exposed

I do not like who I see sometimes when I get a full look at her.

The person you see is fairly tame and in these online spaces is mostly well-behaved. She's rational about the things that trouble her deeply and though you hear her heart ache from time to time, she's mostly able to keep it together.

As these layers are burned away, I see someone else entirely. Skin and muscle peeled back, nerve endings exposed and raw, I have been coming to see who she really is -- the red and throbbing life underneath it all.

She knows trials and troubles are promised, and she knows she should endure these things as discipline. A move away from family, friends, and familiarity and mysterious health issues are refining her soul. She knows she's being taught to trust deeply in the Giver and not in the gifts themselves. She observes what she perceives to be the ease and happiness of others and thanks God for how He's blessing them.

Truth is, she loves the gifts more than the One who gives them. Trials, tedious and prolonged, have worn her down like water over a rock and make her doubt what she knows: not that He exists, but if He is good. She pouts and pines away in the hopes that she will somehow get her way. She wonders what she has done to get here (is it punishment? does she inhabit God's blind spot?) and what she could do to escape. She has considered that if it meant her circumstances would improve, she would turn her back, give it all up and try something new. She wonders what kind of God has the power to heal, but withholds it from her. She knows that He counts her tears, but protests that she'd rather not have a reason to cry them in the first place.

She is not as devoted and faith-filled as she thought she was. She is selfish and proud, desiring above all else her own comfort and happiness. She fears that this is all there is, that this is as good as it's going to get, and that she had just better get used to it.

Every time she thinks the last layer has been pulled away, He finds another, peeling it back easily as the skin of an onion. It seems to her that there is nothing left, no covering for her nakedness. And so her insides are turned out and her raw nerve-endings are exposed, unprotected. She is totally exposed, entirely vulnerable even to the most infinitesimal threat. She is afraid. He is, after all, the One who burned away her layers of protection. Will He protect her now?

She does not know what He will do next, or how He will be with her, but she knows for sure that she is something truer now than she was before. It burns and it stings, but it occurs to her: this is what changing feels like; this is the business of being made new.

repentance

Many of you know that I'm in the process of picking up my life here in Bellingham in order to move to the Seattle area, roughly 100 miles south of my current home. This means a lot of things -- not only has this meant I'm away from the blogs while I get things ready for the big move, but I'm also in the process of preparing myself for my new home. Part of that is checking out new churches.

While I still intend to remain committed to Christ the King church in Bellingham, I am in the process of checking out churches in my new area. I am aware that the day will likely come when commuting to Bellingham no longer makes sense and God calls me to become more fully integrated into church life in my new community. I've been listening to sermons online from Mars Hill Church, which has several campuses in the greater Seattle area and have gotten hooked on the most recent sermon series on the Song of Songs.

While there's only so much you can tell about a church from a podcast, I can tell you that if this is the teaching I can count on every week, then I can count on teaching that is solid, biblical, and aims straight for the heart (and maybe sometimes the jugular). It's straight from the word of God and is as convicting as ... well, you know.

This is the most recent sermon in the series on the Song of Songs that talks about confession and repentance in the context of relationships (specifically the marriage relationship). I cannot begin to describe how this series has taught me, convicted me, dug to the bottom of my soul, and inspired me to check this place out in person soon.

Note: the video is about 70 minutes, but worth every bit of it.

reflections on job: part 5 {an answer, of sorts}

The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power;
in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.
Elihu (37:23)

In the last chapter of Job, our hearts are eased as we see him restored: God tells the friends how wrong they were in their continued claims that God was punishing Job for a wrong commited. His wealth is restored. He has a new family and dies old and full of years. In my heart, I sigh relief not only to see his suffering end, but to see that he is able to enjoy the remaining years of his earthly life in peace and prosperity.

But something still niggles. Something is not quite right. In the school of knowing God, I sit in my desk and look around me shyly, tentatively. Should I just shrink back, fold my hands piously, nod and smile as the story draws to a close? I bend my elbow, drawing it in close toward my side. I raise my hand cautiously, simultaneously hoping for and dreading the prospect of the instructor calling my name. Yes? he asks, already knowing my question.

But ... um ... well ...

Yes? he asks again.

Well, I say, Job never really got an answer. I mean, he went through all this suffering. He lost everything, he got really sick, was in massive amounts of pain, and on top of that, he had to endure arguments with so called "friends" who supposedly came to comfort him, but only go eighty-seven rounds with him to tell him he's going through all this pain because he must have done something terribly wrong to offend God. I mean, he doesn't even get the assurance that it all had a purpose or meaning or anything. Everything is okay in the end, but still. He went through all that, and for what?

My instructor folds his arms, looks at the floor, and nods knowingly.

With the momentum of pent-up emotion finally being released, I continue: And what's all this business about a leviathan and the behemoth? What kind of good does that do for a man who has quite literally been through hell and has no one at all to comfort him?

My instructor stands silently, displaying a calm and collectedness that I find even more unsettling than the question I've just asked. I know that the only answer I'll receive is the same one Job received: an assertion of God as sovereign and eternal, as creator and sustainer of the universe, as master and tamer of massive beasts. He set the constellations in place and whispers to the birds when it's time to migrate. No, I was not there at creation. No, I can't tell a bird when it's time to move south. I get it.

But ... I know I have nothing to say. His answer, while not satisfying, puts me in my place. God does not answer to me. I have no case to make before him. The classroom is silent and I bow my head, looking at my folded hands through a stream of tears.

He looks me full in the face and extends a hand forward toward me, lifting a tear off my cheek with his finger.

And at once I know that His assertions of sovereignty, while they serve to show me my proper place in the scheme of things, are not to whip me into fright, nor are they a showy display of divine machismo, showing off how much bigger He is than I am. He is infinitely bigger and more powerful than I am, but every facet of his potency and his bigness is for me. He knows infinitely more than I know and sees infinitely more than I see. And even when everything I can see and feel causes me to call this relationship into question, He asks me to trust Him.

Yes, He will allow awful things to happen -- bad things, painful things, evil things, unjust things. When Satan enters the heavenly court and asks permission to have his way with us, God will permit him to afflict us. And perhaps we will never receive a satisying answer as to why. Maybe we will never see how God might redeem the pain and evil we experience, how He will work good out of something so terrible. We're asked not only to trust that He will -- we're asked to trust Him: to trust He is good and sovereign, to trust He is the first to defend our righteousness, to trust that His love for us is fierce, that He has not lost sight of us, and that we are safe in the palm of His hand. This is no small feat when the losses are compounding and there is no relief in sight.

Trust me, He says. Know me. I am good. I am for you. Look to me. I am in control of all of this. I am infinitely bigger than everything you're facing. You are safe. Even when all you can see and know and feel would tell you that it's crazy to believe it. Know me. I am good. I am for you. Look to me.

Trust me.

And that is the answer.

renewing my mind

I'm not quite done with our friend Job just yet, but I wanted interrupt our regularly scheduled posting to share with you a class that Kaari and I are taking at our church right now called The Truth Project.

The Truth Project is a 13-week video/discussion series which looks at some of the biggest and most basic questions facing us as human beings living in a world of competing philosophies and worldviews, a world that is increasingly antagonistic to God. The course is led by Del Tackett, an engaging, intelligent, and gracious instructor.

This series asks some big questions: What is truth? What do I believe? How do I know that what I believe is really real?

Here's a teaser:

What I love about this course is that it's not about rote memorization or learning the answers to get a good grade on a test. It's about inviting the kind of inner transformation that can only come about by the renewing of the mind.

reflections on job: part 4 {the mystery of God in the shadows}

I'll admit it: once upon a time, I thought Job just needed to suck it up. You know, why couldn't he basically pull himself up by his bootstraps and take it like a man? Yeah Job, I know it stinks, but it's temporary and you know this. Just trust God. I mean, how hard is that?

Add a few years, a dash of experience, a lot of tears and bake it all in the ovens of humility (fired by a few less-than-pleasant experiences of my own) and I think better of him now. Measuring sticks of suffering aside, he experienced several profound personal losses, one succeeding the other with scarcely a breath in between. After bearing the losses of his wealth, children, and property, after being afflicted with sores from his scalp to his heels, after bearing with the words of a wife who wants to see his suffering end even at the cost of rejecting God, he still offers praise. I don't know if I could do that. I think I could be pious about it all for maybe a minute, but when the reality of the loss and the pain set in, I am not sure that praise is what would rise to the surface of my soul.

In reading the text, we have the distinct advantage of having more of a bird's eye view than he did. We see God and Lucifer in conversation, the accuser bartering with God for how he might tempt Job to defy God altogether. We see and know the enemy. And we see that God really isn't at all worried about how it will turn out.

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing Job was knowledgeable about the stories of the creation and the fall of man. I'm fairly certain he knew about Adam and Eve, the deception and temptation, and how man was cut off from God with just one little bite of fruit. He must have known there was an enemy. But still, if Job's friends are any indicator, popular theology of the time sought to explain the dilemma of human suffering by stating that if you're good, God blesses you and if you sin, God punishes you. Therefore (conclude his friends), Job must have done something offensive of which he needs to repent. Nowhere in their explanation is the enemy mentioned.

It's amazing how quickly I forget what is true when my feet are to the fire. And maybe Job also lost sight of the fact that God is good and just and has our best in mind; that He is our defender and rescuer and redeemer and His eye is always upon us; that nothing that happens to us happens apart from His permission and that we are more protected and safe than we realize. And it also seems he lost sight of the fact that there's an enemy who takes the best possible advantage of the fact that we so easily forget about him.

The enemy operates in darkness and deception and trickery. He is good at averting our gazes from where they should be. He wants us to forget that there is something more true than anything else. The enemy wants us to call God into question and to place Him on the witness stand. He wants us to think God caused our pain and maybe even enjoys watching us suffer. He wants us to think that if God really loved us, He wouldn't let this happen. And if God really doesn't love us, then we may as well give up and go home. He wants us to direct our anger at God, to accuse Him of causing, allowing, and perpetuating our pain. He wants us to wonder if our lives of faith and devotion are an elaborate sham. He wants us to abandon our faith not in a quiet, unassuming way, but in a fist-shaking, screaming-match, throat-scraping, very public, broadcast-on-the-5-o'clock-news, there's-no-doubt-about-it way.

The enemy's design is to hem us in, to shorten the range of our vision until we cannot see beyond the boundaries of our own pain. In drawing our attention away from God, he takes us captive and makes us his hostages. It's like Stockholm syndrome in a way: we align ourselves with our captor, agreeing with the deceptions and doubts he drives into our hearts. Unable to retaliate in any other way, desiring to protect ourselves, we turn those doubts and deceptions into weapons and direct them at God. He's supposed to be our protector and rescuer, right? If He's so good and our pain is so bad, why does He not come and save us? And when God does not answer, our agreements with the enemy begin to take root even more deeply. It is a dark and lonely place to be and the questions and doubts continue to cut off our souls from the light of day.

I am certain that not even God would dare minimize or make light of anyone's pain. And while this may sound ridiculous at first, I believe that the only thing to do is the one thing the enemy doesn't want us to do and fix our gaze on the face of God, to know and affirm:

The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.
The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.

Psalm 145:17-18


Without knowing why and without being trite or overly pious about it, without intending to be the least bit dismissive, I believe the greatest act of defiance against our enemy is to worship our God.

Even so, a number of weighty questions remain.

God is unbearably quiet in most of the text of Job. And as I sit in my own pile of ashes in a way, I'm wondering about what I can learn from Job by turning his story over and over in my heart. I wonder what He is doing in the shadows as He listens to Job's friends all but accuse him of some vile sin time and again. I wonder what was in His heart as He watched Job scrape at his sores with bits of broken pottery. I wonder what He was thinking as Job and asked why?, over and over again. I wonder how He held himself in silence when Job requested an audience with God so Job could make his case. I wonder how His heart felt as He counted and collected Job's tears.

But He is there. He is present, hidden by the shadows. And He is not done with Job ... not yet. Not even close.

reflections on job: part 3 {asking questions & making a case}

Why is life given to a man

whose way is hidden,

whom God has hedged in?

For sighing comes to me instead of food;

my groans pour out like water.

What I feared has come upon me;

what I dreaded has happened to me.

I have no peace, no quietness;

I have no rest, but only turmoil.

Job 3:23-26

This is at the end of Job's first speech since the onslaught of his pain and loss. His friends have come to be with him and seeing how much he is suffering, sit with him on the ground in silence for seven days (2:13). Just sitting. Just being present with him. Seven whole days and nights (and we all know that when you're in the thick of it, the nights are the hardest).

These first words out of his mouth are heavy with sadness: he laments the day he was born, wondering why he did not perish at birth (3:11), or why he is given life when his days are so bitter (3:20-21). There is no rest, nor is there any escape for him in his waking or living hours; death seems to be the only way out.

His friends, being the good Jewish boys they are, seek to explain to Job his pain. A very simplistic way of summarizing their theology is that if you're good and obedient, God blesses you. If you offend God, he curses you. They tell Job that God is disciplining him and that he should evaluate himself closely and confess his sin to God, do his best to make amends and live a righteous life. Job maintains before his friends that he has not offended God, that he has not exacted any injustice. In fact, Job desires to "speak to the Almighty / and to argue my case with God" (13:3).

From chapters 3 through 31, Job and his friends go round and round with arguments and answers to arguments. Job maintains his integrity and his friends try to convince him that his suffering is God's chastisement for him. When Elihu shows up in chapter 32, he tries to put both Job and his friends in their places: his friends are unable to answer Job's arguments or prove him wrong. To Job, he says that God does no wrong or evil toward any man (34:10), but "those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; / he speaks to them in their affliction" (36:15).

If I were Job, I'd be asking: How? How is he delivering me in this suffering? From what is He delivering me? How is He speaking? God has not said a thing.

I'm struck by the fact that in this span of more than thirty chapters (and who knows how many days and nights), God is alarmingly silent. While the pain continues and while his friends argue and while Job wonders and asks and maintains his integrity, God is quiet. The suffering continues, and Job wants to make his case before God, who does not answer him. At least not yet.

This song is one that has stayed with me since I first heard it about ten years ago. There is some comfort in knowing that Christ did not spare himself from any aspect of our human lives, including suffering; in His last moments He knew what it was to feel like God had disappeared, extricated Himself from the scene completely. But even in light of this, the questions continue and we wonder why, and when it will stop. Job asked, and I think no matter what kind of suffering we face, his questions are representative of those we ask when we are hedged in, when the pain just won't stop.

Please, God. Please. Answer me.

This song has no answers. But I love that in it, the questions I'm sometimes too afraid to ask are said out loud. There's a certain not-aloneness in that, and an inherent permission to feel the same.

NOTE: For some reason, the music doesn't want to embed in the post. I've put the song over on the sidebar.


Rich Mullins
"Hard to Get"

reflections on job: part 2 {the unseen intruder}

When I read Job this time around, I did something I don't usually do when I read my Bible: I read the commentary first. I have nothing against commentators and generally trust that they are well-trained in their field of study, knowing a good deal more than me about the historical context, the intended audience, and literary devices employed in a particular text. It's just that I don't want to be told how to think of the book I'm about to read. I don't want to approach the text with a particular bias before I've even encountered it. After all, it is the Scripture that is God-breathed, not the commentary preceding it.

But like I said, I read the commentary before approaching the story of Job this time around. I'm glad I did, because the commentator reminded me of something -- and it's something that I can read and notice and comprehend on my own, but something that's easy to forget when pain is pressing in hard against your soul, shrouding it in darkness and doubt. He reminded me that it's not just God and Job at play in this story. There is an enemy, the great anti-hero: Satan himself.

In the earliest chapters, he is ushered into the throne room of heaven with the angels and has a tête-à-tête with God. God asks Satan where he's been (as if He doesn't know).

Roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it, Satan replies (1:7).

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil, God says (1:8).

Now hold the phone: Satan is in heaven having an audience with God. Satan tells God that he's been roaming the earth looking for someone to mess with and God in turn offers up Job. Hey Lucifer. Have you thought about Job? He's a great guy. He and I are pretty tight.

Wanna bet? Satan retorts. You've given him the sweet life: he's got it so easy. I bet you that if you took away all the good things you've given him, he'd spit in your face in a minute.

Alrighty, God says. Go for it. Everything I've given him is in your hands, but just don't touch him. Deal?

Satan agrees and in a matter of a few sentences, everything Job once possessed is gone: his livestock, his servants, and his children. All his wealth and his family are gone in a breath. Job still gives glory to God despite his grief. Satan comes back to God with a new challenge in chapter two, having new ideas of how he can get Job to slap God in the face. God offers up Job a second time:

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason (2:3). Satan couldn't have liked hearing that.

And so God gives the enemy permission to strike Job's body. Satan thinks he has God here; he will surely curse you to your face. And so Job is afflicted with terrible sores from his scalp to the soles of his feet. He is left mourning in the ashes, scraping his skin with shards of broken pottery.

There are a few things that stick out to me about this exchange.

Aside from the initial surprise that Lucifer is making a return appearance in heaven, I'm struck by the fact that God is not the least bit threatened by Satan's presence or by the challenge he presents. Of course He's not; He is God, after all. But seriously, He's not worried about how Job will respond; He already knows what will happen. He is, after all, the one who suggests that Lucifer take on Job.

This brings me to my second point. God declares Job to be a righteous man: in the text God affirms that Job is blameless and upright. We all know that while no one in the history of the world but Christ has lived a truly blameless life, God still counts Job as a righteous man. Before there is even a chance for the shock of God's first assertion to wear off, He declares it a second time: He really means it when He proclaims that Job is a righteous man, and He knows that Job won't turn his back on Him.

I'm also struck by the fact that the enemy is on a leash. God holds the other end of it and determines its length. God determines the parameters within which Satan might wreak havoc on Job's life, and Satan cannot go beyond those lines. I know we would all prefer that he were chained tightly to a wall in hell, that he were given no permission to roam at all, but it is something, isn't it? Satan only moves and strikes within the allowance God Himself permits.

Examining the same thought from a different angle, I notice also that Job's suffering does not occur apart from God's permission. God does not instigate, nor does He cause it, but He does allow it to occur. The myriad of questions this thought alone raises aside, this truth makes me wildly uncomfortable, especially when I consider that Satan might be making a similar wager with God concerning me. And God answers him, have you considered my servant Kirsten?

What I can also see is that the enemy's tactics have not changed. This is where the commentary shed some light for me, reminding me that since he was cast out of heaven, he's been trying to drive a wedge between God and man; he's trying to disrupt and sever relationship. He causes all sorts of trouble and hopes we'll blame God, that we'll curse Him. Our enemy hopes that we'll forget him; that we'll blame God for our suffering. That we'll question Him and doubt Him. Lose faith in Him altogether. Think of Him as cruel, sadistic, or worse, apathetic. Shake our fists at Him and curse Him. Since first going after Adam and Eve in the garden, the enemy has applied to same tactic throughout the history of the church: divide and conquer.

Any one of these observations gives rise to a hundred questions, all of which I am sure have been asked since there have been people around to ask them. Job is the oldest book of the Bible and people much smarter than myself have studied and written about it over the thousands of years it's existed as a text; I don't expect to add anything new or profound to the discussion, but I do expect it will give me a new lens through which to view my current experience.

And for now it is good for me to remember these things: that there is an enemy who is against me and seeks to divide me from my God. As for my God, He is for me and declares me as righteous before enemy and angels alike.

{stay tuned for part 3}