Unafraidness

Jesus wasn’t ever afraid to express the way he was affected by people and his circumstances. He wasn’t ever afraid.

Thursday of this week was our last day traveling to Seattle and our first day arriving. My emotions were at times boiling over with fear and frustration and other times bottled up behind fear of who I know I can be when those emotions take over.

So, after 2200 miles plus driving, a week of being in different beds while longing for our own, missing heart friends and seeing only unfamiliar faces, and looking forward to an unknown (and often scary) future, I almost broke down completely at Palouse Falls State Park in Washington.

I am with my favorite people in the world in some of the most beautiful places in the world and I am emotionally stunted, frustrated and not present. The reflected Beauty of the falls can’t move my immovable heart. My wife and daughter pick up on how I am feeling and decide just to let me be so I don’t overreact towards them.

The hardest thing of all: I am completely aware of all of this. I am completely aware of my sinful self-absorption and how my faith-drained thoughts are fueling my emotional disconnectedness.

These are not my finest moments.

On my mind the entire time is Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

If I am “crucified with Christ” and “Christ lives in me” then why am I still a man who can get to this place?  Where is his power not to live this way? Where is his power not to be afraid and, even better, to live in Jesus’ unafraidness?

I guess you call that “faith.” Unafriadness is called faith.

Somehwere between Palouse Falls and the Columbia River on I-90, considering these precious words from Paul’s letter, the Spirit took me to the heart of it: I know how much we need the Father to come through in so many ways, but I do not always believe he will come through. Desperation with out the feeling of hope.

I turned to my sweet wife and shared these things with her and, for the first time in too long, I started to cry. Not the kind that makes our faces look different the rest of the day, but the kind that helps me express the deepest part of what I am feeling: I want to live trusting Jesus.

The kind of trust that sees the deep need in front of us and rests in knowing that, if the Father didn’t spare his Son, how will he hold back anything else that is good? (see Rom 8:31-32)

What if I could stop striving (especially on the inside) and willfully let go and hold on to the One who made promises to us because of who we are in Christ?

What if the crucified life is not even a life of trying to stir up preciously small amounts of faith, but living out Jesus’ very own faith?

As missionary to inland China, Hudson Taylor once wrote to his sister:

“All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was-how do I get it out…I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it in my puny branch was the question…I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has not He promised to abide with me- never to leave me, never to fail me?”

Jesus was never afraid to express himself because he knew, not that he had it altogether (which he did, but that’s another story), but because he knew the Father was with him. He trusted the Father by the Spirit to shape his responses to people and to circumstances.

He knew he wasn’t alone in engaging the world and loving people. 

So my heart question is “what would our lives look like if we lived Jesus’ faith and didn’t rely on our own?” How would we feel waking up and what would we see in people as we passed them on the street? How would my words be more gentle…or more confrontative?

I want the kind of life where I no longer live, but I know Christ lives in me…and can rest in that. Where all of life is rest, and that is where my Savior shows his glory in ways that make us all marvel.

My Moment of Pagan Worship

We spent the afternoon outside of Moab, Utah at Arches National Park. The short story is that there is way too much to see in the park and around Moab for one afternoon. ​Way. Too. Much. I kept telling my wife how much I wish I was bigger to be able to understand all of the beauty we got to see. God forbid that we ever get bored with the glory reflected in creation!

I wonder if we will have the "bigness" to understand God's beauty in things like Arches National Park in the new heavens and the new earth. 

There was something else that rose up in me too: covetousness. I don't like that word because I'm not exactly sure what it fully means or how to say it. (covet-chus-ness?)

On the trail to the "Delicate Arch" in the Park, I was overwhelmed with a desire to have the means to buy stuff to play like this all of the time. We hiked along the same path with people who bought expensive stuff to go exploring with their family. I longed for that too. I longed for it too much. I longed for lesser things (like a high end hiking backpack to carry my daughter) in a weak moment.

At that moment, I tasted how easy it would be for me to treasure the things of the world at the expense of the Creator of those things. Being outside, playing in God's world seems to breathe new life into me, but it can also be the path to pagan idolatry. Subtly exchanging the treasure of the Beauty of Christ in his creation for a (falsely) beautiful Lesser thing. (See Romans 1:24-25 for more on that)

So, for a few moments I was a pagan today. Or at least I felt like one. 

I often try to force out this type of sinfulness by doubling up my resolve against it. That doesn't work. It never has, but I will foolishly keep trying, I'm sure.

What does "work" is something only the Spirit can do: give us a deeper, broader love for something (ahem, "someone") more beautiful. I long for the day when we get to play on earth as we were meant to, but with no desire to worship creation.  Those will be days when we will be "big" enough to see and grasp the Source of all Beauty as he plays alongside us in his Creation.

There, by the Delicate Arch and thousands of other breathtaking places, we will love him for the beauty he created and for the scars that remind us of the beauty of his heart.

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." C.S. Lewis

"If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." (Colossians 3:1-2 ESV)