You of Little Faith

During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw Him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."

"Lord, if it is you," Peter replied, "Tell me to come to you on the water."

"Come," He said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"

Immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. "You of little faith," He said, "Why did you doubt?"

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.

(Matthew 14:25-32)

One thing that I love about the Bible is that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, scriptures that you have read a thousand times can take on new meaning to speak directly into your life for the situation you are currently in. So it was with this passage.

In the story as told in Mark, it says that Jesus saw the disciples struggling with their boat because "the wind was against them." Their journey was not going well for them, but they were trying hard to do as Jesus commanded and "go on across the lake ahead of Him." Jesus walked out to them and gave them direction, but they were afraid.

A week ago today, Jesus walked out on the water in front of me. He had commanded me to walk down a certain path, assuring me He'd meet me on the other side, and I was struggling to obey. I knew the command, and I knew I'd get through it somehow, so I was certainly not expecting Jesus to show up and change my plans. When He did arrive, I was scared. My response to His direction was, "No! That can't be Jesus! If I do that, it will ruin everything!" I didn't recognize Jesus - I saw a ghost.

But Jesus answered and said, "Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid, Craig." I was still doubtful, but I wanted to do God's will, so I cried out, "If that is you, Lord, confirm it for me. Tell me to come to you directly." And much to my displeasure, Jesus said, "Come." He called me out. If I was going to be obedient, I had to get out of the boat, leave my comfort zone, step out where it seemed like I would immediately sink. It was a suicide mission, if God didn't save the day.

I got out of the boat. I acted in a very bold manner. I gave my first kiss. I walked toward Jesus and, amazingly, didn't sink. At least not right away. Pretty soon after (within 24 hours), the winds came against me, and I started looking at them rather than at Jesus. The winds came from an unexpected source, accusing me of not hearing from God, of being unable to hear from God and needing to "seriously revaluate my relationship with Him" because I was wrong. I faltered. I started doubting myself, my ability to hear God, and I sank quick. Jesus was still speaking to me while those words were being said, but the waves were too loud for me to hear.

I went home following that conversation, not knowing what to do or where I was at, and all I could say was, "Lord, save me! I know You have Your hand in my life, in both of our lives. I thank You for loving me. I need direction now; please, save me." Then I went to sleep.

The next day, God gave me the above scriptures, and I realized where I was. I really had followed Jesus and stepped out of the boat. I was on top of the water, not drowning in it. Jesus immediately reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling me back up the moment my faith began to die. The storm was (is) still raging all around me, with no sign of letting up, but I have peace in the storm, safe in His arms.

Now I have to walk back to the boat. That was the final step for Peter - even though he had faltered, and Jesus had saved him, he still had to get back to the boat for the storm to die down. He had to hold Jesus's hand and go a little bit further across the surface of the tossing waves. I have to do the same. Jesus's words to me where two-fold: "You of little faith. Why do you doubt Me, Craig? You knew it was going to get worse before it got better. I told you that, even if you didn't want to hear it. But you obeyed, and that is all I ask of you. Now come here, rest in My arms, give Me your burdened heart, and let Me take it from here. You keep believing, and this storm will pass. That means you have to back off - you have to respect her wishes. It is between her and I now. I changed your heart in this; do you doubt I can do it again?"

Peace that passes all understanding. Even though the storms of love and life rage all around me, I am safe in His hands. Now my prayers need to take a different direction - it isn't my heart that is about to be tossed to and fro. Thank you, Lord, for providing for me; now please turn Your attention - and my attention - outward. We'll walk this together, and end up with a beautiful day out of sea soon enough.

I don't think anybody really reads this blog, but if you do, I want to encourage you to spend time in prayer, letting God know precisely how you feel and what you want. As you unburden yourself, you'll find peace, and in that peace, you'll be quieted enough to hear God's still, small voice of direction. When you do, no matter how crazy the direction seems, follow it. It may not make the storm go away immediately, but Jesus will be there save you, even if you falter once you start. All He asks for is obedience, that first step. And once the two of you get back to the boat, your answer will come. But none of it happens if you don't step out of the boat and onto the crashing waves in the first place.

Crashing Those Pity Parties

In Luke 9:23 Jesus tells us, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Self-denial is necessary to take up the cross and follow Jesus. It needs to be done every day. To me the self-denial part involves a deconstruction of negative aspects of the self. Like self-love, self-hatred, and self-pity. All are forms of self-obsession, and the more self-obsession one has the less following of Jesus there will be. The following of Jesus is in inverse proportion to self-obsession.

Self-pity is one of the more punishing kinds of self-obsession. Self-pity cannot coexist with spiritual renewal and transformation. Unfortunately, I could write a book and call it How To Host Your Next Pity Party.

To be self-pitying is to live life as a victim. While it’s true that sometimes we are victims, I think there is a spirit of victimization (self-deprivation) that is to be distinguished from the real thing. It looks like this. More than once the words have come into my mind, "Poor me! They are not treating me right - and after all I've done for them!" Sometimes I even replace "they" and "them" with "God" and "Jesus" in my pity-parties, feeling short-changed by my Creator. Personal deprivation and even mistreatment lead to the emotion of anger.

In this regard Henri Nouwen asks, "What else is anger but the response to the sense of being deprived? Much of my own anger comes from the fact that my self feels deprived." When one chooses to express this anger by hosting a pity party the self-obsession has begun.

One then becomes like Tolstoy’s character Ivan Ilyich, of whom it was said that “no one pitied Ivan the way he wished to be pitied.” If you’re at all familiar with self-pity read this section from Tolstoy and relate:

"What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and the only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result… The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position… [W]hat most tormented Ivan Ilych was that no one pitied him as he wished to be pitied. At certain moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied. He longed to be petted and comforted.”

When you hold a “pity party” and invite yourself and others to it, the focus is on you. It’s all about how you have been hurt, how you have been mistreated, and how you have been wronged. The ruling emotion of pity is bitterness. But one can’t be at the same time bitter and fulfilling the Great Commandment to love God with all your heart. Self-pity seems to be the opposite of renewal and transformation of the heart. For an unfortunate example of the spirit of victimization consider this:

In 1978 Dan White, a former San Francisco city supervisor who had recently resigned his position, entered San Francisco City Hall through a basement window, went upstairs, and shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified in court that White had been depressed, which led to eating junk food: Twinkies and Coca-Cola. This further deepened White's depression, since he was an ex-athlete and knew that the food was not good for him. White’s legal defense was that this junk-food-induced depression prompted his murder spree. This celebrated diagnosis became known as the "Twinkie defense." We were supposed to have pity on him because the Twinkies made him do it!

Someone who holds “pity parties” refuses to take responsibility for their own behavior and blames others. Self-pity leads to a “victim mentality.” Therefore self-pity needs to be denied, because it keeps us from being fulfilled in Jesus. To experience renewal and transformation be free from giving the “Twinkie Defense.” Experience God as your Defender. Do this by daily being like a branch attached to Jesus the true Vine, gaining your sustenance from Him.

Soul-Searching

I am going soul-searching. I am deliberately taking time out of my life to just spend time with God. To just get to know Him. There are people in this world who I care deeply for, and this makes me want to just be with them. We don't have to talk or play games or anything for me to be content; I simply enjoy their presence. I love Jesus. I care for Him deeply. I want to just spend time with Him, not telling Him all of my concerns, not finding ways to do His work... just enjoying His presence. The rest of it - my concerns, my calling, His work - will be taken care of if I pursue this simple loving relationship first and foremost. My flesh struggles against this. It seems very foreign to me. I think C. S. Lewis summed up why I resist so strongly the idea of just spending time in solitude alone with God:

"The natural life knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that."

Solitude with God inevitably leads to the spiritual life getting hold of my natural, selfish life. That part of me is going to die. That's a scary thought, really - there are things that I WANT and that I do NOT WANT to give up. The truth is, my heart is restless. I don't like what God is telling me. I hate it. I want nothing to do with it. I don't want to hurt, or to long, or to be lonely. I want answers now. I want results now. But that's the natural, fighting tooth and nail. My spirit knows it is in my best interest to give way to God's transformation, whether I "like" it or not. And, deep down, in a still, small voice, I know that what I REALLY want is for all of this bad, nasty, heavy, oppressive emotion to go away, to be replaced by steadfast hope and love in my Savior. But I have to let parts of me die first. And that requires slow-cooking in God's presence. I need solitude with God.

As I walk this path, more instructive posts will follow most likely. I want to share what God reveals to me, in hopes my pain and time-spent will be of help to you and save you that pain and time. That being said, I cannot encourage you enough to start deliberately taking time out to be alone with God. Not a little time, either - hours. A full day. A weekend.

You will fall in love with Him, and your life will never be the same. You cannot avoid being changed after spending time in God's presence. That's what He does. Trust me.

The "Game with Minutes"

The Game with Minutes was designed by missionary Frank Laubach. It is mentioned in Greg Boyd's Present Perfect.

The game's challenge is this: try to bring Christ to mind at least one second of each and every minute within a designated hour. Laubach suggests choosing "an uncomplicated hour" to do this. Boyd writes: "The basic idea is that we need to become accustomed to remembering Christ when our mind has little to do before we can learn how to remember Christ with any consistency in situations that require more attention." (38)

Playing a game like this can be used by God to overcome the secular mentality deep within us. When we are brainwashed by the secular worldview "we habitually exclude [God] from our awareness. Because of this we go about our day-to-day lives as functional atheists... So thoroughly are we brainwashed by the secular mind-set that the very suggestion that we could routinely experience the world in a way that includes God strikes us as impossible." (29)

If we were like branches continually connected to Jesus the True Vine then Laubach's "game" would be silly. It would be like saying "Let's play a game where we breathe every few seconds." Or: "Let's play a game and pretend the Pope is Catholic." In other words we wouldn't need to play Laubach's game since we'd be fully God-connected 24/7. But is that possible? Boyd, following in the footsteps of many Jesus-followers before him, thinks it is, or is at least approachable. The reason is: constant God-awareness is the normal Christian life.

Rather than wait for special God-moments to come, God is present in every moment, in every "now." Because God is present now and in every moment, we can surrender ourselves in every moment to God. We don't have to wait for special worship services to do this. Indeed, to wait for the next worship service to come around shows that we're living more in the prevailing secular world than in the Kingdom of God.

Boyd writes: "As foreign as it is to contemporary Western Christianity, and as impossible as it may seem to many contemporary Christians, practicing the presence of God lies at the foundation of "mere Christianity."" (37) And: "Branches don't visit a vine once in a while on special occasions. Rather, branches are permanently attached to their source of life. So too, followers of Jesus are to take up permanent residence in Christ, remaining attached to him at all times as their source of their Life." (34)

This challenge can only be met one moment at a time:

Right now is the time to surrender.
Right now is the time to seek first the Kingdom of God.
Right now is the time to remain in Christ.
Right now is the time to live in the Spirit.
Right now is the time to pray.
Right now is the time to take every moment captive.

As Jesus taught, tomorrow will worry about itself. (Matthew 6:34; cf. Boyd, 37)

More on God and Time

Here is a bit of what I've been reading on time and eternity, so you all can know where I'm coming from. This is an excerpt by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. I'm actually pulling from a lot of sources, but Lewis is an old one that's been in the back of my mind throughout. I'm giving it in full, and I'll comment on it tomorrow - I don't want to throw too much at you at once, and its long enough by itself. (Also, feel free to take the advice offered in the first two sentences below - this may not be for everybody.)

From C. S. Lewis:

In this chapter I am going to talk about something which may be helpful to some readers, but which may seem to others merely an unnecessary complication. If you are one of the second sort of readers, then I advise you not to bother about this chapter at all but to turn on to the next.

In the last chapter I had to touch on the subject of prayer, and while that is still fresh in your mind and my own, I should like to deal with a difficulty that some people find about the whole idea of prayer. A man put it to me by saying "I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment." And I have found that quite a lot of people feel this.

Now, the first thing to notice is that the whole sting of it comes in the words at the same moment. Most of us can imagine God attending to any number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of God having to fit too many things into one moment of time.

Well that is of course what happens to us. Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like. And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this Time series--this arrangement of past, present and future--is not simply the way life comes to us but the way all things really exist. We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the Philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same.

Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty--and every other moment from the beginning of the world--is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.

That is difficult, I know. Let me try to give something, not the same, but a bit like it. Suppose I am writing a novel. I write "Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door! " For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all.

This is not a perfect illustration, of course. But it may give just a glimpse of what I believe to be the truth. God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.

The way in which my illustration breaks down is this. In it the author gets out of one Time-series (that of the novel) only by going into another Time-series (the real one). But God, I believe, does not live in a Time-series at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is, so to speak, still 1920 and already 1960. For His life is Himself.

If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.

The idea is worth trying to grasp because it removes some apparent difficulties in Christianity. Before I became a Christian one of my objections was as follows. The Christians said that the eternal God who is everywhere and keeps the whole universe going, once became a human being. Well then, said 1, how did the whole universe keep going while He was a baby, or while He was asleep? How could He at the same time be God who knows everything and also a man asking his disciples "who touched me?" You will notice that the sting lay in the time words: "While He was a baby" --"How could He at the same time?" In other words I was assuming that Christ's life as God was in time, and that His life as the man Jesus in Palestine was a shorter period taken out of that time--just as my service in the army was a shorter period taken out of my total life. And that is how most of us perhaps tend to think about it. We picture God living through a period when His human life was still in the future: then coming to a period when it was present: then going on to a period when He could look back on it as something in the past. But probably these ideas correspond to nothing in the actual facts. You cannot fit Christ's earthly life in Palestine into any time-relations with His life as God beyond all space and time. It is really, I suggest, a timeless truth about God that human nature, and the human experience of weakness and sleep and ignorance, are somehow included in His whole divine life. This human life in God is from our point of view a particular period in the history of our world (from the year A.D. one till the Crucifixion). We therefore imagine it is also a period in the history of God's own existence. But God has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one. For, of course, to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak about it. God forbid we should think God was like that. Even we may hope not to be always rationed in that way.

Another difficulty we get if we believe God to be in time is this. Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them: because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way--because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action tin you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.

This idea has helped me a good deal. If it does not help you, leave it alone. It is a "Christian idea" in the sense that great and wise Christians have held it and there is nothing in it contrary to Christianity. But it is not in the Bible or any of the creeds. You can be a perfectly good Christian without accepting it, or indeed without thinking of the matter at all.

(C.S. Lewis, Time And Beyond Time, from Mere Christianity)

The Sacrament of the Present Moment

We have a lot of pain in this life. There is physical pain, like when you throw a bowling ball wrong and have it twist off a piece of your fingernail; and emotional pain, like when you feel alone or fearful; and mental pain, like when you fear the physical or emotional pain that is to come; and sometimes all of them at once, like when you have to go to the dentist.

We have a lot of reasons to worry and to think about our future, where our lives will lead us. This comes naturally to us. Scientists are now telling us that our brains are primarily designed to predict the future.

Ps. 118:24 reads - "This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." Increasingly, I find this scripture to be important. It's a motif found throughout the Bible. Like...

* Today is the day of salvation...
* Now is the time to worship...
* This is the day the Lord has made...

Arguably, this moment... right now... is the moment of all moments. It is not to be avoided (as if we could) or gotten-past because we are on to better things. I like how Greg Boyd puts this:

"God is the God of the living, not the God of the already-past or the not-yet-present. He's the great "I AM," not the great "I was" or the great "I will be." He's been present for every moment in the past, for which we can be thankful, and he'll be present at every moment in the future, which gives us great hope. But he's only alive and active now, in the present - which is the only thing that's real." (Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now, 15)

Now, for example, God loves you. This core Jesus-truth is meant to be not a mere theoretical truth but an experiential reality. This is cool because it is experience, not theory, that breeds conviction. So right now, "remind yourself that you are submerged in God's love." (Ib., 19) Dwell with God who makes his dwelling place in you 24/7. God is in the house of "you" right now. Why not say "Hi?"

Those who practice attending to God in every now-moment are the ones who will do great things for God in the future. Non-attendance now means failure tomorrow. And, God could grant one of those watershed-life-changing now-moments... now. Read history to verify the truth of this last statement. Therefore attend. Raise your hand and say "Present, Lord."

Boyd says that "now is where God lives." (Ib., 21) Missionary Frank Laubach encourages us to "Make a new beginning." Boyd writes: "Wake up to God's presence in this moment now." 17th-century monk Jean-Pierre de Caussade called this "the sacrament of the present moment." We attend to God now so we can know God now, and so we can be different in the next moment.

Speaking for myself personally, I am a wuss when it comes to physical pain, and I'm a sucker for emotional pain, and I put a lot of mental pain on myself. The devil likes to try to steal my joy whenever I let him. Yesterday, I was driving home with a sore thumb after a terrific weekend. I was joyful, and listening to worship music. Yet my praises were not enough to keep the devil away, to prevent him from reminding me of what I do not have, of placing a pang of emotional hurt into my heart. He knows that that will trigger my mind into overdrive, and I'll start that slow spiral into self-induced pity and panic by overthinking a situation. It was a perfectly designed trap for me on all three levels of pain. And all three were lies.

That's right, devil, it didn't work that time, did it? I hope my spoken Word of God and subsequent loud praises sent you running in pain yourself. "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice!" (Phil. 4:4). God is with me now. He doesn't leave me alone to go prepare my future - He stays beside me to work on my present.

So the next time you are sitting in the dentist's chair (literally or metaphorically) and the oral surgeon is about to drill and tells you, "You'll now feel some vibration," do not decide to just to hang on and long for this particular now-experience to be over. I don't believe that God says, in that moment, "Excuse me, I'll be back when the tooth is out." Instead, my ever-present God suggests that it would be good to take this time to pray for some other people that He has on His mind, and that now would be a good time since you have nothing else to do. So, fight the enemy by praying for some specific friends that you care for very much.

If you are like me, you need God now and not in some distant future. And while it is very good to recount our past experiences with God, it is better to experience God now. God is not like some person we used to live with but is no longer with us. Nor is God living in some far-off land but making plans to visit us in a few years. God calls himself "Emmanuel." God with us. God with you. In the now.

Thy Will

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear -
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Does the fact that I cannot forget indicate that God does not want me to, or is it my own unwillingness to forget that has kept God from answering my prayer to that end?

Or does He want me to remember - to "suffer me to hunger" so that I might the more fully learn to find all my satisfaction in Him?

Can it be that by a show of what Paul called "will worship" I should crush the bud of a flower of God's creation?

I know no prayer for this other than: Thy will be done.