Reflections

The last month particularly has been really exhausting.  A lot I’ve realized because I haven’t been trusting God for strength.  These are thoughts I written down so I could process it but I hope you find them edifying.

Where I was.
It is much easier for me to find my justification in what I do, in what I achieve, in what others say of me, than in Christ.  All of those are a usurping of the throne of Christ and are placing my faith and belief in myself.  It is easier, simpler, more self fulfilling to believe in that which I can know on my own power and name tangibly.  To the outsider the life appears the same.  It’s composed of the same actions, prayer, reading of the word, meeting with people, serving, but at a foundational level it’s built on something entirely different.  It’s built on my own power and my own word.  There’s fundamental unbelief of God and self-serving pride at the root of both of those.  The end of my actions is to build up my ego and my security in attempts to earn God’s approval.  So I met with people more than ever.  Good things, but my attitude was to assure myself that I was bearing fruit and walking in obedience instead of trusting that Christ’s work on the cross was already sufficient.  There was some sort of sick thrill or rush, knowing that I was making the grade, and knowing that the people around me approved of me.  I so often surrender myself to the opinion of others instead of the opinion of my Father.  Because I wasn’t daily trusting and knowing the power of Christ, it wasn’t on my tongue either.  I wasn’t trusting, I wasn’t tasting, I wasn’t proclaiming.  I wasn’t bold with the Gospel, because I wasn’t excited about it.  It lost its rawness and reality so opportunities would go by to stir conversation or seek or take chances on Jesus’ fame and I would intentionally miss them entirely.  The means became an end.  I met with people in the name of Jesus, but not for the sake of Jesus.  It was about my meeting with people and that was all. I found my justification and satisfaction in that so it ended there.  Jesus was a good reason to call up friends, but he wasn’t the end and he certainly didn’t make it into conversation.  Upon all that I wasn’t taking time for myself.  My worth was in what I did and so I gave myself no grace to take time for myself, even less to be served by others.  My pride set meeting with people as the top priority.  That was my god and so nothing else came between me and that.  I spent a large amount of spare time in the Word but it wasn’t changing because I learned a lot about God, without ever knowing God through it.  Worse, prayer and communing with God and silence before God stopped.  The Bible became a textbook.

How I got there.
I’ve struggled with trying to earn approval all my life.  All grade school and a lot of times at Wheaton the most important thing in my life was other’s opinions.  Achievement and appearances were end goals.  As the God worked in my life, revealing the truths of the Gospel to me, these things have begun to lose their grip.  However, as I grew up, I was more often able to get the approval of friends and family, whether through service in the church or personality or possessions or experiences.  The graciousness of God no doubt, not in granting those things per se, but in holding them off until I had matured so that they would not entirely write God out of my scope of life.  I was always at a point where I felt ‘I had tasted too much of God’s faithfulness and power to doubt his existence or the truth of the Gospel’.  I’m beginning to see the falsity of that statement and naivety.  The biggest problem is the self-trust of the statement.  Now I see the ridiculousness, but then I thought I was strong enough.  The second problem is that I’ve never really had to trust God for much.  I’ve always had everything I needed to survive and most things I wanted.  Family, friends, stuff, health, vacations, so much grace there, but it never developed depth in my belief.  Any trust I had in God had been almost fake situations, like a controlled experiment.  Mission’s trips I went on, serving in the church, standard middle-class American life.  That’s why it’s harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.  We don’t see our need for God at first, and once we do, it’s harder to remember that we still need him.  I don’t know why I’m speaking of this like it’s the past.  Faith is a have-it-or-don’t.  It’s the situation that’s the variable; and so I’ve seen God’s providence in profound, but still small ways.  I’m thinking specifically of a time in India where we were driving from village to village and were exhausted and one of the leaders suggested we read Hebrews 11 where it talks of Christ and his sufferings.  It was great to see the Word bring life to our weary souls, but it was still only a week and a half trip, and all told it really wasn’t that draining.  These past months are the most I’ve had to trust God before.  I don’t love Beijing.  I like being around hundreds of people I know.  I’ve never had to live with such ugly furniture before.  Not to mention that the spiritual battle here is more intense that it ever felt at Wheaton.  Life is real here.  And it’s a year long.  I can’t just up and out when I feel like it and the end is still a ways off.

Ok so this didn’t happen overnight either.  When I got here I was much firmer in my knowledge of God, but it was also a lot shallower.  Actually, probably a lot of that firmness came from pride.  After about two or three months I started to hit the grind and I would end up deeply trusting God one moment, and then literally twenty minutes later, entirely unsure of myself.  And some days I would cycle through that three (or more?) times.  My faith was gaining depth as I began to encounter more difficult experiences with friends and longer periods in more uncomfortable situations but it was also lacking any steadiness.  That went on for awhile and I slowly began to put more stock in what I could touch and feel in the here and now.  My experiences and my actions and me and myself replaced God.  Ministry was more and more about me and it drained me until I collapsed emotionally.

Grace.
The first thing I was admonished to do was check where my heart was grounded.  To really take time and think through where I was placing my trust.  I had completely forgotten that God is faithful and that he was still working even when I didn’t see it and that he was still reigning and still worthy of my worship.  The truths of the Gospel began to make sense again, but at a much deeper level.  Because Christ is risen, everything else is still worth doing.  He’s worthy of my belief, and my worship and perseverance.  He’s restored boldness and I’ve gotten to see the work of the Spirit in my interactions.  I understand more now, what it means to walk in faith, not having all the answers, but taking God at his word and obeying based on that.  I’ve seen the importance of really taking time to commune with God and foster that real relationship.  It’s also been awfully humbling to realize how little I know about God and myself and the world.  And because of that it’s really freeing to not have judge myself by my own actions or pretend that others are judging me.  Life feels real again.  Everything makes more sense now in the light of the Gospel.  That’s really vague.  But it’s hard to put a finger on it.  It’s not about my work here, or what others think, or even my relationship with God.  It’s about me worshiping him.  Not about what I can gain from Christ.  Christ himself is the reward.  This much I know still, that God will continue to be faithful in my life.