Wednesday, September 16

Scarred and still standing….

"You must encourage one another each day. And you must keep on while there is still a time that can be called 'today.' If you don't, then sin may fool some of you and make you stubborn." Hebrews 3:13 (CEV)


 

"There are none," Matthew Henry remarks. "even the strongest of the flock, who do not need help of other Christians. Neither are there any so low and despised, but the care of their standing in the faith, and of their safety, belongs to all."

We use the yardstick of 'difficulties' as the measure of one's faith, the strength of their walk and the power of their belief. If you have few difficulties, few sins to confess, participate but not utilize corporate help and are constantly 'upbeat' and 'happy'…well, you should be an elder, a deacon or heck, a ______ pastor (outreach, small group, teaching, lead, etc.) You are a powerful warrior in the kingdom, set up in your suit and tie in the corporate board room of the church. You are the example that we all want and should want to follow.

Wars aren't won by armchair quarterbacks firmly encased in the most technologically advanced war-rooms safely back at home and inexperienced politicians aren't the best generals in which to decide battle plans.

Oh, we spend some time 'trying' to help those in difficulties; whether the addiction of chemically-created drugs, the wounds of the past or even the financial burdens of such times as these. But, after a deliberate time of 'involvement' (i.e. a financial workshop, recovery programs or counseling), if there is no 'results' then we decide that this person has to be cut loose and is 'unredeemable.' The streets of this world are littered with the rejected refuge of the church politic.

Granted, there are those who will take advantage of compassion, mercy and grace. Can you judge the limits that should be imposed? I can't.

A friend of mine was talking how excited she was that she had embarked upon a exercise regiment to bring herself into the vision of what she wants to look like for health, personal and physical reasons. She was happy for herself, for doing something for herself after years and years of doing for her family, her husband and friends. Some would call that selfish, unless they knew her and the reasons behind both the past and the new reasons. She asked me when I had done something for myself.

I told her I wasn't built to do that, and wouldn't know what to do with 'self-time'. As my children dread, I am always talking and speaking to someone if only to give them peace in these troubling times.

I was reading a post on one of the social groups that I belong to where the person asked how the community felt about the opinion put out by a majority of organizations of an 'elite group' of believers that are going to be raised up to whip the church into shape and bring the battle renewed upon the enemy and his minions. They are organizing, enticing leaders to join this 'elite' so that a revival of the church that Christ left His disciples and the ones who followed after can be implemented.

All others, who aren't part of this 'elite' will be cannon fodder to be used by their will. For the glory of Christ, of course.

We, after all, being part of the body of Christ are entitled to this….to be lead by the brightest, most eloquent and passionate of us who are walking foot-in-step with what we envision God to be. We are entitled to be the victors because we are of the victorious. Even though the greatest among us was considered ugly by the people of His culture, divisive by His rhetoric and hounded by trials during the most active time of His life on this world.

We are entitled to comfy seats, grand productions, friendly fellowship and healing. We are entitled to prosperity and peace, success and triumph and the blessings by which God shows His love for His people. The Good News has become a billboard advertisement for an exclusive, all-inclusive resort of great delight……..and if you aren't a sales agent for its enlargement, you aren't part of the membership.

After all, it is the membership papers that supply the cars, homes, knickknacks and other things that make our lives so comfortable. We want, the feeling within this community, only because we haven't asked. We struggle only because we have unconfessed sins or burdens. We have needs only because our lives are not in alignment with God's purpose.

God would never make His people struggle for no other reason than to be corrected…..never make them feel defeat only to bring them back to their knees. The battle-scarred among His people are lunkheads, not learning the lessons God would have them learn time and time again.

Like guided missiles, such things are knocking out the 'elite' among us; those humbled, broken and beaten servants of the Most High God. Surgical strikes designed to bring the enemy forces to the point where they are combat-ineffective for the battle ahead. Sapping the vitality and life from the faithful who once walked the halls of grace, bled mercy and fought the good fight with their bare hands when weapons were not on hand.

For, without the encouragement from the brethren…..spoken over and over again….as long as there is a moment in time to be labeled "today", even the strongest of us in the midst of the economic, personal, spiritual and selfish brutality of this world find ourselves losing our passions, our hope-fed peace and our battle-effectiveness. The landscape of Christianity is littered with its victims. Eventually, the stress is too much for us to remember what led us on this narrow path to begin with and the hollowness of "I'll pray for you" or "Be strong" and "We have nothing to fear" become simply a clunking, grinding and destructive 'separation' from the body.

And then sin doesn't seem so harsh and defined…..we seek comfort in uncomfortable times and fight among ourselves to keep it. We push away those in constant need, constant correction and constant support…..they simply aren't worth the effort at the cost of our own continuing efforts to keep going. And, as Henry points out, "The hardening of the heart is the spring of all other sins."

"When we long for a life with no difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds, and diamonds are made under pressure." -Peter Marshall

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you have noticed a common theme of my last year or two….financial prayer, requests and defeat. I have been broken, despite the movement of God in some powerful ways, to the point where I am living with family as a 'last ditched effort' to overcome these trials. And I'm stumbling along, as usual, with success and failure, success and failure.

Of course, the taunting of this 'entitlement' culture to which I am a part doesn't help. The house next story to my sister being up for sale, the need (want, desire) for a newer car that isn't in a state of constant need of repair, a job that will fit the bill ratio and so on. I find myself on the ropes and exhausted of the friends that could help, would help or can help…..the constant need has become a burden to most, nagging to others and a sign of continued sinfulness by the majority.

"Everyone who asks receives"

We pray like respectful children, with pious blather of convenient rout quickly and tack on the 'your will' bit at the end and call it 'all good.' We pray for those things which will bring us comfort, peace and our own perception of blessings and ignore what lies beneath our feet, over our heads and upon our bodies. We decide, in the sanctimonious piousness of our humanity, what denotes God's direction in other people's lives and ignore the calling in our own. Our subjected will, that which was given to God, isn't in the praying and when God doesn't answer, we say He's decided…..but we haven't asked for anything.

As Oswald Chambers wrote, ""Ye shall ask what ye will," Jesus said. Asking means our will is in it. Whenever Jesus talked about prayer, He put it with the grand simplicity of a child: we bring in our critical temper and say---Yes, but....Jesus said "Ask.""

Asking, with our subjected will, doesn't mean we will find the comfort of living, the freedom from difficulties and the mercy of provisions. We will receive an answer, even if it is one that we, in our sinful self-serving humanity, might want but it is there given by the God that was revealed by Christ Jesus.

I have been guilty, probably more so than not, of this respectful and pious praying without the will of my subjection in its utterance. And each time, God has answered….either fulfilling the need or not, bringing visionary sight or not and drawing me closer and closer to the realization that I am not my own and a life of comfort, free from worry and fear that is the staple of this world and never to have a peace that is subjected to mumbled statements of positivity or assured selfishness.

The scars are plenty upon this war-weary body, the wounds deep and open and the sufferance that comes from their existence breaks me daily upon the battlements of this field of war. But, each day I strap on the dented, rusted and worn armor and pick up a sword with chipped and dull edge with the shield sullied and peppered with the arrows of the enemy and I walk back out on the battlefield.

I may not be a pretty sight standing in the grandiose finery of the church but I fit right in on the bloody, dirty and dark battlefields where the battle is truly fought.

While there is a breath in me, I will always go forth to battle because of the love that Christ has for me, to hang upon a cross of wood and face the horrible death of such agony because He lived this life for me, He came for me.

You may come up with all sorts of excuses as to why I struggle, why I suffer defeats and why I am not of a 'caliber' to be one of the elite in the family of God. You may even be able to justify it in the eyes of yourself and the others that gather with you on Sundays. I may not grace the stage of the congregational style church because I'm not clean-cut, wearing polished armor or eloquent in the style of words.

But you will never be able to give any other reason why I continue to get up from the falls, struggle against the defeats and why I continue to press to follow the undeserved call to ministry by God amid continued rejection……why I can confidently declare that this life may kill me but I will go down swinging…….other than this:

I am one of God's chosen people……purposed, equipped and loved.

That is all the entitlement, provisioning and reason I need.

Is it enough for you?


 


 

“God is not a man, that He should lie. He is not a human, that He should change His mind. Has He ever spoken and failed to act? Has He ever promised and not carried it through?” Numbers 23:19 (NLT)

My neighbor at work in the shop, “Junior” (as I call him), was telling me today about the repair to the roof of his new home that he has recently purchased. He said that as the roofers were walking on his roof, they would pause, shake their heads and proceed to rip out the boards underneath. As he watched the boards sail off the roof, he said, many were so badly rotten that they literally crumpled in the air, others were so warped they wobbled as they descended….the repair is going to require more than was originally estimated when the shingles covered the boards. My thought, sadly, wasn’t empathy for this young man and the adventures of home ownership but one of self-pity….”If only I had that problem.”

Yesterday was my birthday, the physical one. Forty-two years ago this day, a baby boy was born.

And, as is usually my practice on this day, I look back at my life….some twelve years past where I thought it would end…..and wonder about the journey I’ve travelled so far and the journey I have yet to go before I arrive before that great white throne of judgment and receive my ‘review’ of what I have done with what God has given to me.

And the struggles that I face…..even today, smack up against the deadline of the secular world and fully exposed to defeat yet again. With a mustard seed of faith…..crying out to the Lord for salvation from the distress yet again. Will He come through or will He finally shake His mighty head in sadness and let go……..
God is not a man, human or bound by anything other than His righteousness and holiness.

He is mighty and powerful indeed to save. Even a wretch like me.

Some people look at my life and where I am now; shaking their heads. I drive a car that has seen better days years ago. I have no degree, no ‘highly’ skilled job to match my desires, talents and skills. I have no home even, having fallen upon the graces of family….living in a home that is not my own and burdening someone else with the needs of my family. My bank account is seriously vacant and my financial outlook grimmer than a necessary roof repair….I have broken relationships and children who have had to grow up beyond their years…..I struggle with smoking, with depression and self-depreciating self-image…

And yet, on this day of my physical birth….I can only look back, even in the face of the burden of possibly being without a ‘legal’ car by the end of the day because of insurance and plates that expire and no funds to obtain their renewal……and see a God that is so much more than human eyes can behold and human minds can encompass.
And who has spelled out the proof of His love, the might of His grace and the redemptive peace of His mercy throughout history and even in the smaller story of my own life…time and time and time again.

Even in the midst of this latest deadline; I hope for an outcome that would not only rescue me from this disaster but would bring Him undeniable glory through the testimony of its resolution……or that the darkness of the road ahead is the one He has set my feet to and that my movement into its inky blackness would speak of His love and peace that is mine to have, if only I trust in Him.

But to testify to His power, to show His grace and to live in His mercy…we have to live exposed…and willing, by human hands and words, to be wounded. Honor scars, John Eldridge calls them…..the infliction of which bear no difference from the painful wounds of our hearts outside of Christ’s salvation.

“Have you ‘renounced secret and shameful ways’---the things that your sense of honour will not allow to come to the light? …………….. Is there a thought in your heart about anyone which you would not like to be dragged into the light?” Oswald Chambers asks us today in My Utmost For His Highest. “Renounce it as soon as it springs up; renounce the whole thing until there is no hidden thing of dishonesty or craftiness about you. Envy, jealousy, strife---these things arise not necessarily from the disposition of sin, but from the make-up of your body which was used for this kind of thing in days gone by.”

Today, forty-two years ago, a baby boy was born to Sharon Lee Nitchie and Ronald Lawrence Hutson. Shortly thereafter, the heart of that little boy was brutally murdered unconsciously and consciously at the hands of his parents….. At the age of sixteen, abandoned by a church that refused to step up and defiant of a father whom chose to live a life beyond the focus of children, that now-teenager left home and moved in with his birth mother for a week, then his half-sister for a few months, eventually living on his own during his senior year of High School, turning his back upon God and this religiosity called “Christianity.” Renouncing everything and anything to do with “God”, this young man departed into a life that would leave many quivering in their shoes and ill with contempt. It is hard to live life when your heart has been stilled…..and you are unaware of a life flowing around you when your ambition is to kill the body as the soul is by the age of thirty.

Drugs, immoral behavior, theft, alcohol abuse and involvement in things that would be questionable for even the hardiest of criminally-driven minds were my attempts….and they all failed in the self-set purpose they were engaged for.
Five years ago on February 14th, 2004 that boy was redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and the grace of the Father in Heaven….and took the first steps on a journey that has stepped into the darkness of a wounded soul…and found peace in the midst of exposure. My life is disrupted, disturbed and disorientated; completely worthless but in the hands of the Creator who made it ‘wonderfully and fearfully’, naming me before I was even born and purposing me to the work He has set aside to do with me for the sake of His glory.

I have been blessed, even if the only blessing I can see is the love of a Savior that was so powerfully felt within the fabric of His being that He allowed Himself to be sacrificed upon a cross, nailed brutally with iron nails through the human flesh He set aside His rightful place to assume by my own hands. I cringe when the image of that hammer driving the nails through His flesh plays in my mind.

Yet, even in those times of open rebellion and defiance when I walked willfully away from Him, His promise and His purpose….He stood there and offered the protection of a father’s love…..until that day He knew I would turn around and seek Him once more in the summer of my youth. He waited and rejoiced once He saw me walking over that hill and didn’t even wait for me to complete the miles to the front door of the home He’s kept for me before His arms wrapped themselves around me, His robe tightly wrapped around my shoulders and His love flowing over me like waves of cleansing rain…..tears of joy that once were tears of sorrow and pain for the son who wandered so far from home’s warmth and grace.

Where I am only fit to be a servant in my Father’s house, He would throw a banquet…..where I am only fit to slop the pens of the pigs and livestock, He would cloak me in finest silks…..where I am even unfit to tie the sandals on His feet, He would bend down and wash the grime and filth of the journey in this decayed and corrupt world from my feet.

I have nothing to give and yet He looks at me with the eyes of a Master Craftsman and nods His head….”This is what I was looking for when I first took you from the clay of the ground, and I can do much with this.”

He has begun that developing work; shaping this burnt, misshapen and brittle wood into the vision He holds in His eye for it. Whittling dependency on worldly things here, cutting off decayed and corrupted material there, sanding off the sharpness of an edge here and there…..listening with a craftsman’s ear to the story that the wood has to tell…one He knows from its beginnings…….working as He knows to do towards the final work of beauty that He sees already formed.

I am far from where the finished piece is, but I am being shaped by the Father’s hands.

That is why I struggle despite the certainty of my doubts, why I move into the darkness of a small and narrow way and why I desire nothing more than to stand before those seeking, those hungering and those thirsting for His truth and speak it from personal experience; the hope that flows within me that He has begun a work in me and will not stop until He is finished.

On that day, however many birthdays on this world I have yet to celebrate….I want to stand before Him in judgment and know that I am the beautiful work He has made in me, that those who stand with me that I have come across in this journey were blessed by my testimony, empowered by my sorrow and impacted by my love for His work.
That is my purpose, to which I have given my life freely to Him to be used as He sees fit. To serve others that they might see Him.

“Do not use deception,” that is, resorting to what will carry your point. This is a great snare. You know that God will only let you work in one way, then be careful never to catch people the other way………………..” Chambers concludes his devotion for today, “For you to do a certain thing would mean the incoming of craftiness for an end other than the highest, and the blunting of the motive God has given you. Many have gone back because they are afraid of looking at things from God’s standpoint. The great crisis comes spiritually when a man has to emerge a bit farther on than the creed he has accepted.”

Fully exposed…….in the midst of this deadline, where the doubt of my flesh war with the assurance of my spirit, I will stand; praying for God’s provision and understanding His authority to answer in His way, His timing and His plan….even to the point of my distress in the physical. I will continue to praise Him if the plane continues to the ground…..I can do nothing else.

Because on this day forty-two years ago, a baby boy was born…..and is walking closer and closer to home in the arms of his loving Savior.

There was no resolution for the mountain that I face....but I am confident in the Lord to do what He has purposed to do in this situation and bring me to greater testimony about the power, grace and love of our Father in Heaven.