An "Inciting Incident"

This is another of my old posts for Thrive80, a short-lived Moody Publishing blog for millennials. It was originally written and published in September 2012 on a now-defunct website. I want to share it here and now because the subject ties in closely with another blog post I am currently working on writing!!

The original blog prompt for this was to write about an "inciting incident" in my life...something that forever altered/changed me. It was easy for me, as a college senior, to know what to pick!! Enjoy :)

Tuesday, January 25, 2011. It seemed like a perfectly normal day, but I will forever mark it as the day God revolutionized my life. I stood in chapel at my small, Christian college singing during the worship time. For some reason I sat further back than normal—nearly under the shelter of the upstairs balcony.

As I sang, surrounded by hundreds of my fellow students and yet feeling alone, my mind returned to the questions I had asked so often throughout high school and my first year and a half of college. “Why God? Why is it that I feel like I want a deeper relationship with You and yet nothing changes? Why do You seem so silent? I try so hard.”

There was no rending of the heavens, no vision of glorious majesty. But there was a simple Thought, sent—I believe—by the Holy Spirit at just the moment He had crafted in His infinite plan.

“What you do is not a question of earning My love. You can never earn it. Salvation is a free gift, based on nothing you do, My child. I already love you more than you know – no matter what.”

Hearing that truth and truly realizing what it meant in my life for the first time acted as a single beam of light into what had long been the dark room of my spiritual strivings. Looking back now, I can see that I have always tended toward attempting to earn assurance of others’ love and affection for me by working as a people pleaser. I naturally brought that same idea over to my relationship with God.

Yes, I knew intellectually that I could not earn my salvation. And yet as a Christian I had spent the previous years of my life trying to make myself worthy of God’s love and approval – lacking the faith that the Immanuel who came to save people from sin could truly accept me with all of my shortcomings and failings. In some ways it seems so simple and silly – it is in Scripture…I learned those verses and I should have known that receiving salvation did not suddenly mean that I must curry God’s favor (Gal. 3:1-3). Nevertheless that was how I thought, and it is still a trap I often find myself falling into.

I am still nowhere near the perfection I would love to achieve. But the embedding of that truth deep into my spiritual psyche started me on a journey of personal revival which God is still unfolding. The beauty of it all is that there was nothing special about that day – no reason from my end for the blessings I have since received. It is all Grace – God’s amazing Grace. And that’s the whole point. Yes, it is tempting to question why not sooner. But the answer goes right back to the lesson. God’s Grace is not bound by human understanding. No, I didn’t deserve what happened on January 25^th any more than I had any other day. But that is the beauty of Grace.

I could have written that last paragraph yesterday, not six years ago!!! The ramifications of this inciting incident are still reverberating through my life as I continue to learn the importance of practicing the truth Paraclete spoke into my heart that day. Thankful to God for His faithfulness in leading my journey up to that point, through that revelation, and every day since then--even in the trials and the challenges.

{Don't} Let Fear Paralyze You

While I was in college, I was a contributor to a blog—started by Moody Publishing for millennials—for about a year. The blog ended up changing its name and web address, and eventually the old domain expired…so the posts I authored now exist only on my computer [yes, I keep *everything*!!]. But occasionally I will be reminded of something I wrote and go back and look at it.

That happened recently with a post that was originally published on Thrive80 in April of 2012. The editor team had asked us to contribute posts about hypothetical ways to ruin your life before the age of 30. Below is what I wrote – with a current postscript at the end! :D It’s a message that spoke to my heart again today, even though I’m now in a different stage of life than I was as a 2^nd semester junior.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are so many options available of what we can do with our lives.  This is especially true for our generation.  We have grown up in a world where travelling to another country is something that is not all that unusual, where we are told that we can be whatever we want to be.

Boys and girls both have increasingly equal chances to pursue whatever course they desire in their lives.  Our current president has demonstrated that the color of one’s skin can no longer effectively bar one from even the highest office in the land. [Remember this was originally written in 2012!] Freed from the constraints of comparative financial and physical limitations, the vast majority of our generation of Americans is free to chase and reach their dreams.

But there is one thing that can quickly and easily destroy any chance we have of achieving our goals:

FEAR

The fear of not making the right choice.  The fear of things not working out the way I want them to.  The fear that no matter how hard I try, it won’t be good enough.  The fear that God’s plan will be different than mine and ruin what I seek.

Such fear can paralyze us, preventing us from doing anything productive.  It can wrap its chains around our hearts and weigh us down.  Allowing this fear to overtake us is exactly what the enemy would love to see.  When Christians are bound by fear, they will not take the risks or chances that could lead them to victory in their lives or to bring God glory.

Not giving fear a foothold in my life is something I have been learning a lot about both last summer and this month.  As a person who wants people to like me and who wants to always make exactly the right choices, I can tend to hesitate too long in doing something important with my life – fearing rejection, fearing the unknown. 

But God does not call us to fear.  He calls us to hope and trust.  He calls us to live with our all on the line, to pursue Him whole-heartedly no matter what might happen.  It is then that He will gladly pour out His blessings on us and give us the desires of our hearts (Ps. 37:4, 1 Pet. 5:6-7).

Last summer, God kept bringing me back to the verse in 1 John which tells us that perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment (4:18).  There is no reason for us to fear the future, because God loves us.  When we do fear, it is a signal that we are not yet fully willing to trust God with all that we are.  And yet, because He loves us so much, He consistently and patiently points us back to Him.  “Trust Me, My child,” He whispers, “I love you more than you can even love yourself.”

Earlier this month, I was in a place of inner turmoil and doubt.  There was something I sensed God was calling me to, but everything within me was frightened of what would happen if I did it.  On Good Friday, I was able to spend a large chunk of time outside, away from the distractions of everyday life.  In that time, God used the feelings I was struggling with to bring me back to this idea of fear.  He did this through a part of Scripture I had memorized years ago.

In James 4:13-16, the author is criticizing people who go to the opposite extreme of the problem I am talking about here.  Those folks assume that they do know exactly what will happen.  They make plans and are overly confident that they will achieve their goals.  James reminds his readers that the fact is that we don’t know what will happen.  Our life is a vapor.  “Instead,” he concludes, “you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’”

He is calling these people to live their lives in a manner which is surrendered to God’s plan for their lives.  He is calling them to trust.  But an important point here is that James does not say we should walk around in fear.  [Neither does he] say “Sit still in your house until you know exactly what it is God has planned for you to do because otherwise you will be a failure.”  No!  Rather, he is simply cautioning that while we can make our plans, we should not presumptuously assume that things will come out just as we expect.

James then turns and equally chastises the people who are too bound by fear.  “Therefore,” he writes, “to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (4:17).  God does allow us a level of free will!  I’m not going to try to debate this large theological issue, but suffice it to say I do not believe in a deterministic view of God’s sovereignty.  I believe He leaves room for human choice and plans.

James’ last verse here is telling us to do what we know we should.  Follow through on applying for that job, even if you’re not sure how it will work out.  Try to make friends with that person you see sitting alone, despite the fact they may choose to ignore you.  Love freely, as you have been loved – even when that can open you up to hurt and disappointment.

Thinking through this passage in James brought me back to something that has been a recurring theme of my college career: that life issues rarely fit into neat categories.  Instead, as Aristotle’s theory of the golden mean describes, the ideal course of action typically lies in finding a balance between two extreme responses.  As I tweeted shortly after my time of reflection, “I am called to trust - not to either fear that God may change my plans, nor to presume that He will not.”

And so, my friends, there is one word that can prevent you from letting fear ruin your life and paralyze you.  It may be a simple word, but the concept is deep – one which God has been slowly developing in my life for months:

TRUST

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interestingly, God has continued to use that passage from James in my life, without me consciously remembering this post I wrote. In October of 2015, I was praying about whether God would have me commit to coming back to Uganda after my initial 14-month stint as staff was over. Again, I was out in nature spending time communing with Him. And as I prayed, He gave me those same verses in James.

And so they’ve stayed in the back of my mind – as I said that yes, I would return to Uganda. As I renewed my work permit in early 2016 for two years. As I think about the future now. Those are the verses that my mind goes back to. I can make my plans, but God may change them at any time. And yes, that’s scary—IF I forget how faithful and trustworthy God is. IF I ignore the fact that He knows things I can’t even imagine. IF I don’t remember that His purposes are perfect.

The word that is the call to my heart is still the same now as it was five years ago:

TRUST.

Classifying Sins: Pets or Monsters?

We humans can be very inconsistent creatures. We like to think that we have things all figured out and are always reasonable……but we most certainly don’t and aren’t. I was thinking about this while making lunch today. What brought it to mind was thinking about how we inadvertently and perhaps unconsciously classify and think about sin/sins. Everybody has at least two classes into which they group types of faults: pets and monsters. {In this post, I use “we” because I think everyone does this. But each of us as individuals has our own pets and monsters.}

Pet sins are those ones that I might admit I do but that I make excuses for or try to explain away. They’re like my pet bird Bluebonnet. As I was trying to type the first part of this post, he was running around on the keyboard, playing with my fingers and wanting me to pay attention to him and give him kisses. Sometimes our pets can be so very annoying! Sometimes we may even despise them. But other times we love them and anything they do seems cute.

Now to the monsters. This group is for those sins we always recognize as horrible—the things that we would never never do, try to avoid at all costs, and are always quick to judge others for doing. Things like (in my upbringing) getting drunk, gambling, murder, adultery, etc. We view this class of sins as horrible villains, like Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, Sauron in the Lord of the Rings, or any other classic nemesis—things that are clearly evil, non-negotiable and unacceptable.

This system can be very comfortable for us. It can make us feel good and self-righteous. There’s just one small problem with it: God doesn’t see sin that way. He doesn’t acknowledge or identify with our classification scheme. To God, ALL sins are EQUALLY reprehensible and disgusting.

I can be standing where I am critically judging a fellow brother or sister in Christ because they choose to buy a lottery ticket, drink or go clubbing. At that moment, what I am failing to recognize is that I have equally atrocious sins which I have grown to accept in my own life – be it gluttony, gossiping or harbored anger. Each of us has villainous sins in our life—horrible addictions which we have come to see as cute little pets. What’s even worse is when I despise others for the very things I am myself guilty of doing.

Hmm….this concept reminds me of a Bible verse! In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” Matthew 7:1-5, NIV (emphasis mine).

There’s also this: Some things like gambling are not mentioned or directly prohibited in the Bible. So on what basis have “good Christians” made these activities such a marker for judging others???? Gambling may be unwise and a poor use of the money which God has given me to be a steward of, but so is spending all my money on food or entertainment. Although we see it as such a “bad” thing to do, it’s not listed in the Ten Commandments. But honoring my parents is, and so is coveting. Have I ever dishonored my parents? Definitely. Have I ever been envious of what others have? You betcha I have. If I can’t even fulfill the ten most basic rules God gave men to govern their lives, what business have I to criticize others so strongly for their faults?

This has been a convicting post for me to write. I don’t always choose to remember how serious my sins and faults are. I much prefer keeping my pets. But when I take a step back and remember how God sees my sin—just as evil as the monsters I judge others for—it makes me feel quite ashamed of myself. But at the same time it makes me feel very grateful for Christ’s love and sacrifice for me.

Lord, teach me to recognize the evilness of my own sins. Remind me that I am no better of a person than anyone else. Through Your power, may I choose to say no to my entangling snares and also show others the same grace and mercy which I have received.