What We Ignored About the Chik-Fil-A...Thing

I had lunch with my mom today, and God love her, she is the wisest, silliest woman I know. We laughed over her story about forgetting a close family friend's name. And caught up on family news. And then of course talked about things that have been important to us in the last couple weeks.

I did not participate in any way with the Chik-Fil-A...thing. I wanted to think and be rational and not jump into a misguided protest. And after talking to Mom, I'm glad I didn't.

I have a lot of GLBT friends. And I love each of them dearly. Their friendship is partly responsible for forming the woman I am today. And I would never dream of hurting them.

So all this controversy over supporting or boycotting a Christian organization has confused me a little, because that's not the point. Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Matthew 22:37-40)

I didn't see a lot of love going on - of God or of neighbors. And then Mom pointed out another verse that I'm familiar with but had never read the way she did: "[If] My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Mom said, "That doesn't say, 'All you dirty sinners get saved and then I'll fix everything.' It says if MY people who are called by MY name will HUMBLE themSELVES and pray and seek My face and turn from THEIR wicked ways, then I will hear. He's talking to Christians."

And she's right! The church - the body of Christ - we're proud! We're full of our own goodness and our support of ridiculous campaigns. And all around us, the world is groaning with sickness, poverty, and pain.

What makes my heart heavy, though, is this: God still hasn't gotten our attention. We still have not humbled ourselves before Him and begged His forgiveness for our shiny arrogance. And the body of Christ is suffering for it. A sweet young couple's first baby is stillborn. A gentle, loving mother of four girls is dying of cancer. A brave wife is struggling with illness. A new husband is fighting to make a living.

Brothers and sisters, if ever it were time, the time is now. We cannot defy God and defy His Word and expect Him to bless us. The church is as sinful as the world - we struggle to tell them apart. Father! Forgive us!

From whom every family derives its name.

Dave and I were married 2 weeks ago in a beautiful ceremony performed by our counselor. Hayne read Ephesians 3 to us, and it turns out that several well-wishers penned it in their cards, too. I hadn't read it in the context of a marriage before, but now - as a wife - I believe I'll come back to it over and over:


"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted andgrounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
"Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."

Voices from the past are often clearer in the present.

This is the same idea as "Hindsight is 20/20." Oswald has hit the mark again.

He quotes Luke, when the disciples are standing around on the third day wondering where on heaven and earth Jesus has got to and why He hasn't shown up like He said He would. Two of them are walking to Emmaus and discussing recent events. A mysterious traveler joins them, asks what they're talking about, and they say, "We were hoping it was Jesus who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Then some women told us His body wasn't in the tomb anymore, and we're all amazed. He said He would rise again. But we haven't seen Him and are beginning to wonder if it was all true." The men didn't realize they were talking to Jesus Himself. They were dejected and feeling the eyes of the known world watching their belief in their Savior crumble.

Oswald says, "Every fact that the disciples stated was right; but the inferences they drew from those facts were wrong. Anything that savours of dejection spiritually is always wrong. If depression and oppression visit me, I am to blame; God is not, nor is anyone else." Really, you should just read the whole thing and come back to this blog...otherwise I'm going to end up copying and pasting the whole article: My Utmost for His Highest, February 7.

What I mean in the blog title by "voices from the past" is this: (and do pardon my writing today - it's Monday, and I'm struggling) Last year (almost exactly a year ago), I was dejected and physically sick over a decision I knew I had to make. And my friends - every last one of my friends - were telling me to do the same thing (the opposite of what I wanted to do). I was asking God (literally - crazy prayers) for a billboard with what I should do. Through it all, I missed the point that I was chasing the answers to my prayers, instead of the God Who answers prayer. If I had cleared my mind of what I wanted to hear and listened to the voices around me, I would have found that they were advising me to do what our Father wanted for me.

It's a slow journey, isn't it?

As the rope frays, we get rather frantic.

The inimitable Joshua Rogers has done it again. (Go read "Dear Jesus, I am a Loser," then come back here for my follow-up remarks.)


No, really. Do it.


And if you want to read some of his other posts, you should. It's ok, I'll wait. (But please come back!)


So. Prayer is a frequent topic here, because (as I've said before) I suck at it. And I was just wondering about this idea of telling God every last dirty detail of how I really feel when I read Josh's blog.


The sad part of my story is that it generally takes weeks of the tidy, righteous prayers before I get to the end of my rope and start saying things like, "God! I can't do this anymore! I can hardly stand x, y, and z!" And then the truth comes out.


It's a messy situation. I've been hanging on to my dirty old rope for dear life, watching the point where it's rubbing begin to splinter, repeating my pretty, rote prayers. As the rope frays, I get more frantic and more honest. This is where the Father's wanted from me to be from the beginning - total surrender to Him.


By that point, I'm hoping for a miracle - I need fast-acting relief. I need the Claritin solution. But even God knows that drugs are never the answer: He wants me to learn something from this desperate situation, and He knows that if He gives me my miracle, I'll just repeat the whole scene next week.


So He waits. And He comforts me, but He tells me to wait on His timing.


Here's what I'm supposed to learn (and am only just now getting): If in the very beginning I will be open and honest and ugly in my prayers, the solution will come, the dangling will be less frightening, and my faith will be strengthened. Instead of waiting till I've reached my breaking point, I need to immediately pray with a loose tongue and an exposed heart. (I can feel my Father smiling and nodding: Well, that took a while, but she got it, guys!)


We're silly, fragile little creatures, aren't we? But oh, how He loves us!

We wait impatiently and with anticipation.

The boyfriend and I have been talking a lot lately about trusting God's perfect will in our lives, and stepping back out of the way to let Him do what He's got planned. And as we talk, those lessons I learned last year are bubbling to the surface again. My faith in God is increased by remembering how many giants He's killed in my past. And my joy is returning (I vaguely remember saying months ago that something just wasn't quite right in my heart). It's good to be reminded.


And then Oswald does it again. I've been praying a lot about getting myself out of the way in order to let God in (which is very hard to do on your own, you should know). He says the one thing that keeps us from God is us. But this last paragraph caught my heart in the anticipation of God's handiwork in my life:


"Any problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any problem, and there are many, that is alongside me while I obey God, increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing."

This smacks of fairy tale - and I love it.

Our story - as wandering into redeemed children of our Father God - is the best fairy tale story ever. Except that it's real. I think it's the story, the basis for all other stories, the heart of story.


And if my redemption story is a fairy tale - and Jesus is my Knight in shining armor, truly - then every love story is a dim reflection of the first love story.


It's funny, though - if I'm a princess, and my Knight in shining armor has already swept in and stolen my heart, why do I not live like a princess who is the center of her Knight's life? My life should reflect the grace and wealth and calm of a daughter of the King: I should be quick to love, quick to give and help, quick to soothe, quick to honor responsibility. And all this should flow out of the glorious knowledge that I am loved - truly and deeply and for every fiber of my being but especially for my heart.


As my every day life is beginning to change, I'm understanding more clearly how my Father sees me. And that tiny glimpse into His unfathomable heart has already undone me. Walls and reservations and fears that I didn't even know I was harboring are breaking up and drifting away. I'm also discovering just how deep the wounds of my past are, how jaggedly they have healed, how much pain they still manage to create in me.


Daddy,
As I follow You down this new and long-awaited path, I ask that Your heart beat within and around mine. Drench me in comprehension, compassion, and passion as Your Son's love drenched Him in blood. May those who look on at my life marvel at the difference in my love for them and for You. Father, though it hurts, continue bringing the unreachable places of my heart to the light. Heal them in Your perfect and gentle time. Assuage my fears; fight fiercely, Lord - save my heart and mind from the black darkness. Oh, my Rescuer, I owe You my life - take it; it is Yours.
Amen.

I cannot teach you how to pray in words.

Prayer again. 

I'm going to try and learn to do it by sheer dint of determination. My Dear Roommate suggested praying together in the mornings before work, and I jumped. I want to also start reading at night before I go to bed. It's just the in-between-times that I struggle with.

Dad has been sweet - He's given me music (which is a form of prayer, as long as it doesn't become background noise). The song "Oh How He Loves" has been a kind of anthem for me lately (and a lot of other people, it would seem). And this morning, first thing on Pandora was Relient K (I heart Relient K... could explain, but I'll save it for later):

Cause I’ve been housing all this doubt and insecurity,

and I’ve been locked inside this house - all the while You hold the key.
And I’ve been dying to get out and that might be the death of me.
And even though there’s no way of knowing where to go, I promise I’m going because
I gotta get outta here.
Cause I’m afraid that this complacency is something I can’t shake.
I gotta get outta here, 
And I’m begging You, I’m begging You, I’m begging You to be my escape.

That's the feeling I've had for weeks - I'm stuck inside myself, and there's nothing there but desert sand, a bound-less sea of nothing. I haven't cried in ages, and the image that comes to mind is a heart of stone. I've been afraid - afraid that this complacency is something I can't shake. And fear (wait, this is sounding familiar) has kept me from asking the One Who can help. *Sigh... we're slow learners, aren't we?

Kahlil Gibran, On Prayer:

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

I cannot teach you how to pray in words.

But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart,
And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,
"Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.
It is thy desire in us that desireth.

It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also.
We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all."

Swim 'til you drown; Know that we all fall down.

Prayer sucks.


But only because I'm not good at it, because it's a struggle.


In reality, prayer is "more powerful than any force of nature." And like all disciplines, it takes practice, dedication.


If my hunch is right, it's something like painting: you wander around, prepping canvases and arranging paint tubes and making fussy little charcoal sketches and shifting the lighting and selecting the right background music. You hesitantly mix a color or two, touch brush to canvas, mix another color, steel yourself against walking away, and continue to touch the canvas. And suddenly, it's five hours later and your canvas is bursting with color and your heart is so involved that you don't realize the music went off, the sun went down, and you missed dinner.


When I pray, I pray for this and that, mention all my family members, bring up my singleness, and remind myself of God's sovereignty and grace, then wander into another list of little things. I know that if I were to paint every day for hours at a time, not only would it get easier to pick up the brush and touch it to canvas, but my paintings would become more structured, more inviting, more artistic. And I get the feeling that if I could just learn to pray more often, every day for hours at a time even, prayer would be less like a visit to a nursing home patient and more like painting, or making love, or a white water kayaking trip.


I don't know this for sure, but this is what I hear some people saying, and a voice in my heart says, "That is true."