I Dare You to Trust

I have been a fan of Rich Mullins' music for about as long as I can remember listening to music.  His album A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band forever changed my idea of what music and lyric writing meant.  I still remember the day, and where I was on my college campus, when I heard that Rich had passed away in a tragic car accident.  What Rich inspired me to do was to try and understand God and His love for me.  Since Rich's passing, I have watched just about every documentary and tribute that was produced about him and his life.  Most recently, there was a film called Ragamuffin that was made about his life.  It was a film that David Leo Schultz (who I hope I get to meet and have a conversation with someday) directed that beautifully depicts the struggles Rich faced throughout his life.  The things that I admired most about Rich were his humanity, his unashamed realness, and his passion for knowing God.  He didn't pretend to be something he wasn't, and he wasn't afraid to be broken in front of others.  

I think we all can learn a lesson here.  In order to be honest before others, you have to be honest with yourself.  In order to be honest with yourself, you have to be honest before God.  In order to be honest before God, you must be broken.  Brokenness is an essential part of honesty, in my opinion.  Today, I think our churches are overrun with people who have selective brokenness or selective surrender.  That is not what God requires.  What does God require?  The death of self.  Every day, another piece of me has to die.  Every day, another piece of my pride, my judgmental spirit, my anger, and anything else that does not reflect my Savior has to be killed.  There will never come a day that God won't require that of me.  The question is...do I have the guts to surrender?

For years, I had this very poor, distorted view of God.  I thought He was a God of rules, regulations, criticisms, critiques, and judgment.  When I view God that way, I take away almost everything that Jesus did on the cross.  What is at the core of who God is?   Love and compassion.  While watching Ragamuffin, I heard this quote by Brennan Manning (another man whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration for):

(It's rather long, but very worth it!)

On judgment day, I believe God will ask one question, and only one question…did you believe that I loved you, that I desired you, that I waited for you day after day, that I longed to hear the sound of your voice?  The real believers will respond and say, I believed in your love, and I tried to shape my life as a response to it.  But many of us who are so faithful to our ministry to our practice, to our church-going are going to answer, "Well frankly, no sir, I never really believed it.  There is the real difference between the real believers and the nominal Christians who abound in our churches across the land.  No one can measure like a believer the depth and the intensity of God's love, but then again no one can measure like a believer the effectiveness of our gloom, our pessimism, our low self-esteem, our self-hatred, and despair that block God's way to us.  Do you see now why it's so important to lay hold to this basic truth of our faith, because you are only going to be as big as your own concept of God.  We make God in our own image, and He winds up as being as fussy,  and rude, and narrow-minded, and judgmental, and legalistic, and unloving, and unforgiving as we are.  I've been in churches from Bangor, Maine, Miami, Seattle, San Diego, and St. Louis, and, honest the God, of so many Christians I meet is too small for me.  Because He is not the God of the Word, He is not the God who is revealed in and by Jesus Christ who, at this moment, comes to your seat and says, "I have a word for you.  I know your whole life story.  I know every skeleton in your closet.  I know every moment of sin and shame, dishonesty and degraded love that darkened your past.  Right now, I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship, and my word to you is this…I dare you to trust that I love you, just as you are, not as you should be, because none of us are as we should be."  

When I heard that, God wrecked me.  For so many years, I was the person who had to say, "well frankly, no sir, I never really believed it."  Now, I am beginning to dare to believe that God loves me just as I am.  God's love for me is not performance based.  It is based solely on the fact that HE IS LOVE!  God loves you just the way you are, too!  It's not because you go to church every week, or go to a bible study, or tithe, or sing, or play in the praise band, or serve in some other capacity.  All of those things are great, but His love for you is based on the fact that God IS love...and He is crazy about you.  Does God know that I am going to fail Him again and again?  Absolutely.  Doesn't that change His love for me?  Absolutely not!  What would happen if we all grasped this idea?  Man, you want to talk about revival.  If we can view ourselves in the light of God's love, imagine how we would view others!  Everything would change.  How we led our families, our jobs, our communities, our churches, our nation....  Everything.  Would.  Change.  What about you?  Do you dare trust that God loves you that way?  I dare you to trust that God loves you, just as you are, not as you should be, because none of us are as we should be.

Be God's

Foolishness for Christ

I surrender all
I surrender all
All to Thee, my Blessed Savior
I surrender all
("I Surrender All" written by Judson Van DeVenter and Winfield Weeden)

Or maybe this one,

Strip away all that remain for the glory of Your Name
'Til there's nothing left of me
Burn the kingdoms I have made that You would shine and I would fade
'Til there's nothing left of me, 'til there's nothing left of me
("Nothing Left of Me" written by Jeffrey Scott and Joel Engle)

Or maybe one more,

So I'll stand with arms high and heart abandoned
In awe of the One who gave it all
I'll stand my soul Lord to You surrendered
All I am is Yours
("The Stand" by Joel Houston)

As a worship leader and musician, I can't tell you how many times I have sung and played these songs.  In the moment, when I led these songs, I thought I meant every word coming out of my mouth.  However, if I'm honest with you, I meant them from my head and not my heart.  As I would sing these words, inside I was trying to convince myself that I meant them.  The reality was, I was singing "I surrender all...up until this line in the sand that I have drawn.  Then, I surrender some."  Or, "Strip away the easy stuff that remains, 'til there's still something left of me."  Or, "I'll stand, my head (not my heart) Lord to You surrendered, some of what I have is Yours."

Peter is a prime example of this kind of struggle.  In Peter's own head, he was invincible.  He had convinced himself that if Jesus had asked him to run through a brick wall, Peter would've done it in a heartbeat.  Even when Jesus confronted Peter to tell him that he would deny Jesus three times, Peter's response was, "You must be out of your mind."  I am the same way.  For years, my head was totally committed while my heart teetered back and forth.  My heart would only commit to things that were safe and easy.  Whenever things got difficult, my heart would shut off communication to my head and there would be a busy signal.  Talk about stubborn...I know.

Just like Peter, however, there comes a point in our lives, as believers, that our Heavenly Father brings us to a crisis of faith.  There is no busy signal when the Father gets involved.  He presents us with a question, as He did with Peter.  "Do you love Me?"  Of course I do, my head and heart agree on that.  "Do you trust Me?"  Of course I do, wait, my head does, but my heart isn't sure.  "Do you truly want to surrender and mean those words you sing?"  Yes, Lord, the deep of my heart is calling out to the deep of Your love.  Wait, if I'm supposed to surrender, then I have a few questions for you, Lord.  Will there be pain involved?  "Yes, you must be refined, and that process is not an easy one."  Will there be suffering involved?  "Yes, when you die to yourself, it hurts, but the closeness you will have with Me will far outweigh the cost it took to get there."  Will it be safe for me and my family?  "Your definition of safe is not the same as Mine, but I will never leave you or forsake you.  I love you, and I want what is best for you and your family."  Having struggled through these questions between God and myself, I was finally brought to a point a total surrender, and my heart and head finally agreed.

What does surrender look like?  Well, to others, it will look like foolishness.  Foolishness is defined as an act that is lacking in sense, judgment or discretion.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:10 that we are fools for Christ.  If we follow Christ the way that He requires, our lives will not make sense to those around us.  We will sacrifice when others would walk away.  We will love and show mercy when others would turn up their nose.  We will seek less when others desire more (speaking of things).  When people look at us and watch us, they will see that we are not of this world.  They will look at us as foolish.

Here is what I have come to realize on my journey to foolishness, I have to allow God to break through the busy signal between my head and heart.  If I am to sing, and truly mean, the words of these songs on surrender, then I have to stop trying.  If I try and make myself surrender, I will fail every time.  At the core of surrender is the idea of yielding, or submitting.  Initially, there is this fear of what will happen, but fear does not come from the Lord.  The enemy will fight against this kind of surrender with all his might, so don't allow fear, doubt, or any other negative thought or emotion sway you.  Trust that, through this process, the Lord will never leave you or forsake you.  He is birthing in us His desires and His will for our lives.  God is always at work in us, it's up to us to yield control.  It is then that God can do amazing and miraculous things.

Be God's!

Helplessness

John 21:17 - "He asked him the third time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love Me?'  Peter was grieved that He asked him the third time, 'Do you love Me?'  He said, 'Lord, You know everything! You know that I love You.' 'Feed My sheep,' Jesus said."

I have to be honest, there are times that my life feels like a runaway train headed down a mountain, with no brakes, with a curve is straight ahead, and a thousand foot drop into a deep chasm.  Have you ever felt that way...helpless?  I am currently fighting that battle right now.  There are several areas in my life that are beyond my control, and there is nothing I can do to fix any of them.  I am literally at a point of total reliance on God. Now, being in a place of total reliance is great on one hand, because God has ample opportunity to work things out in a way where He receives the most glory.  However, personally, it is the one of the hardest things to live out.

I have been using Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest" during my quiet time that I spend with the Lord.  Earlier this week, I read a passage called "The Piercing Question."  In it, Chambers was referencing Jesus' restoration of Peter in John 21.  Chambers made the following point:

Unless we are experiencing the hurt of facing every deception about ourselves, we have hindered the work of the Word of God in our lives. The Word of God inflicts hurt on us more than sin ever could, because sin dulls our senses. But this question of the Lord intensifies our sensitivities to the point that this hurt produced by Jesus is the most exquisite pain conceivable. It hurts not only on the natural level, but also on the deeper spiritual level.

Why is this important?  I'm glad you asked.  If we are to truly follow after Christ the way He intends for us to, then we are going to have to face some of these same questions.  He is asking us these questions in order for us to surrender, and, when we do, it will be some of the most intense pain you will ever feel.  You begin to realize how much you have allowed the enemy to dull your senses.  At this point you have 2 choices, you can give in let God finish the work He started in you.  The other choice is to fight against Him tooth and nail until, eventually, God has worn you down to a place where you have no other choice but to surrender (kind of like Jonah).   The good news is that the moment we feel that intense pain, God is able to instill and reveal His truth.  When we learn this kind of lesson, just like Peter, it will be one we will never forget.  Look how God used Peter after this moment of restoration.  He was the cornerstone on which God was to build His church.

Helplessness is the feeling you get when you are in the middle of this process.  It is one of the enemy's tactics he uses to try and deter or distract us from the bigger truth, which is that God is working and moving in our lives.  The journey we have to go on in order to reach this level of brokenness is a painful one.  My buddy, Jason, heard a great quote that states, "Faith preaches easy but walks hard."  My tendency is to try and speed up this process or try and justify a decision and ask for God's blessing after the fact.  The reality is, God's timing is never my timing.  Through this process, God is trying to instill in us the importance of patience.  The phrase from the song "The Lord Our God" keeps coming to mind..."we won't move without You, we won't move without You, You're the light of all and all that we need."  The way we defeat helplessness is total reliance on and brokenness before the One True God.  We can't move without Him.

The bottom line is this...do we truly desire to chase after God and make Him our heart's only devotion?  If so, there is going to be a lot of death in our life.  We will die to our pride and have it replaced with God's love and humility.  We will die to our lust for things and have those replaced with a desire to give to those in need and show mercy to those who don't necessarily deserve it.  We will also die to our desires, and they will be replaced with a yearning for God's will to be done in our lives.  Those are just a few areas that will have to be surrendered.  So, there I am in a train headed down the mountain with no brakes and a curve ahead, and all I can hear God say is, "Give it a little more gas."  Death is a beautiful thing isn't it!  Who wants to journey with me?

Be God's!