Community

“Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.”  

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I love this. It is very true. Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It wasn't until I got into community that my heart toward the church and its people matured and grew into being more compassionate and humble. When things don't go my way, or people flake out and let you down, or when they love on you dearly, and you see them serving one another wholeheartedly...all that sanctifies my soul. Through serving in community with my end goal being glory to Christ my soul becomes more humble, more loving, more empathetic, more compassionate, more forgiving. Serving in community without my end goal at glorifying Christ turns my soul into being more prideful, more bitter, more resentful, more hateful, more victimized, more broken.

I've also experienced the depth of friendships being formed in a unique way. They were not formed because people decide to meet up for coffee. They have formed from people serving in ministry together. They have also not just formed through serving in ministry together but I've also seen deep friendships form through people serving one another. From a mutual self-sacrifice to care for one another consistently.

My hope is that as I continue on in living in community I will continue to discover the love of Christ.

 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  -Ephesians 3:14-19

Out of the desert

I've hit a peak of God just working around my life lately. It seems like I was in the desert for years waiting...and then it all started with Chris and I praying together and truly wanting what we prayed for. 

God lead us into your will, we want to be part of Your will not our own. Our lives are meaningless in any other will but your's. 

Then we were approached with serving more people in a deeper way & we were thrown into a whirlwind.

We keep getting approached about how well our ministry is going...that people hear such great things about it. It's crazy what God decides to do when you want what He wants. It testifies to me that for years my faith has been too small. I've prayed too little. I've asked for such minor things. God has been so gracious towards me with those things but I am so deeply amazed and encouraged that He actually uses me. Me! A broken, prideful, selfish, sin-stained person. I am so self-righteous, God knows how evil my heart is. Yet in my brokenness He uses it. 

I've been so nervous about leading. It's funny because you'd think all this positive feedback would make me full of myself. It's the opposite...because I know it's not me. It's God. He is moving and shaping His will around me and it's beautiful. It's amazing. It's masterful to watch.

I feared that I would live a boring suburban life. Not changing my community because I fell into the "american dream" lifestyle. It hasn't hit me yet. I live in suburbia, I have mediocre things, I work an 8 to 5 job, and have never traveled outside the U.S. Yet my heart still wants Jesus. My heart still wants to change this complacent suburban culture. 

You know what I've learned? God works in powerful ways within the mediocre life. I don't have to leave my town to see Him working. He will answer prayer and He will move in powerful ways among our simple "boring" lifestyles. I don't need to go on a missions trip to a third world country to see that.

I hope this whirlwind stays for a while. I so want to unify & build up His church. Not for my glory or my own ego-boost but for His glory and for the sake of the Gospel. For the sake of His church. I want Him to keep working not for my own entertainment but so that He builds it, strengthens it, unifies it. I'm just here as an instrument and that's all I want to be.

I pray a lot for spiritual protection. I've seen the evil one get in the way when someone is doing so much good for the Gospel & totally wreck havoc on that person's life. To say that I enjoy being in a whirlwind is not always true. I'm bracing myself for the fall. I'm watching for the trap. Yet I'm praying for protection. My spirit is simultaneously joyful and sorrowful for what I am experiencing and what I will be approaching. It may be the cynic in me and I hope my cynicism is proven wrong. Regardless of that I know that He is good, and no one else's will is better than His.

Ima just do it

Recently Chris and I have been called to lead an Missional Community (In other churches it's known as a "small group"). We say "called" because we had been praying for God to direct us to where He wants us. We were willing to leave our church if that was the direction needed to best glorify God in our life. Instead we were approached and asked about leading an MC. I don't like using the word "called" because it's a very loosely used term within the evangelical community and I tend to be doubtful. I don't think highly of my spirituality and so to say I'm "called" to something in my mind sounds rather elitist. However, in this instance I say "called" because we weren't looking to lead an MC. If we were asked 4 months ago we would have laughed and said no.

One of the reasons we would have declined quickly is we already volunteer our time & energy to youth ministry. I'm not the type to mindlessly volunteer myself for stuff. I also don't like when organizations like churches suck the time and energy out of their members. I have burned out in ministry before. That may be why I'm so cynical about stuff. However, I honestly believe this is the right choice and it is taking a huge step of faith and discipline on my part to trust that God will care for us through this.

Today thinking about it started to overwhelm my spirit and then this hymn came to my heart:

Holy Spirit, living Breath of God,

Breathe new life into my willing soul.

Bring the presence of the risen Lord

To renew my heart and make me whole.

Cause Your Word to come alive in me;

Give me faith for what I cannot see;

Give me passion for Your purity.

Holy Spirit, breathe new life in me.

Holy Spirit, come abide within;

May Your joy be seen in all I do—

Love enough to cover ev'ry sin

In each thought and deed and attitude,

Kindness to the greatest and the least,

Gentleness that sows the path of peace.

Turn my striving into works of grace.

Breath of God, show Christ in all I do. 

Holy Spirit, from creation's birth,

Giving life to all that God has made,

Show Your power once again on earth;

Cause Your church to hunger for Your ways.

Let the fragrance of our prayers arise.

Lead us on the road of sacrifice

That in unity the face of Christ

Will be clear for all the world to see.

Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God

Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend

© 2006 Thankyou Music

From <http://www.gettymusic.com/hymns-holyspirit.aspx>

^^^ That is so my heart for our MC this year.

A major part of stepping out in faith is being willing to sacrifice. Chris and I don't want to live a quiet happy comfortable life. Before I was married I feared the suburban lifestyle. I feared becoming so complacent in my life that I didn't see the needy or have a desire to change a community for the better. Looking back now I see why I have always been willing to go into social situations where I don't know anyone and meet new people and try new things. It is comfortable to be known it is extremely uncomfortable to not be known by anyone. As I got older the more uncomfortable things I would put myself through. That's why I was willing to leave my hometown so quickly. Why I left to go to college and not stay at home and then right after graduation move to another state with a totally different culture.

Now the next step to sacrifice for me is time. Being willing to give more time to people and also balance it well so my marriage is healthy. My fear is that I will burn out. That I won't be able to handle ministering to people in a deeper way. That what I thought I was a "calling" was just a human coincidence and has no bearing on a divine plan. Or that I made the wrong decision and it was a test on me to either say yes or no and now I must suffer the consequences of my human foolishness.

My spirit responds to my overthinking with this: Ima just do it.

Those who love their dream of a Christian community

“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idolized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another and God accordingly. It is not we who build. Christ builds the church. Whoever is mindful to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it, for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess he builds. We must proclaim, he builds. We must pray to him, and he will build. We do not know his plan. We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may be that the times which by human standards are the times of collapse are for him the great times of construction. It may be that the times which from a human point are great times for the church are times when it's pulled down. It is a great comfort which Jesus gives to his church. You confess, preach, bear witness to me, and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not meddle in what is not your providence. Do what is given to you, and do it well, and you will have done enough.... Live together in the forgiveness of your sins. Forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer


I love this quote so much. The reason why is because I identified with that. I was a dreamer of what Christian community "should" look like and came to find myself judgmental and bitter over the state of things. God has been so gracious to my heart through these last couple of years. I've come out of the judgmental and bitter state to wanting to love as many people as I can for the sake of Christ. To value as many people as I can for the glory of God. Instead of growing bitter at what the Church lacks I've grown in joy of how great God is. I use to depend on the Church for my value and worth as a Christian and it turned to bitterness. Now I believe the Church has a huge role in the growth of a new believer and the shepherding of a Christian, but there comes a time when that Christian needs to grow solely in Christ.. They can't stay relying on the Church for their growth. I couldn't stay there. If I did the Church would become my crutch. Instead I've come to the realization that I'd rather have Christ above all things. I'd rather Christ be glorified over a group of people. If that group isn't glorifying Christ then I won't let them bring me down because they don't define my relationship with God, only Christ does.

I have my moments where I turn to despair and bitterness at the state of our society. At the state of Christendom today. Yet I will not let it waiver me from Christ. When I see falsehood flow into churches and sin encroach on the cause of Christ, I hold on to this promise:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

    and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

   so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

    it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it."

Isaiah 55:10-11

I've realized how liberating it is to live in Christ alone. To find ways of loving people more. Even if someday the Church no longer welcomes me I can still love them because my value and worth is found in the Cross of Christ. He is my strength and He is my portion forever. God will mobilize me when everything else is trying to take me down. I love Him and I pray I never lose sight of this.

Affections awaken in the strangest of places

You know when God hits you?  When He just penetrates your soul?  I haven't had that happen for quite some time until now.  I'm a victim of His grace in this way.  He has been working through my heart all weekend and into this week. Knocking at my soul.  Do certain words or lyrics from a song hit you like a two by four and make you break down and cry?  Words you heard or read before, now somehow echo in your mind and linger in your heart?  It's funny how something like picking up a book and deciding to read something I had underlined to come back to now effect me more than before. A song I have been listening to whenever I drive it finally sinks in and causes my heart to cry out to God.

Here's what has awoken affections for my Savior:

Self denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ & no more of self, to see only him who goes before & no more the road which is too hard for us

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Cost of Discipleship, page 88

So what if they think you the man
That don’t mean nothing in the kingdom
So what I want ya’ll to remember me for
 If you forget my name, please remember my Jesus
KB, Give My All, EP 100

You know what else has caused affections to be awaken? A sinful thought and desire moved through my heart today that I wanted no part of. I realized I don't want that sin anymore.  I just want Jesus. I don't want the things that hide in darkness, the dirt and depravity of my human heart. Something really powerful hit my heart this Sunday morning when songs were being sung. I had opened up to some women close to me last month about something I've struggled with, I struggle in controlling my thoughts.  It's like my thoughts want to enslave me into enjoying sin again as I use to.  Sometimes shameful thoughts just jump into my mind and my heart just sinks. My soul weeps and lives in guilt that I would even go where I have in my thoughts. Sometimes I feel I can't even control them and the more guilt I feel the more evil thoughts flood in. It spoils everything good that I want to enjoy and tries to convince me I can't have those good things, I have to be enslaved to the bad.  This past Sunday rolled around and while we were singing a shameful thought went through my mind, and the moment I began to feel shame I told myself, "You are clean. Jesus has made you clean. That sin has been washed away by His blood on the cross."  I know the words of that, I know what they mean, and I've always understood them, but this was the first time in a long time I've believed them.

When Bonhoeffer makes that statement in the Cost of Discipleship that I quoted above it is such a great comfort to me.  To know that the majority of discipleship is being captivated by the person of Jesus, the character of God. As John the Baptist puts it so my own heart proclaims it, "He must increase but I must decrease"  (John 3:30). Discipleship cannot be done without decreasing self so that Christ Himself is proclaimed.

With that I have been in tears all night pleading to God that if anyone remembers me, that the one thing they remember the most is Jesus. If I'm forgotten I beg God that He is remembered.  I'd rather be forgotten by everyone if it meant Jesus was found by souls through it.

These are my thoughts tonight. As much as I talk about how discipleship is about losing self, I have spoken mostly of myself.  I apologize for that.  This was therapeutic to write and I hope that as I look back on my blog Christ shines through.  I hope that these words will heal my future heart and awaken my soul to Christ again when it becomes dry through the cares of life. God is so great and loving!

Cheap Grace

My indwelling sin has flared up again. I'm not sure what triggered it exactly the last time I dealt with it was about 3 years ago when I was still in college. I think what caused it then was I prayed to God that he would show me my sin and that all I would want was Him. Unfortunately since I didn't learn from my past I'm doomed to repeat it and recalling last week on my way to work I prayed this same exact type of prayer to God. If you don't want to go spiritually insane don't pray that prayer. I have had shameful thoughts all weekend not allowing me a moment of spiritual joy to myself. My "inner goddess" has flared up again. You know, the desire to be admired and in control of people? Only that can happen in my mind though since I don't actively do it in real life. The problem is that I didn't practice beating my body and making it my slave early in my Christian walk so I'm going to have to work harder now than before.

I think what has led me slip into believing I'm okay and unaware of this indwelling sin is my false view of grace. I have cheapened it. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it:

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. 

 

Cheap grace is the grace I have bestowed on myself.  This false grace, my inner goddess fooled me into believing that I could be made right with God without repentance or the realization of my actual need of God. That I could be made right with God because Jesus has covered me and therefore I can live and think in the ways I want. The refusal to believe that God hates my sin and if I love God I would hate it too.

My thoughts have brought me to Paul in Romans 6 where he states:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

I want to walk into that newness of life again. Maybe I am and I can't see it but I really want it.  I don't want to be a slave to my sin but to Christ's righteousness.  The lyrics of an old hymn have been playing through my mind tonight:

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul!

If only I can recognize this sin has actually been nailed to the cross because it seems to be living and active right now within my spirit.

I think it's time for me to pick up the Mortification of Sin by John Owen again. This indwelling sin will be dead to me.

American Christianity's great sin

From observing the media lately, there's been a lot of talk about homosexuality. Many Christians believe homosexuality is the great sin attacking the church right now in our era. I believe it's a sin but I don't believe the greatest sin in America and among evangelical Christianity is homosexuality. I also don't believe it is the greatest threat. I believe the issue of how homosexuality has come upon and into churches is a byproduct of a much deeper sin that has gone unchecked among the American church and that is: idolatry of marriage and family.

I grew up in an evangelical culture where I prayed for my husband and believed he was out there for me. That God had someone special just for me out there to complete me. I engaged in the evangelical culture of relationships and love and defined myself in that.

As I grew older I started to really think about who God is and that my whole life's goal was not to in the end glorify God but to glorify myself. This started to really stick with me... 

When I would go to church as a teenager and the pastor interviewed one of their staff members who was single, he would mention it to the "ladies" or "men" in the congregation of this. Hinting that that person was a great catch and needed to be married off.

As I attended college and started wrestling with this identity in relationships, I started realizing my idolatry was in marriage. In an imaginary man that didn't exist. I think why this relationship culture among evangelical christianity really makes me angry is because I had to wrestle through the consequences of that poison planted in my heart early on. I had to come to the realization that I wasn't meant to be married off. That God's whole plan for my life wasn't in marriage to a man. 

The question I started to really ask myself was would I be happy if I never got married. If I never ended up with someone, would I be okay? As I wrestled through broken relationships I came to the conclusion that I would be okay. I realized that all I wanted was the perfect one, God himself. In college I started realizing that my lack of faith was that I didn't believe God would actually take care of me. I believed I needed something or someone to do that. I realized my heart was committing idolatry before God. I worshipped this concept of stability when the Creator was already there providing it.

Walking away from that idolatry I feel surrounded by my brothers and sisters living in it. Preaching it. I just want to ask them…what are your thoughts on our Christian patriarch Paul who wrote in Romans: "I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided…I say this not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord."?

Evangelical teachers and preachers promote marriage but Paul clearly didn't. The only time Paul actually dwelled on marriage is when he compared it to Christ and the Church, the place where his devotion lies. (Ephesians 5:21-33) Paul didn't promote marriage but addressed a concern that the body of believers were having during that time. Instead he promoted: good order and securing "undivided devotion" to God.

From these experiences and thoughts I've had over the last several years, I've started to question the following: when you put that single man or woman on a pedestal and encourage their singleness to be turned to marriage, could you actually be discouraging God's call for their life? Psychologically you remind them that in "your" view, singleness is not fulfilling and marriage is the right path. So you set their minds not on Christ but on a goal of earthly marriage. 

My question is…what if God didn't call that person you just promoted to marriage? Who are you to decide this person's calling… Paul talking of circumcision and uncircumcision, slavery and freedom in the same chapter regarding marriage says: "only, let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches." He concludes by stating: "so, brethren, in whatever state each was called, there let him remain with God."

Notice the key word: with God. If marriage is for you then go into with God. If it is not for you then stay out of it with God. Wherever we go, we take God with us. HE is our devotion, HE is the one we are suppose to promote.

I guess as I write this I think about my own life now. I don't think marriage is wrong since I got married (ironically) but the step I took was me fighting off everything that idolizes marriage as well as secular single hood. I had to fight off my desire of what a perfect marriage looked like and also fight off my desire of how I couldn't travel and "change the world" as a single career minded woman. Both idolized myself. I don't want that. I also don't want to see my married brothers and sisters patronize my single brothers and sisters. That hurts me because there is so much spiritual potential for both. God created and called both to glorify Him in different areas. To reach people that only those certain circumstances could bring. Some are to have co-glorifers of God in the intimacy of marriage whereas others are to have co-glorifiers of God in the intimacy of brotherhood and sisterhood of singleness.

My fear in these things is that I too will become disengaged with spiritual reality and forget the beautiful lives my single brothers and sisters are living for the glory of our God. My hope and prayer is that I find a balance in approaching these two lifestyles and continually surrender my life to the worship of God.