Gimme that Gospel

I have been listening to gospel music lately. (If you haven't made a Israel Houghton Pandora station, DO IT.) Even non-Christians listen to gospel because of it is so exciting and moving. You can call it emotionalism or whatever you want, but the fact is that, if it's done right by people who really have a heart of worship, gospel music brings a spirit of joy that can be felt even by people who don't know the Lord.

If you know me, which most of you do, you know that I spent a lot of time in graduate school studying American slavery. (Why I would pick such a depressing subject to specialize in, I don't know.) It occurred to me this week that one of the reasons gospel music is so moving is because it is a genre created by people who understood the meaning of freedom. Even during the restrictive and horrific times of Jim Crow laws and government-approved African-American oppression, gospel music was a way for a disadvantaged people group to find purpose. It was a constructive outlet for intense emotions. In addition to that--and this is the reason I've been listening to it this week--gospel music is appealing because it communicates dogged resilience and stubborn perseverance. It's laughing in the face of oppression; it's flagrant rebellion against the lies of a relentless enemy; it's running out in front of an oncoming army and screaming like a madman with the kind of boldness even William Wallace would admire.

Honestly, it's borderline ballistic. But the reason there is an under-melody of joy in gospel music is because it is sung from a position of victory. It is sung by people who have stepped into the light of freedom from a place of intense bondage. They know what slavery is, and they are NOT going back.

Christians of all backgrounds: this is our story.

"For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'"-- Romans 8:15

We were all captivated and held hostage by sin until Jesus came and liberated us (Isaiah 61:1). As people who are free, we should be unstoppable, walking in the authority of sons and daughters. We have the keys to Dad's house in our pockets.

But I think that many of us (well, all of us at some point) think like the Israelites after they were liberated from Egypt.

"'...I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.' Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery."--Exodus 6:8-9

All human beings are born into slavery. We are all born into a culture, an onslaught of mindsets, a fallen world that breaks spirits until we submit to slavery. Gospel music emphasizes freedom from slave mentalities that color every thought and action of our daily lives. I think that's why it touches even unbelievers: because they, too, have experienced slavery.

Jesus wore a crown of thorns so that your slave mentality could be redeemed. But sadly, we as Christians are often more content to wander in the wilderness, with a victim mentality and without an identity, eating manna the rest of our lives, than enter the promised land. We've been so brainwashed by the slave master that we can't conceive of a victory that has already been won.

How many of you know: if you're in Christ, you are more than a conqueror simply based on His victory (Romans 8:37). If you still see yourself as a slave or victim, it's in your mind.

I'm not knocking anybody for this, because this week has been an exercise in breaking every thought that comes from fear. I asked the Lord to give me discernment about thoughts that move me deeply, lead me down rabbit trails in my mind, or influence my behavior. If they are thoughts that come from slavery, from fear, they get thrown on a bonfire. If they are a thought from or about Jesus, they get to stay.

There really are only those two choices for any thought in my mind that is deeper than what I'll eat for breakfast or brushing my teeth. Jesus or fear. I'm not over-analyzing every thought (Lord knows I've had enough analyzation)--I've asked for divine discernment from the Spirit of God. And He shows me the origin of the thought before I finish thinking it. It's that simple: keep it or burn it, and go on your merry way. It's so incredibly freeing that it makes me want to sing gospel music from my rooftop.

God created me (and you) to be fearless. This is a kind of fearlessness beyond "having fear and continuing anyway." It's kingdom boldness. It is to literally be without fear in everything because the love of God casts out every consideration but Himself (1 John 4:18). Slaves are afraid; followers of Christ are without fear. I want that so badly. But I can't embrace that identity if I'm agreeing with and submitting to the slave master of fear.

It's not easy to submit your thought life to God. To be honest, I've been holding onto it all this time because--like a true slave--I felt like it was the one thing I could control. But in reality, it was controlling me. In my thoughts, fear was able to creep in and influence my behavior. Worse, it was hijacking my identity, because I hoarded my mind and didn't allow God in. The enemy was able to accuse me of the very things I was afraid to be accused of.

It takes good friends to remind you that broken spirit and harsh slavery are not your identity. Fear is not your identity. It took several people in my life (as resistant as I am) to remind me that I don't have to let fear influence my thought patterns. A good friend (or sibling...thanks, little bro) will tell you, "Your thoughts are, like, ridiculous psycho. Better look at what's motivating that. Hello, you're not a slave."

There were actually slaves after the Civil War who weren't aware that they were free because they were so isolated. They continued to submit to a life of slavery just because no one told them the good news.

I'm telling you today. Jesus has already freed you. The only weapon the devil has is to convince you that you're still a slave. Ask for discernment of your thoughts, because Jesus will surely break every chain in His name.

Genie in a Bottle

I am in a season of what we who speak Christianese call "pruning." It is also referred to as "the winepress." In regular people talk, it's called, "OUCH."

If you want true transformation, if you want to become who He designed you to be, it usually means spiritual heart surgery. The world has influenced our minds with its abuse and ideas. He removes those things to make room for His endless, perfect love: the only thing in the universe that offers us unconditional security and hope.

Through His Holy Spirit (and only through Him), God has brought me such a long way, and freed me from so many wounds and issues that I didn't even know were there, which is awesome. It's just that the process sometimes feels heavy...or like someone is giving you a shot in your soul...a shot with a really long, fat needle that burns and makes you want to slap the nurse. You feel SO MUCH BETTER when it's over, and it doesn't even last that long, but the whole time it's happening, you're screaming, "This is not what I signed up for!" You come in for a lovely little checkup, and you end up having a procedure for a problem you didn't know you had.

Have I made my point clear? God gets rid of the cancer that is killing us. He heals those emotional wounds and the prideful mentalities and the false hopes, replacing them all with the eternal goodness of Himself. But boy is it a rattling process sometimes.

I realized recently that, due to years of of-and-on pruning seasons (and one too many dramatic, taking-yourself-too-seriously worship songs), I tend to think of Holy Spirit as the cosmic killjoy of the Trinity, the mean nurse with all the shots. This is the picture in my head: Jesus is leaping around doing backflips on His white horse and yelling, "I'm King of the Universe!" and Holy Spirit is standing nearby with a scowl like Felix Unger, shaking His head and saying, "Tsk, tsk, Jesus...there is really no need for all these shenanigans. The are people are messed up and MUST be FIXED if I am expected to live inside them. What a dirty job, but...(sigh) someone has to do it. Since you and Daddy are having too much fun, I guess it will have to be me."

I know this sounds ridiculous. When I realized it this week, I was like, "Wait a second....that's not what the Bible says."

I've been re-reading Romans 8, and it's been coming at me from every sermon I've heard over the past week or two, so I guess there's a reason for that. I won't retype the whole thing here, but I think you should go read it for yourself.

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace (v. 6).

Life and peace. Not stress, hopelessness, and punk alternative music.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17).

What if we really believed that? God Himself--Jesus and the Father--are the Spirit. He's not some awkward third-party body guard, silent and moody, waiting to kick people in the rear end. Nor is He God's enslaved minion, like the Genie from Aladdin, a special friend who just grants selfish wishes whenever we snap our fingers. He's not an afterthought to the Trinity. He is THE Spirit of GOD, with all of God's personality and goodness. And He is Jesus' greatest gift to us, and actually a better part of God to have around even than Jesus in the flesh, because He can live inside of us. Jesus said so Himself (John 16:7).

And Paul goes even further.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control....(Galatians 5:22).

If we work to obtain these things ourselves, we simply can't do it. Yes, you can be successful for a time at managing your behavior....But it's not really about the behavior. If you don't address the root issue that causes unhealthy behaviors, or adopt the right thinking that causes the good behaviors, sin is always going to be a challenge, and you're always going to be fighting it.

But what does Romans say the Spirit brings?...Oh yeah, peace.

So although the pruning process is painful, it's way less painful than spending your life fighting against your own wounds and then internalizing victimization as your identity. This goes WAY deeper, but if you want a great example of "failure to heal," you could just read Judges. It's the story of people recognizing right and wrong, then trying to live up to a moral code without addressing the issues that caused their hearts to want to sin in the first place. They always failed, which resulted in such disasters as people poking out one another's eyeballs, stabbing obese kings to death, and cutting up their own concubines...oh yeah, and then mailing the body parts to different people.....Folks got issues.

"Royal fail" doesn't begin to describe humanity in so many of our failings. But it's really not our fault that we're messed up. I think that when we go through seasons of pruning, we tend to think we're defective. The light of God shines on us (Ephesians 5:13), we see our faults, and we think, "Gosh, how can He ever use me? I'm a hot mess." We even sometimes feel hopeless, like there is no way we will ever overcome these issues, sins, negative thoughts, wrong beliefs.

And let me assure you: we won't. Thanks be to God: it's not up to us, because we can't do it. That's like asking a 2-year-old to perform brain surgery. Even if they were smart enough, they don't have the fine motor skills to even pick up the utensils.

But Holy Spirit does.

And His ultimate goal is not to condemn us or make us feel down on ourselves. He convicts the world of sin, but He convicts God's people of who they are (John 16:8). He doesn't "discipline" us like earthly fathers, who get angry and spank without explanation (Hebrews 12...just read the whole chapter). Rather, God disciples us through His Holy Spirit, leading gently and healing and comforting through Holy Spirit in a way only He can do.

Basically, Holy Spirit doesn't have ulterior motives to crush followers of Jesus into submission to God. He has one aim: to make the love of God known to the world through Jesus Christ. When that love enters, sure, it prunes some things; but it's only clearing things out of the way so we can experience the JOY of knowing the love of the Father through Jesus Christ. 

Holy Spirit isn't some mysterious, creepy old sorcerer. He is not a grumpy old man. He is not some floating, enigmatic mist, either. He has a personality. He is actually God Himself coming to live within us. He is deep and rich and sometimes, well, weird. (I mean, regeneration of limbs and being raised from the dead is kind of strange....and these things do happen in the world today. Holy Spirit is working.) He can seem mysterious. However, relationship with Him is really not that complicated. He comes to bring simplicity to our walk with the Lord by revealing the heart of the Father through the Son. And when we get the epitomal revelation that the Father loves us, and in that is our whole identity, we're relieved, filled not with emo songs about rejection and failure, but with joyful songs of worship. (Sorry, Death Cab.)

If you're in a time of pruning, great! God is just de-complicating your spirit to make room for His joy.

From now on, I will picture Holy Spirit smiling and laughing, full of life and the realest kind of love there is.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).

It's a Bird...It's a Plane.....

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.--Ephesians 2:8-10

Every kid wants to be a superhero. If you work with kids, like me, it's a topic that comes up quite a bit...especially during times when the students are supposed to be talking about letters and numbers, not movies and comic books.

So I am reminded often of my favorite superhero, Spider-Man. I've wondered before why he is my favorite, but I think it's because Peter Parker is so relatable. He's just a dumb kid from a poor area of town with no social skills and no future (at least in the Tobey Maguire movie version--I am uneducated about the comic books or the more recent films). He's smart, but a lot of good it's doing him...he struggles even to make conversation. He even has a selfish, scared, revengeful heart that causes him to let a burglar get away...and he loses his Uncle Ben because of his own mistake. 

Peter Parker is a loser with a capital L. I mean, really: this kid's got NOTHING. 

Nothing except a radioactive spider bite that changes his life.

I think that when Marvel published the comic books about Spider-Man, they didn't realize that, in some unorthodox way, they were telling the Christian story.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:22-30).

That's a hefty chunk of scripture, but what it's saying is that God is so wise that even his "foolishness" (something that looks foolish to the world--the entire message of grace and redemption through Jesus) is way wiser than what we can come up with. 

If you feel today that you are an idiot, unaccomplished, lowly, exhausted, worthless, unable to do anything for God: great!! I mean, we'll work on your self-esteem...but when you're at a place of surrender like that, knowing that what God has commissioned us to do is way harder than you could ever accomplish, you're at a wonderful place, because that's just where God can use you. 

I mean, think about it: Jesus didn't say "Go out and make converts, beating people in the head with a Bible and telling them to get saved or go to hell." That's actually pretty easy.All you'd have to do is go into the streets, knock a few people around, and go home and eat a hamburger and watch TV, feeling good about yourself for what you've "done for God." 

But what Jesus actually said was, "Go out into the world and make disciples" (Matthew 28:16-20). That means having real relationship with people--even people we in our Pharisee mindsets find dirty. It means listening to them, holding them, teaching them, cleaning their wounds, praying for them, and authentically caring about them, sharing our hearts with them as He does and loving them even if they reject and kill you. That's hard stuff. If you think you can accomplish that without the Holy Spirit, you have a rude awakening coming. And, not to be a jerk, but if you think you can do that in your own strength, chances are you're not actually doing it. You've probably skipped straight to the eating a hamburger and feeling smug about yourself part. 

It's the truth. And I'm preaching to myself more than anyone.

But thanks be to God, because He humbles us enough to get us out of our own way and lead us to the fulfilling life of ministry He designed from the first.

Think about Batman. He had some SERIOUS childhood issues. He needed therapy. But instead, he adopted a savior complex, built a cool car, hired a genius butler, and tried to redeem his own issues. Sure, he was smart, could learn any number of languages, probably had 25 graduate degrees, and could probably beat even Karate Kid to a pulp. But all of that didn't heal his pain. It did nothing to redeem him. At the end of the day, Batman is just a guy wearing a weird black mask and missing what was stolen from him in his childhood.

Meanwhile, Peter Parker is daydreaming about really cool Batman-esque cars when he accidentally shoots some web out of his wrist and exclaims, "Hey, I didn't know I could do that!" 

We are all inept in our human strength, no matter how great and awesome and talented and mysteriously charming we are. The cross brings us to this life-altering revelation. But that's not all. Jesus didn't just die: He was raised from the dead. And the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead lives in YOU, Spirit-filled believer (Romans 8:11). When you start walking in that revelation, you discover powers you didn't know you had...and, haphazardly, probably clumsily, but definitely with eternal effects, you start living the Great Commission.

Like Batman, I was a scholar, an intellectual, someone who often didn't stop to listen to the Holy Spirit because, obviously, I already knew exactly what to do. God had to show me more and more that being a snotty little hipster was basically as weird as dressing up in a black skin-tight outfit and trying to save the world by myself. I'm not getting down on myself here; God gave me tremendous talents and skills. I am very blessed. But it tends to be the talented of us who put the most pressure on ourselves. It tends to be the over-achievers who invest most of our identity in what we can do. I want you to experience this relief today: it's not about you. It's all about Jesus.

While my own talents can accomplish a lot in the world, and even make a few people's lives better, they can't bring them the deep, personal, intimate healing, joy, and love that God wants to give everyone. Without Him, I can't bring freedom to a lost and dying world. I'm just a person with a savior complex who needs therapy.

When I look at myself from an eternal, cosmic perspective, I look a lot like Peter Parker: I got nothing...just a lot of pride and maybe some photography skills. I'm really glad the saving of the world doesn't depend on me, because, frankly, the world would have no hope. Instead, we have an eternal hope: Jesus Christ...who, by the way, already saved the world and probably looked way better (and less creepy) than Batman doing it.

Jesus said, "Turn and become like children." Children want to be superheros. They dream of great things, and they know they can't get there by themselves. Like them, we need a radioactive spider bite from Holy Spirit. And what a beautiful, tremendous relief it is to discover that, in the consistency and perfection of God, NOTHING depends on your skill, wisdom, intellect, beauty, or ability to build really cool cars. It all depends on Him, so just go for what He's telling you to do. Even if you're imperfect, He's still going to make it happen, because He is perfect.

I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted (Job 42:2).

It's the great joke of the gospel: God is so awesome that He can make even a talking donkey (Numbers 22) or rocks accomplish His purposes (Luke 19:40). His foolishness is wiser than men.

But He doesn't use rocks. He can do what He wants in spite of us, but He desires to do it with us. That's the gospel.

If you're talented, great. But don't put so much pressure on yourself to achieve, because that only leads to paralyzing fear, anxiety, and failure. Only when you realize it's not up to you will you start walking in the boldness He's called you to--and you will really change the world.

I don't normally read the Message, since it's such a paraphrase translation, but I like how it gives life to Matthew 11:28-30. So that's the thought I want to leave with you, the sweet, relieving invitation of Jesus:

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

For an over-achiever like me, this is good news. Happy web-slinging, folks.