites us to voluntarily give up our rights.  Lent invites us to choose the path of submission in an intentional way not as a matter of paying penance, but as a tangible practice of turning one’s heart and mind to the reality that just as Jesus gave his all for us, when we come to Jesus we give up all our rights to him.  It is painful no doubt.  The human will certainly convulses in the throes of self-denial.  But as the flesh gives way to the spirit, the dust settles and we see that with Jesus loss is never only loss, but always also gain. 

So, as my son said to me, I pray God will help me to say to him in an even more real way this season, “Daddy…I don’t want to be the Daddy any more.  I want to be the kid.  I will do what you say.”

Bragging Rights

The Apostle Paul says I have something to brag about…OK…He has my attention.  Paul starts in 2 Corinthians 11 by saying that he, like the people in the Church at Corinth, could very well be a “fool” and boast in all kinds of things that might in turn make him look better in their eyes.  However, he says, “I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in my weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

As you read through the first and second letter to the Corinthians, you get the feeling that the people of that church gave Paul plenty of reason to “delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties.”  The church was not only openly engaged in sexual sin, drunkenness, gluttony, social-economic prejudice and more, but they had also falsely accused the motives and actions of Paul.  It takes two letters to address it all.  When he finally reaches his end (probably in more ways than one) he tells them about a personal encounter he had with Christ that changed everything for him.  Three times he prayed for the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh.  Many scholars speculate about what his “thorn in the flesh” was (e.g. was his thorn a personal struggle, a physical ailment, a spouse, the church in Corinth….?) but all admit we will never know.  But for Paul the point is not the specific nature of his thorn, but what Jesus revealed to him through it: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” And having stated that revelation, Paul then moves on to assume bragging rights about his weaknesses!

These words from Paul (2 Corinthians 12:9-10) are what I believe I have been led to embrace as my verse of meditation for transformation for 2015.  I can tell you at this point that the more I seek the Spirit as I read this verse each day, the more I realize that I have yet but tapped its surface.  What I can tell you now is that I AM WEAK.  Just in case you have not figured it out by now, you need to know that you have a very weak Pastor. 

Paul is teaching me not to look down when I admit that but to look up!  I am to say, “I am weak,” and look up in my spirit to such an extent that I actually “delight in my weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.”  To be honest, I have always been extremely hard on myself.  My parents use to say that they really did not have to discipline me very harshly because by the time my shortcomings got to them I had already given myself a whipping so to speak.  So, I know how to look down in my weaknesses, but how do I delight in them?

I also am really good at looking down when insults come my way.  I was an extremely shy child growing up.  I can recall one of my teachers telling me and my Mom that “Chad will never be able to reach his potential because his shyness will always hold him back.”  I took that to heart for a good long time.  I spent my teenage years trying to hide in the shadows, but all it seemed to do was accentuate that I was different enough to be made fun of by our local school bullies.  Back then we did not know that bullying was not supposed to be the normal lot of life for a select few, so I would just take it looking down.

I am also prone to looking down in discouragement in hardships and difficulties.  I can remember when God called me into ministry when I was 14 years old.  I could not believe God would call a shy kid like me who teachers said would never amount to anything.  But way back then, I made a decision to believe what God saw could be in me rather than what people saw in me.  Looking back…it is amazing to see how God’s truth about his view of me literally changed my world.  The passion he put in me to prepare myself for ministry and the vision he began to give me for the kind of Pastor he was calling me to be still leaves me without words of description.  But then I began to Pastor and I realized that while MVNU and NTS taught me so much about Biblical exegesis, it prepared me little for the hardships and difficulties of ministry (That is no fault to MVNU and NTS because the truth is only experience can teach that lesson).  I know I am not alone in this as I have watched many (I would venture to say a majority, but without having proof will not state that for sure) of my friends who started in ministry at the same time as I, are now no longer in “ministry.”  I often think of how these “wounded soldiers” are the ones people in the church love to shake their heads and talk about as if they have any idea what it is like to try to Pastor any church these days.  The level of hostility, unrealistic expectations, pressure to perform and consumption with pettiness is simply something that at times, frankly, has just about brought me to leave ministry.  Needless to say, I have a lot to learn about delighting in hardships and difficulties.

Finally, I know full well how to flinch and run from persecution.  First of all, I think very few US citizens have any right to “brag” about persecution. I think of our friend and sister in Christ, Naghmeh Abedini, whose husband, Pastor Saeed, has been imprisoned and beaten in Iran for two years—that is persecution.  But nevertheless, whatever its form, Jesus let us know in advance that the student is not above the teacher and so all who follow him will face persecution of some kind and degree.  Again, how do we delight in that?

Well, as you can tell I have a lot to learn from this verse for 2015.  You might even want to throw your own two cents my way about just how much more I have to learn.  But one thing I have already been learning to appropriate is to take the first step.  I truly believe the Bible says this is the first step for anyone who wants to experience Jesus’ “power made perfect in our weakness” and that is to admit, “I am weak.”  So, CFNaz family, “I am weak.”  I have not yet learned how to delight in my weakness, in insults, in hardships or in difficulties, but something tells me that God has brought me to the perfect time and place for which I can learn. 

Truthfully, I am little afraid.  What it takes to learn this truth does not exactly sound fun.  But on the other hand, I have this surge of hope filling me this year.  How loved by God I am that he would want me to learn his power in my weakness! Wow!  Now that is something to brag about!