Spoiled Rotten?

Since I was a little kid, I always wondered what it would have been like to have God talk to me.  I had heard all the Bible stories of God talking to people:  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Paul to name just a few. 

I always craved that kind of personal attention… to know that the Creator of the Universe saw me, knew me, and was willing to speak to me. I grew up in a church that did not mention the presence of the Holy Spirit, let alone attempt to lead others to experience His presence.  

In the past year, I have begun to experience this kind of personal interaction with the Lord through an Immanuel approach to prayer and life… but now something strange has happened.

As I have experienced God's personal presence in overwhelming new ways, I have wrestled with the temptation to worship the 'experience' of His presence.  I have a new vision of what it means to be 'in Christ' and to have Christ dwell in me.  It is a brand new thing for me to personally experience the presence of Immanuel... to learn that He is present with not just 'His people' in a collective way, but also with 'me' as a beloved daughter. 

I am so grateful for these visits from the Lord... but now I am becoming a bit more like a spoiled brat.  I am tempted to demand His presence… complaining when I’m not aware of His presence like I was the last time I prayed… feeling like it’s somehow my fault when He doesn’t show up and speak to me like He did before... getting depressed when I experience silence from Him.

Ty preached this morning… and as a side point, talked about a time in his life when he experienced something similar.  He was aware of God’s presence with him and full of God’s purpose.  And then began trying to analyze how he was staying in that place… and trying to do whatever he could to keep experiencing God in this way.  And he spoke of the danger of turning gifts into something we try to control or manipulate.  He reminded us that God’s words and God’s signs aren’t the thing that we seek… but God, Himself, as a person who wants to engage with us and wants to encounter us.  Sometimes, our experience of God makes us feel ruined… because we can’t have everything all at once.  But the Lord gives us our daily bread… food for the journey. 

And I am reminded that I need to lay down my demands and receive today’s gift of His presence… whether it’s an overwhelming experience… or stubborn faith in His promise to be with His people.

Missional as a Family?

About a week ago, someone asked if Geoff and I could share some ideas on living missionally as a family.  We interpreted the word ‘missional’ as ‘sent out’ and we told our friend that we would feel inauthentic sharing thoughts about something that we’re not sure we’re doing.  After all, most of our time feels like it’s spent ‘in.’  After speaking those words, I continued to think about it.  I didn’t want that to be my answer.

But we live in a bizarre place… a church parsonage on 6 acres of land in an old community that was swallowed up by the suburbs of Chicago.  We look across the street at a newly refinished playground and behind it, houses that are less than 20 feet away from each other.  I can’t even tell you how many hours I’ve spent at that playground with my kids… waiting to meet my neighbors.  I’ve met nannies and grandmas whose English was so broken that we couldn’t communicate… and I couldn’t realistically learn enough Russian, Polish, Korean, and Chinese to keep up with them.  My kids played with the other kids… but only as well as kids who speak different languages can play.

I used to play the clarinet… I joined the symphonic band to try to meet some folks in our community.  But there weren’t many opportunities to have meaningful interaction and the time spent in rehearsal and performance put too much strain on our family… the cost didn’t seem worth it.

I joined a community of unschoolers, hoping to build some relationships with other homeschooling families in the area… They were wonderfully warm and welcoming.  We had fabulous discussions about politics, spirituality (none of them were Christians), and education.  My kids mixed well with their kids.  But they meet on Friday afternoons… and that’s one of the only days I can get a babysitter so that I can prepare sermons, pray with people, and keep up on other pastoring reponsibilities.

I ended up in relationship with a single mom who was fed up with the church and with Christians.  There were kairos moments.  But she eventually got fed up with me because I couldn’t give her all the things she wanted from me.

And so there remains only one place in our lives where we are involved in our neighborhood and community.  And to me, it’s an enormously significant and healing place.  But it’s not exciting or spectacular.  There are two men who live next door to us - a father and son.  The father is in his 90s and the son is in his 60s.  They both lost their wives to cancer before we moved into the house over 8 years ago.  There are skeletons in the closet… they were both workaholics, one was an alcoholic, and the choices they made during their pasts ripple into their present.  They don’t have close relationships with siblings, children, grandchildren. 

But they have become grandfathers to our boys.  The kids interact with them fluidly and naturally.  They spoil our kids with cookies, juice, tootsie pops, and cash for birthdays and Christmas. The boys love their grandpas!  They give us spaghetti sauce, chili, and baked beans.  They joined us for Thanksgiving.  They take in our mail and feed our cats when we’re gone.  Together, we coax vegetables from the ground in our garden.  They have become family.

But apart from these relationships, there’s nothing else apparently ‘outward’ going on in our lives.  We intend to raise kids who pay attention… who notice kairos moments… who are open to God’s work in them and through them.  For us, this has taken the shape of homeschooling… creating a climate where we set the priorities on relationships over and above the academic rat race of the affluent northwest suburbs in which we live.

This allows us to be family to our neighbors.  It allows us to care for little ones when needed.  It allows us to invite other families into our family life.  It allows for a lot of flexibility with our schedule, which allows us to be freed up for ministry.  It allows for fabulous conversations about God and about listening and responding… but it’s also very ‘in’ and not very ‘out.’

Most of the time, I feel like we’re living faithfully to what God has called us to. We’re equipping and empowering others in our local body to be missional… to go ‘out’ in their neighborhoods and workplaces.  We’re building into our kids, preparing them for lives of obedience and service in the kingdom.  And right now, these places feel like the part of God’s work that we’re participating in.  But is it OK to equip others to go ‘out’ when our own lives are so much more ‘in’?

How do other missional, bi/tri/quad-vocational pastoring parents work through this?  Anyone have any feedback?

Into His Presence

Well... I'm on a bit of a Tozer kick right now as I'm continuing to read The Pursuit of God... he has a way with words:

"The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the church is famishing for want of His presence.  The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us.  This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged.  This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush."  

Moses at the burning bush is a traditional Epiphany text... and Dave proclaimed today at our worship service that "God is cosmically big... a true encounter with God will absorb us into God's magnificent purposes for the world... but He will not completely overwhelm us with his presence and wipe us out... He comes subtly... we must pay attention.  When He reveals Himself to us, He transforms who we are and what we do." 

It's this attentiveness that I am yearning to develop... this persistence to push beyond the veil and into the holy of holies... to remove my 'shoes' of self-love and walk barefoot into His presence... to pay attention to where He is.  

After the building of the tabernacle, Israel knew where to find His presence... even had prescriptions for how to approach His presence:  sacrifice, cleansing, incense, bloodlines, priestly rotations, etc.  The common man (let alone woman) was prohibited from ever directly experiencing the presence of God... I wonder if they ever craved His presence?  Did the common worshiper in the temple courts ever long to go behind the veil?  Or was the presence of God such a terrible and overwhelming thing that they would never even dare to imagine?

I wonder if they realized that at the baptism of Christ, the heavens were torn open... and the Spirit descended as a dove... and suddenly, God was at loose in the world.  No longer safely contained in the temple, His presence could now suddenly be revealed anywhere... at any time... wine at a wedding, dinner with sinners, rule-breaking healings, calm seas, breaking bread.  I wonder if it felt at all like Pandora's box to them... It's no wonder that the response was to try to put God back into His box... 

How did the common Jew receive the news that the curtain was torn at the crucifixion?  Was it a comfort to know that the barrier had been removed?  Or was there terror in knowing that it hadn't worked to nail Him down?... that the Presence of God might still be anywhere?  

How do we receive this news?  That the Creator of the Cosmos can reveal Himself us to anywhere, anytime?  Sometimes, I find myself wishing that there was a particular place where I could go... and find that He is always there.  Sometimes I seek Him, but feel like I'm fumbling in the curtain, unable to pass through to His presence... unable to remove the veils I have erected.

But other times, I'm barely paying attention... and suddenly, He is.  Yesterday, I facilitated a spiritual retreat for thirteen people... together, we paid attention... removed our shoes... and the bush burned... consuming bugs and fungi and enlarging our pitiful narrowness.  

But Christ didn't allow Peter to pitch tents on the mountain... and Moses had to put his sandals back on and head into Egypt... and Saul / Paul had to stumble blindly to Damascus... and so the question is begged: how to experience His presence, but also get on with living?  How to live in the tension of knowing that He reveals Himself... but that part of His revealing depends on our attentiveness?  

  

Epiphany

"There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess.  It covets things with a deep and fierce passion.  The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant.  They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do.  They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease.  The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die.  Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended.  God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution... There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the life.  Because it is so natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is.  But its outworkings are tragic."  A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing.

My last post about the temptation to vacation is related... If I were not so content with 'things', I could not afford to life without the constant communion of Christ.  As I read this passage from Tozer, there was a response in me... from a safe distance, that thought "this is why Lent is so important" as if I could safely wait until Lent to do this work.


But Epiphany is the season in which the church traditionally remembers the coming of the wise men, the magi, who brought gifts to the Christ child.  In their worship of the child, they 'revealed' Jesus to the world as Lord and King.  The word 'epiphany' means 'to show', 'to make known' or 'to reveal.'

What better season than Epiphany to examine the 'tough, fibrous root of fallen life' in my heart... the possessiveness that hungers and thirsts for 'things' and then clings to them in place of the King.

Tozer writes of Abraham, and what he learned in the 'school of renunciation':  "He had everything, but he possessed nothing...  Things had been cast out forever.  They had now become external to the man.  His inner heart was free from them.  The world said, "Abraham is rich," but the aged partriarch only smiled.  He could not explain it, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal."

Epiphany... the season to root out the possessiveness, the my and the mine...  that the lack of possession would 'reveal' that Christ is King!