Work and Play

This was written a while ago, but upon reading, it seemed good to share.
------
On Sunday, the YearTeam folks who have chosen to go to Nicaragua in March gathered to tell each other our stories.  It was a powerful time, and deeply challenging.
I was to share second to last. As my turn drew closer, I found that I desperately wanted my story to live up to theirs.  But, in my eyes, it did not.  My life against of all theirs suddenly seemed inexperienced, and sugar-coated.  Through what has God led me, except disasters of my own making?  My life has been easy, simple and relatively painless.  What have I been through, really?  My entire family loves God and breathes in remarkable health.  I was raised with a strong work ethic, in grace, in a house on a river-side farm.  I have been encouraged and mentored through each step, in every choice and pursuit, and yet still I have sinned.  Yes, I have wrestled with doubt, depression, fear.  But not because I lost a father.  Or a mother.  Not because I was abused or neglected, nor because of peer pressure or ignorance.  With the best of circumstances, information and influences, I still have managed to hurt God and those around me intentionally.  My weakness is mine.  My sin is of my making, of my hands.  There is no pleading for merciful understanding, for circumstantial excuses.  My sin is simply mine.

I woke up anxious on Tuesday.  On Tuesdays I Sabbath, take a day to read/pray/write/walk/woodwork/etc. (basically a day in which to remember God and to cling to Him).  But this week I felt anxious.  I had planned to go to Francis Marion Forest to Hike, but felt like something was wrong. Perhaps the way I had chosen to spend my day? I could thing of nothing better to do, so I drove north.  Somewhere on HWY17 in Mt. Pleasant, Sunday afternoon filled my focus.  I realized that in some way I had entered the meeting feeling like I was present to pull others up to my level of faith and understanding.  Really, feeling a sense of superiority with accompanying responsibility.  But by the time my story turned around, I had been humbled by the magnitude of God's work in them.  And then, as I told of my life, what God has done appeared so small.  I made a big deal of things that, compared to the stories of my compatriots, seemed miniscule, nit-picky, miniature.  He has not saved me from burning buildings and collapsing relationships and poverty and drugs.  He saved me from my the consequences I brought on myself, from my immaturity and sinfulness.  That doesn't seem so attractive.  Certainly not as attractive as a God who heals bones, and families, and hearts.  Honestly, mine did not seem a testimony worth sharing.  God never fixed my circumstances- they were never that broken.  The pit of my testimony, that from which I was saved became, in the presence of these stories, a puddle amidst canyons.  I saw myself smaller, my story insignificant, unmoving, unrelatable.  How can this testimony be of any worth at all?  Who desires an intimate salvation from the God of a sheltered life who saves the one without excuses?

I arrived in the forest and walked and prayed.  The ranger had an incredibly loud indoor voice.  It would not have been out of place at a dance, trying to speak over the music.

I walked around well kept trails in less-than-engaging scenery, stopping to sit and pray, to kneel, to walk blindly into the woods in the hopes of stumbling across some missing tent poles, stopping to read at a picnic table.  I knew I wanted to read Paul's words to Timothy.  Don't let them look down on you because you're young.  That at least disarms the inexperience attack.  Next my eyes wandered to the reading from the day before, saying "the weaker parts are indispensable".  That disarms the feeling of a worthless testimony.

Yet I was still unsatisfied.  Something was still amiss within me.

Next to 1 Chronicles.  The Lord says to David, I will build you a house.  I will covenant with your family.  And then Paul again. He gives gifts to all.  The 'same God', it says, gives gifts to all.

There it is.  Subtly.

My anxiety surges when the Kingdom resists obliging my outstretched hand.  Like when I pray for healing and it doesn't happen, or when I pray to love someone and grow still more frustrated with them.  It frustrates me, and places my heart in a defensive stance.  I know I cannot be 'good' enough to earn my place at the Lord's table, but for some reason I still try to claim my righteousness through spiritual endeavor.  If I ensure that my faith is radical, if I am pushing the limits, then I can know that I am secure.  Sturdy calls it my spiritual resume-  I fill it out to make sure I know that I am saved.

But what can I conclude when I am surrounded by those whose hearts betray a radicalness and who know a revealed Comforter and Redeemer in participatory intimacy far deeper than mine.  I have spent the semester often seeking to raise these brothers and sisters up, and only to see them bloom as eight-foot sunflowers, towering high above my head.


I will build you a house.  I, the same God, gives to all.

Suddenly, sitting in Metto off Coleman BLVD, the connections meet.  Like parallel truths, the product of one mirrors that of the other.  My work is my constant striving, constant recalculating for the highest spiritual track.  My fear is the finding that my track is not so high after all.  But my rest, and my play, is in this.  That the same God that moves in my friends moves in me, and that my story is not about what I do for God, but about what He has done, who He is.

Very often my eyes remained focused on myself, on my needs, on my failures, on my strivings and on my faith.  But, if my eyes are leveled upon the very presence and nature of God in my life, there is freedom, play and worship.  Be my story a blockbuster full of car chases and betrayal, ending in peace, or a footnote, ending in peace, no matter.  Because my glory is Christ, the Lord.  The holiness of my story is not determined in the magnitude of that from which I have been saved, (though my sin is immense, and does reveal God's ability to heal.)  Instead, its holiness is determined by Who has saved me.  For the Lord has made a covenant with me, to build me a house.  He has invited me in to eat with Him.  This, the same Lord as the giants of the faith, of Calvin, Luther, and Peter, Stephanie, Edy, Jason, and Tripp, and the rest.  He that liveth in them, liveth in me.  Dead for me, alive for me, here are the rules, the limits and definitions.  All else is merely play.

a Brief Distraction

I'm waiting for the Hunger Games midnight premier.  No, i haven't read the books, and no, I'm not in costume.  It's just a good excuse to do something fun with friends.  Right this very moment I am sitting outside of a closed Barnes and Noble, taking a break from writing a blog on the purposeless nature of the church (yeah, brace yourselves),  and thus, this story from the past week is a brief distraction.  Which, I think, is also why so many people are waiting outside Palmetto Grande an hour before the movies starts.  They are looking for a distraction.  I know because I often want one, and few distractions are better than an alternate world where we see the good win over inestimable odds, all in less than an hour.  Still, you're left with that 'if only I was a part of something like that' feeling. Alas, I digress.  Back to the story.

I arrived to Wednesday night worship at St. Andrews late, as usual.  Coming from worship practice with the highschool folk, I'm usually enjoying some conversation with them well past 6:30.  This week was no exception.  A great conversation.  Alas, I digress.

I went into worship.  I didn't feel enthrallment with the Lord, even much desire for Him.  I hate it, but that is not unusual for me, which you should know.  I fought the battle in my head once again.  Am I a hypocrite if I raise my hands when I'm not feeling anything?  If I sit down, would standing get my heart more involved?  I stood, I raised my hands.  I was tired, but pressing in past emotional stalemate.  Such is faith, I think.  That's what God's been teaching me, of late.  Alas, I digress.

Anyway, the speaker began teaching on centering prayer.  She was narrowing down to her focus, but I was tired of waiting and ready for God to move.  And, I'd heard it before.  My dad's taught on centering prayer, I've heard of breathing prayer, the Jesus prayer.  I shut my eyes to center, to listen.  And immediately a picture flashed in my mind.  It was a river in a clay/mud/sand plain that had eroded its banks such that they fell away at least four or five feet on each side, washed out to the point of near-collapse.  Everything including the river was an orange-tinged brown, and monochromatic foam and rubble floated downstream to the right in drifts and piles.

I looked up at the speaker, but the image seemed important, like it might have been God speaking.  So, I went back to it and asked God what He wanted to share.  It seemed like the river symbolized me, somehow, but what were the drifts?  Did they mean something?

I was thinking about this, waiting on the Lord, when suddenly I heard the speaker say, very clearly, "So, you see a river, and there's a lot of debris floating down it."  I almost fell out of the pew.  It was as though she had read my mind.  Part of centering prayer, as she went on to explain, was allowing your distractions to drift away, using a word or a phrase to bring your mind to center.  That is, to the acknowledgement of God's presence and love.

I dove in.  I chose the word 'presence', because it is what I want to know so badly.  And so we waiting.  As I spoke the word, the plain turned green, and my view turned upstream where the debris was becoming less and less.  And as I spoke, the plain to the left formed a soft rise.  And on the rise, I think.  Was Jesus.  He wasn't looking at me, but he was calling those around me to Him.

I think as I work through more Ananias prayer stuff, learning to forgive myself and walk in freedom, I expect to see him looking at me more and more.  But, in any case, it was a beautiful moment, and a sweet reminder that the Lord is guiding my steps.  Even when I feel nothing, even when I am not expecting, or not perceiving, He is moving, and calling me.  The process not, is learning to see distractions and let them drift away, to the right and out of view, as my eyes shift left and look to my Lord.

Jesus, would you continue to call me to Yourself.  Would you remind me of Your love for me, of my oft' buried love for you.  Teach me to lay aside those things which steal my attention.  Teach me to see Your face, turned towards me.  I turn to You.  I know You, and press on to know You, for you have made me Your own.  Thank you.

Intersections

I struggle with returning from Nicaragua to my day job.  Yes, even though in Nicaragua I didn't feel His Presence as much as I wanted, even though I didn't develop the relational depth I wanted with our hosts, even though I didn't see flashy regenerative miracles or hear the voice of the Father echo through the tiled floors of our hotel(s).  It didn't really matter, because there was something more there.

I struggle because in Nicaragua there was something beautiful: a communal singleness of mind.  We were focused on the Kingdom, and it changed everything.  Everything was deep, everything was significant.  Each morning we gathered to worship, expecting to be lead by the Spirit.  Which, I might say, takes a TON of stress off the worship leader.  Suddenly, you are not looked to for direction; everyone looks to the Spirit.  At most, I was the check to prevent the group from entering church-song-karaoke mode.

Example: one morning, four people woke up with the same song in their heads.  It's easy to lead worship when God is leading through the group.  If I didn't know the song, no worries.  We sang it anyway, and I hummed.  It was great.

Singlemindedness led to a two hour worship session on the side of the road after an overheated engine, a blown head gasket, and a flat (possible shot out) tire.  It led to the graceful reception of canceled reservations, to the stepping over of so many comfortably drawn lines, and to constant iPod worship on car rides.  I typically don't like group worship to recordings.  But, when all the hands are up in a bus revving through sewage on the way to a feeding program.....
... it may look and feel (smell?) like a roller coaster, but it's worship, in Spirit and truth, and so it's beautifully engaging.

Singlemindedness led to visions coming true.  Praying for our women before they went to bless some prostitutes, I got a picture of a field of yellow flowers and single bunch of grapes.  I didn't know what it meant, but I shared anyway (you don't have as great a risk of looking foolish when everyone is trying new things alongside you).  No one had any clear interpretation, so we moved on, and I forgot about it.  But when our women arrived at the meeting, they sat down in the gathering space and looked up.  There, out of place and alone, tacked to a cross beam, was a single bunch of plastic grapes.  Hanging in a big yellow room.

Singlemindedness meant praying for anyone and everyone with any kind of injury.  I don't do that here, when I see casts or wraps or winces.  I'm not sure we're supposed to.  But there, with the momentum of the group behind me, it was pretty obvious.  Even though we didn't see any crazy healings happen, we still tried over and over again, and that's huge.  And God touched people, left and right, through our prayers.


I felt the Lord most clearly in some of our group worship times, in prayer on the bus on the way to the prostitutes' rehabilitation home, and in spontaneous worship.  He met me most transformatively in conversations with Tripp, prayer with Pastor Oswaldo, sharing my testimony to several classrooms of highschool students, and in teaching 9 yr old Jose to take pictures with my camera.  By the by, Jose took the last five or so on my previous blog post (minus the very last shot).

Each of the above moments is worthy of paragraphs, if not books.  Such is life.  To write them all fully would fill every library in the world, and leave no room for imagination.  With your questions, ask away, but in my blog, I press on.

And french press on we will, soon, at Kudu.  And frankly, it just doesn't typically feel like I'm making a difference there.  Sure, some conversations drip with purpose.  But mostly, learning to serve in humility is hard work, soaked in glass cleaner, wrapped in towels.  It doesn't feel like Kingdom.  At least, not in the same way.

Lay aside, for the moment, that sometimes I still want to prove myself.  Lay aside my continuing fears of praying for people in front of other folks.  Lay aside the doubts that still surface when miracles don't happen as I expect/want them too.  I get frustrated.  As one friend of mine once prayed, Get me off the bench.  Let me play.

It's hard to see the intersection of Kingdom and Coffee.  Maybe in some ethereal, create jobs and disciple younger guys when you hire them kinda way.  Or in a fair trade, composting, creating communal third spaces kinda way.  But that's a vague intersection, somewhere in Greenville and my dreams.  It gets less concrete at the intersection of King and Vanderhorst.

Anyhow, I was explaining my feelings to my coworker tonight.  Actually, I was apologizing for my lack of motivation to serve.  It just didn't feel important, Kingdom bringing, difference making.  I stepped outside to straighten chairs, and while I did a guy and two girls walked in the shop.  Here's how the conversation went:

Guy & Gals: Hey, is the Christian employee here?
Coworker: Sorry, who?
G&G: You know, the guy who loves Jesus alot.
C: Oh, Drew? yeah he's outside.
G&G: Bandana?  Yep. (Noticing the leprechaun hat) I didn't realize Jesus celebrated St. Patty's Day...


Isn't that just amazing.  God knew I needed that.  Turns out, I am making an impact.  I am changing things.  I am bringing God glory, and showing people His love.*

Serving as a barista sometimes feels unfulfilling, even in a place as sweet as Kudu, with coworkers as ballin' as I have, with customers as interesting as I know.  It's hard to go from constant communal worship and prayer to doing it most days mostly by yourself.  But, it seems that the Kingdom is advancing here as well, as much as I sometimes wish I was called elsewhere.  It seems, wherever I am, the intersection between this world and that is present.  I am praying for the eyes to see it, and the heart to receive it.  And the boldness to act.




*Let it be known, many of the Kudu employees love Jesus as much and more than I do.  I respect many of them a lot, and seek guidance from them on many things.  That needs to be said- I am not the only 'one who loves Jesus alot'- far from it.  But, I appreciate it, as encouragement from God.

Nicaragua Pics

The Promised Kingdom

Bill Johnson makes an interesting parallel between the Israelites entering the Promised Land through the Jordan River and the Christian's baptism in the Holy Spirit.  Both, he claims, are second baptisms; both open the way into a life of victory over the enemy; both move the called from an existence of natural proportions to some kind of limitless miraculous position.  After the Jordan, the Israelites capture cities with trumpets and pots.  They march around defenses until they collapse.  A land of milk and honey.  Does this new Promised Land come without struggle?  No.  Is there still hardship?  A resounding yes.  When they arrive, the Israelites are repeatedly drawn into idolatry and forgetfulness.  They have always been an encouragement to me- for some reason God keeps calling them back.  Nonetheless, something is different about this land.  They are given cities already built, farms already established, trees already bearing fruit. (If anyone has ever tried to plant a fruit tree, this is a big deal.  Usually it takes years before anything is produced.)

Since the beginning of the year, a verse from Genesis has been taped to my bathroom mirror.  God speaks to Abraham and says, "Go, walk the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you."  There's a kind of playfulness to it.  Go ahead, explore, wander, wonder, dream.  I'll give it to you.  One of those resounding passages, reverberating in my gut like some old church bell chiming nine o'clock.  If you believe in heaven (which I do), it's a good discipline, that of wandering and dreaming, of rejoicing in what's to come.

But when Joshua enters the Promised Land, God says it another way.  He says "Everywhere your foot treads, I have given it to you."  Notice, God changes the tense.  God speaks of the promised land as something accomplished.  Bill Johnson takes this to mean that we have some kind of spiritual authority wherever we go to claim the presence of God's kingdom, and make it evident with miracles and that sort of thing.  In our baptism into Jesus, we have the future hope of glory.  In the Spirit, we have the present reality of God.

I like the concept, but honestly, I don't usually feel like the Kingdom is here.  It didn't feel like the kingdom when I walked into Muddy Waters to write this morning.  It honestly didn't feel like it last night in worship either.  But, during worship, I prayed for a woman's foot, and she felt it grow warm as I prayed, made more interesting when she told me she was icing it.  God at work.

I want emotional evidence to corroborate what God claims.  But he doesn't say to wait for that.  He doesn't say wherever your foot treads while you feel heroic, that land I have given to you.  He says, very practically, wherever you step.  Jesus doesn't say, the Kingdom is within you when your gut feels like a spring day in Charleston, or a snowy hike in the mountains.  He says it's there. Period.

Sometimes I think the Kingdom will not be present, manifest, until my heart is where it needs to be.  And by that I mean, until my heart feels near to God, feels righteous, feels an awareness of God's call, His presence*.  But Jesus claims a reality of intimacy that disregards our feelings**.

God told Joshua, "Everywhere your foot treads, I have given it to you."  Did the ground feel different?  Did his feet?  I doubt it.  Fundamentally, the Promised Land was not about feeling, but about walking.  It was putting weight in feelings (doubt, fear) that drove Moses back into the wilderness.

I don't think the Kingdom is about feelings either.  And establishing our steps on our feelings can drive us away, too.  Pray for me, as I leave for Nicaragua on Saturday (for a week with St. Andrews), that I would act in faith, not feelings.  Pray for wisdom to know the difference, particularly when leading worship and as we visit a local high school Wednesday morning.  I'll keep you posted, if I can.  If not, as soon as I get back.


---

* I am NOT saying that my heart can be in active, unrepentant sin and manifesting the kingdom of God.  More that I don't have to be perfect to live into the priesthood.  I didn't have to be perfect to get in- what makes me think I have to be perfect to keep moving?

** In John 14:7 and John 20:22 Jesus declares intimacy, sometimes even while noting their ignorance towards it.