Serve now, do not wait to feel worthy!

Gotta get this out before it is gone.  The last few weeks our pastor has been teaching from Colossians.  It has been good stuff.  I have been paying attention as he has talked about what we have been rescued from, and how we should be living now.  Last week’s message was from chapter two.  The key points were;

1. In Christ you have been given God’s infinite resources, His fullness.
2. In Christ you have been freed from the bondage of sin.  That is not who I am any more!
3. In Christ you have been freed from the punishment of sin.  I pictured a big thick college textbook of rules, regulations and punishments that Satan tries to hit us over the head with.  But Jesus gave Satan a rather public smackdown at the cross, and he cannot throw the book at us any longer.
4. Walking with Jesus is the way to live right and avoid sin.  THIS IS INTIMACY! NOT RELIGION!

I have been thinking about his alot and struggling with the dichotomy between the old man and the new man.  How can I sin when I am a Christian? How do I react to my sin when it does happen?  I was relating all this to my counselor and also drawing in what Paul has to say in Romans about no longer being a slave to sin, when my counselor asked the all important questions….What does this mean to you?  How does it affect your life.  I thought for a minute and understood.

If I am identified with Christ, I cannot be identified by my sin.  I have been given citizenship in a new kingdom with all the rank and privileges that come with it.  I must act as a citizen of that kingdom.   This means that I have the freedom to say “yes” when I am asked to serve or have an opportunity to reach out to another.  I may not always say yes, but it should never be because I feel unworthy, that would be my own sense of condemnation talking.  I am worthy!  I may feel inadequate, but His fullness takes care of that.

It really helps me to understand how the men around me can serve as elders, deacons and pastors.  They have been identified with Christ.  From the world’s point of view they are a bunch of hairy stinky sinners with quirky personalities that might seem an odd fit for any of these positions.  But these men act out of their position in Christ.  If they serve, they serve in Christ.  I know they still are tempted and still fall to sin, but that is not who they are.

The Impostor

My writing is below

The Impostor 08/14/2008 From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off them. Stuart found he was good at math and science. He shut down his heart and spent all his energies perfecting his “Spock” persona. There, in the academy, he was safe; he was also recognized and rewarded. “When I was eight,” confesses Brennan Manning, “the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered, ‘Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know.’” Notice the key phrase: “as a defense against pain,” as a way of saving himself. The impostor is our plan for salvation. So God must take it all away. He thwarts our plan for salvation; he shatters the false self. Our plan for redemption is hard to let go of; it clings to our hearts like an octopus. Why would God do something so terrible as to wound us in the place of our deepest wound? Jesus warned us that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24). Christ is not using the word bios here; he’s not talking about our physical life. The passage is not about trying to save your skin by ducking martyrdom or something like that. The word Christ uses for “life” is the word psyche—the word for our soul, our inner self, our heart. He says that the things we do to save our psyche, our self, those plans to save and protect our inner life—those are the things that will actually destroy us. “There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death,” says Proverbs 16:25. The false self, our plan for redemption, seems so right to us. It shields us from pain and secures us a little love and admiration. But the false self is a lie; the whole plan is built on pretense. It’s a deadly trap God loves us too much to leave us there. So he thwarts us, in many, many different ways. (Wild at Heart , 107–8) To subscribe to this email, create a profile at www.ransomedheart.com/myprofile See also the Ransomed Heart Podcast at www.ransomedheart.com/podcast

I get this daily reading from John Eldrege’s writings. I thought today was especially good. I have been an impostor for many years. Only in the last couple years has God begun speaking to me about this in a way that would get my attention. He first began softening me up as I attended the Discipleship group on Saturday morning. Then He hit me with a big bomb. Instead of turning to him, I resented the intrusion. Oh, I tried to rebuild, but it was clear that what had been ok before, would not work anymore. I was expected to build something completely new. It really angered me that my world had crumbled. I did not like the amount of work it would take to build a new thing. I did not understand that it would be Christ in me that would build anything lasting. Instead I chose to live in the rubble, focused on the destruction that had happened.

Being faithful, God is at it again. This time even the rubble is gone, there is no shelter for me. I can no longer sustain even a shadow of my former life. Sometimes I see bits my former comfort off in the distance, and I try to run towards it, but it vanishes before I can get there. The only thing that is constant is the Light. I walk forward into the glare, hoping to find the source.

Balancing Beer and Ice cream

I recently read a post at Without Wax concerning balance in our lives. The author, Pete Wilson, is pastor at a church in Nashville. He had originally written about receiving a lottery ticket for his birthday, which caused a bit of a ruckus. His follow-up post had more to do with balance than it did with gambling. I had to chuckle when he also mentioned “fast food, movie rentals, ice cream and other things that we blow money on to entertain ourselves.” I commented that I had to give up ice cream when I discovered beer. This is actually true, but still funny.

As relates to the lottery, I do buy a ticket when it gets up over $250 million. It is fun to dream about what I would do or buy. One of the comments on the other post mentioned God’s riches, which really made me think. Being an adopted son of the Almighty, how much time do I spend dreaming about his riches and my inheritance? OUCH

Changing Gears

Recognizing that I need to stop my puny human efforts to change my wife, I have reined in my tongue. I have tried to keep my communication with her to the minimum needed to run the house and plan the immediate future. This is not too hard, since she does not generally address anything directly to me. What is hard and surprising, is what has happened spiritually in the last couple days.

Recognition that much of my behavior, good or bad, has been controlling has not made my days any easier. I find myself falling back into personal patterns of grasping and despondency. I am also being tempted like I have not been tempted in a while.

I know this is a sign that I was depending on my own efforts to sustain me. This should throw me even more completely on the Lord. I struggle. In my head I know that what is happening is for my good, that God does not put his children through the wringer for no purpose. My prayer life has been a little stunted, but this morning one of the first things I had to do was thank the Lord for loving me enough to strip these things from me.

I think my wife continues to write. I hope that she will write out her position and think it through. Writing was her idea, not mine, so it is not a hoop that I have asked her to jump through. At the same time, I wonder if the effort will cause her to throw up her hands and say, “I do not have to justify myself to anyone.” I have been careful not to say anything about her writing to avoid provoking just this kind of reaction.

These are all hard things. I have been encouraging my daughter to “Do Hard Things!” and I find myself faced by the hardest things I have ever faced. I know that you all pray, and I ask for that to continue. I really appreciate the email and phone calls. God has returned me to the point of desperation, I want to respond appropriately.