Lent 2015

Lent started on Wednesday.

This past year I've been listening to a lot of talks by Dallas Willard and I read his Spirit of the Disciplines (which I cannot find at the moment sadly). A Baptist minister and philosophy professor at USC, his talks have given me much to think about.

I have participated in some kind of fasting at different times for different reason since I was about 16. I've fasted for God's favor, in seeking God's will, in overcoming diseased thoughts, and because the whole church was encouraged to. But I have liked best how Willard explains fasting and disciplines in general. I'll need to find the talk, but he says something like the disciplines give us an opportunity to experience "not having things our way". And I think that feeds into the Lord's prayer, "Thy will be done."

I am fasting this season. It does not make be virtuous; it is not might righteousness. But it is an exercise to submit myself to "not having things my way". And I for that I look forward to the journey.

Getting to know Grace

Grace and Mom, 1994

In my earliest memories, I lived in a small bubble of Chinese families in a Southern town. But when I was eight, my parents went off the reservation, and we started attending a large, mostly white church. One lady that befriended us all in that lonely transition was Grace Mutzabaugh. As a child, I thought she was old as dirt with her deep criss-cross of wrinkles, but she would have been 60ish when we met. She loved games and at a time when I threw temper tantrums if I thought I were losing, she helped me stay the course through rounds of Parcheesi.

I remember in middle school, she returned from a trip to South America with a gift for me, a bird made out of animal horn. I remember liking the bird, but really marveling that she had thought of me while traveling.

When I was in high school, she tutored my mom in English. I don't remember anyone else spending time with my mom like that. They were dear friends, taking walks and praying together for many years.

Miss Mutzabaugh was the never-married founder of the National Institute of Learning Disabilities which worked closely with the church and Christian school I attended. She traveled to other countries to help missionary parents with learning disabled children have the skills to help their child and stay on the field. She was my example of a woman doing big things outside of home life. But more importantly, she embodied the Jesus-life and showed me what it was like to see people and not projects, to see people and not see labels and expectations.

But I was thick and even though I grew up in a Christian home, in a church, with Grace in my life, it wasn't until I got to college that I understood God's grace. Somewhere between the lovely community of believers I met and the books I read, it finally sank in that there was nothing I could do to make God love me more (and nothing I could do to make God love me less).

As a black-and-white perfectionist, this was revolutionary and deflating. I could not try harder, collect more achievements, do anything to increase the love of God for me. But the primary orientation of my life up to then had been precisely doing more, doing better. So once you can't do anything to earn God's love, what do you do? The doing is what is called discipleship, it's training to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18).

Some time after I left home, Grace developed Alzheimer's and had to be moved out of her house. Many of her books came to our house, and maybe a dozen or so are with me now. Looking over those titles, I got a glimpse of how this friend chose to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in a lifeling process of letting God be Lord over all that she was, heart, soul, mind, and strength.

What Grace chose to read, how far she chose to travel, or how she chose to love my family did not earn her a place a heaven. But these were part of an ongoing habit in her life to entrust herself to God. This is discipleship; this is what we do in grace; this is what it means to say yes to Jesus. We apply the strength we have to move in the direction of the will of God and trust in the power of the Holy Spirit for the rest.

Incredible opportunity

When I was finishing university and looking around for what to do next, my internet searching brought up a professor doing work that I thought was interesting. So I applied to his department, and they flew me out to visit. It was a fun visit and I enjoyed sitting in on his class and office hours, but I decided not to go to graduate school straight out of college.

In the end, I wanted to learn from him so much, I re-applied to the program, moved to a big city I didn't like, and took his crazy 4-8PM courses for years. At one point, I was sick of that city and sick of the lack of funding in the department and looked to transfer to another program in another city. But I couldn't find a researcher I'd rather work under. And so I stayed in that expensive, crowded city, in that poor department, but with that professor. For all his faults and the surrounding difficulties, being his student was an incredible opportunity.

 [Jesus] must be clearly seen as the most important thing in human life, and being his apprentice as the greatest opportunity any human being ever has. ~Dallas Willard, "How does the disciple live?"

Being a student of Jesus is the most incredible opportunity. It is inconceivable yet true that the one who is right about everything invites us to learn from him. This learning doesn't consist of long-distance, over-the-internet lectures. This learning is an in-the-flesh, moment-by-moment, intimately-near and out-of-love experience. And from it, we can learn what is good, true, and beautiful.

This is really good news. It is a damaging half-truth to focus on our eternal souls when what we really mean is that we want Jesus to get us into heaven after we die. Indeed, it's a logical fallacy because eternity includes now. The good news of the Bible is not about later. The good news is about now and forever.

What Jesus actually says in "Great Commission" is this (which I've broken up for emphasis):

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
~The good news according to Matthew, chapter 28, vs 17-20

There are many points to make here, but what I want to push back against is our Christian cultural emphasis on just going. "Go means Go" I've heard pastors preach. And that's great. I agree. But what's to happen when we arrive? Making disciples. Introducing people to the incredible opportunity of learning all that is good, true, and beautiful with and from the loving Creator God.

What are we to be about? What does being a disciple look like? We'll keep digging into that next week.



  

He is right about everything

For the next little bit, I'd like to reflect on this article called "How Does the Disciple Live?" by Dallas Willard. 

Willard starts off this way:

As Jesus’ disciple, I am his apprentice in kingdom living. I am learning from him how to lead my life in the Kingdom of the Heavens as he would lead my life if he were I. It is my faith in him that led me to become his disciple. My confidence in him simply means that I believe that he is right about everything: that all that he is and says shows what life is at its best, what it was intended by God to be. “In him was life and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4 NAS)

The idea of apprenticeship has fallen by the wayside. Perhaps if you're in the trades it might not have, but among the people I spend time with we don't talk about and don't know about apprenticeship. The best we get is Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But the idea is that a novice learns from an expert by spending time with and being under the direct instruction of an expert. 

Somehow in the Christian-ese I grew up in the word disciple and follower came up frequently, but this idea that Jesus is a life expert from whom I should learn how to live life did not. And this is true even though the word disciple finds its root in the Latin word for student, discipulus, -a. 

Willard pushes this idea even further writing, "...I believe that [Jesus] is right about everything." Honestly, that rubs me the wrong way. I know that he's God, creator of the universe, etc. etc. blah, blah, blah, but "right about everything" seems so inflexible, so hard nosed. 

But then I ran into this other quote:

When the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian. ~ Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer.

The goal is not to become a Jewish carpenter from two thousand years ago. The goal is to learn His heart because that is and can only be right about everything.

Our church has been going through the 10 commandments which my small group went through only a few months before. (That, by the way, is a lot of 10 commandments.) Why would modern, new covenant, post-Jesus believers spend that much time with the 10 commandments? It's not to live a small, legalistic life. It's to live a large and enlarged life. The tagline for this sermon series is "Set free to live free".

Jesus, the expert on life, the creator and sustainer of life, is not just a savior for the down-the-road judgment day. He provides the pattern and instruction for how to live our right-now life. And far from being a ball and chain, the Jesus way is the best, and freest way to live.

How to eat an elephant

Back in college, I studied Russian. Actually, I should say I studied Russian grammar or even Russian linguistics. And then, I went to Russia. And surprise, surprise, I couldn't speak Russian. I felt ashamed that I knew so much and could use so little. But I wanted to learn how to speak Russian.

So I decided that each day I would apply one new grammar rule. I gave myself permission to ignore every other grammar rule except the rule I picked out for the day. With time and a lot of trial and error, and the patience of the kids I was working with, my Russian improved.

This reminds me of one of my husband's jokes: "How do you eat an elephant?...One bite at a time." The elephant was speaking Russian, the bites were one grammar rule at a time.

When I think about the Christian life, I feel we get a lot of "Once, I ate an elephant" and a lot less, "One bite at a time."

We imagine what a holy life looks like and we think, "if only I prayed more and did that Beth Moore Bible study and got an accountability partner and served in the children's ministry and volunteered for the upcoming service project with my husband and kids and...who am I kidding? This is never going to happen"

When it comes to life with Jesus, I think that the big picture, the whole elephant is important. Becoming holy is what God asks of us. But we need to live in the one bite at a time. We don't like bites because they are mundane and even doable, but I think that's where trusting Jesus flowers.

So in one relationship that went off the rails, the elephant was a healthy relationship, the first bite was not being in bed together. Not sitting, standing, and definitely not lying down. Other bites later on would include an evening cutoff time for phone calls and a complete break from communicating for a while.

That was the last of a my string of inappropriate relationships with other women. So on this side of things, the elephant is not only a healthy relationship with that woman, but healthy relationships with other women in general and with my husband. But if you only see where I am now, you don't know how small that first bite was and how it was a miracle empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you've always been impressed by people who memorize scripture. Well, once, a roommate and I decided to memorize the book of Philippians. That sounds like a huge elephant. The first bite was Philippians 1:1. That's it. We added one verse a day, six days a week. It really helped to do this with a friend to smooth over the times when I just wanted to throw in the towel. Anyways, lo and behold, about four months later we were done.

But to the more mundane, I'm not a star housekeeper. It's easy for me to feel like if I can't get it all right, it's not worth doing any of it. So I'm learning to live in God's grace and accept cleaning by bites. One year, the big accomplishment was mopping once a week. Later, I added cleaning the bathrooms. And more recently, I put all the bedsheets on a schedule instead of whenever I remembered them. (I know all you neatniks are freaking out, but Jesus loves me even in my grossness.)

I'm a big picture person, so it feels strange for me to be the one to say this, but I think we need to think about individual bites more often.

If you're a wife, what if the next time you see your husband, you just smile and choose not to air the complaints of the day? Add a kiss for flair.

Or what if the next time you're lonely, you stay off the internet, just this once, and you pick something healthy or even neutral to do? Rearrange a closet, go for a walk, pick up a project you never finished, get gas for your car, change the batteries in your smoke detector. I don't know. Anything. Even a 5 minute thing.

I've been at war with depression lately as my medication has been changed. My bites are

1. not skipping exercise 
2. adding two cups of milk a day--it's a long story 
3. reciting John 6:68-69 over my dark thoughts. 

It's not magic. I haven't finished this elephant, but the alternative is to lay down and die. And I'm not ready for that.

So how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

--
Watercolor by Fritz Ahlefeldt, hikingartist.com

What am I supposed to do with my life?

The Calm My Anxious Heart chapter that we're reading in my women's Bible study talks about purpose in life and encourages everyone to have a purpose statement. But it's really short on how to develop one other than to open your Bible and have magic happen.

At the same time, I've been listening to some old talks by Alan Andrews, a former president of the Navigators, and they've made me think of some questions or experiences that can be useful in identifying purpose.

In the first talk, Andrews mentions that all followers of Jesus have 3 callings: to repentance, to discipleship, and to laboring. So the first call is to turn away from our sin and toward Jesus and his saving grace through his death, burial and resurrection. The second call is to discipleship, which Dallas Willard describes as a lifelong apprenticeship with Jesus meaning we learn how to live by watching and being with Jesus.

The third call is laboring which to Andrews and the Navigators is about the work of moving people in the direction of Jesus either in a conversion experience or a discipleship process. I think about laboring as service. Sometimes people need to be served with truth about Jesus or how to have an ongoing walk with Him, and sometimes people need to be served with general acts of friendship, and sometimes people need actual serving that they could never repay.

If these are primary callings from Jesus, then when we throw up our hands asking "Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life?" we can start with these follow up questions:

1. Am I living a life of repentance where I'm walking away from sin and toward Jesus?
2. Do I allow Jesus and what I know about Him from the Bible to govern my choices?
3. Am I faithfully serving others, making someone(s) other than myself a priority?

I think these are important questions because I wonder if we see the purposes God has in our lives as we allow Him to shape our character and reveal our gifts.

We need our character to be God-shaped because purpose without God is like traveling with a broken compass. You'll get somewhere, but it probably won't be where you want to go.

We need to understand our gifts because we're told in scripture (I Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4) that everyone has some spiritual gift and that the differences are like the different parts of the body--critical functions that are different but part of a working whole. And we recognize our gifts and our community recognizes our gifts as we serve.

So if you're trying to figure out what your purpose in life is and you haven't submitted to the rule of Jesus and developed godly character, start there. And if you've done that, then start faithfully serving others. If you've been slacking at work, stop slacking. Do your job (even if you hate it). If you've never helped out your community, i.e. neighborhood, city, local church, do that for a while (even if it is uncomfortable).

You might not be writing a purpose statement during that time, but you're learning to entrust your life to God, and that thrills him, and what's the point to all this if we're not pleasing God?

But let's say you've done all this and you really want to have a purpose statement. I think some quiet time alone with God, reviewing your experiences in God's word, in work, play, and service, I think you'll see themes. That's where the purpose statement comes from.

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I'll write my personal reflections up in another post since this has gotten long. Oh, and before I forget, my favorite book on this topic is Os Guinness's The Call.