Kiwi In Flight

The Extent of Sin

2011-03-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

My usual posts have something to do with irony, but this time, God has given me some new insight into the things of the past. Maybe I am dense or maybe I am really good at compartmentalizing pain, either way, it always seems to take me years to figure out just what happened in situations of the past, specifically when it comes to relationships, both the platonic and the physical.

This week I have been reflecting on a physical relationship that has had a profound effect on my life and is still reverberating through my present and probably will continue to in my future. Through the curses of being overly introspective and a tendency to analyze the past, this reflection comes frequently. This time the reflection comes from a different place, Student Ministry.

This week we began a series in our group titled, "God's Plan for Great Sex!" The majority of my talks this year have been based on curriculum, not because that is my teaching philosophy, it is quite the opposite honestly, but because of the amount of time I have. Working full-time, attending school full-time, and taking care of a pregnant wife/now baby has left me with little time for my students. So, I being a relationship oriented person obviously chose to spend more time with students than use up that time in study away from them. This is important because it was the curriculum that prompted this topic, not me. While it has been something that has needed to be addressed in our group, I have typically shied away from teaching on this topic. "Why?" You ask. Yep, you guessed it, because there are issues in my own life.

I have a love/hate relationship with the "True Loves Waits" campaign. I love it because it was a vital part of keeping my relationships pure for a while and it kept my wife pure until we were married. I hate it, because I fell and was a casualty of the law and guilt it produced in me. I was a zealot for purity throughout high-school and the first part of college. I actually had a girl become frustrated with me because I would not "give her any" so I promptly broke up with her and moved on. In college I began dating a young lady that is now my wife, but she lived four hours away in my hometown and it was very hard to maintain that relationship, so it did not last ("the first time" we call it). The break-up was painful and I being emotionally immature at 19 years old began a relationship with another girl a month later (let's call her “Sarah”). Sarah and I had become close as well. We had been friends for some time before we dated, but I began dating her very soon after my last relationship ended. For years I blamed the failure of this relationship on "rebound" but the fact is it is just not true. This is another qualm I have with the "True Love Waits" campaign. It mixes the struggle for purity with a Hollywood romance of the "one and only." While I do believe that my wife is “the one” for me (because of circumstances that would take me hours to explain that reveal the sovereignty of God in our lives), when that belief is set up as a system, it leaves no room for the complexity of human emotions. The fact is that I loved Sarah deeply and she loved me deeply. There is simply no denying that. The reason our relationship ended is because we didn't love each other enough.

Our lives and schedules were very similar. We were college students at the same college with part time jobs. Our life was no more than 30 minutes away from one another at any time of day. Because of the contrast of relationships in my life and the broken heart that I let go unhealed by God, my temptation for the physical relationship was heightened and I eventually fell from the pedestal of purity that I had built for myself (notice the theological implications in my thinking at the time). Over time Sarah and I tried to heal our relationship, but we just couldn't. The more we tried to stay pure, the more we fell and the more disrespect we had for one another and for God. Eventually, it was the sin in our relationship that ate us alive. We came to a place where we didn't want to even look at each other anymore. A relationship that once was thriving in the things of God became something so ugly and wretched to us. We were living in blatant disregard for God's plan and we had begun to pay for it. We made multiple attempts at breaking up until it finally ended and I think that process was one of the most painful I had ever been through and I know it was even tougher for her. We had spent years intertwining our lives and now it was being ripped apart. Despite our society's legal view of marriage, I will always wonder if, upon a sexual union, a type of marriage is pronounced in the spiritual realm. During this reflection upon this relationship this week, I have felt like someone who has gone through divorce. I have never wanted to place myself in that category and never had the accountability to consider it, but that is exactly what has happened.

The tragedy of this situation does not end in divorce, but the far reaching hand of sin continues. The tragedy is not that we simply "fell," it is what we were denying by the falling. I have always felt strongly that a relationship with the opposite sex should lead us closer to God. It should strengthen our faith instead of weaken it. No matter what our calling is individually unto the Lord and how egalitarian it is, it is a man's responsibility to lead spiritually in that relationship. This does not mean that a man sit downs and subjects a poor woman to his personal knowledge and righteous trophies, but it means that he sets the example for her “in speech, conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity" - 1 Tim. 4:12. It means that he is always building up and living out his faith in that relationship and when a person does that, there will be a natural occurrence of bible reading and devotion between them. The tragedy of our situation is that I did not do this. Instead of loving Sarah the way that God wanted me to, I loved her the way I wanted to. Loving her the way I wanted to do did not build up her spirit, but it broke her down and by the time that I ended that relationship I was standing before a broken and bloody mess of a spirit.

When we love a significant other in this way, we are disregarding the fact that the people we are "loving" have to eventually interact with this broken world and they will not have the connection to Christ that they need to overcome it. When Sarah was a young girl, she witnessed her best friend get run over and killed by an automobile. She had to learn the fragility of life at a very young age and because of this she developed an obsessive compulsive disorder. It was a mild one, but its focus was on her family and those closest to her. Sarah's biggest fear in the world was to lose a family member. After years of being broken down spiritually, because of my lack of spiritual leadership, and because we wanted what we wanted, and because I didn't love her enough to stop it, she was left broken and unprepared for quite possibly the biggest tragedy in her life.

A short time after we broke up, i got a phone call from my college minister. Sarah's younger brother had been working at a water park and had fallen 15 feet off the top of a waterslide and broken his neck. He passed away within hours. From what I understand, Sarah began a downward spiral into a world of depression, anxiety, and self-destructive sin. I am not sure of the specifics, but I know that she struggled for years. Things are better now, but there are days when the extent of my own sin still reaches into her life.

My relationship with “Sarah” ended years ago. I know that she is reconnected to the Lord and serving in the work of the ministry again and she has a great husband and a beautiful daughter. For almost 5 years, I have been married to an amazing woman whom I love beyond my capability to show it and I have a beautiful daughter as a result of that love. A lot of time has passed, life has changed, and God is restoring both of our lives. Yet I cannot help but feel the weight and extent of sin, of pursuing what we want outside of God's plan.

In our culture today, there are strong opinions about God having a say in people's personal relationships and sexual choices. Your body is not your own and your significant other's body is definitely not your own unless you are in a covenant of marriage. You do not have the permission from God to do what you want in your relationships. You can choose to disobey God, but it will always lead to destruction either of that relationship or of the people in it. Some may ask, "If we are consenting adults, what does it matter?" It matters because you're significant other is made in the image of God and that means they are sacred to Him. Until you are married to that person they are still a brother/sister in Christ and your selfish choices will continue to reverberate through their life. Don't mistake Satan's perversion of a beautiful gift from God for an "everyone's doing it" or "I just couldn't help myself" or “we love each other and how we show it doesn’t concern you” mentality. God is serious about the beautiful gift of sex that He has given. When His plan for that gift is tampered with, the extent of that sin reaches farther and deeper than we could ever imagine.

Grace-Driven Effort?

2010-09-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

It has been a while, but I hope to write more regularly about what God is doing in my heart and life. One of the things I love about the body of Christ is that we have the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14). We have a fellowship, a deep and purpose-filled relationship with the very Spirit of God. This Holy Spirit resides within each and every one of us and that means every believer is connected no matter where we are emotionally or geographically. This has been a truth that never ceases to astound me. The same Holy Spirit that is sanctifying you to God (Rom 15:16; 2 Thess. 2:13) is the same Holy Spirit that is working in me.

This is why I love to hear people’s testimony of what God is doing in their midst. I love to hear about the little things people experience that enable them to see God’s fingerprints on their life. For instance, it moves me to hear of the one who suffers from depression experiencing an answered prayer through merely waking up in the morning and knowing it’s a new day or when a person tells their story of genuine trust in the Lord despite suffering and odds. I love to hear the testimony of God’s perfect timing revealed or even the experience of a shapeless form, piece of steel or unhealthy greenery suffering the slow and painful experience of molding, shaping and pruning from a loving father. Hearing the stories of how God is moving and working in lives of the people around me lets me know that God is moving in real and unique ways. It reminds me in the time of waiting to keep waiting because God is near. The same Holy Spirit that is working in you is working in me.

One of the major things on my mind lately is the idea of grace-driven effort. I read the Village Church Pastor’s Blog entitled Dwell Deep as often as I can. Within this blog, the Village Church Pastor, Matt Chandler has been tackling this idea of Grace-Driven Effort. This is a topic that has always been interesting to me. For some time, there has been a lingering trend of thought in the Christian Community that magnifies grace in our personal walks with Christ over obedience or holiness. Rightly so because we would not even have the capacity for obedience or holiness without the grace we receive, "that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). But it is more like the unbalanced product of only appreciating one side of something. This kind of idea that Jesus only had one thing to say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Somehow as long as you are doing this thing, nothing else matters; a kind of anti-fundamentalist disposition. I am not sure if this comes from a seeker movement or the post-modern movement or maybe just a response from college students graduating from youth groups that taught them following Christ equaled behavior modification; i.e., not seeing rated R movies or cussing. So it seems that the pendulum has swung from holiness movements to grace movements and has hung there for some time.

I fell headlong into this movement because somewhere along the way I found myself as that college student who was neck-deep in self-righteousness. I was coming to terms with the fact that I just could not be holy on my own. I could not clean myself up enough to please God. No matter how hard I tried, I still came back dirty.

So began my first encounter with grace; a pinnacle moment when my life was shouting, “I just can’t do this anymore!” and God was responding with, “Thank you Captain Obvious! Finally! Now maybe I can accomplish something in your life.” So began a long journey of living by grace. I began with short prayers in difficult moments when the temptation arose to be holy out of my flesh. “God help me! Give me the strength, the fire, and the will to follow you.” Little by little, I watched as the more God enabled me to spend time in prayer and in study the more strength and desire I had to follow Him. I would only act when I felt the desire from God, a shaky practice at best, but nevertheless, one given by the Lord to lead me uniquely and personally.

For days, months and years I resisted any spiritual discipline for the sake of not falling into the trap of self-righteousness or legalism. If you add that to a guy with a predisposition to Calvinistic theology, you get one heck of a fatalist. I became a dedicated podcaster of Matt Chandler, listening to multiple sermons a week that fiercely proclaimed the gospel and how it had been ripped away and twisted by fundamental moral deists. Yet, I always knew somewhere deep inside that I was ignoring giant pieces of scripture; such as, the letters of Peter, James, and most of Paul’s outside of Romans 9. Peter’s words haunted me with his quote of the Levitical text, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).

I wondered if anyone knew how to reconcile these passages of scripture to the gospel and rescue me from fatalism. My answer actually came from the gospels; from the words of Jesus to be exact. In Matthew 5:17-20. Jesus blindsided me with His words in verse 20, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Wow! For so long I had got it wrong. Jesus did not want his disciples to be the opposite of the Pharisees; He wanted them to be MORE than the Pharisees. In verse 17-18, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them…not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” It is not that Jesus did not want us to live righteous lives. He does not want us to live self-righteous lives, but live life with a righteousness that comes from God. When that happens our lives are characterized by love; His love. Jesus is the only one that can accomplish the fulfillment of the law and enable us to live righteous lives, so it is in fact by grace that we follow Christ. But then Paul finishes the thought in Romans 6:15-18 when he says, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means…you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

We must pursue the things of God and the commands of Christ with grace-driven effort. Ephesians 2:8 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” But it is by that same grace that we have been given “every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph. 1:3) and “an incomparably great power for us who believe” (Eph. 1:19). The same power that raised Christ from the dead is living in us through the Holy Spirit giving us the ability to choose the things of God and to live the life of obedience and holiness that Jesus calls us to.

In John 15, Jesus says, “I am the vine; you (disciples/followers) are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” It seems that one can gather from this passage that if your life is not bearing fruit, you are in danger of being thrown into the fire. This passage always made me wonder if it was possible to lose your salvation, but I believe Jesus is talking about people who confess Christ as their Lord, yet there is no true heart-change signifying that they were not truly saved to begin with. Is it not possible for weeds to grow in your flower bed? Some of those weeds even bud and produce a flower, but that doesn’t make them flowers. They are still weeds.

Jesus confronts this issue in John chapter 6 when many disciples leave Him after hearing a hard teaching. In verses 63-65, 70, Jesus says, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say that, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled Him….have I not chosen you, The Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!”

We have to walk a fine line as followers of Christ. On one hand we cannot to do anything without grace. But if we have grace and do nothing with it, then we are still found without grace. The only way to pursue Christ is to pray for God’s strength and mercy to enable you to follow Him and to utilize His Holy Spirit to guide you, teach you, and sanctify you. But once the Holy Spirit convicts us and gives the knowledge, wisdom, and ability for the task, the ball is in our court. Jesus separates the true disciples from the weeds when he challenges us in John 14:15 when He says, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”

“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, and obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” – D.A. Carson

Tender Violence

2010-02-01T16:21:00.000-08:00

Recently I had to renew my anti-virus software because it had expired. I decided to renew it online instead of just going and buying a new one. I do not have to tell you that clicking that “renew now” button was the start of a frustrating and interesting experience. When you install a new program on your computer, you don’t even have to decide where to put that program. It swiftly asks you if this is a correct place to put it. I usually swiftly pick yes and move on to finishing the install as to not be confronted with the fact that I have no idea where it is going. I was thinking that sometimes when we experience hurt in our lives, our minds and hearts swiftly move that specific hurt to a default folder. It is almost as if someone flipped the autopilot switch and we missed it. This process sounds like it could be to our advantage, yet there is only so much you can stuff down and compress before the structure you have built for all the irresolute hurt starts to buckle and give way to the pressure. Today God allowed me to experience this epiphany in my own life.

I am not sure why, but I feel as though I am given eyes to see through some of the weird things that Christians do. For the American church as an institution and her para-organizations, I believe it is difficult to focus on an organic process of making disciples and keep the doors open. It seems as though we are confused as a people as to whether our churches are fortune 500 wannabe’s filled with vision statements and salvation quotas, old folk’s homes for the spiritually retired, or seeker-friendly hippy communes that host buddy Jesus and an anything goes philosophy. But before I continue down my never ending and ever-winding stream of consciousness, my problem today does not lie in the institution alone or a ministry philosophy of a specific institution. My problem is in our adoption of worldly philosophies into our disciple making process. When did this process ever look like a ladder? When did this process ever have a formula? When did this process ever have measureable results? What is painful about this is that there are those in leadership who are unable to accept this incalculable and uncontrollable process, that assume and size up others based on a limited perception and assumptions and then proceed to assume the role of the Holy Spirit. I believe that this is a direct result of a lack of trust. We don’t actually believe that He who began a good work in us will be faithful to bring it on to completion, so we take matters into our own hands.

It never ceases to amazes me when I experience the Holy Spirit comforting, counseling, and breaking. It is a beautiful and humbling experience full of paradox. I feel so weak and unworthy, yet so loved and protected. God used a song today to remind me that He is the author and perfecter of our faith. He revealed to me that He and He alone is the one who leads, guides, disciplines, comforts, and counsels

I'm looking for some stable ground
Some kinda place to lay it down
And settle for a while
I'm sick of looking for a star
I won't show anyone my scars
Can you help me out?
I wanna see a change in me

When it's time for another round
I get in then, I bow out
I'm kinda freaky that way
I used to stand as tall as I could
I used to be better than good
I guess I've made my bed
I wanna see a change in me

No, I don't listen when they tell me
They think I won't
Come back around
Find my way out
It's none of their business!
It's none of their business!

I've got another song in me
Because of you, I'm changing
I'm learning how to wait
Ugly as I could've been
Down and out and all broken
You never made me wait
You saw me
You didn't see my shame

No, I don't listen when they tell me
They think I won't
Come back around
Find my way out
It's none of their business!
It's none of their business!

I'm free because you said so
And I'm learning to grow
Because you held my hand
I'm free because you said
Go, keep walking

Certain Risk

2009-11-25T10:44:00.000-08:00

I am feeling rather honest these days. At the moment I am reading about the metaphysical and philosophical elements of Hinduism. Sometimes these chapter interactions for class surprise me about how interested I really am in these sorts of things. It opens up whole new worlds and opportunities of thought to me. Not so much for my spirit, but for my imagination. For some reason, reincarnation fascinates me. I guess in my mind it is placed within the ranks of the paranormal and supernatural. Reincarnation fascinates me the same way superpowers do. For some reason I have always been drawn to the supernatural. I can’t get enough of movies based on comic books or television shows like Heroes. When I watch Heroes, I await the display of a supernatural ability like a kid awaiting to open gifts on Christmas morning. I am hanging on the edge of my seat waiting for them to show me what it looks like. Then I walk away pondering what it would be like to be supernatural, to live forever, to control electricity or be even wield the mystical abilities of ancient martial arts. If I was ten years old again, this would manifest in all sorts of imaginative demonstrations (sometimes it still does when I am alone in my house). If you wouldn’t have known any better, you’d believe that I actually was a ninja. You should have seen how many crane kicks I performed from the theater doors of Karate Kid to my father’s Nissan Pathfinder.
All this to say that it is interesting to me that whenever these thoughts enter my mind, an immediate guilt follows as if I must limit my imagination. I have to wonder if sometimes this is the influence of church life. Not so much following Christ or the search for truth, but the kind of community church life based on mathematical spiritual formulas and secular business models. The kind that says a mature spiritual person looks like this (insert cookie-cutter here) and this is how to get there. P.S., Do not color outside the lines either! There is this unstated assumption at times within Christian life that you must check your brain, heart, or imagination at the door. Let’s not forget our fellow brethren’s response to things like the Davinci Code, Twilight, or Harry Potter, how embarrassing! Before I get written off as a rebel and critical spirit, I must say that I believe for the most part that we have done the best we know how to do. Nevertheless, growing up in a small holiness-based church created walls for my brain and heart. I remember having conversations with others before my encounter with grace that make me cringe and induce self-loathing even today. There were lines and barriers that were set up before interactions with others would even begin. Alarms would sound off if those fundamental trip wires were crossed within conversation. Instead of walking along-side someone, truly listening, and journeying with them, I set up boundaries. When they crossed them, I analyzed, categorized, and judged accordingly. Mix that with my already predisposition to being a perfectionist and you get one heck of a monster. I was a mad-man blazing a trail for perfection and self-righteousness and I expected everyone who claimed to follow Christ to join me in the zealous pursuit. In the end, only to find that all my friends and fellow followers were dropping like flies. In hindsight, they were essentially standing at the dock lovingly sending my ship off with a salute saying, “Dude, I can’t do this. Good luck!” At this point in my life having come into contact with what grace really looks like, I feel like a caged bird set free. Not only to feel freedom from the law of sin and death, but to be able to think freely, to ponder the universe and all things in it as created by God, for God, and intended for good. To finally attempt to embrace how God has wired me up is probably one of the most cathartic experiences as of late. I have this tendency to try to be everything to everyone, or fit inside a specific mold in order to be aesthetically pleasing for others. I just end up becoming a cultural Pharisee (great phrase Tony). I always come to the end of that rope and go, “God, I can’t be this guy!” He replies, “Good! I didn’t create you to be that guy! I created you to use the gifts, abilities, and passions that I’ve given you. Stop trying to be everything else but that!”
The thought that I cannot escape is that so much of my experience with churches doesn’t look anything like that I experience in my pursuit of Christ. I would love to be a part of a body of Christ followers that accept others and celebrate others like I experience with Christ. I am inclined to believe that Christ is not concerned with the way people look, they way they dress, or what kind of art moves them. In light of this, the question must be asked, “What would it be like to be in a community that embraced this kind of freedom?” Last night, our student ministry finished their purpose statement. Now, I know that purpose statements are what they are, but aside from that fact, I was excited with the results. They came up with this statement, “_______ student ministry exists to reach students with unconditional love, to honor God with our lives, to gather with purpose, to grow to be more like Christ, and to serve others with diversity.” I was totally stoked about that. When do we get to experience a community of followers that accepts others despite the color of their skin, tax bracket, or personal affections? I think the time is now! I don’t think the church can wait any longer to experience this. I was impacted by a statement from a book a friend of mine read about four years ago (I wish I could have claimed it for myself…haha). If I remember the conversation correctly, in summary of the book, He said, “The church has to change or die.” There is such a sense of urgency in that statement and I think that it pinpoints the way many people feel about the way we are doing life within church communities.
My heart is aching to love people because they are people. The individual who is created by God is sacred simply because they are created in the image of God. We hold so much in common with others if we would just let ourselves see it. I am seeing some of these things come about in our student ministry and this really excites me. My prayer is that I would trust God with it. Ministry has been so hard in the past and part of me is waiting for someone to come along and destroy what God is doing, but may I rest in Christ and let Him lead his students through me while I get out of the way. He loves them much more than I do, whether I believe that or not.