The Incarnation: An Experience in Childhood and Play-doh

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).

Calling

I know that I can't cover the whole of missionary theology here, and I know that I don't know enough of it or of the Spirit to even pretend to, but here's what I want (and feel I need) to offer to the conversation about calling and missions work.

Somehow, in my personal experience, calling and missions have been divorced from our relationship with Christ. Missions work and callings are for pastors, for self-sufficent, extroverted men who know how to bring people to Jesus. As I consider my current situation (temporary grad-school drop-out heading to Russia to do 'missions work'), I'd like to state that there was no directive from God that said, 'You're ready for missions! I'd like to send you to Russia. Hop to it!' There was no fire from God that made me weak in my knees, no tears of repentance to my ignorance of the world.

There is, however, a Voice that says, 'Come with me. Do you trust me? Do you believe that I am enough and that I am faithful?' I am weak in my knees and in my heart when I consider raising support--both financially and spiritually. I weep for the pain--the pain of our humanity, our collective need to know Christ to be complete, the cry of desiring to be release from bondage. I pray desperate prayers of the burdened, saying, Lord, I am young, I am inexperienced, and I know that I don't know you half as well as I should. How can you send me?

'Calling' is not made up of spreadsheets. Calling is not a career choice. Calling is not an excericise in creative thinking, asking 'How can I imitate Jesus?' Calling is a walk. Calling is a relationship. Calling is part of every day. Calling is following Jesus in whatever it is that he is asking of you in a moment in time. And for me, in this moment in time, Jesus is asking me to take him at his word, inviting me to discover that he is deeply, abidingly faithful, that he is enough, and that he is Lord. And it is for that reason I go to Russia, because of the pain in that country that I know that HE can heal. Because it asks me to trust radically in his provision, and to trust that he knows who I am better than I do.

Missions work CANNOT be done without the Holy Spirit. Missions work is *fundamentally* HIS work. Missions work is not building houses. Missions work is not teaching English. Missions work is not translating Bibles, it is not preaching on the beaches to any listening ear. Missions work is GOD's work of redemption and healing and saving; it is only by his grace that we are invited along for the journey. We are first and foremost HIS partner. A missionary's life is not split up into a vertical relationship with God and a horizontal relationship with our neighborhood. A missionary's life is an arc, where the vertical and the horizontal are intimately connected. A missionary must be continually watching for the Wind of the Spirit, listening for the Voice of the Spirit. A missionary must have the heart and the mind of Christ. And that is not just a way to say 'a gentle and humble heart.' A missionary MUST be indwelled with Christ Himself through His Holy Spirit.

What a humble calling. What a challenge to be surrendered to Him. What a privilege to be called to work alongside him.

You said, ask and I'll give the nations to you...

Two weeks ago, after quite possibly the most awkward interview I've ever been through and apparently lengthy reference calls (I got to hang out with the wife of one of my references and she said that he was on the phone for 45 minutes!), I was invited to teach overseas with Teach Overseas.

With confirmation in prayer and through others, I accepted last week. Which means....I'M GOING TO RUSSIA IN 8 MONTHS!

As nervous as I am to go overseas, I know that it is the right thing for me to do. As daunting as it seems to raise support, I know that God will provide.

I feel like this is the next step in my discipleship. I feel like I won't be able to give him adequate praise until I experience his provision, until I take this leap of faith. I want and need to see him work, to give him the opportunity to reveal himself to me in this way. I need to put myself in a position where can show himself to me outside of the personal realm of my heart. Just as the priests had to step foot into the Jordan before the Lord parted it (Joshua 3:13), I have to step into places of uncertainty.

I am eager for this opportunity to take this step of faith. It fills me with joy. Not necessarily happiness persay, because I am certainly anxious about many aspects of this trip, but there is a welling joy in my heart knowing that I am following my God, wherever he leads.