As I sit with the challenges I find in my hands and press in to the heart of God, I discover not that I am too weak, but that I am too strong.
The problem with letting the Spirit search your thoughts (Ps 139:23) is precisely that you have to let the Spirit search your thoughts. You don't do the searching, and present what you find to God and ask him what he thinks. You don't do the offering. You have to let down your crossed swords to give him passage. It's understanding that what the Spirit finds only the Spirit can heal. You have to put down your tools, your chisels, your hammers, your chainsaws. He doesn't pull out scorpions for you to whack with your mallet. How hard it is for me to put down my weapons. How hard is it for me to offer my body as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1). Not just my resources, not just my alliegiance, but my body—every single part of me. Every breath, every intention, every sin, every fear and weakness. You can’t crawl onto the altar and leave your arm behind.
Incarnation seems like this wonderful, Jesus-movement word; the new-old buzz word in living a Christian life: Be Jesus! Live like he lived! Sounds pretty good, right? Problem: As Ligenfelter points out in the first chapter of "Ministering Cross-Culturally," Jesus was born into our world as a child. Jesus did not pop out of Mary's womb with all knowledge and power. Jesus had to learn at the knees of Mary and Joseph and the rest of his community how to grow into a child, and eventually into a Jewish man. Jesus, the Son of God, was dependent upon those in his community to raise him. I don't know if I'm humble enough to admit that I don't know things. I've never hidden behind the "everything's fine in my life" mask, but I have always hidden behind the "I don't need your help" mask. My life is hard, but I can handle it. And see, look. My grades and even my driving record prove it! I don't need your help. But living in another country in another culture will require admitting that I not only don't know their language or currency, but that I don't understand their customs, I don't know how to be accepted into their circles, I don't know how to act in their everyday situations. I will have to allow myself to be taught these basic things.
The incarnation requires me to live without walls. There are no walls between me and those I come to serve. Jesus sends out his seventy disciples in Luke 10 without any means of their own protection or provision, intentionally leaving them dependent upon the hospitality of the towns to which they are sent. In this way, relationships and trust can be built. But it also takes away a sense of protection, safety, and security. God has been showing this to me in many ways through small group studies at church, in my conversations with him, but also through our bible studies with my IV students. Gardening, harvesting, all of these keep popping up in our listening times, in our scriptures. Gardening requires getting on your knees, in the dirt, and getting dirty. And every portion of time I spend with my students, I am challenged to stay in the dirt. Incarnation does not allow for retreat into bubbles of safety, cleanliness, superiority. Incarnation is not safe. It is vulnerable, it is dirty, it is anything but enviable.
Everything about the incarnation challenges how I live my life. And I am bridling at that, bristling at the ambiguity and the vulnerability that I am being called to live into. This is living in surrender, laying aside everything of self in exchange for the joys and pleasures of the Most High (Ps 16:11).
