Sacrifice

"We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us."
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Cold, hard stone--
Coagulating blood--
The dwelling place of death.
I grip the ledge
And hoist myself
Up to the top.
Crawling like an animal,
I lay myself before You:
On this altar,
Let me die.

Sophisticates

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.
And the Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail.
And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in."
Isaiah 58:6-12

This morning, I drove to Panera Bread to meet an incredible woman of God for some coffee (or, to be true, tea) and conversation. I followed a steady line of cars into a shopping complex and watched people routinely pull into the parking lots of Panera and Starbucks, many of them inevitably here to order "their drinks" as they do every day before returning to their shiny cars and driving off to their careers.

I have a hard time with suburbia. There is such an air of presumed sophistication present here. And I am not referring to Briargate specifically. I am speaking more generally of an attitude that prevails in our society. Look at our nice vehicles: they are shiny and modern, and the payment we are obligated to make on it every month is well worth the status we associate with it. Look at our $4 coffees in recycled cardboard cups; our perfectly placed, chemically coloured hair; our laptops and SmartPhones. How sophisticated we are!

I am not condemning cars, coffee, or laptops (I am typing this on my year-old MacBook Pro). But I do feel that we tend to glorify and idolize our advancement, as if technology and the marketplace are the standards by which we measure the sophistication we value so highly. SUV+latte+iPhone=sophistication?

Hardly. What if we shifted our thinking to believe that the truly sophisticated thing is compassion? That our advancement is in the growth of our love? That the number of people we have genuinely helped is more important than the figure in our bank account?

Ultimately, who cares about the rest of the mess? Is eternity concerned with your social status or fashion or ability to acquire? There is nothing spectacular about buying and owning and storing. What is unique and beautiful is to give and aid and sacrifice. Eternity is looking for what Brennan Manning in the book The Furious Longing of God called "a community of prophets and professional lovers."

Please, be sophisticated. Be so advanced in love that it is a remarkable gift to a dying world. Cultivate such a rich compassion that souls are redeemed by the display of God's kindness you live before the hopeless. Develop a disregard for the trivialities and trappings.

Stuff

I just watched "The Story of Stuff."

I think I need to rethink the way I consume.

I've grown up around arguments against any redefinition of consumption my whole life. Such changes have always been associated with a radical leftist view that, in the context of my developmental years, was necessarily anti-God. If you're challenging the economic system and pushing for "zero carbon footprint" and "sustainability," you are a Godless liberal. So, essentially, the thinking went.

I am beginning to think differently.

Slowly, it is becoming clear how deeply rooted our western preoccupation with materials is even in the people of the Church. It really is an addiction, and it is disgusting. It's poison.

For example, I was having a discussion recently with some friends about people who move to America and don't learn our language. These friends are amazing and have beautiful hearts for God. But as we discussed whether or not immigrants should be required to learn English upon their entry to America, the heart of the matter was exposed: unrecognized materialism.

The question I posed was this: "If we view ourselves primarily not as Americans trying to function in an American, English-speaking society, but as citizens of heaven with a message of hope for people of every tribe, nation, and tongue, should we not attempt to learn their language first?"

(We discussed this at length and unpacked arguments for both sides. If you wish to engage this topic with me, I would love to talk about it.)

The discussion carried on for a substantial amount of time, and when we reached the end, the final example given by my dear friend was this: "I agree we should be reaching out to these people with the gospel. But when I am working at a grocery store, and someone comes in speaking Spanish, and I can't understand them, it keeps me from doing my job."

That was when I realized, Oh, my goodness. That's it. The problem is consumerism. We want people to know our language so we can keep the flow of the economy.

And this isn't just my friend, one person, who has some shocking mindset. That is the mindset I have heard all my life. It's not that she is a bad person possessing an unusual degree of selfishness. This is the way most of us are.

How did this get into our hearts? my heart?

Now I am seeing this consumer mentality everywhere. And I am seeing that is not an issue of right or left. In fact, I am seeing that left and right may just be two different words for "wrong."

I am reading Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy, in which the author unpacks a substantial explanation of the "gospels" of both the right and left as unsound gospels focused on sin-management. Of the right, he says, "Being let off the divine hook replaces possession of a divine life 'from above.'" Alternatively: "This is the gospel of the current Christian left: Love comes out on top."
(I don't have time to explain these in full, but I highly suggest you read the book if you are interested in understanding both fatal flaws.)

What I have begun to see in the general mindset of the people of God I have known is a certain measure of identity which is found in possessions.

"The system of production is flawed," one says. "People are losing resources and living in poverty and we are polluting our surroundings and ourselves."

"That's all social gospel" is the response. And so our right to continue buying more than we need and wasting perfectly functional, if aesthetically obsolete, resources is protected because we are unaffected by any state of well-being outside of our own.

But my primary concern here is not even whatever level of natural resources we may or may not have consumed, or the effect that is having on local economies where our production occurs, or how full national landfills are or are not (though I think that each of these issues possesses a level of importance). My first concern is that it appears we have God further from the throne of our hearts than we might admit or even perceive. The issue is that where our treasure is our heart is as well.

In other words, why don't we care?

Do we dismiss movements for green living, sustainability, and fair trade because we have a just argument against the way these causes are conducted? Or is it because we draw a certain amount of our identity from how much, how big, how often?

If we were free from materialism, as we so often pray and profess to be, would it not be of great importance to us that workers receive fair pay and that the production of American goods across the globe does not negatively impact the people and environments involved in that production? And from what I can see, these things largely do not concern us as we sit in our right-leaning, evangelistic perch.

I am not attacking the American church or the people that compose her. How could I claim to love the Man and not also love His Bride?

What I am asking, mostly of myself, is this:
Why is it so important to me to purchase new clothing?
Why don't I cultivate more of my own food? Because I am unable? If so, why am I not careful to ensure the food I buy is produced in a manner that is not harmful to those actually doing the work?
Why do I replace things that I already have?

Or, to put it succinctly, do I live like He is my portion?

Questions that need to be answered.

One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD
And to meditate in His temple.
Ps. 27:4

Or have I?

David

If we go to coffee anytime soon, be prepared for a lot of David. "David said..." "I love that David recognized this..." "Well, it's the same as what David saw..."

A few weeks ago, I looked at the Psalms and was struck by the preoccupation this man had with God. Shepherd or king, warrior or poet--in every stage of life, he maintained an utter fascination with the Almighty. He wrote things such as: "O sons of men...how long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception?" [Ps. 4:2] Such unprecedented questions and statements of devotion. I began to ask God, What was it about You that so captivated this man?

When David was out in the fields tending sheep, what revelation did he receive that birthed such obsession? What did he see? What did he hear? With what was he so engrossed?

To uncover the answer to these questions, I've begun a bit of a detective hunt through the Psalms. I printed out all David's Songs (as this hunt has been dubbed in my mind), hole-punched them, and put them into a big white binder. High liter in one hand, pen in the other, I'm reading through them all to find the clues to David's revelation.

I am only roughly twenty psalms into the study, and I am already ruined by what I am discovering. Among other things, I am learning to see David as a man. I see him as a teenager out in a field, thinking about the stories of his forefathers. Reliving the Genesis 15 promise to Abraham that God would be his shield and great reward. Pondering the Exodus 33 prayer of Moses: "Show me your glory!" And I see his heart coming alive to the invitation of God. Thinking, "If there have been those that have encountered God, then it may be that men may still know God in this way. If this is true, I will be among those who know Him."

David dared to be swept up in the revelation of a beckoning God. All his words about satisfaction and righteousness were born of a heart so intent on knowing the Almighty face-to-face that no cost was considered a sacrifice. God was literally David's reward.

There is so much to say about all of this, but I have already written more than I anticipated. More to come on David, holiness, obsession...

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Matthew 13:44

Daylight

I love my God. Honestly, He does the most lovely things. Such as daylight revelations.

Technically, it was not a daylight revelation at eight in the morning, but regardless, God dropped a revelation as clear as crystal into my mind the moment I woke up this morning.

I've been wrestling with this whole missions concept for months, and it's all been coming to a head the last few weeks. I'd never considered overseas missions at all until this past spring, when God asked me to respond to an altar call for people who were to work overseas. It was news to me.

Even since then--and even since falling in love with Berlin in May--I've known that I'm not necessarily called to vocational missions work. Though I am serious about the idea of going to Europe at some point, I do not foresee traditional missions life in my future. If I were to go to Europe, it would almost certainly be to work in discipleship or leadership development at a local church. I would just see it as moving to another place to serve at a church. I can move to Oregon to work at a church. I can move to Sweden to work at a church. There are certainly linguistic and cultural differences, but at the foundations, the options seem parallel.

Add to this the fact that there are still certain American cities and regions weighing on my heart, and you come up with a lot of questions. In the meantime, I do not wish to abandon the thought of ministering overseas, so I continue to respond to altar calls. A fair amount of people come to the logical conclusion that I want to be a vocational missionary. I haven't felt compelled to correct them all--after all, in the end, it is my calling and not theirs.

This brings us to my awakening this morning. I've been wondering to God, "How does this work? I want to work with discipleship in ______. I want to work with youth in _______. And for this season, I want to stay where I am and minister where I am already serving. These are three completely separate regions, not to mention the less specific burdens I'm carrying. How do I know where I'm called?"

As clear as any revelation I have ever before received, He told me this morning, "'Where?' is the wrong question. I never called you to a place. I never called you to a city or a country. I called you to a generation."

Oh yes. I remember.

That makes perfect sense.

And it's beautiful. Thank You.

They are mobile like the wind, They belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
['The Vision,' Pete Greig]

Vision

"Where there is no vision, the people perish..."
Prov. 29:18

I hopped onto the BBC website this morning to see what the world is up to and came across this article.

Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions, was forced to publish the guidance after a long-running legal fight by Debbie Purdy, a multiple sclerosis sufferer from Bradford.

In July, Law Lords ruled she had the right to know under what circumstances her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her travel abroad to die.

I can't imagine the agony of Heaven at a woman so eager to end her life.

It is easy to delve into the politics of assisted suicide, but the fact is that the argument between sanctity of life and one's purported right to his own life is a messy one and one that is often too personal to be had objectively. I am not going to presume to defend one view or another. What I am wondering is, How heartbreaking must our hopelessness be to the Father?

How little revelation people must possess of God's unfailing, ravishing love to have so little hope for life. How muffled the message of grace and the call to discipleship must be that the ears of those who need to hear it most are deaf to it. How blind to the light of Christ the world is; without vision, the people are perishing. Death has so pervaded their souls that it is coming out from their inner man to destroy their very selves.

And I wonder if perhaps we as the Church are inclined to take the wrong action in response to such a culture of death. While we lobby in hearings and petition against the passing of laws--unquestionably with good intentions--are we failing to communicate the hope that might compel the individual to choose life for himself? It is undoubtedly valuable for us to fight for the principles we believe in, but are we so busy screeching over the principle that we neglect the person? Is our vocal opposition a convenient alternative to personal action?

I do not think for a second that any government ruling or law that allows for the destruction of precious life pleases God. But then again, I don't see Jesus overthrowing Rome to pass a law against adultery. I see Him stepping between the unfaithful woman and the self-righteous mob, empowering the one who is so lost with the grace and purpose to "go and sin no more."

Perhaps our responsibility is first to bring vision. Perhaps we are to walk alongside Jesus to the castaways and the uncertain and echo His call to "follow Me." Perhaps our primary concern is to be taking to the streets, walking into hospital rooms, and sitting down in shelters to speak weak words to frail people, desperate to see their hearts come alive. Perhaps I should be more concerned with carrying Christ than condemning sinners. No one without hope needs to be reminded of their hopelessness. They need to be given something for which they can hope.

But these are all thoughts and questions I ask of my own life. Where do I speak much and do little? Where do I hide (often self-righteously) behind principle and avoid the act of loving my neighbor? Where is the one whose behavior I easily condemn but whose heart I am reluctant to heal? God forgive me.

Wrestling

Now he arose that same night and took his two wives and his two maids and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream. And he sent across whatever he had. Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."

He said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed."

Then Jacob asked him and said, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And he blessed him there.

So Jacob named the place ^d]">Peniel, for he said, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved."

Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh.

Gen. 32:22-31

In the womb he grasped his brother's heel;
as a man he struggled with God.
He struggled with the angel and overcame him;
he wept and begged for his favor.
He found him at Bethel
and talked with him there-
the LORD God Almighty,
the LORD is his name of renown!

Hosea 12:3-5

I try to picture Jacob on this night. Restless, anxious over the necessary encounter with his estranged brother the next day, he rises in the middle of the night to send his family across the river. He sends all he has with them. He lingers, alone. Helpless, hopeless. Praying to God for favour to be granted.

Then, as if the inescapable adversary of the next day was not enough, the divine itself makes an appearance on the scene. There was no blessing for Jacob as there was for his ancestor Abraham. There was no burning revelation as there would one day be for Moses. Jacob is crying out for peace, and God comes down to struggle against him.

He is a desperate man. He fights, he strives, he clings. Even when crippled by Heaven, he refuses to relinquish his hold apart from the blessing of God.

And he steps into the dawn of the new day broken, limping, blessed--having seen the face of God.

It's nighttime. Everything is across the river, and I am standing before an open sky, desperate, waiting. God has come. We are struggling against one another.

It's incredible how clearly I can see the love in His eyes as I strive. I am at once wrestling against Him and with Him. I see that as He struggles against me, He is not fighting me but rather everything that is not me inside of me. He fights the supplanter of my birth to reveal the favoured friend of my maturity.

It seems as if this would be a terrible condition in which to find oneself. But it's not. Better to be wrestling and beholding Him than to be sleeping by the river, motionless and empty.

Let's go at it.