The Responses to Pain

It seems to me that there are five possible ways for a person to deal with emotional pain.

1)  The first way that a person tends to deal with pain is reciprocation.  This is the natural sinful desire to hurt someone back for the hurt that they've caused you.  However, in our more ethically advanced society this does not always come out as direct backlashes, rather it comes out through hateful attitudes, indifference towards the person, doing the things that drive them nuts.  Sometimes we don't even know why we're doing it, but deep down inside it traces back to the hurt they've caused us.  A lot of times these hurtful / hateful habits start with one simple decision to not speak to someone or to not do something that we normally do to care for them.  If we can stop ourselves from making that first decision to act in an unloving way it seems to me that we would keep ourselves off the slippery slope of reciprocation.

2)  The second way is somewhat a halfway point between the first and third, so I won't say much about it.  Sometimes we don't reciprocate to the person who offended us (for whatever reason, intimidation being a common one) but instead take out or emotional pain, hurt, and anger on someone or something else that is around us.  It has been said, "Hurting people hurt people" which is often true, however I still believe it is only one of the options.

3)  The third way that people deal with pain or hurt is to just accept it.  They decide that it is not worth retaliating and they are not willing to make someone else hurt for them so instead they take it in and they just hurt, A LOT.  Unfortunately this has been painted as the Christian approach to pain by many, but it is actually very contrary to the Christian understanding of forgiveness, but we'll get to that later.  The problem with this approach is that our hearts, our emotions, cannot sustain this level of pain if we never release it, so this tends to come out in explosive anger or self-destruction.  In fact, I believe that part of the rise of self-destructive habits in our culture (such as cutting) is due to the fact that option 1 and 2 have become less and less socially acceptable, as well as option 4 and 5 as we will see, so more people must turn to option 3, which only tears them apart.

4)  The fourth way that people deal with pain is somewhat of a hybrid between option 3 and 5, so again I won't say much about it although I could (and probably should).  The fourth thing that people do when they are in extreme emotional pain is to take it out on God.  They get angry at God, they shake their fist at God, they yell at God, they curse God.  Interestingly, most Christians would see this as the least Christian response out of any of those yet named, however when you read through the Psalms you start to get the idea that this may be as close to the truth as we've gotten yet.  I believe that there is a place for this response to pain and hurt IF it leads us into the fifth way to deal with pain.

5)  The fifth way that people deal with pain is to give it up to God.  This is when someone says, "This is too much for me to bear, dear Lord, please take this from me."  This was Jesus' response in the Garden of Gethsemane when he pleaded with God to take the cup from him, interestingly God did not but by Jesus giving up the pain, by him pleading his case to his father, he was able to then bear up under it.  Too often people confuse option 3 and option 5 because they tend to have the same short-range results.  When people take the pain on themselves the result is that they do not act out against another person, and when people give the pain up to God the result is that they do not act out against another person.  However, the difference is not in what they do not do but in what they DO.  The person who takes the pain on themselves becomes self-consumed, they either end up feeling high and mighty and like they are better than anyone else or they end up feeling like crap and hating themselves, but the person who gives their pain up to God is freed to love no matter what, to accept the circumstances (NOT the pain, that they've given away) and continue to love and live for God despite them.  In fact, the person who has taken this approach will actually love MORE when they are hurt, because when they give the pain up to God they will see their own sin, their own faults, their own failures, and it will give them a compassion and sympathy for the person who has hurt them.  In options 1 and 2 you don't love others because they become objects to inflict your pain on, in options 3 and 4 you don't love others because in your mind THEY should be loving YOU (because you have so much pain), but in option 5 you are freed from any of this and are suddenly able to love.

So cast your cares upon him because he cares for you.  He is more than able to take them upon himself, in fact, he wants to take them upon himself.  You don't have to bear them any longer, you don't have to cause others to bear them any longer, you can be freed and you can love.  There is that split second when someone hurts you where you decide what to do with it.  Some people immediately scheme about what to do back, others go and yell at someone or break something, others ignore it and simply internalize it, still others get mad at God and shake their fists; but in that split second, make it your conviction, your desire, your impulse to turn to God and say "Father, take this cup from me, it is more than I am able to bear.  I know that Jesus already took this pain upon himself, I know that he already bore this sin, I know that he loved even when he was spit upon and beaten, send your Holy Spirit to put the same love in my heart."

Where Are You Most Vulnerable to Satan's Attack?

We have an awesome Men's Ministry at our [old] church.  (I have to start clarifying...because if everything goes as planned this coming Sunday will be our last Sunday there.)  We typically have a monthly 4M (Men, Meat, Message, Movie) night with anywhere from 15-30 guys.  I attended last night's 4M and the message was on the armor of God.  They're having an Advance (because we don't want to be retreating in our Christian life, we should be advancing) in November where they will be talking about individual pieces of the armor of God, so last night was just a generic discussion of the armor, or more specifically of the Christian life as a battle (one of my favorite metaphors for the Christian life, by the way).

Pastor Jeff led the discussion with several questions and most of it was just "hoohaa, I've heard this before, now I actually have to work to try to figure out how to apply it....." type stuff (if you've been in the church for anything close to a long time you probably know what I mean).  However, there was one question that really stuck out to me and grabbed me.  Jeff asked "Where are you most vulnerable to Satan's attack?  Where does he most often strike you and where do you most often fall?"  This is a question I've heard before thought about many times, but he put the question so directly that it really hit me.  I thought of it another way "What thing(s) in my life keep(s) me from obeying direct commands from God?  What ways does Satan tempt me so that when I have a decision for right or for wrong I will choose wrong?"  This is a great question to ask yourself as well.  What is it in your life?  (feel free to comment)

As soon as he asked, I knew my answer.  My biggest area of weakness (and she knows this and I think would be comfortable with me sharing it) is Dana.  And no, its not what you are all now thinking.  Yes, sexual sin is a weakness for any man, especially an engaged one, but that's not my biggest struggle.  My biggest struggle is when there's something that I think/know that God wants me to do but I also think/know (although in my mind I always KNOW it for a fact) that Dana would not be a fan.  I don't have any specific examples, typically they're too embarrassing to share...because when it actually comes around to it and I admit it out loud I realize that Dana wouldn't have cared one way or another and I was actually being very childish.  But it happens with enough regularity that I would consider it my weakest point.  But its not just with Dana, its with others as well.  I just have this tendency to fear what others think (or so I always thought).  But as I tried to articulate this to the men last night, I realized that that's not what it is at all.  Because the fact of the matter is, I don't really give a hoot about what others think of me.  I mean, to a certain extent any one of us likes to be liked, but when people fawn over me or tell me how great I am, it actually irritates me, but when people correct me or say things they dislike about me it is actually invigorating to a certain extent (not in a weird type of "I like to be hated" way, but in the sense that I like when people see that I'm humanly imperfect).

So as I grasped for words last night to explain this, to make sense of why I am so vulnerable in this type of decision making, it all of a sudden hit me.  It's not that I care what they think, its that I care what I think!  Its that, in my mind, I have created my perceived role in the situation and I must live up to that role, otherwise I feel that in some way I have failed.  And for the most part, this is actually a strength of mine!  It causes me to be self-motivated, it actually helps me make difficult decisions that may offend people, it causes me to be relentless in pursuing my calling, but it creates a problem when my view of my role is not God's view of my role, or even worse, when I think that it is my job to be God!  Ultimately, for me, it comes down to a pride thing.  At times I think that I have to do XY and Z, not because I really do, but because in my mind I am the only one who can do it, or because in my mind I need to do it or I will be disappointed in myself.  And now that I realize this, I feel like it is very freeing, very liberating.  Because, before, if I felt like God had something for me to do that interfered with my idea of what I needed to be/do for Dana, I would cave to my preconceived view of my role instead of to God's desire.  And in my mind I justified it by saying that this is what Dana needs.  But now, when such a situation arises I can ask "Is this really what Dana needs, or is this what I think Dana needs but in reality God (and possibly even Dana) see the situation differently?"

I thank God for this question that was asked last night that helped me to realize these things.  I thank God for our Ministry to Men at church that gave the platform for me to think about and voice these thoughts in my head.  And I thank God for Dana and all of the rest of you that put up with me when I try to be God for you instead of submitting to His will and design for our relationships.

Now I would challenge you to ask yourself, "Where am I most vulnerable to Satan's attacks?"...

Thoughts on a Flower

Today I was thinking about flowers...yes flowers.  (And yes, this may have something to do with the cold reminding me of an unfinished project which I really should start up again...)  While thinking about flowers, something interesting occurred to me.

Flowers hold a sense of beauty in our minds.  It doesn't matter the type of flower (except for maybe dandelions...) or the time or year, a flower always holds a certain level of beauty.  We use them for decoration, cutting them and placing them around our houses; for cosmetic purposes, placing them in our hair or on our clothing (I only do this in private...); for perfume, taking their scents to make ourselves smell more beautiful.

But as beautiful as flowers are, they actually have a real purpose for their existence.  And that purpose is fruit, reproduction, survival.  The flower gives way to the fruit of the plant, to the seed, and therefore is the plant's way of propagating itself and thus ensuring survival of the species (do plants have species?... Hmmm).  In other words, in nature, the flower isn't where it's at.  The flower precedes the truly [beautiful?] important part of the plant, the seed.

How often do we find this in our lives?  How often do we miss the truly important parts of our days and weeks because we are distracted by the beautiful things that will pass away?  How often do we see only the temporal advantages of something but miss the truly eternal aspects of it that will only come through time?

How great is God to provide us with something as beautiful as a flower, even though it has no obvious (other than attracting bees and butterflies) purposes?  God could have made flowers just as bland as many other parts of the landscape, but He made them different, He made the stand out?  But that doesn't mean they're more important, in fact, in some ways they're less important than some of the more bland parts of the plant, such as the leaves, or the seeds, or even the roots!

I hope that I'm not simply a flower in the chain of human existence.  I hope that I'm not beautiful and smell nice (well, I do hope I smell at least ok most of the time) but provide no eternal consequence, no beneficial development.  I hope that I don't pass away without first planting seeds that will spring up into a harvest of life to those around me and those to come after me.  I hope that God gives me the grace to be as efficient as a leaf, as beautiful as a flower, and as beneficial as a seed (sorry root, I couldn't think of anything nice to say about you....but I hope I have good roots as well).

The End.

Overcoming the Distractions of Fear

I've been reading through John Flavel's 120 page book "Triumphing over Sinful Fear".  It has been excellent so far; short and succinct but also insightful and motivating.  He identifies three types of fear: natural fear - which everyone feels when confronted with danger; sinful fear - which comes from a lack of faith; and religious fear - which is the appropriate fear of God, not a fear of punishment but rather a desire to not offend or disappoint God because we recognize His great love for us.
He then identifies and describes the effects of sinful fear.  The first effect is distraction of mind in religious duty (a term which encompasses all effects of grace: prayer, love, good works, communion with believers, etc...)

I do not doubt that it is one of the devil's great designs to keep us in continual fear and alarm, and to puzzle our heads and hearts with a thousand difficulties which will probably never come upon us (even if they do, they will never prove as fatal as we imagine).  He does this to unfit us for present duties and to destroy our comfort in them.  If he can distract our thoughts through fears and terrors, he gains three advantages to our unspeakable loss.

1) He severs us from the freedom and sweetness of communion with God in duties.
2) He severs the soul from the support and relief it should draw from God's promises.
3) He severs us from the comfort that is found in our past experiences and the relief that God's faithfulness and goodness imparted in former straits and dangers.

How often have I fallen into the distraction of mind that is the result of sinful fear!  I fear what others will think of me; I fear what I will think of me; I fear my propensity for making wrong decisions; I fear my propensity to not make decisions.  And slowly these fears become so burdensome to my mind and my heart that I can no longer pray, I no longer have peace, I forget the things that God has done for me in the past, I forget the things that He has for me in the future, I lose my ability to sense His peace and joy, I lose my ability to love.

How sad it is when a Christian allows the devil to conquer him through the distraction of fear.  As we sit and analyze every possible way that a situation could go wrong God is waiting for us to step forward and see how He will make it right.

May we, you and I, step forward on the wings of faith.  May we stop analyzing every decision for every possible pitfall but rather to step forward, trusting in the promises of God.  May we take away our distractions by no longer focusing upon the problems, but rather praying for the solutions, with our minds set steadfastly upon God and His promises, our hearts sustained unwaveringly by the Holy Spirit, and our souls nourished continually, not by bread alone, but by the very words that proceed from the mouth of God.

Trusting Christ in Everyday Life

This is a good illustration by Francis Chan, I highly recommend it.  I found it to be extremely convicting, especially as now is a time in our (mine and Dana's) life when we are looking ahead and trying to discern God's path for us.  It is always tempting to take the easy and comfortable road, to just try to have that "normal life" that everyone strives for, instead of recognizing that sometimes God will call us to do radical and extreme, uncomfortable and difficult things.

Walk in Spirit

 This is a devotional that I wrote for the group from our church that went to Honduras.

Walk in Spirit

Read Galatians 5:13-26

Throughout the whole book of Galatians Paul is reminding the church that in the gospel they are no longer  bound by the law but rather freed by God’s grace, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  But now, suddenly, we get to the end of the book and find that Paul is telling them how they should live!  How can this possibly make any sense?  Isn’t it legalism for one Christian to tell another Christian how to live?  Won’t it drive newcomers away if they find that we have certain actions we are to do and others that we are not to do?  Isn’t this contrary to grace?

There are so many people today, tired with the legalisms of yesterday, that automatically reject any admonition for “proper living” as legalism.  But we see here that our freedom in Christ necessitates a certain lifestyle.

What we learn through the book of Galatians (as well as Romans, Ephesians, and the Peters) is that when we receive the grace of God we are made alive in our spirit.  We were once dead in our sins, but have been made alive in Jesus.  Your spirit is not dead, rather, it is very alive!

So now we are actually in bondage to a higher law, the law of the Spirit (Matthew 5:17-20, Romans 6:18).  In fact, God has written His law upon our hearts.  It is not that we can now live however we like, because the Spirit is in direct opposition to the sin nature, which means that we may not do whatever we want (verse 17) but can instead live as we should.

Paul is saying here (cf. 1 Peter 1:13-16, 2 Peter 1:3-9, Romans 6-8:17, Ephesians 2:1-8, 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, Colossians 3:1-17) you once lived according to the intense desires of the flesh and you were powerless against them, but now that you have been made alive by the Spirit you must no longer satisfy those desires of the flesh.  Instead, walk in spirit, listen to the Holy Spirit, and if you do this you will not satisfy the desires of the flesh because they are in opposition to each other.  This then ties the second half of the chapter back to verse 1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

So, do not fulfill the longings of the flesh, but rather walk in spirit.

The Teaching on Works

2) We have such a fear of legalism creeping into the church that any mention of what our lives as Christians should look like is immediately labeled legalistic. Recently in Adult Sunday School my pastor read excerpts from the Didache, a compilation of early Christian teachings (dating around 175 AD). These teachings were simply a list of things that Christians should partake in and do. Many people in the class responded by saying that this sounded legalistic and wrong, however it appeared to me that the lists were directly out of Scripture. See Matthew 5-7, Titus 3, Colossians 3:12-4:6, 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, 2 Peter 1:5-11. It would seem that many people would get up and walk out saying they will not put up with legalism if these Scriptures were to be read. But we must come to see that talking about and expounding upon what the Christian life should look like is not legalism!! In fact, encouraging good deeds (Hebrews 10:24-25) is commanded in Scripture, so we should be doing it. Encouraging and even teaching good works is not legalism; legalism is when good works are seen as a prerequisite for salvation. We must come to see that apart from Galatians 1-4 on the superiority of grace over law, chapters 5 and 6 would be legalism. But apart from chapter 5 and 6, the doctrine of grace in chapters 1-4 would be wholly incomplete. Until we are able to freely talk about what the Christian life should be, until we are free to describe and encourage Christ-like living without people getting their feathers all ruffled, until we do this we will not have truly started building the kingdom of God. For what is a kingdom where the king is not obeyed? As long as we continue to not live our lives for Jesus, as long as we only focus on the things we are not to do but leave out the things that we are to do, we are not serving Jesus but rather ourselves.

The Sound Doctrine

1) First, it seems that we also have an alarming lack of information/teaching on the resurrection of Christ. We often talk about the cross and the crucifixion with little or no mention to the empty tomb and now living savior. In fact, our gospel presentations are often grimly void of any mention of the risen savior, and the importance of our now risen Lord, Jesus Christ. And this is in spite of the fact that the Bible seems to almost emphasize the resurrection OVER the cross in many of its references to the gospel and salvation. And this makes sense when we consider that there isn’t much good news in someone dying. Isn't the good news that the one who died (notice the death is still important) was also raised and therefore is God Himself and has the power to save us from our sins? But we so often present the crucified messiah rather than the risen savior.

Now, I see a connection between this lack of conversation regarding the resurrection and the aforementioned lack of conversation regarding Christian living. Paul often makes mention of us being crucified with Christ (the death of our sinful nature) followed by our resurrection with him (putting on of new life). This is why putting off the works of the sinful nature in Scripture is always paired with putting on the works of the Spirit, because to not do this is to leave Jesus in the grave! As Christians we are not only saved from something, we are saved to something, and this mirrors Jesus death and resurrection. So it makes sense, then, that as we have focused less and less on the resurrection and new life of Jesus that we have also focused less and less on the new life that has been given to us and we must now walk in.

The Lack of Teaching on Works in Accord with Sound Doctrine

I have felt for a long time that modern evangelical Christianity (as I have experienced it) has a curious overemphasis on ceasing to sin and an alarming lack of emphasis on doing good works. We recognize all of the bad things that we are not to be doing and frequently talk about them, but how often is the new life that we are to be walking in Christ expounded upon? I have heard countless sermons that go on and on about dying to sin and what that looks like and the process entailed and then finish with minor if any reference to living to righteousness. However, when we really consider the gospel message, when we look into what the Bible teaches of salvation, we will see that our life is crucial! At this some of you may be putting up red flags, and while I would love to address them now, that is not the intent of this post, however I would encourage you to look over Ephesians 2:8-10, Matthew 7:15-27 (spec 20 & 24), Galatians 5, Colossians 3:5-4:6 (note the extensive list of good works following the short list of bad works to avoid), Titus 2, James, 1 Peter 2:24, 1 Peter 4:1-11. I could list many more passages, but even a short perusal of these will quickly illuminate the fact that 1) the good news of our salvation is rarely mentioned in the Bible without being immediately followed by a call to live a good life and 2) passages encouraging us to stop doing bad things, to put off sin, are always followed by a specific admonition to also put on godliness, or good works.

Unfortunately it seems that the modern day evangelical community has lost this focus on what our new life in Christ is supposed to be and I have recently come to two conclusions as to why this is.  I will devote each of my next two posts to discussing these points.

True Worship - Why Our Lives Must Align With Our Words

 This is an excerpt from "Why Church Matters" by Jonathan R. Wilson.  He is a bit heady and uses big words, but it is well worth reading, and a great follow-up to the series on worship that I just finished posting.

True worship requires an understanding of the one true God and increases our understanding of that God...The worship of the people of God becomes untrue when they wrongly construe the God whom they are worshiping and when they try to combine the worship of other gods with the worship of the one true God.  The Israelites misconstrue the God whom they are worshiping when they think that ritually and legally correct worship places God under their control.  This attempted domestication of God wrongly treats God as something like a petulant giant who has to be mollified.  In a reversal of Marx's dictum, this approach is worship as the opiate of the god.  As long as we are ritually and legally correct in our worship, God will be drugged and will not notice that God's character and will are being violated in every other area of life.  This is the worship that Isaiah condemns in Isaiah 1.
The church commits this same error today when we think that enthusiastic, well-planned, perfectly executed worship excuses affluent, consumptive lifestyles that depend upon unjust economic structures and practices.  We also commit this error when we think that beautiful buildings and large offerings will distract God from the tragic, sinful reality that our churches are still some of the most racially segregated institutions in our culture.  We fall into this error as well when we think that beautiful music and well-crafted sermons make up for our failure to visit those in prison.
These errors lead to worship that is untrue because they are errors in our understanding of God.  They reflect the belief that God is not "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" (Anselm's definition in his Proslogion) but rather "that than which nothing is more narcissistic."  As long as we feed God's narcissism with our worship, we can get away with almost anything.  But that is not the character and will of the one true God.