Tent Duty

Tent Duty
The crucible of leadership formation
by Alex Kirk

We seldom know in advance what God is going to do with our experience of “tent duty” — those times of seemingly wasted faithful service and waiting. Often, the work God does is subterranean and mysterious.


“Tie your boots impeccably.” —Post-it® note on my dad’s desk

My grandparents were missionaries in Brazil for forty years. The stories they tell are pregnant with the faithfulness and redemptive work of God as they took risks (and made mistakes) in their ministry with Brazilians. My grandfather went to Wake Forest University as part of his preparation for ministry. One summer break he eagerly sought out ministry opportunities to develop his skills and prepare him for mission work, only to come up curiously and frustratingly empty-handed. In the end he gave up his search, and took a job at a cigarette-making plant which was a primary employer in the area—a wasted summer. The next year he finished his schooling, married my grandmother and went to Brazil. Several years into their ministry, a government came into power that was skeptical of foreign missionaries. It cracked down on their operations, restricting them from access to the paper needed to produce Bibles in Portuguese. My grandfather’s experience at the cigarette plant provided this invaluable insight: cigarette paper was the same weight as the paper they were running through their press. The printing presses that the government had tried to shut down were cranked back up and they produced hundreds of Bibles on cigarette paper. As the Bibles were distributed throughout the country, a seemingly wasted summer was wasted no more.

The Place of Preparation
Exodus 33 describes a time full of tension and uncertainty in the story of the Israelites. They had just experienced major failure in the golden calf incident—God is angry, Aaron is foolish, Moses is the hero. As the dust is still settling, the Exodus account pulls back and tells us some things about life among the nomadic Israelites. Specifically, Exodus 33 tells us about the “tent of meeting” and how Moses regularly pitched this tent in order for the people to go to worship God. The tent was available for anyone to meet with God, but when Moses went in, it was particularly spectacular. There is one minor character in Exodus 33 that captures something pivotal about the preparation for leadership illustrated by my grandfather’s story: “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent” (Exodus 33:11).

Tent duty. Joshua is guarding the tent, some distance away from the rest of the camp. Perhaps it was an honor to accompany the tent of meeting, but just as likely there were long stretches of boredom, many hours with no one coming and no one going. Moses is the one who gets to go inside, meeting with God face to face, speaking with him as a man would speak to his friend. Joshua is outside the tent, making sure that sacred things remain safe, that holy things aren’t mistreated. This is the first time in scripture that we meet Joshua, son of Nun. No one might have guessed it then, but soon this same Joshua who spent long days doing tent duty would lead hundreds of thousands of God’s people into the Promised Land. And his character will have been forged during tent duty.

God uses tent duty in the lives and hearts of leaders to develop integrity, to weave the fabric of faithfulness in their souls. Tent duty is unlikely training ground for a king/warrior/prophet, and on the surface it would seem far from practical. It’s not a management seminar, it’s not a military drill, it’s not a speech-writing class. It’s just tent duty. But tent duty will be used by God as he calls Joshua to follow after the leadership of Moses, the man the Scriptures describe as the most humble man on the face of the earth.

We seldom know in advance what God is going to do with our experience of tent duty. Sometimes, as in my grandfather’s story, tent duty is so amazingly redeemed it seems like fiction rather than fact. More often, the work God does is subterranean, meticulous, or, maddeningly, we’re never given a clear explanation of what he’s doing. In any case, we are seldom given a clear explanation while we’re in the midst of tent duty itself. In that respect it is always a faith-stretching exercise. And the string of questions will lead us to the place we nearly always end up if we have the courage or foolishness to follow the trail long enough: do we trust God to be good? Do we believe that he puts us exactly where he wants us? Have we genuinely given all our days to the Lord to have him order them as he sees fit? Do we trust that it’s all for our good and his glory? Embracing tent duty means looking at odd, discouraging or dry seasons of our lives and leaning into the grace of God. It is a reckless abandonment to the goodness and sovereignty of God. He is forever faithful or he does not exist at all; there are no other choices.

Embracing tent duty requires a significant paradigm shift in terms of how we view our lives. When we understand all of life as discipleship and all our various roles and contexts as venues for our discipleship, we find our goals and dreams radically altered. There is a glorious passage in Revelation that has captured my imagination in the last two years: “To him who overcomes . . . I will give him a white stone with a new name written on it” (Revelation 2:17). George MacDonald unpacks this brilliantly: “. . . it is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for only then can he first understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, the completion that determines the name. . . . Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name” (Unspoken Sermons, vol. 1). I, too, am in the process of becoming. Throughout the course of my life I have worn many names and titles. Some were earned, some were given, some were rooted in talents or roles: son, student, awkward, brother, friend, husband, sophomore, gifted, late-bloomer, employee, father, loser, leader. I can find myself becoming so enamored with these titles (or, in darker days, so self-hating) that I am tempted to take up my own stone and carve a permanent name for myself. But only God can give me my true name. All other names, all other titles, must either bow to the name on the white stone or they will be destroyed. Our God is a consuming fire. Tent duty is one of the many instruments of this blessed process of purification.

You may be married, dating, or single, in leadership or at tent duty, a student, working for a company, or at home with kids, all for the sake of forming Christ’s life in you. Jesus, like a good shepherd, leads us down the roads that we need to travel for repentance from our sin and into enjoyment of him. Every major hero in the Old Testament, from Abraham to Joseph to Moses to Joshua to David, experienced some space of life marked by struggle, loneliness, hardship, boredom or waiting. God is more interested in our character development than our career advancement. He is more interested in who we are becoming than what we are producing. He is more interested in our discipleship than our résumé.

Tent Duty in Cube World
The summer after my sophomore year of college, I was privileged to work at Camp Willow Run, a week-long Christian summer camp for grade-school kids. I worked with eight kids who shared a remodeled train car with me for a week. It was hard and rewarding work. The pay, however, stank. The next summer I evaluated my finances (or lack thereof) and decided that I needed to opt for a more lucrative summer job. I moved back to my parents’ home and signed up with a temp agency. Within a couple days I was in a cube going through call center training for a major nationwide bank. I had sold out. Instead of ministering to kids, I was in cube world making money.

My job entailed working with company employees who were having problems with their computers. Bob, a retiree who worked part time at the bank between shuffleboard matches in Tallahassee, would be having problems with his teller computer. He’d call us at the help desk and we would trouble-shoot. If we couldn’t fix it, we’d call the repair folks who would come out on site and do the repairs. I knew next to nothing about computers, but fortunately most of our work was pretty straight-forward: turn it off, turn it back on, good as new, thank you for calling network support.

My first two years of college I had been deeply impressed with several older guys in our fellowship who were quiet and wise. They were the type of servant leaders who listened well, spoke rarely, and when they did speak, everyone listened. I wanted, of course, to be just like them. However, a strange thing happened as I spent eight hours a day on the phone with stressed-out computer users: I discovered that I loved talking with people. I would chat with them about anything and everything that was happening in their worlds: “What was the weather like in New Jersey today?” “Someone from your branch called me about this yesterday; what are you people doing to your computers?” I’d often talk on the phone with them long after their computer was up and running.

I was, and still am, an extravert. This is how God made me, and while it needs redemption and transformation by the Spirit, it is good. Three months of tent duty at a phone bank in cube world taught me things about myself that I would not have learned in the Christian bubble, where I was still too busy trying to wear someone else’s armor.

What is your experience with tent duty? Almost everyone has had some space or season in their lives that at the time seemed pointless, plotless, aimless. How did you respond? What went on in your heart during your period of tent duty? Are you open, at times like these, to the surprising work of the Spirit to shape and mold you? Joshua would soon lead the stiff-necks into battle for the Promised Land. He would preside over the politically toxic task of dividing the conquered land among a group of squabbling malcontents. This work would require valor, integrity and grace. It would also require a deep sense of the direction, work and presence of the God of Moses, Abraham and Isaac. Tent duty was the place where these characteristics were forged in Joshua.

Built-in Tent Duty
Every task and every calling, whether it’s working in cube world or in ministry, has elements of tent duty woven into the job. No work sparkles all the time. I recently took a class on spiritual formation where we were required to keep a spiritual journal to reflect on our readings. I was in the midst of discerning my calling. I had been in campus ministry for eight years and I was getting antsy. Several job opportunities were coming my way and I was wondering if it were time to leave campus. One day I was reflecting in my journal on what God might be teaching me during this process, and I realized that it had very much to do with the tent duty aspects of my work:

I had a great retreat of silence two days ago. I was considering whether the explosion of job opportunities was so that I would see how well-suited I was for campus ministry. I wondered whether this was to lead me to repentance for my “grumbling” about some parts of my work. The scripture I’d been reading talked about lessons from Israel’s history: no idolatry, no sexual immorality and no grumbling. I circled back to that word; there was something for me there. I’ve grumbled most about my parking situation and the long walk to the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. The only way for me to park for free all day is to park and hike a long, long way. I started to consider my response to this walk. The Cary Street walk makes me feel like my work on campus is marginal. The walk through broken glass and beer cans makes me wonder if what I’m doing is valuable. I begin to think that not only is my work marginal, but also that God’s work and his story are secondary. Nothing about the day-to-day operation of the campus administration or faculty seems to take into account either the work of God, or me, his wonderful emissary.

And so I find that my heart is again wrapped around all the wrong things. This walk has cast its spell on me—I think the things of God are peripheral and that I need to be recognized. This is a vital lesson for me no matter what I do. Either I must learn to delight in the humble parts of ministry that serve to ground me, or I will become absorbed in tireless and tiresome self-promotion. Every job has its long walks down Cary Street. There have been times when creative ministry on campus has been more about my own plans and potential glory than God’s will and his praise. I long for my creative energies and big dreams to be drawn from deeper wells. I long for the walk down Cary Street to be the seedbed of humble and holy creativity. Can I learn to embrace the humbler parts of my job—of any job? Can I delight in God’s purifying me as I walk down Cary Street?

For many of us, God enforces a period of tent duty to protect us from an intoxicated love affair with ourselves. For some it is longer than others, in order to deepen us, steep us in perseverance, prepare us for the real work ahead. This kid Joshua, he leads, and does so with great anointing and great power. Joshua is among the few Old Testament heroes who end up untarnished by moral failure. Perhaps Joshua’s near-flawless record is rooted in years and years of tent duty. We need to learn to trust, to wait, to work, to be faithful in the places where God has us. Tent duty is a gift, not only to us but to the people that we will be fortunate to have the opportunity to serve.

When nothing seems to be happening, keep moving. Guard the tent impeccably. You never know what God might be doing with you at the cigarette factory.
_____________
Emphasis placed in the above article are mine.
Graduate school=tent duty. This is exactly what I'm doing. God keeps saying WAIT. And in this waiting, I am growing incredibly frustrated. The temptation is to rush God's timing and to go off and do something crazy. However, the harder temptation to resist is to deny the hope that he has me waiting for a reason. I know a bundle of reasons why: to teach me patience, humility, servant leadership, and radical dependence upon him. To give me space to explore my gifts, to refine my motives, to continue to heal areas of sin. However, this does not make the waiting easier, as this does not keep the temptation to give up at bay. However tempting it was to not return to MSU and stay at Hope doing InterVarsity things, I'm not reckless enough to do something unthought-through, something drastic without a very good reason (ie, walking into my advisor's office and telling him I quit or just not showing up for days in a row). For me, the harder challenge is to trust God's call. For the first time in my life, God has opened such a door for me. For the first time in my life, my heart makes sense. For the first time in my life, I'm excited about something that is not academic--and that's valid. For the first time in my life, my heart matters--my heart, not my brain or my achievements, and for the first time in my life, I have permission to use it! The temptation, in this time of waiting, is to ignore it and toss it all into the garbage can and chalk it up to emotion and naivete.

Peace came today when this scripture was sung in the IHOP prayer room: Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed. (Psalm 25:3)

Hosea/Thornbushes and the Desert

I feel like I'm kicking against my goads, so I'm tired and hurting.

Yet, still, I am grateful for them.

There is a God...and I am not Him

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne... (Isaiah 6:1)

My grace is sufficient for you... (2 Cor 12:9)

Jesus is LORD. I am not. I am not God, and I never will be. No matter how good I've been, how good I am, or how good I ever will be, however hard I try to be perfect, NOTHING I do will EVER make me good enough to be God. I need to remember this. I need to remember to breathe and to let go of my death grip!! that I have on controlling my life.

This is my identity. From page one of Genesis to the last page of Revelation, this is my identity: There is a God. And I am not him.

Be a sinner, and sin boldy. But believe more boldy that Christ is victor. Martin Luther

Esther and Birth Pains

I've always been intrigued by Esther. Someone introduced me to her story on a missions trip in high school, and verse 4:14 has always kind of stuck to me.

I've been looking at her story again lately, and it struck me yesterday that before Esther went before the king, she fasted (which I'm assuming went hand in hand with prayer, as in other places in the OT) for three days. It is this fasting and praying that allowed her to go with confidence and say "If I perish, I perish." She had confidence that when she laid aside her plans and attended to God, he would instruct her path, and if she did so, then whatever happened was up to God.

I've realized that I have been trusting others' judgment of me to define me: either negatively or positively. Lately, I'm finding myself dismissing my calls to leadership because it doesn't look like other people's. To trust God's call instead of measuring it against others' is proving quite challenging. I know I want to do this (meaning discerning the intersection of leadership/ministry and work in my life) wisely and that requires listening to the wisdom of others. But I know there comes a point where listening to others is not listening to God. So I'm trying to pray for wisdom and mentors and patience (if you could help me do that, I would very, very much appreciate that).

She also didn't do anything rash. First, she approached the king for the first time after the three days of fasting. She didn't present her request then, but instead invited him to dinner. He came. She did not ask then, either, but instead invited him to dinner a second time. That was when she asked him to spare her people.

There are passions in my heart that God is igniting lately. They've always been there, but this is the first time that I've really ever thought anything of them. I think part of what helped me actually recognize God's call of leadership at IVLI was that for that whole month, we were learning what it meant to be a leader, and even though I doubted that I had anything to offer, nothing I was learning seemed "forbidden" to me; in fact, everything I was learning was everything that I had been pursuing since high school. It's almost like I finally had permission to pursue those things. So now the doors are open: IV staff, IFES staff, IHOP staff...the possibilities of what God could do with my life are there. No longer do I feel like the only thing I have to offer is my scientific ability (which I don't feel I have much of anyway). Science is cool, and I've always known this, but when I was pondering grad school, I didn't want to get a PhD and be forced to be a professor. I didn't necessarily want that but it was the only option I saw, and it made sense and it wasn't a bad choice, it could even have been a good one. So now that these things, these ministry opportunities exist as valid possibilities for me, I want to run after them! Oh, I want to run after them. But I know that I'm not ready for them. I have a lot to learn and a lot to sort out before God before I do those things because if I don't, bad things could happen. So I'm trying to press into God while in grad school. Ha. Yay, another limit. So, before I go and leave grad school, I have to consider it carefully, with prayer and fasting and wisdom.

Almost...

I went to a jeweler today.

I was shaking and I'm sure that my face was on fire, but I actually walked up to the counter at Kay Jeweler's and asked about rings.

I've been looking in standard department store racks for months and months, but nothing fit. I was in the mall today, walked a couple yards past Kay's, prayed a quick prayer, and turned around and marched up to the counter.

I spent a hesitant but enjoyable 20-30 minutes trying on rings (with a spunky Christian saleslady whom I hope to talk to again). I found one that I liked, but it wasn't THE ring.

So I left without a ring, but I still really, actually went into and talked to a jeweler today. (They did, however, first check that I was 18. I politely responded that yes, I'm 22. HA!)

I can't wait to try another jeweler next week. ^.^

Patience

Love is patient. -1 Cor 13:4a
Endure patiently.-Rev 3:10

I really don't want to.

This is hard.

Science will be good for my patience.

Rawr.

Niether Created nor Destroyed

Part I.
Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Same goes for energy. Momentum. Charge. All that. These must all be conserved.

This is a basic, fundamental law of science that anyone who has ever taken a junior high science class knows. It is the basis for everything a scientist studies, that I am working with as a graduate student (conservation of spin!). You can't make matter out of nothing, and it doesn't just disappear; you can take carbon and oxygen and make carbon monoxide, but it doesn't ever become nitrogen and hydrogen. You can take potential energy and transform it into kinetic energy, mechanical energy, and back, but that's it. You can only convert matter and energy.

Genesis 1:1 (and echoed in John 1) In the beginning, God--
In the beginning, God. In the beginning was God. Before he created anything, there was God. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Before anything in all creation, there was God, and he can neither be created nor destroyed; he is the only "thing" that has any right to say that he wasn't created--he just was The most basic and fundamental law of science derives from WHO God IS.

(see Genesis 1:1, John 1:1, John 1:3)

Part II.
I was cleaning up a reaction, and I was muttering to myself about having to deal with the waste products, and thinking about how I've made all this (mildly) toxic crud, and it has be packed and shipping specially, and dumped somewhere "safe" away from us...
And then I realized: When God created, he didn't have any waste. He didn't have any waste! It has implications for how we handle our own behaviors in terms of what we produce, but the major implication (momentarily) is what it means for us as people: We are not waste products. No one is a waste product. It's not like God worked at making this one really great person and other people were just waste byproducts. NO! God created each and every single one of us, deliberately. Me. You.

Living to Die

Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. -Philippians 1:20-21

Whether by life or by death, Christ will be it--everything. Because my days are used by Christ for the work he has planned, which, by his Spirit, is/becomes my desire, and because dieing allows me to be with him, which my heart and soul cry out for.

Therefore, whether I die or I live, it doesn't matter. Either way, Christ is still being made known--getting the glory he deserves, the love he desires, and his people are able to be made new, and either way, Christ is still LORD.

Sanctuary

noun
A sacred place, such as a church, in which fugitives formerly were immune to arrest.
Immunity to arrest afforded by a sanctuary.
A place of refuge or asylum.

"For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock." Psalm 27:5

But yet we sing, “Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary.” Prepare ME to be a sanctuary. Prepare me that I might be good enough for you. Now, sometimes that’s right. But yet, HE is our sanctuary. He is our sanctuary, where we run when the world is crashing in on us, when everyone is out to get us, we run to him and we have sanctuary in him!

He will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle. He will keep me safe in his dwelling.

Sanctuary.

Desperate

I'm a grad student. I'm human. My life at present is learning the intersection of those things, and how grace is large enough for both.

I am attempting to learn what it means to follow Jesus radically. Which, I'm hoping, is a hard thing for anyone. Unfortunately, I'm also attempting to learn what it means to be a scientist, specifically at the graduate level, which, it seems, is hard for anyone.

But He has called me to both, at least for the time being. That might change in 5 months, or in 5 years. Or it may never. I don't know.

I am desperate for the understanding--the kind that sinks deep into your soul, into your bones, that grace is large enough for me. For I am human. Both following Jesus radically and pursuing academia demand that which is superhuman. I am human. Jesus, I need you.

Too Sacred?

"All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:6)
We have defiled ourselves. We have stained ourselves and made ourselves unclean, and yet we act so righteous...

"All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people....who say, 'Keep away; don't come near me, for I am too sacred for you!'" (Isaiah 65:2,5)

Keep away...I am too sacred for you. Too sacred for You. Too sacred for You?

Oh LORD, what have we done?

Urbana 2009 sans detail

My well. He came to my well.

They'll know we are Christians by our love. Not our facebook profiles.

Worship out of truth.

We haven't been given an idiot-proof map. We need to trust. And even if we had, we'd still screw it up.

Praise defeats the evil one.

Sinned? Flee to him.

Prayers are not about getting answers.

If we can be challenged to appreciate other ethnic groups' worship style, why not be challenged to appreciate other styles within our own white worship style? CCM (ie, Hillsong), country, rap, gospel, metal, rock.

Limits.

Dancing shoes.

Call/Hope College/Prophets

Rise up! Do not fear. The harvest is ripe.

Ezra 10/Mat 9:37

Flux

Ideas change nothing.

Grad school is harder than college, and it takes discipline and wisdom that I don't know if I have.

I think I need to stop asking why. I'm always always asking why (hello triangle personality). I have to know everything before I take steps. It's why I was freaked out at Compelling. I kept asking WHY. I didn't have any information, and saw no purpose. But then God said to me, If I call you, who are you to say no? I will bring my purposes to pass.

This, then, changes my entire perspective on life, on grad school. My life. is not. under. my control. My life is not. about. me. My life is not. about. my career. My job. My husband. My life is not something that I can plan out anymore, and my life is not something that I'm going to do my way and make it be Christian. If my life is truly to glorify God, my life isn't something I do. Following Christ is just that: FOLLOWING.
follow
–verb
1. to come after in sequence, order of time, etc.
2. to go or come after; move behind in the same direction
3. to accept as a guide or leader; accept the authority of or give allegiance to
4. to conform to, comply with, or act in accordance with; obey
12. to watch the movements, progress, or course of
18. to go or come after a person or thing in motion.

If I am to lead, I must first be led.

Ideas change nothing. Believing that an innocent man's death saves you means nothing. God changes everything. Once you understand that it was God himself who died on that cross that day, who died for you, that changes everything. Ideas change nothing. Truth changes everything.

God, love, and the Old Testament

They say that the depth of your pain when you lose someone shows the depth of how much you loved them.
They also say that the God of the Old Testament is not the god of love that we see in the New Testament.

Take a look at Deuteronomy 32. Listen to the language that fills the first 15 verses. "Listen, O heavens, and I will speak." Is that not a gorgeous opening to a chapter? But it continues! The poetry, the beautiful poetry continues! "Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?" "For the Lord's portion is his people"--what satisfies the Lord's innermost desire is his people! Ah! "He shielded and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye." "He fed him with fruit of the fields. He nourished them with honey from the rock....choice rams...finest kernels of wheat...foaming blood of the grape." Is that not gorgeous??

But they (the whole thing is about Israel of course) abandoned and rejected God. "They sacrificed to demons, which are not God--gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth." Can you not feel the smoldering incredulity??

"For a fire has been kindled by my wrath, one that burns to the realm of death below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains." (Aside: He sends plagues and venom and such things. But it is interesting to note vs 26--God did not scatter them or blot them out for he knew the enemy would take triumph in that.)

If such is the jealousy and pain of God that the very mountains would melt, how much greater is his love for us?

Still don't believe that the God of the Old Testament is the same god of love? Check these verses out:
"I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.....I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness." In an age where sports celebrities cheat on their wives and try to by her heart back with diamonds, this God speaks tenderly, and his betrothal is in righteousness and justice, not compressed carbon molecules. Now tell me: Is this a verse you hear in the New Testament? No. Ok, maybe in the Psalms, because we like those? No. It's in a little book called Hosea, you know, in the Old Testament. About halfway between the Psalms and the end of the Old Testament. Hosea is about a prostitute. A prostitute who is married but dresses up and goes chasing after her lovers. Israel, God's people, we are that prostitute. And in the middle of all her foolish and despicable behavior (Chapter 2 if you're wondering), "I am now going to allure her"?! "I will betroth you in faithfulness" even though you have not been faithful to me.

If that's not love, I don't know what is.

God and math

I was reading youtube comments to song, and I came across this one:

"Call it regurgitation if you want[conversation had been about everything the Christians said was just regurgitating things that they had been brainwashed to believe]. But if I were to regurgitate an algebraic expression to you, would that make it an less true and valid? It would still solve for X. And Christ can solve for you as well, if you let him."

Score.

I loled too. The thought of God hunched over a pieces of paper with a pencil, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, concentrating on an algebra problem is amusing. :)

God rocks...still

I wish I could adequately describe how amazing God is.

When we forget this, we strive to follow out of our own forces, our own power. But we can't do that! Even if we what we are trying to do is ministry, we can't! We can't even follow without his grace! When we try to follow out of our own power, we are only kidding ourselves. We can't force God's hand! We can't force his hand. And when we just surrender...everything falls into place. Everything falls into place and everything comes to life.

LORD
lover
provider
Immanuel

God rocks

I don't have big, cool, awesome stories, but I do have little, cool, awesome mini-stories.

-All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive. ~Psalm 22:29

How great it is that they who cannot save themselves are the ones who will be saved and will worship!

-The very same power who made the trees to quiver with life lives inside of me!

-I'm not working for perfection. I'm working to be faithful. If I'm faithful in following his call, and if being a scientist is what I'm supposed to do, he won't let me fail.

-Questions are valid. A faith that does not question is weak. Questions are valid--and here's the kicker: they're just as valid unanswered. Questions aren't validated because they get answered. They are valid because we can't know everything. It's trust. We are supposed to seek God, not necessarily answers. And in by seeking him, questions may be answered or changed or deemed unnecessary to know the answer to.


God, give us faith that is beyond what we think we can handle. Because faith we can handle isn't faith at all; it's twisted reasoning. Give us faith that dares to believe.

You're a fake!

38Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" -Matthew 27

I wonder, do we ignore the events leading up to the crucifixion? For whatever reason, the details of the events are suddenly proving more interesting than they used to. These two verses, for instance. So Jesus was insulted. We know that. Big deal. But take a minute to think about it. Where are the insults coming from? And why waste all that breath on two complete complex sentences? Why not just call him a liar, a cheat, or if you were really that pissed, why not bastard? (After all, Mary did get "mysteriously" pregnant, right?) What had their blood boiling enough to let off that much steam?

There's a bitterness underneath these insults, a bitterness that comes from the fact that the feel like Jesus lied to them. "You said that you were going to save us! You promised! If you are really who you said you are, and if you can really do what you said you would, prove to us that you are who say you are!" They are hurt. They feel cheated and lied to. They had hoped that he would save them, and he isn't (so it seems). So they walk on by, and insult him, with mockery that lets him know exactly how they feel.


What insults are you hurling?

Laments

NEWS FLASH: Lazarus still died.

Yea, Jesus raised him from the dead. But Lazarus still died. And he died later on down the road, too.

The bible ain't all rainbows and roses and blind following. People have beefs with God and they take them up with him. Yea, there are a dozen psalms that are rather emo, Psalm 88 definetly being one of them. But there's also an entire book devoted to these. Ever hear of Lamentations? Yea. That book. It's an entire book of laments. "He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones." That was verse 4. Multiply that by about 66 and you've got chapter 3 of Lamentations--and there are 5 of them.

Some may view laments and cries as faithless whinings. I beg to differ. Being willing to completely lay it out for God, blow by blow--this is everything that I can't stand, about me, about life, about you, about your plans, this path you've laid for me, takes an immense amount of faith. Let me tell you, crying out even just a third of the verses of Psalm 88 into a microphone at church on Sunday had me trembling--these are hard, dark, rugged, anguished verses, and they are in the bible. They are in the Bible. And here I am, proclaiming it. Not the way you'd expect someone to proclaim the Word of God:
"You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.

Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
Selah

You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
my eyes are dim with grief." (Ps 88:6-9)

But yet, there I was, my voice alone in a room of 50 people, putting forth those words.
And these are valid words. These are valid words to express. And God knows them, and knows me.
It takes faith to walk to the throne of God and say, This is not fair! I am hurt by this! And I don't want to take it anymore! It's a level of faith to which I have been challenged.


Something I've been returning to is an image from Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. I saw it in high school, but a few weeks ago, they played a clip of it at IV. There was this one scene when Jesus (or at least, the actor playing Jesus) gets flung onto the cross on the ground. The camera is just above the ground, pointed along the crossbeam. Jesus, completely bloodied, lands on the cross and his head rolls to the side and looks towards the camera. And in that moment, I remember: this is Divinty. This beaten, brusied, bloodied, weakened, exhausted man getting manhandled and flung onto a cross for which he was not meant is God. This was no mere man, being wrongfully accused. This was God.

He knows this pain. Whatever pain it is, he knows it. He knows the hopelessness, the wieght of the darkness. He knows it, because he experienced it. That gut-turning ache inside when everything falls? He knows it. And he died to save you from it, so that death may be conquered and you shall live--despite everything in your body that feels otherwise.

On that day long ago, on that hill, God twisted the "rules." He said, This, what you've done, deserves death. But it will be _my_ death.