Archive for dying to self
June 21, 2008 at 4:34 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, growing in God, loving others, spirit, struggling with sin
When I walk in public places, I find myself searching the faces of strangers, wondering what their tragedies are. We all have them.
Anyone who tells you life is a bowl of cherries, easy-peasy, cloud nine, is full of it.
That doesn’t mean life can’t be full of joy, but joy isn’t dependent on what’s happening to me. I can have joy regardless of my circumstances. I don’t always, but I can. Peace too.
Anyway, life is hard, pretty much across the board, for everyone. Don’t be fooled looking at people who seem to have everything that you wish you had. Look into their eyes, behind the stuff, and you’ll sometimes get a glimpse of the tragedy. And even if you can’t see it, it’s there.
We are an angry people. Anyone who spends five minutes in traffic can attest to that. Getting behind the wheel of a car gives us just the anonymity and the power we need to vent some of that anger on other anonymous souls.
We’re angry because we have a longing for eternity (perfection) in our souls, and all we have experienced is imperfection. We’re angry because we desire beauty and love and satisfaction, and nothing man offers can fill that desire.
No amount of money, no number of possessions, no conquest of the heart can fill that desire, and we are sorely disappointed.
The last several decades have been particularly godless and the fruit of that is anger. I think we’re making a turn back to recognizing true spirituality, which gives hope, but for almost fifty years children have been born and raised in hopelessness.
I don’t think this is the first such period we’ve gone through. It’s a cycle - we move closer to God, we move away, God calls a remnant to him, those that hear, and eventually many follow, then many fall away. So I don’t think it’s the end of the world or something just because there is so much evil and godlessness. We’ve had that before.
And we all have hard lives. No one is immune to this. Don’t let some starry-eyed evangelist ever tell you that if you just say the sinner’s prayer, all your problems will be solved. Untold numbers of souls have been harmed by this premise. Say the sinner’s prayer, become a Christian, happy happy. Then when the problems and struggles don’t disappear they either hate God or themselves and put on the happy happy mask and shake their fingers at others who are unhappy: you don’ t have enough faith.
Seems clear to me that Jesus told us we were going to have troubles. And when he went away, he didn’t say he was going to solve all our problems. He just said he was giving us peace. And he asked us to lay down our lives for each other. I didn’t hear anything about financial or physical prosperity.
So the difference between me and someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is not that I have a tragedy-free life. It’s that I have a source of peace in the midst of my tragedies. I know that he has overcome the world and that I will overcome also and experience perfection. Not in this life - no one gets to have that. But when I see him face to face, it’s going to be worth it.
For my sake, he didn’t give up, through the trials, the persecution, the injustice, the hurt, the betrayal, the poverty, the hardship, the pain, the death. He persevered through his tragedies, and he overcame.
And for his sake, I won’t give up either. I’m not looking for financial blessing, physical health, to have my needs met, a nice, neat, bow-tied-on-top ending to my life or the lives of the ones I love, or any kind of security other than the hope that I have in him that it’s going to be worth it all.
And there is peace and joy in that, even if we don’t understand it. There really is.
May 24, 2008 at 1:16 pm · Filed under dying to self, faith, family, fellowship, growing in God, ideals, struggling with sin
Many of us are victims of hurt from other women. Most of the time it comes from a childhood hurt. For me, it was rejection. Cold, unfeeling rejection from two girls that I thought were my best friends. Many years later, I realize it is possible that neither of them meant to hurt me. But their actions left a lasting wound that perhaps only now is healing.
Women are often suspicious of each other. I have found that whenever I talk about my former “issues” with women, it strikes a chord with other women, who tell me that they have given up and just decided to hang out with men.
The root of this is the kind of childhood hurts like I experienced, coupled with the messages society delivers about what makes women valuable. These messages literally pit us one against another in an endless competition to be the most beautiful, the sexiest, the youngest looking, the best dressed, the most well off, and to get the man. Even if he is someone else’s man. Even if he is yours.
So after we experience the sting of childhood rejection, then they pile on with the news that we have to watch out or some nasty but beautiful vixen is going to snatch our husband or boyfriend out from under our nose, especially if we are not thin, smooth-skinned, and large-breasted enough to continuously captivate our mate and any other man in our presence.
This is not a good environment for friend-making. We don’t trust each other. We’re insecure, and we think everyone else is making us look bad. Just drive to work and you’ll receive hundreds of messages designed to make you feel bad about yourself so you will buy something.
I am convinced that because we women are constantly receiving the message “not good enough,” we see other women not as friends, but as dangerous rivals. We put up our defenses, just waiting for the first slight. If someone else is having a bad day and snaps at us or ignores us or says something insensitive, we take it as a personal rejection. Many times we snap back, or take our hurt and go hurt someone else with it.
My prayer today for all my sisters is that we would recognize our need for healing in our relationships with each other, and our need to overcome the deadly message of Madison Avenue. I know you all think I am “smoking something” with my posts on stepping out of the matrix and not following the systems of this world, but let me tell you that you are better off without these things. Living the message of Madison Avenue brings death to the things that are really important - the things that, when we get to the end of our life, we realize are the things that matter.
I got to be 40 and realized I had this hole in my heart that was missing friendships with women. Since I have begun to heal from my past hurts, I have discovered the nourishing quality of relationship with the fairer sex. With my female friends, I can be mothered. I can also mother and mentor. With my girlfriends, I can be a child. I can be myself in a safe environment where I know they love me. I can grow. Oh yes, we step on each others’ toes sometimes and it hurts. But “wounds from a friend can be trusted,” goes the Proverb. When it comes to friendships with women, “Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” In other words, we will get angry with each other, but anger is born of true relationship. When we are envious of others’ status, that destroys relationship. Anger can make our relationships stronger, as long as we work through the anger and keep on trusting each other.
If you are one of those women who just don’t “do women,” I get you. I used to be you and I know that it feels safer to just avoid the issue of female relationships. I also know that there is an ache in your heart to experience the God-given blessing of healthy relationships with women. I am praying for you, my sister, to overcome your woundedness and reach out to that motherly woman who needs a daughter like you. Or to pick up the phone and call that mother who needs a sister, or that young girl who needs a mother. Don’t reach the end of your life and realize that in protecting yourself, you have missed what is really important in this life. In giving of yourself you will receive so much more. It really is worth the risk.
May 15, 2008 at 2:19 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, freedom, growing in God, spirit
For me, it’s just gotta be heart.
How can we put God in a book and tell him to stay there?
Sure, there are facts we become aware of - they are few: Jesus, the Son of God, crucified for my redemption, resurrected for my eternality. But where we store these facts, where we plant those seeds, determines whether they will grow or not. The mind is rocky soil, mixed with so much thorny, puffed up and prideful proof of righteousness, that facts planted there often grow stunted and produce haughty fear-fruit, if they even take root at all. But the heart, what rich soil unhindered by vanity and the pretensions of intelligence, that produces a lush harvest of love for our brother Jesus. What trust, what longing, what unconcern for details, what abandon, that follows him even to death. The head cannot conceive of such unsafe behavior and instinctively condemns and shuns the rebellious, libertarian heart.
May 9, 2008 at 3:26 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, growing in God, spirit, struggling with sin
I was writing a prayer today and I was asking God to please take away this awful burden of self, these daily temptations and driven desires that make endless demands on me. Please take it away, I was begging with my pen, and as I wrote those words I heard him say, Please give it to me.
Huh?
Please give it to me.
……………………………
Oh, you mean I’m holding on to this thing and asking you to wrest it from my white-knuckled grip, when instead I could just hand it over to you? I thought about that for a moment and then the questions started. He probably expected that. He was probably shaking his head and chuckling a little bit as I ranted: How can I just let go because I started to do that a few months ago and look at where I’m at now. It sure doesn’t look like you’re handling it, Jesus. I don’t think you took it away, this burden of self, because right now I am buried even deeper in it. Look at me, I’m struggling and I’m questioning and I’m feeling really stuck. I must have been doing it wrong but I don’t know how to do it the right way and I’m scared.
And he said, Just trust me.
So I changed the subject for a little while, because the thought of just letting go of all of that, ceasing to be concerned about it, and living in the moment with my life directed completely toward him above everything else, was just too risky.
Now, after a morning of consideration, I am feeling brave enough to confront that idea again. And I can see that in constantly begging him to take my burden of selfishness and self-concern away, I don’t have to trust him with that burden because I am still holding on to it. Trust means letting go of the crap voluntarily, not waiting around for him to rip it away forcibly. Trust means not judging the outcome of letting go according to my own desires or vision. Trust means opening my hands and my heart and keeping my eyes completely and only on him, and following with all my strength. Trust means giving up control because I want to, not because I have to.
May 8, 2008 at 7:28 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, freedom, growing in God, struggling with sin
Jesus takes away my sin nature, but what about the rest of me? Does he completely change my entire nature? Or is it just my sin nature that has to go? If he changes me completely then what of being fearfully and wonderfully made? What of being created in Dad’s image? Does this mean I completely suck as a human being and need to be made into something completely different? That he thinks the Tina he made was a mistake? I’m thinking not. I am made new by the sacrifice of Jesus. New doesn’t mean different, it means clean and fresh, which can certainly be different than sin-stained, but it’s not a different me. The old sin nature is dead, but the unique creation that Daddy loves so much is still here and still cherished by him.
May 8, 2008 at 4:00 pm · Filed under dying to self, faith, ideals, struggling with sin
I think that just the act of trying to live by my ideals makes me more vulnerable to hurt from others. Have you ever asked for forgiveness from someone, in a heartfelt and repentant way, only to have them act (in a really snotty way, I might add) like they don’t know what you’re talking about? It definitely hurts to get smacked by your own sincerity. Oh well! It’s not about me and my feelings.
May 3, 2008 at 3:08 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, family, growing in God, paradigms, struggling with sin
This morning I was thinking (ok I was obsessing) about the importance of being right and doing right and making sure our loved ones can see what is right and do what is right. Then Jesus said, “But Tina, this is how the world will know that you are my disciple: that you love one another.” And I thought that was just so off topic. How off topic of you, Jesus. And he just looked at me and loved me.
So maybe it’s not about getting everyone on track, after all.
April 3, 2008 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Church, Jesus, bible, dying to self, faith, family, freedom, ideals, little "c" church, paradigms, struggling with sin, systems
My good friend submitted a comment on my post entitled “God.” I thought he raised some good questions, so I decided to make my reply a post where everyone could see it — perhaps there are others with similar thoughts and questions about my post and my intentions.
Tina, are you trying to engage conversation or controversy?
I see your over all concept idea of idolatry, but prejuduces, woundings, and crusades can be idols as well.
If the Bible is not divine or our final athority (or God-breathed) do we go to YOU for your emotional empressions of what God is saying at the moment. Or are we left with the maddness of the people in the time of the Book of Judges where people did “that which was right in their own eyes?”
How do we even understand what a relationship with Jesus is like if you have denied me the divinity and authority of the Bible? That is the only source I have which tells me what he was like and what he said. “If you want to know what my father is like, look at me.”
True….we do not worship translations…but His Word is truth and is a light unto my path and living water to my soul.
True….communinion is not divine…but is a wonderful gift of grace, a remainder how much he loves me, that he was willing to accept my rebellion, pride, hurts, fear, and pride to save the person I would become.
True….the church is not final authority…but hidden within the organization it has become is the Bride of Christ he is purifying and preparing to present to his Father. I REFUSE to forsake even ONE member of her just because she seems surrounded by inempt and frustrating rules and regulations. If she needs encouragement, that is why Christ has not taken me home; not to rail but to restore.
As a member of the clergy, if my fellow ministers have wounded you or you family, I want to to be the one to assume the responsiblity of asking your forgiveness. Too long we have wounded with our demandes and regations.
Hey Dave,
First of all, I love you a lot, bro.
I see I have struck a somewhat dissonant note here for you. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to explain, clarify, etc.
I guess I tend to engender controversy. It’s not intentional. But it does happen. I don’t shy away from it most of the time, but neither do I intentionally court it because honestly, my life would be a LOT easier if this controversy didn’t happen.
You seem to be saying (and correct me if I am wrong) that I have prejudices, woundings, and at least one crusade, and my interpretation of your statement is that these are the motivation for the things I have written in this post. Am I correct? For the purposes of this reply I will assume for now that I am correct.
So, if I am honest, yes, I do have prejudices - I think we all do. Prejudices are kind of nebulous usually and hard to nail down so I’m really not sure what prejudices I may be motivated by on a daily basis. I think prejudices are based in fear of the unknown, though, and don’t think I have many unknowns when it comes to the institution.
I have been wounded by many many things in my life, not the least of which is the institution. I think it is fair enough to say that all of us either have been or will be. But this was long ago in my past - probably about 10 years ago now, and while I was very, very angry at the time and allowed my anger and bitterness to put a wedge between me and Papa, this is no longer the case. I made my peace with the institution and even embraced it, for years. Some of my best friends are clergy. I am not angry or wounded any longer by anything the institution does - if I am angry it is only for the big picture injustice of the entire system and how it feeds on people, including clergy, to sustain itself.
Dave, I guess I’d take your comments about the Bible and turn them around: How in God’s name can we say that the Bible is the final authority and not Jesus himself? We have replaced Jesus with the Bible. Is Scripture inspired? Of course it is! Is it the most inspired piece of Christian literature that exists? I would probably have to say yes to that! Is it the fourth person of the Godhead? NO! Is it even the Word that is mentioned in Scripture? No, I don’t believe so! I believe that Jesus is the Word of God. If we believe that the Word of God is actually Scripture, then when John wrote that the Word was God … well nevermind because I think we have actually adopted that belief and mindset in evangelical circles that the Bible is God. That’s a problem if you ask me. But don’t ask me, ask Jesus! I’m definitely not the person where the buck stops. Don’t look at me, look at Jesus.
And yes, His Word is truth and a light unto my path: his Word is JESUS, not a book. Even the book points us to Jesus and not to itself. But we only go to the book and then stop there, thinking that’s enough and it’s not.
Communion is a great reminder of God’s grace, I don’t think we disagree there. My beef is more with the Catholic idea that communion is the actual body and blood of Jesus, which renders it God.
In protestant churches, the Word of God must be cloistered and guarded by professional clergy, just as in the Catholic church, the Eucharist must be cloistered and guarded by professional clergy, because we have given these inanimate objects a divinity that they should not have.
And regarding the Church, which is the actual bride, she is not hidden inside the institution, David, but throughout the entire world. The institution does not envelop the bride because she must and shall go free. Are there some members of the bride who move inside those institutions? Yes. Does walking free of the institution mean one is forsaking anyone? No, it does not. If I am a part of the true Body, I cannot forsake it because I AM a member of it. If you, as a member of the Body, choose to move within the system but remain separate from it because that is what Papa has told you to do, then do it with all your might. If I, as a member of the Body, choose to go out to the wilderness with Jesus on my arm because I heard him calling me out to it, then I will do it and proclaim it with all my might.
I think there are good-hearted people who believe, mistakenly, that being “of” the system is the best way to follow God. Do I condemn those people? Of course not! The couple who runs the last institutional church we were a part of are still our friends, we just saw them the other day and had a blast hanging out. The wife is asking us to come back to the small group we were part of where we had such great friendships and dug into Truth. We kind of chuckled because if we went back to that group that met in a friend’s home, there’s no way we could keep quiet about our views on the institution. Butwe are all on a journey and none of us has the ultimate and final solution except to the extent that we have Jesus. Isn’t it interesting that when we boil away everything that truly isn’t necessary, we are left with Jesus. That’s all I was saying in the post. That was my heart that I was sharing. Thanks for giving me the opportunity once again to share it more fully.
With much sisterly affection,
Tina
April 3, 2008 at 1:22 pm · Filed under Church, Jesus, bible, dying to self, faith, freedom, paradigms, spirit, struggling with sin, systems
I shouldn’t be writing on my blog today, I have a lot to do. But I just wanted to share about simple living and how counter-cultural that is. Jesus just wanted us to live this day and not worry about tomorrow. A book I recently read, the one with the provocative title that you would love anyway, (warning: PDF file) talks about trusting Jesus: don’t you have what you need to make it through today? Why worry about the future?
Trusting God means not needing a person or thing in my life in order to make God more real to me. That’s not to say that Father doesn’t sometimes give us people or things when it seems good to him. I need to realize however, that if he hasn’t given me something then I don’t need it. That’s a faith journey.
I don’t need fellowship or money or retirement funds or insurance or a job or religious icons or “spiritual covering” (what the heck is that) or meetings or preaching of God’s word, or somewhere to lay my head even. All I need is him. Simple and free. Daily bread.
My friend Jim read the book whose title shall not be mentioned (warning: PDF file) and it really had an impact on him. Isn’t that cool? Maybe you want to read it too.
March 26, 2008 at 4:23 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, fellowship, leadership, struggling with sin
We are significant because we are created in the image of God, by God. But we get that all wrong because our beliefs are wrong. We search our environments for affirmation of our significance (or lack thereof), and when we find it, we turn to God and offer the evidence to him as proof that he should either accept us or reject us.
I have been successful, therefore God accepts me.
I have been a failure, therefore God should reject me and if he doesn’t, he’s probably going to any day now because I’m just going to keep screwing it up.
Or worse, I have been successful today, therefore I am loved. Tomorrow I will fail and therefore I will be hated.
I thought this was not a struggle of mine until I was recruited to deliver the concept and the message to a group of about 100 women over the course of about three months. Now that I am in the midst of “teaching” this concept, I have discovered how much I have to learn about it. Funny (ha ha) how God works sometimes. It’s not like this message was even forced on me. It was completely up to me what the “theme” of this teaching would be. I selected Significance because I discerned that it was something many people struggle with.
What I have found is that I struggle profoundly with it and I didn’t even realize. But through some life events that have illustrated to me so very clearly that I have found my significance, in large part, through my role as a mother, I have become a living example of that struggle to those 100 or so women, and I will continue to live out this struggle and this journey of discovery right in front of them for another month or so, culminating in a weekend event of intimate Christian community where we will share this teaching with 36 more women.
It is so humiliating to be placed in a leadership role and find that your role is really to be transparent and vulnerable as you lead. But what else should I have expected to be asked to do by my brother Jesus? It’s rather disturbing to think that I actually expected to lead from an “I’ve arrived” perspective. I should have known better. Leaders are simply those who are willing to take the first step in becoming better followers of Jesus. Willing to be the first to take up the cross and die to self, willing to serve first, willing to be broken first, willing to be watched by a Christian community as the Potter shapes and reshapes.
I can’t even really claim credit for being willing. I feel like I was drafted. At least I’m willing not to go AWOL, yet.
Psalm 8 speaks of this flow of significance, which is from God, through me, and to the world:
1 O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
2 From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise [b]
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [c]
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
And William P. Young speaks richly to this idea of our significance in his book, The Shack:
“The truth is this: “Significance originates from ‘being’, not from doing.” Doing adds nothing to our significance and doing takes nothing away. Doing is directly related, not to significance, but is largely an expression of who we think we are. “As a person thinks in their heart, so are they (so they will act).” Because we are already significant, our choices and actions matter. It is not the choices that make us significant, it is our significance that make our choices meaningful. Every human being is significant by nature. They are imprinted with the very image of God, they are each the center of God’s love and goodness. True significance is individually wrapped up in the uniqueness of each person and each one being created in the image of God, regardless of what Madison Ave says, or how an individual may be damaged or broken. “
There is really only one way we can identify ourselves, and that is by our status as children of God. There is nothing else that can remain, in the end. Everything else that we might draw some significance from can be taken away. Motherhood, accomplishment, power, fame, intelligence, health, wealth, relationships, beauty, youth, age, wisdom, whatever. It all goes away, it is all shifting sand. This is my lesson to learn, and I’m not sure how that’s going to happen because I am one of those damaged and I fear, permanently broken individuals. All I can do is submit myself to Jesus, and like Paul, say “follow me as I follow the Lord.”
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