The Gift of Your Needs

The church needs you.  And not just because you have a particularly useful set of talents (though you do), nor just because God has made you uniquely to fill a particular role (though he has).

The church needs you, because you have needs.

I have several friends who suffer from depression, who are in despair, who see within themselves no capacity to pour out and no desire to serve.  They are trapped in themselves.  Depression is a self-centered position, entirely introspective and implosive.  I oft' times live in melancholy, and depression is never far from me.  My senior year of college was by far the darkest season of my life (thus far), and for nine or ten months I idled in depression.  Occaisionally I shifted into first or second gear, serving or worshipping or writing.  But generally, I 'rested' in fear and anxiety.  And if I'm not careful, I can slip into anxiety again, in but a moment's time.  Because, I am self-centered, self-concerned and introspective.  God is teaching me how to step out of that, how to love and worship and look outward, not inward.  But it's a slow process.  Time, the ultimate tool in the Lord's sanctifying workshop.

Smack dab in the middle of my depression, I interned at a church in Greenville.  God used my community there the push me out of my self and into gratitude.  I hated it.  But, they were right in many ways.  Though I felt nothing, I had to choose.  Though I perceived nothing, I was called to worship.  Faith in darkness: another blog, for another day.

At the end of my internship, we took a trip to the beach, and shared what we had discovered as each other's greatest strengths, our greatest gifts to the community.  I was ready to hear that, perhaps I was a great encouragement, that I had excellent discernment or wisdom.  But instead, the group almost unanimously agreed that I was the greatest single force for unity in our community.  Why?

Because I was a mess.  I cried, I groveled, I was vulnerable.  I knew that I was in a horrible state, and I laid it all out before the community.  I begged for help, I asked for advice, I complained, I whimpered in despair.  And in doing so I provided the church with an opportunity to do God's work.  They prayed with me, encouraged me, prayed without me for me.  They loved me with creativity, and they rallied around me.

And somehow, in the midst of the catastrophic spirals of my existential doubts, my weakness became a strength for the group.  My total ineptitude became a blessing to the community.  My depression strengthened the church.

This puts 1 Corinthians 12 in a different light for me.  God's strength was made perfect in my weakness.  How?  His strength was manifest, made present to both me and my community, in the work and love of my church.  And, as God used them, they were grown, and strengthened, and unified, and encouraged.

The church needed me for my needs.

When you feel least able to serve, least able to be a blessing, least able to offer anything good at all, offer your weakness.  Offer your hopelessness.  Offer your needs.  As you allow the church to minister to you, whether you feel encouraged or not, you bless the community.  For in your weakness, hopelessness, needs, God's power in the church is made perfect.  The church is refined, gifts honed, compassion deepened.  Don't waste your despair; don't be the 'noble' martyr, suffering alone.*  Counter-intuitive though it may be, keeping your troubles to yourself is a selfish thing, for it robs the church of it's work.  Let us bear one another's burdens, and so better know the ministry and nature of our God who has already borne them.  Let us offer the church the gift of our needs.

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*The position of noble, solitary martyr has already been filled, that you might be fully incorporated into His body.  Don't cheat His body of the opportunity to serve you, for it is part of His desire in placing you within it.

Growth and Easy Answers

I long to give quick answers when group discussion births questions that I have wrestled with myself.  I want to interrupt, speak truth, and move on.  None of this dilly-dallying, let's get to the point and grow and push forward into the next thing.  In some cases I can probably answer more accurately, with scripture, than most folks in a group, simply because I've done my time on that particular issue, and have some conclusions that have been affirmed in me, in scripture and experience.  I have vision for conclusion, and so want to see it reached.

Aside from the arrogance clear in that thought process, the immediate provision of an answer holds two great faults.  First, it denies the community the opportunity to become the body of Christ to itself, and second because it removes the quickening presence of tension that drives much of our desire to pursue the Lord and His righteousness.  Thus, I am learning to not jump to share answers, but instead to press into questions.  Greenleaf talks about questions as the key to building corporate vision, and I think he's on to something.  Questions, the right ones, can best be used to build holy discomfort and spark true desire.

How often the Lord engages us with a question- Where are you? What are you doing here, Elijah? Can these bones live?  From whence came John's baptism?  Who do you say that I am?  Why do you persecute me, Saul?  Who is worthy to open the scroll?  These questions set our hearts on fire.  They reframe our thoughts, not on our experience but on the kingdom of God, with its own ethics and physics and wisdom.

Questions, by definition, lack resolution.  Our culture has trained us to reach the end as quickly and easily as possible.  Unanswered questions are bad, answers are good, all hail wikipedia.  Yet this focus on resolution denies the relational benefit of process.  Let me explain.

Think of someone lifting weights, repeating the same motion over and over.  The 'goal' is to lift the barbell from one position to another- yet the 'purpose' is not the newly-achieved height of the barbell, but what is gained in the process.  Similarly, the life of faith is not a matter of achieving ends or reaching certain points, but of relationship with the Lord.  Case in point: most evangelicals would say that eternal life is to get into heaven, but Jesus says that eternal life is to know the Father.  It is not the end result but the relationship that moves us towards the end upon which Jesus focusses.

So, I ask you the question- does the way you structure your church, your gathering, allow for relationship with the Father, or simply reaching conclusions?  Is it only about teaching truth, that people may accept and believe, or is it about engaging hearts with the heart beat of God, that they may, as Hosea writes, know and press on to know the Lord.  Know and press on to know, both.

Teaching is a massive tool in the belt of the church, absolutely.  Truth is not relative, but is universal, clearly.  But Jesus taught within experiences and often did not give the easy answers even when they existed.  He let questions sit, let theology jumble, let minds explode.  Because he was not as interested with His people assenting to doctrines as He was with nurturing His relationship with them, knowing that true relationship with the Father will produce true doctrine.

I am learning that the presence of vision does not require reaching the end, but pursuing it.  For, if faith is primarily discipleship, walking with the Lord and learning from His yoke, then it is not the conclusion that matures us, but the walking.

Or, to quote the ever-wise Ashley twins, half of the adventure is getting there.  You can thank my sisters for that one.