Sight

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.—Proverbs 31:25

The Lord has done a magnificent work in me since the last time I posted. I have prayed hard over the past couple weeks about perspective. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I was sorely in need of a change of lenses. And I am overjoyed today to tell you that He has heard my cry, and He has answered me.

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:6-7).

I don’t know about you, but I want to always be of good courage. However, apparently, to be courageous, you also have to be blind.

Talk about a change in perspective. How about no perspective—that’s what this scripture seems to suggest.

Let me back up a little.

Two Mondays ago, I had a challenging day at work and drove home feeling completely inadequate. I was frustrated at how frail I become under pressure, how easily I crack under stress. Then, of course, I got mad about feeling inadequate, and mad that I was immature enough to be mad. I just wanted to skip ahead to some point on this timeline of my life that I was imagining, a place where I have become this super-godly, super-mature, super-put-together woman who loves the Lord and impresses everyone around her with her ability to handle pressure. I wanted to stop being so young.

Clearly this was insane, so I called my therapist: Mom.

What Mom told me to do (or, rather, what the Holy Spirit told me to do using Mom) was to stop thinking about my purpose, to stop obsessing over the big picture of my life as this intense mission, and start focusing on my relationship with Jesus.

She also told me to pray in the Spirit. I took that advice, and over the past week or so, I have felt mountains being moved in my soul. You see, we humans are so inadequate that we can’t even hardly pray for ourselves; for we know not how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26). God has had to pray for me, then answer His own prayers for me. I had no part in the whole process except to receive.

Isn’t God awesome?

I got on a plane last weekend to head to Alabama for a close friend’s wedding, and, while I was suspended in the air, I finally got some time to sit still and further chew on this idea of focusing simply on Jesus. (Kind of sad that God had to strap me down and jet me 4,000 feet in the sky, or however high planes go, to get an uninterrupted word with me….)

It may be different for other people, but for me right now, the “sight” mentioned in this verse in 2 Corinthians doesn’t necessarily mean believing in something that I can see literally in front of me. Like many people with a visionary, passionate personality, I have turned my imagined “mission,” my vision of my future, into a kind of mental security blanket. It’s my default thought, the thing I daydream about. In this imagined world, my future is this neat scenario that plays out: I marry some church planter or something, and we blast off for the kingdom together. It’s a neat little narrative.

It is very easy to daydream when you feel dissatisfied with your daily life. Everyone knows that. You end up living in the future. And that’s why we are often not “of good courage”: we plan too much in the earthly realm, which allows God little room to submit us to His greater plans.

Here’s the bigger sin: visualizing my future all the time not only takes away from the present moment, the time when Jesus always is (I AM is present tense, you know); it also leads me to worship my spiritual growth, my vision for who “I should be”—that person who is “worthy” enough to receive the things that I want for myself. This spirals into self-condemnation: I didn’t do that right. I shouldn’t have made that mistake. I am not prepared enough. I am not organized enough. I…me….my……

Time to get real. I realized that, as I said before, I was angry that I had been reminded of my immaturity. But there was an even bigger issue (as usual). See, I was thinking, in my little earthbound heart, that only “mature” people are worth anything for God’s purposes. My stressful job had brought out a side of myself I didn’t like, and I was feeling that I wasn’t worthy yet of the future I envision for myself. I was believing this lie: that I am not worthy yet of the godly marriage and ministry I imagine; that right now, at this life stage, I’m just piddling around. When I am worthy, when He grants me these things I have envisioned, then my life can really start.

Meanwhile, Jesus is standing right in front of me, jumping up and down and waving His arms, shouting, “I paid a great price for you! Stop living in fantasy land and just let me love you!”

I didn’t realize what a sneaky sin sight could become.

Leave it to Mom to bring the real issue to light when I least expected it.

At His feet….

I’m an artist. Sight is kind of my thing. And this vision is a gift from God. But like all gifts, it can easily be inverted.

My human perspective of the future is completely inaccurate. All the things I visualize for myself are probably never going to happen—or at least, they won’t happen the way I imagine them. If they did, something would be wrong. God always acts in unexpected ways. Read the Bible. Some of His plans are weird, ok? Like Jesus being born of a virgin, then being crucified…and the whole communion, “this is my blood” thing. Everything about the gospel is the opposite of the kind of predictable, world-affirming legend humanity would invent.

Humans write stories they can imagine might be true. God writes stories that only He can imagine. (The pastor did a whole sermon on this today…further confirmation that I needed to write about it.)

So what I’m saying is, God’s plans for me are so much bigger than my own, so awesome and crazy that I can’t even visualize them, no matter how much time I waste trying to do it.

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).

And again: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

The way I visualize my future is the “sight” that I am not supposed to be living by.

So…what is this “faith” thing?

When I was a little kid, I thought I understood faith.  I grew up in a charismatic household where we talked about healing miracles and spiritual warfare at the dinner table. I got the impression that faith was something we did, as humans.  Faith meant, simply, believing hard enough.

I didn’t realize that faith is a spiritual gift. You know what that means? God has to give it to you. And in order for Him to give it to you, you have to receive it.

Here’s the thing: God hasn’t set some great cosmic timer, some agenda, some deadline, for me to “become” something, so that He can rain blessings on me (as if I don’t have enough blessings already); so that He can grant me my heart’s desires. All He wants is for me to sit at His feet.

Literally, that’s all He wants.

It’s hard for our human minds to comprehend that. But it’s right there in scripture.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act (Psalm 37:4-5).

Then, two verses down: Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

I did a double-take when I read that. “Wait…what?” I said to myself. “I thought I was supposed to be doing something here…? You know, ‘committing my way’ and all that….”

Nope: be still.

I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think “being still” involves scurrying around your life, trying to plan everything.

Good courage….

On the next Monday, Columbus Day, I had another crisis, a much worse one. When I got back from my trip to Alabama, I checked my emails and saw that there was a job prospect opening up in Nashville in arts education. I already signed a contract here, of course; and it would damage my integrity to break that.

But don’t you think I didn’t consider it.

It sounded so lovely: moving back to a city I love, away from this city I have hated. A more predictable schedule. More stability for my future.

I knew I couldn’t take it. But the thought spiraled me down into a pit of self-doubt. What if I was wrong to move here? What if I am completely off-course? What if I misread the direction, navigated wrong, somehow got myself marooned here on this island, thinking it was part of divine purpose when in fact it was just a random breeze? I mean, we all miss it sometimes.

It was a pretty bad day.

Then I prayed and called to my Father, asking Him to give me peace and quiet in my spirit, because I can’t change my decision now.

Thank the Lord that He is faithful.

There is no way I could seek after and catch a sense of peace myself. But I asked the Lord for it, and He provided. In the past week, I’ve had more peace here than I’ve ever had before. I feel like I’m standing on something solid, finally. And I know Who it is I am standing on. He calls Himself the Rock.

Basically what I am trying to say in all this is that God is awesome, because He sent His Holy Spirit to comfort me. I desperately wanted a different attitude, but there was such a bitter taste in my mouth toward Northern Virginia and DC that I just couldn’t bring myself to make positive memories here. So I told Him that. I asked Him to change me. And He did.

Psalm 121:1-2: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

Amen!

Don’t let your sight be a stumbling block.

I don’t want to offer vague platitudes here about “keeping your eyes upon Jesus,” or advise you to pray more, read more Bible, sweat and gasp trying to spend enough time with the Lord to achieve this peace, on your own efforts. What I am trying to tell you is that you can cry out to the Holy Spirit to do the work in you—to rescue you from your own vision. Let Him do the work. There is no other way for it to get done.

Toward the end of Psalm 37, we read this: for there is a future for the man of peace (verse 37). I don’t know that this can always be interpreted as “keeping peace” between people; rather, it might refer to being at peace within ourselves. We ought to rest in the peace He gives us. If we do, we can “laugh at the time to come.” And that is how we are always “of good courage”: we trust in the vision of the One who created sight.

Prepositions

“How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?”

That’s how the disciples responded to Jesus when He observed that the four thousand-plus crowd of His followers was hungry.

Actually, He didn’t simply observe that they were hungry. What He actually said was, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away” (Mark 8:2).

The disciples’ first response was, basically, “Well, what do you want us to do about it, Jesus? There ain’t nowhere to get bread out here. We can’t even bake it. We have nothing with us. What are we supposed to do?”

I mean, I don’t know if the disciples were sarcastic guys, but I have to imagine that they might’ve been here, just a little. The place they were was desolate. That means it was in the middle of nowhere, inaccessible, the country. People had walked a very long time to get there. (Which begs the question, why didn’t they bring lunch? Maybe they did, but I guess they didn’t expect to be so impressed with Jesus that they stayed three days. The PB & J was long gone by then.)

But the disciples were missing the point here. Jesus didn’t say, “Go get some bread for these folks!” He said, “I have compassion on them. They have come a long way to be with me.”

And He was ready to feed them.

Are you in the crowd? Are you drawn so far out into the wilderness that you have to depend upon Jesus to feed you?

If so, just so you know: He has compassion on you. And He will take the seven little loaves you have and make them enough to feed thousands.

I always say this is my favorite chapter of Mark because, less than a score of verses later, the disciples are sitting around talking about how they don’t have any bread.

Um….

I mean, now that I think about it, I guess they had given all they had to the people. But there were seven basketsful left. And Jesus had done this breaking-bread miracle another time before. So as they sat around talking about their lack of bread, He said, “Do you not yet understand?”

In case you didn’t catch that, it was a rhetorical question.

And it’s a question Jesus has to ask me again and again. Praise be to Him, though, because I think that after all this time, I am beginning to understand.

I have been finding over the past few weeks that there’s just not much to me. I reach the end of my own strength sooner than I thought. (Surprise, right? There’s nothing like working 10 hours a day to cure you of your unrealistic perspective.)

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.—Hebrews 4:14-15

That means Jesus was with me when I got lost going to the DMV today; and he was with me, feeling my pain, as I stood in line for an hour, only to find out that I didn’t have the proper documents. (What up, Virginia? Put it on the website!) Jesus was there when I cried out and sobbed in my car for a pathetically long time last Saturday. He was there this week when I was angry or tired.

He is with me right now as I am sitting here terrified to fly by myself next weekend—terrified of making a mistake and ending up in Ohio or something.

Jesus was tempted to be afraid sometimes. But where I fail and give in to the sin of anxiety, He is strong. He has been tempted in every respect as I am—and more.

I know that He looks on me now with compassion, saying, “She has followed me out to this desolate place, and if she goes home, she will faint on the way.” I know He is faithful to act on His compassion, because the little crumbs of bread I have had—a few minutes stolen to study the Word and pray—have been fruitful beyond my expectation, when I have come to Him with a true heart, seeking.

Jesus feeds me with His spirit, if I will stop complaining about how I have no bread for long enough to chew.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.—Psalm 81:10

He ransomed me. He paid a priceless bride-price to marry the church. He will feed us.

The Israelites often failed at opening their mouths (to receive food, anyway). This week, I read Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was this sad little guy who had to go tell the Israelites that they were sinning against God by worshipping foreign gods. (I bet he felt pretty desolate most of the time.) Through him, God told the people, “for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Then He asked a question (another rhetorical one, actually): “Have you not brought this upon yourself by forsaking the Lord your God, when he led you in the way?” (Jeremiah 2:17).

He led us out here; He’ll provide for us. It’s that simple. Don’t dig your own cistern. It’ll just be a fruitless pit for you to fall into. If you don’t turn to Jesus for your bread, you’re guaranteed to build a broken cistern. By the same token, if you do turn to Him, you’ll have seven basketsful leftover—no matter how “desolate” your location is.

This week has been much better, but last week was really stressful. I was angry because I felt that my job was sucking down 25 hours of my day away and grabbing greedily for more. And, really, as far as the DMV is concerned, I was mad today because I felt that my Saturday had been wasted, and it was somebody else’s fault. In other words, my time was so valuable that I had a right to be furious at the state of Virginia for messing it up.

The pastor I heard last week said, “If there is anything you think you need in addition to Jesus, the devil is probably using it right now to steal your joy.”

Ouch. He said if we don’t know what it is we think we need in addition to Jesus, we should look and see what is causing us stress and anxiety. Then he asked people who felt stressed to raise their hands.

I had to raise my hand.

Apparently, I think I need “my” time in addition to Jesus. (What I need it for, I’m not sure.) The cistern I keep trying to dig is this perfect schedule that I control completely. And it doesn’t give water; it only steals my joy.

To take us back to elementary grammar, I’ve been thinking in personal pronouns: I, me, mine. For a little while, I have forgotten about prepositions.

A quick run through Colossians chapter one: …He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…and in him all things hold together…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory….

And Ephesians chapter one: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing…even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him….In him we have redemption through his blood…according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him…In him we have obtained an inheritance….so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit…

When we feel lost, and when we feel isolated, we must try to remember where we are. And we get there by following the prepositions.

Psalm 23:4 says, I will fear no evil, for you are with me….

I have felt very homesick and alone at various times over the past few weeks. Jesus has been the only one with me in my hardest moments on my hardest days. And God is even more than “with” me by the amazing power of Jesus. He is “in.”

We are not in some “perfect life,” or in our future, or in our past. We are not wandering around in fantasies; and we are not even really in time, actually.

And we are not “in this desolate place” either, beloved.

Here is the beautiful, splendid, ever-amazing gospel: we are IN HIM.

We exist in an entity Who is not constrained by all the little bits of time and physicality that concern us, that upset us, that cause us anxiety, that ruin our days, that make us sit around and talk about how hungry we are.

My time is not important. (Still wrapping my head around this one….) It’s His time, because everything I think, do, and am is in Him.

And maybe I don’t understand that all the way right now. Maybe I’m not sure how not to fall face-first into my cistern. But I know that He who has begun a good work in me will be faithful to complete it (no matter if I have to stand in the DMV line all day). In this I have faith: that over the next few weeks, months, and years, I will burrow much further into the arms of Jesus than I ever have before. I know because He has been drawing me closer by the day, patiently, for my whole life. Glory to God: I won’t faint on the way. He will provide me with spiritual nourishment. My soul will have something to eat, no matter where I am.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit.—1 John 4:13

There are no qualifiers in that statement. This is how we know, says John: His Spirit is in us. By the Spirit’s miraculous power, Jesus multiplies our loaves of bread.

And John just may have known something about that.