Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.” (John 11:25-6)
What an amazing promise! Isn’t death ultimately our greatest source of fear? Dying before we’re ready, without having lived the good life, or fulfilling our dreams, or making a difference? Dying and not knowing what lies beyond death?
It’s not our only source of fear, of course. But it forms early in our lives (as soon as we feel death’s sting in our circle), builds, and generally keeps its hold on us. It doesn’t typically shout for our attention like a fear of heights or spiders, but it quietly shapes what we think, how we act, who we become. I am dying. Slowly or quickly, my life will end; what will the rest of it be like, will I experience enough happiness and excitement and fulfillment, what will I be known for, and what … thereafter? The fear is uncomfortable, so most of the time we stuff it out of the way, pretending it doesn’t exist. Yet fear steadily feeds discontentment.
But what if we really believe this promise of Jesus? What if I trust deeply that I will never die.
Isn’t it the case that this fear – whether subtle or stark – can be relieved and even dismissed? A deep trust in living forever enables and encourages me to live at any moment as though today, tomorrow, and the rest of “this life” (the life as I know it) is only a minuscule blink in the much grander life offered to me. And this perspective, in turn, tells me to love without fear of being un-loved in return, to trust without fear of it being misplaced and betrayed, to be generous without fear of running out. This trust drives out fear and instead facilitates deep joy.
And what is the price of this fear-dispelling serum, this trust in life forever? Live in Jesus and believe in Jesus. A clear formula. Seven total words. Two actions. One focus.
I am a sinner. I choose, repeatedly, to sin against the wishes and directions of our father, God. I do this because in my heart I want to be God.
I am also, though, a created child of God. And unfathomably, despite my sinning, God loves me. He loves me so much that he will – he did – offer to redeem me from the exile and death that I chose by claiming godliness. He made the path for redemption that I couldn’t make on my own.
But if we want redemption, we have to confront a paradox:
On the one hand, this redemption is offered “for free” by God. It costs me absolutely nothing in the sense of having to “work for”, or “earn” it.
In another respect, though, it will cost me my very life – at least, the life I have come to think of as mine. I must give up believing I am God, claiming to be God, wanting to be God.
Superficially, we may think it’s no big deal to give up “wanting to be God”. In fact, this is extraordinarily difficult for me. Even though I don’t necessarily think of it as a quest for God-liness, I have invested so much into trying to be in charge – to define and control my life. And today, perhaps more than ever, this is what culture around us insists that we can and should do. So abandoning this quest for control, and giving up so much of what I have invested my life into, feels a lot like giving up my life.
I can, of course, opt out of this difficult path. But then I discover this irony: if I cling to that life with me “in control”, with me “as God” – ultimately I am guaranteed to lose it. Since that life is premised on the delusion that I am God, it can never become reality.
I’m going to suggest that you too likely are a sinner. You too likely want to be God.
God loves you every bit as much as he loves me. He provides us with the same offer of redemption, on the same terms. He loves us whether we accept or reject his offer, but he can only free us from our exile, pain, and death if we give up the delusion that we are, or can be, or should be, God.
Delusion invariably is built on falsehoods. We need to reject the lies and identify truth. Repeatedly focus on truth, and delusion loses its grip.
Truth: God alone is God.
Truth: God loves you. God loves me.
Truth: God offers us redemption from the chaos and pain that flow from our delusion of Godliness.
Truth: To accept God’s offer, we must relinquish our false claim to the throne and recognize God as God.
And God reminds us that, since you and I are alike in the most important of ways (his love, our sin, his offer of redemption), we are siblings. And we are to love one another.
Our problem is that we want the revival, but we want it for free.
Or at least, we aren’t keen to pay the price on the tag. It seems so expensive – demanding our time, our commitment, and most painful of all, our relinquishment of what we think is control. We like so damn much (yes, literally, damn much!) to believe we have this freedom to choose and that it is ours to wield and to defend. And you, God, stay firm in your demand that we turn over this treasure, in exchange for this thing called revival! You stubbornly insist that we will not see and dispense your glorious power unless we first, and earnestly, and repeatedly, kneel to you. Follow you. Abide in you.
You make clear that spending time with you, really in your presence, is the only way we may hear your whispered guidance. Our demands that you talk to us – do you not hear them? Do you hear, but not listen? Or do you weep, watching us bang our heads on the proverbial wall over and over again? Do you think, “if only they would listen…”?
Oh, but Lord, I know that you also make it possible for us. You are patient like no other, and you invite us to sit with you, and invite again, and again. And you offer us your peace that surpasses understanding. And if we accept, you help us to learn the value of this so-called freedom and control that we cherish. Fool’s gold. Crumbling, useless rubbish. And though we need to re-learn it again and again, you give us that opportunity.
You know how sometimes you don’t really hear the lyrics of a song until the fifty-third time you’ve listened to the song? You like the tune, you sing along with the chorus (or at least the first line of the chorus, because that’s all you really know) and then you mumble-hum along using your inside voice while your brain focuses on traffic and what awaits at the office or at home or how how you really should stop eating potato chips. And then, bam, the words coming out of the speaker collide on just the right neural freeway in your head and you think, “hey – that’s good, that’s right, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking but haven’t quite put into words!”
A neural freeway collision of that sort, along with some added musings, occurred to me recently while driving, as I listened to Casting Crowns’ “What if I Gave Everything?”
“But I don’t want to live that way I don’t want to look back someday On a life that never stepped across the line So why am I still standing here? … What if I gave everything To you? What if I gave everything? What if I stop holding back From you?”
And along with thinking, “yeah, what if?”, right about there is when Ananias and Sapphira popped into my mind. Wait – what? You mean the story in Acts, about the couple who lied about how much of their proceeds they had given to the young church, and were struck dead? The story that makes many of us look a little bit over our shoulders, because it sounds like one heck of a harsh response to folks who were, after all, supporters of the church who gave a whopping big donation if you think of it in offering-plate terms? The story that pastors and church officials are, for the most part, quick to clarify: it’s about their dishonesty, not about amount of giving. Don’t say – don’t pretend – that you’re giving all the proceeds, if that’s not true. Don’t try to lie to God. It might get you killed.
And it occurred to me, what if there’s more to the story than that? What if there’s a lesson here that goes beyond admonishing us not to test God or lie to him in our hearts? What if it’s a parable about where “holding back” leads? What if it also hearkens back to the falling of Adam and Eve, in their act of taking something that wasn’t permitted – that wasn’t for them? What if … if our refusal to give it all (back) is another way of saying “I recognize you as God over most things, God, but I’M still claiming to be god over this.”
What if the additional message we received from this parable was simple, blunt, and more than a little bit uncomfortable: holding back from me, God, leads to death. Maybe not in this life. Maybe not by being struck down in front of fellow “disciples” in dramatic fashion. Maybe only when we’re called to account in the ultimate performance review – when God asks us to explain how we’ve loved him and loved others. Even if we’re honest (unlike our predecessors in Acts) and admit we only gave it 80%, or only loved God by going to church and doing daily devotions and periodic small group, and loved our neighbors by … well, some of our neighbors, because some of them didn’t want our love, or deserve it, or … but anyway sometimes we gave good chunks of money, and stopped to change a tire, and made some meals for those in mourning. Not perfect, but better than most people, I’d guess. Maybe that’s when God says, “But I told you to love me with all of your heart, and all of your mind, and all of your soul.” And I told you to love your neighbor as you love yourself – did you hold back your love for you when you were petty, mean, distracted? And if your heart still holds back from me and what I ask of you, why should you join me in Heaven – in LIFE? How could you be trusted not to again steal the fruit in an act of ‘me first”, because you don’t really trust me, God’?
Or maybe, although we are saved by grace and promised eternity in Heaven by our faith in Christ, real life here and now comes only if and when we stop holding back little pieces of ourselves from God. We can be generous – even extravagant – with our resources, but if we hold back from God little fiefdoms that we claim as ours by right of some entitlement, aren’t we perpetuating our claim to be like God? And isn’t that exactly what got us relocated from Eden to this life that has more than a few nasty thistles in it?
What if “giving everything” was recognized as simply giving everything back, and relinquishing this claim to any entitlement to be like God? What if giving everything we have to God was the way to avoid both death and living a life that is dead?
Lord … YOU alone are God. Everything is from you. Everything is yours. I am yours and EVERYTHING of mine is not mine but yours.
What if … I stop holding back from you? Is this more than just a way to live a better life? Is this what I need to do, to have life?
You alone are God. You are the creator of everything.
Everything, everything, comes from you and belongs to you. You are without limits. You are good – good beyond the understanding of me or of any other human. In your goodness, you gave to us the power to create and freedom to make choices. Even the freedom to choose “no” to you, “yes” to me, and “my will not thy will be done”. Even the freedom to be horribly, catastrophically wrong. And you did that, despite knowing very well that I – that each of us – would choose to abuse this power. We take the serpent’s bait, over and over and over.
But also in your goodness, in your omnipotence, you provided a way back to you. You saw the death in our choices, and giving of yourself you provided a new path to life. You gave your only begotten son, who invited us to “follow me” on his lonely, deathpath walk to Calvary, to put to death our old life and be born into a new one. And in doing so, you again affirmed your unfathomable love for us. You love us, and want nothing more than for us to say “yes” to the life you offer – a life of original freedom, newly rediscovered freedom, found ironically in relinquishing our illegitimate claim to control.
And if, if we change our “no” to a “yes”, we discover the miracle of the tree of life growing within us. Not an object to behold, not a fruit to be stolen, but life from the source of life itself.
Father, let me grow close. Let me abide in you. Help me to be still and tap your living water. Help me learn to trust and not to try daily to steal control. And let me be a vessel from which others too, can find the life you give.
Thank you Jesus. Thank you Holy Spirit. Thank you Father.
I choose to assert that I am god, every time I choose my will over His will.
Can that really be right? Didn’t God give us free will, and if so, then how can it be offensive to God for us to act in the way he designed? Maybe the question can be asked a different way: is there a responsible, respectful way to assert the talents and gifts that God has given me, while not crossing the line into disobedience and acting like I am god?
I think, perhaps, that although sometimes God’s will for my life might be very specific, most times it’s more general, more about principles, more about motives, more about my heart. Sometimes He may nudge me to do or say something particular (“hey, you need to go help that person do this particular thing!”, or “you should pray for and with that person…”). And choosing not to do or say that thing is a form of disobedience. But, maybe more often, what God wills is that I act with a pure heart, in his image.
If I go about my day-to-day activities in a way that honours God and that sits on a foundation that says God is my good King whom I wish to please, that’s a good start. That perspective may not help me choose a red car versus a white car, or even whether to accept a job offer when we’re wrestling with a decision. But it should help us “decide” between harbouring prejudices and loving strangers as fellow humans. It should give us guidance in our approach to problems: do we react to a situation out of fear, or judgement, or pride, or do we (by starting with the perspective that we honour God by following Jesus’ lead) act fearlessly, assertively but lovingly, humbly but filled with God-given confidence?
If I get into the habit of acting “with a pure heart”, beginning with the premise that everything I have comes from and “belongs” to our loving, creating father God, isn’t this also a means to tap into a clearer channel for his direction? “Not my will, but yours.” What if we started every plan, every journey, every action, every thought – with that premise? And, if we put that into the context of our original relationship – our condition in Eden – does it give shape to this duality of our will within his will? If we:
Recognize God alone as God
Acknowledge all as his
Acknowledge God as Good
Repent (yes, the “R”-word) from our sins – sins that foundationally involve trying to take god-hood from God
Submit – willingly, lovingly say yes to obedience
Accept God’s unfathomable love for us
Understand what he gives us and offers us
Recognize that we not only don’t need more, but that to assert our need for more is to reject him, his love, his gifts, his strength
“Abide” in him – spend time listening to God and talking to him; bow our knee to Jesus, our risen King; hang out with the Holy Spirit as we go about our days, both busy and quiet ones
If we do these things, will we find ourselves on the same “wavelength” again as God, with direction being clear? Will peace, above all, become our perspective? Would this bring us closer to a reality wherein “Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”?
And what would this look like if, instead of a single individual’s medicine, it became a prescription for a broken world? Could we regain a new Eden, if we gave back what we illegitimately coveted and stole? How close would we be if, collectively, we repented and acknowledged everything about you, God, that is true?
Remember all those times – and you know they are many – when you longed and even prayed for just a little time away from others, a little time to sit on your own in silence, a little time when overdue work and family demands and the need for groceries and a nagging obligation to respond to messages weren’t hanging over you like gloomy, heavy, late-winter weather? You imagined, perhaps, just sitting in a favorite or dreamed-of place, with coffee or tea or cold drink in hand, in silence and solitude. Push a little further and imagine if that scenario could be guilt-free. You’re not there on a momentary escape from the “real” world obligations, leaving kids or job-duties to be fulfilled by others (or un-done, growing uglier and more overwhelming with time ignored). You’re there with complete permission – even direction. You’ve been ordered to sit still, alone, and told that even if the world turns upside-down, you’re not to invade others’ space to help them nor seek their company to commiserate.
Maybe your fantasy involves an all-expense paid trip to a deserted island for a day or a week. “I just need to get away from it all … just for a little while.”
The nightmare happening around the world today is no dreamy fantasy. It centers around sickness and death; it’s bringing fear everywhere; it’s upending and maybe even destroying much about our way of life as we know it, as we collectively shut down, pull up drawbridges and fortify our castles big and small, and pray “when will it end?” This isn’t a fantasy; it’s a nightmare.
But…
Yes, “but”.
But… perhaps there’s something we can take advantage of within this nightmare. Not in a way that exploits others, but as the “silver lining” we long to find in every cloud.
What if we chose to receive a mandate to “isolate” and “social distance” ourselves from others as a rare opportunity to pull up a chair and draw near to someone guaranteed not to have a virus? Amidst very real and heartfelt pandemic fears and preservation-focused actions, what if we were given real permission to “take a moment” with God – permission in the most freeing sense possible? We must remain isolated from others, or at least most others. We must remain at home. We can work, but our tendency to escape to work or idolize our work is broken with the shattering of our office-centered routine. We have – almost eerily – we have time on our hands. Netflix isn’t doing it for us, at least not all of the time.
The unfamiliar and uncomfortable emptiness that we feel – what if we let it pull us, like a great Star Trek-ian tractor beam, toward the quietest, most isolated corner we can find. And sit. Or even better, kneel. And, with no-one else around, in our quietest whisper, say, “Hi God. It’s me. Can we talk?”