Walking To Be Still

“Be still and know that I am God.”  Psalm 46:10

“Be still.”  Being still is not one of my gifts.  Multi-tasking, though, now that is a gift for sure.  If I don’t have more than one activity going on at once, I get antsy.  So, best to have three or four things going, at least.  This leads to a kind of frenetic pace of life and prevents presence and patience.  I have a sense you know what I mean.

“[K]now that I am God.”  I know that He is God, almighty, all powerful.  I talked to Him this morning.  I feel His presence right now.  I meet Him in others, in serving, in praying, in reading, in . . . doing.

“Be still and know that I am God.”  Combining these two has the tendency to stump me a little.  What does this mean exactly?  

Sometimes I think God just wants to show me stuff about who He is and how I can know Him better and I don’t slow down enough to let Him.   Seems like everything I do is so that I can do something else or so that something else will happen.  There is always a goal or a destination to the task at hand.  Rarely do I do anything that is to appreciate the thing itself.  All this so-that living leaves little room for taking in what God provides to re-fill me.  When my hands are busy, my feet are moving, my brain is solving, and I become unknowingly convinced that I control outcomes, it is hard to really know that He is God, and neither I, nor anything or anyone else, is.   

God is working very deeply in my life right now, in different areas, in different ways.  I feel like an old house being torn down in order for a new one to be put in its place – all that is in me is being torn down and out and off, right down through the foundation.  Sometimes it resembles a gentle reconstruction, a piece carefully taken out and replaced here and there, and other times I feel like I’m surrounded by bulldozers, cranes, and wrecking balls.  This process requires extreme discipline, suffering, prayer, grace, trust, faith, and deep breaths.  And it’s not like I exercise each of these successfully all of the time, or even most of the time.  I’m beginning to understand that this a life-long deal, which can start to feel slightly overwhelming.  I am tending to want to hold on to all the stuff in the old house – the judgments, resentments, anger, jealousies, little hurts, big hurts, sinful habits – just because I know them so well, you know?  We have been friends for a long time.  Let me put it this way: I would not want God’s job rebuilding me.  I’d throw me into the impossible pile.       

I've started to sense that if I would just slow down and live in God’s presence instead of bracing against the rebuilding I might start to enjoy the process and recognize it as the miracle that it is.  If I could understand this not as something I am doing or have to accomplish, but as something to which I am submitting so that someone much bigger, stronger, and more loving than me can do.  God would replace the old stuff with new stuff.  And the new stuff is Him, His love, His grace, His mercy, His glory.  The judgments, resentments, anger, jealousies, hurts, and sinful habits can be put into industrial-size garbage bags and set out on the curb for disposal.  Even just a couple steps into the process, I have caught glimpses of extreme grace, freedom, peace and contentment.

So, as a way to submit to rebuilding, I’ve started walking around outside.  This may not seem like a huge step, but it is; for me, it’s huge.  I never really understood just walking around.  What is the purpose, the goal, the point, the destination?  I am walking so that . . . what?  But already, it is resulting in a centeredness, connectedness, and certainty in God’s promises I have never experienced.  The other day, God showed me something amazing.  I went for a walk and though my feet were moving, I was walking just to walk, and I started to notice all the things that grow and live and move and hang and shine and smell without me.  I mean everything.  I began to feel in a concrete way my smallness in comparison to God’s bigness.  I was walking, but there was a sudden stillness in my mind and heart that opened me and allowed God to show me how much I need Him to live. 

“Be still” is “rapha” in Hebrew, which means “let go” or “be weak.”  Let go and know that I am God.  Be weak and know that I am God.  It is God saying go ahead and be weak; I am strong.  In your weakness, I am strength.  Let go of all the old stuff you’re clinging to because it will not bring you life.  But I will, I am God.

Whatever The Cost

At first, I didn’t want to write this.  I didn’t want this part of the story to be real.  But the rest of this story matters.  

Over the last few days, I began feeling like God was whispering to me to follow-up with the woman I led to Christ last week.  (See The Party In Heaven On April 12, 2011)  I had been praying that He would work in her life, become real to her, transform her.  Truth be told, though, I was a little nervous about calling her.  Our conversation had been so volatile and I wanted to believe that once she accepted Christ and we prayed together (despite the very words I had myself said to her about the fact that all of her external problems would not go away) all of her external problems would go away and all would be well.  One person to whom I related the story said to me: you never really know how things will turn out after you lead someone to Christ.  It was in that moment that a bunch of things – fears really – collided in my head and heart.  This woman is alone in the world.  She has no family, no friends.  She is homeless and believes deeply that she has been wronged.  She is physically sick.  She is not employed.  And perhaps worst of all, she does not feel loved.  Becoming involved in her life would be . . . well, time consuming, hard.  A voice in my head said to be careful, and asked if I really wanted to get involved with this woman with so many different problems.          

I didn’t answer that voice and just took one small step: I called her and asked how she was doing.  She said: not well.  I asked how she was feeling about what we had talked about on Tuesday.  She said:  “Everything you said to me was a lie.  That you felt love for me.  All a lie.”  My head started to spin, my heart sank.  I screamed out in my head to God: “What??  Why, God?  What can I do?  Please, Lord, please intervene!  Show yourself to her!  Please!”

I collected myself and calmly asked her why she thought that.  She said, “Well, I thought if you did love me like you said, you would have helped me.  But, just like everyone else in my life, everyone else I’ve ever talked to, it was just a lie.”

I opened my mouth to say something and she interrupted, “That’s what I thought.  Until just now.  Now you have called me just to see how I am doing.  I may have to re-think things.  Maybe you weren’t lying.”  And there it was.

It would have been so much easier not to make that call, to simply believe that the story ended when we hugged and cried and she walked out the door.  I could invent all kinds of outcomes that would be great to tell.  To lead this woman to Christ and then walk away from her, though, would not have been following Christ.  I would have been saying one thing and doing quite another (which, believe me, I do more than I would prefer to admit).  Following Christ is costly, it’s inconvenient to my own desires, it takes from my claims to my time, it is scary and makes me step into things that are messy and broken.  But it is everything. 

As Bonhoeffer said, there is cheap grace and costly grace:

“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate . . . Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.  Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”  (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship at 44-45)

I’m in something now that is messy.  I don’t know how long I’ll be in it.  I don’t know what it will look like.  I don’t know what will happen.  But it is beautiful, it feels like life, and it is everything.  Following Christ is loving one another as Christ loves us.  “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  (John 15:12)  You know the rest of the story, what Christ did, how He loved.

Loving someone as Christ loves us is not walking away from them, it is walking to them, whatever the cost.  

The Party In Heaven On April 12, 2011

I have not been a part of anything like this before.  And I tell the story only because God gave it to me to tell.  The risk in telling it is that one could read it and believe it is something I did, but I can assure you that this is God's story, not mine. If you, or someone you know, have wondered if God still works, still intervenes in the lives of people living today, and still searches desperately for those far from him, or, if you wonder if God could use you to draw others to him, this is a story meant for you.

I got word Tuesday that a woman was angry because of the service she received in a ministry in which I serve and she wanted to talk to someone. So, I met with her in a private room. She walked in, anger seared across her face and even in the posture of her body. I introduced myself and said I'd heard she had had a bad experience and if she would share it with me, I would love to see if I could help. I asked her to tell me the issue in a nutshell. She began, and to say it was complicated is an extreme understatement. As I listened, I became overcome with a deep and truly inexplicable love for her. But she was far from me and had a very hard shell.

After nearly an hour, she said she had no options; she didn't know how to solve the problem she was facing. We talked this through and she began crying, overwhelmed by the bigness of the problem. At this point, the Holy Spirit took over in a way only one who has experienced it could understand.  What I mean is that I no longer felt in control of the things I was saying and everything going on around me and inside my head was turned to this woman.  There were no distractions, no desires to be elsewhere, there was total singlemindedness.  I asked if she had a relationship with Christ. She immediately burst with tears and began to shake, her head down, eyes closed. She lifted her face to me and slowly opened her eyes, shook her head, and with a sense of embarrassment, said "I'm Jewish."  Without hesitation, I practically shouted: "I love that! I think that might be one of the things Jesus loves most about you. What a rich history you share with him."  She looked at me with shock.  And, I must say, I shared the feeling. 

From there she told me every reason under the sun as to why she could not believe: her family, fear, loss of control, apathy. I confronted her on each point, asking what she feared, what control she had, what her apathy did to her heart.  At one point I asked her if she felt loved. She said no. Not by anyone. I asked if she felt loved by me. She said: "No, to me, you might as well be that chair. I feel nothing from you or for you." I said: "Really? I feel such love for you. And there is something about your tears that tells me that even though we've just met, you feel love stirring in your heart. Maybe for the first time in years. Feel it. It's real and it's safe."

She then told me that she thinks God was with her once -- when things were good. She thanked him then, but now he had abandoned her. We talked more about that and then I asked if she had invited Christ into her pain and abandonment, to walk with her and comfort her.  (At this point, I knew where we were headed and I asked God to give me the words and I said to myself: I will stay here forever if that is what it takes). She said she hadn't.  I told her that a relationship with Christ did not mean that all her problems would disappear and that her external circumstances would suddenly different.  I told her a relationship with Christ meant that a peace would come into her heart, a love she could not understand would envelope her, a transformation of her entire being and identity would occur.  The Holy Spirit would strengthen her and give her courage and confidence and hope.  These are things I have come to know in my own life. 

I asked if I could help her invite Christ into her heart. After an interminable pause, in which she undoubtedly struggled with all that held her back, she said yes. I scooted my chair close to her and held out my hands. She said: my hands are covered in tears. I said: it's ok, mine are sweating. We laughed and locked eyes, locked souls. I had no idea what to say, having never experienced this before, so I opened a conversation with God and thanked him for Christ and the fact that we have a bridge, a way back into relationship with God because of Christ. I then asked her if she wanted to invite Christ into her heart to reign and guide her life. She said quietly: I do. We went from there.

Then came a moment in which there was nothing left to say, but the presence of God was more palpable than I have ever felt. I told her God was present with us, and said to her she could say anything to God or me if she wanted, that she was totally safe. After a few moments, and as we continued to hold hands, she whispered through tears: thank you.

I gave her some things to read in the Bible and then read Psalm 139 aloud to her based on a clear prompting from God to do so.  This Psalm describes God's love for her.  We hugged, and she left.  I have never loved someone so quickly, so deeply, so actively.  It is only because God has loved me first and loves her that I am even capable. 

This story would be quite enough to last a lifetime.  But, when I got home, my Bible was still open to what I had read that morning before going to the legal aid ministry: Luke 15:1-32.  You can read it for yourself, it is the three parables Jesus tells of the desperate searching a shepherd does for one lost sheep, a woman does for one lost coin, and a father does for a lost son, and the party that results when the lost is found.  In the Bible I had read that morning, these words were typed in bold: "In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven't strayed away!" (You can look in the Tyndale "The One Year Bible" and see this on April 12th.)

There was a party in heaven on April 12, 2011 for a lonely, brokenhearted woman who repented and turned to God, a God who had been searching and longing for her return since the day she was made.