My New Covenant Vow

This is something the Holy Spirit led me to work on last week. I used Tuesday morning, when I didn't go into UGM, to "research"/"write" it. Maybe some other time I will write the story of what led up to doing this...but for now I just want to share it with you. It turned out differently than I initially thought it would - but I like it better this way.

In the name of the Triune God, because of who HE is, and by His leading.

The Theological Foundation of My Identity

v  I declare that I am God’s creation, made by Him in His image for His purposes and glory, and so that I may enjoy Him forever in eternally present/future relationship. {Gen. 1:26; Phil. 1:19-23}

v  I am fearfully and wonderfully made; all the days fashioned for me are God’s marvelous work in and through my life; and that my soul knows very well. {Psalm 139:14-15}

v  Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He is the loving Redeemer of my soul; for the joy set before Him and for God’s glory as well as my good, He bore the punishment of my sin on the cross. {Heb. 12:2}

v  I was dead in my trespasses and sins, unable to do anything to resurrect or save myself; God made me alive and saved me by His grace, totally undeserved by me. {Eph. 2:4-5}

v  In Christ, I am God’s beloved adoptive daughter, a child of the Most High King of heaven; I am a co-heir with Christ through suffering with Him. {Rom. 8:15-17}

v  God lavishes His unconditional grace & love on me, moment by moment and day by day {Eph. 1:7-8; 1 John 4:10}

v  It is God who works in me both to will and to do for His good pleasure; but I also have the responsibility of working out my own salvation. {Phil. 2:12-13}

v  Christ’s resurrection power is what is working towards me, within me, and what should be flowing out of me. {Eph. 1:19-20; Phil. 3:10}

v  I carry the treasure of the knowledge of God in Christ as a mere earthen vessel.
{2 Cor. 4:6-7}

v  Paraclete, the Counselor and Spirit of Truth, abides in me forever and reminds me of what Jesus taught; He is the guarantee of my inheritance. {John 14:16-17, 26; Eph. 1:13-14}

v  I am not sufficient in myself; nothing good comes from myself but rather from God; He has made me sufficient and makes me a minister of the new covenant of life in the Spirit.
{2 Cor. 3:5-6}

The Practical Application Points as a Result:

v  Jesus calls me to abide in His unconditional love, and to extend that love to others—laying down my life for them—as well as to myself. {John 15:9-13}

v  Jesus calls me to daily take up my cross and follow Him; to save my life by losing it for His sake {Luke 9:23-25}

v  God calls me to submit to Him as clay does to the potter’s hands. {Rom. 9:20-21}

v  I am called to recognize and worship the holy sovereignty of God, and to repent before Him when I find myself questioning His purposes. {Job 42:5-6}

v  Jesus calls me to come to Him when I am heavy laden by the burden I bear; to take His light and easy yoke in its place; to find rest in Him; to learn from Him. {Matt. 11:28-30}

v  I am called to follow in Jesus’ example, humbling myself and taking the form of a bondservant. {Phil 2:4-8}

v  As Jesus spent hours in solitude and prayer with His heavenly Father to balance out intense times of ministry, so should I. {Matt. 14:23}

v  I should follow Jesus’ example in crying out to God for strength during challenging times and in asking those close to me to pray with/for me. {Matt. 26:38ff}

v  I am called to daily practice authenticity as I intentionally put off the old Esther and put on the new Esther, being renewed by God in holiness & righteousness. {Eph. 4:22-24}

v  It is okay and needed to sometimes pull back, say no, and practice spiritual self-care. {Luke 5:15-16}

v  I am not yet perfected; but I am called to forget the things which are behind and press on toward the prize in Christ; knowing He will continue His work until He returns! {Phil 3:12-14; 1:6}

v  I am called to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. {Micah 6:8}

v  I am called to cast all my cares upon God; to humble myself under His mighty hand; to let Him be the one to exalt me in due time. {1 Pet. 5:6-7}

v  Jesus calls me to rest in the sufficiency of His grace and strength, especially in my weaknesses; to boast and even take pleasure in my shortcomings. {2 Cor. 12:9-10}

v  I am called to be a member of the body of Christ—suffering and rejoicing with my brothers and sisters in Christ (and letting them do the same with me), as well as using my gifts to minister alongside them. {1 Cor. 12:12-31}

v  I am called to live in community – bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to maintain the unity in the Spirit. {Eph. 4:1-6}

v  I am called to confess my sins to my fellow believers, that we may pray for one another and be healed. {James 5:16}

I commit to these things in the name of Abba, Jesus, and Paraclete. Amen.

"Here I Am" - A Spiritual Biography

In high school, I would have told you that in some senses I’ve always been a Christian. I have spent most of my life in an almost exclusively Christian environment. It took me some time, however, before I began to take personal ownership of my faith, allowing God be at work in my life instead of me making my life perfect for God. Due to my personality and the way I grew up, my early spirituality was based a lot on theological knowledge and not much on religious experience.

One night in February of 2000 (age 9.5), our family read a devotional based on 1 Peter 2:24, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree.” I recognized for the first time the weight of my sin and the great cost of Christ’s redemption. I started crying. I had previously prayed a prayer of repentance, as many young Christian kids do (I don’t remember it), but that night my dad read Acts 2:38 to me. In that moment, I felt a call to respond by being baptized, which I did a couple months later.

In 2002, my life changed (age 12). Our family decided to teach at a Chinese university for a year. I loved our time in China. While there, I witnessed the other foreign teachers worshipping and experiencing God in a different way than I had ever known. Somehow, God became more real to me there, and I learned experientially that He wanted to be involved in our lives.

In September 2003 (age 13), we were starting to get settled back into our normal lives – new job, new house. But within a month that fairytale blew up in a complex explosion that is still painful to me. Long story short, there was an ugly church split. My dad also lost his job, and was severely under-employed for two years. I ended up holding onto bitterness and anger toward Dad and God.

Last night, as I was thinking about that period of my life, I realized I expected God to fix it all. I believed He could, and would. When things got worse instead of better, I unconsciously began to doubt and question God’s goodness, I guess. I had never before seen sin and evil so wreck a community of believers. I don’t know exactly how to explain the correlation, but it created some sort of break down in my relationship with God. That, combined with the need I’ve felt all my life to earn love and favor by making sure I meet people's expectations, developed in me a twisted picture of spirituality.

I had tons of head knowledge about God, and from the outside I looked like a really good Christian kid. But inside, I was a mess. I trusted no one, no one felt safe. I wasn’t willing to admit the brokenness inside. There were numerous nights when I would cry in my room, not understanding why I felt the way I did. I was so hungry for a relationship with God, like I had tasted in China. But I could never feel Him – He seemed distant and I knew that couldn’t be His fault, so it must be because of sin in my life. I just wanted to die and be done with having to fight to have a right relationship with Him. That is the overarching memory of my spiritual journey between 2003 and 2009 – pain and unfulfilled hunger.

Coming to JBU (August 2009) was the best thing that ever happened to me. God knew exactly where I needed to be for Him to do His work in my life. Through a variety of new worship experiences, He started breaking outside of the careful boxes I had packed Him into. Then on January 25, 2011, He changed everything. By His grace alone, I finally came to truly know that I didn’t need to earn His approval because He gave it freely as a gift. He revealed His overwhelming love, and He reoriented my whole life.

Since that day two years ago, there have still been plenty of ups and downs. But always underlying has been a deeper, more real knowledge God accepts me. That He loves me no matter what. That His call is to trust, not to understand; to accept grace, not to work to deserve it. And though my spiritual life is still very much a journey, I now know that He is at work and that He will not leave me alone. He is faithful, and He works in His time and His ways. Praise be to His name, Amen.

{To read more about my more recent spiritual learning, start here and read more at my spiritual blog.}

Jan. 14 CQI - Personality's role in spirituality (Mul. ch. 5-6)

Claim 1: Mulholland argues (p. 50) that individual Christians are unable to achieve holistic spiritual health on their own, apart from active participation in the corporate body of Christ. This makes perfect sense to me logically, but as a super strong introvert, I tend to attempt just that – to look for everything I need within myself rather than being willing to rely on the (sometimes undependable) help of others. If I open myself up to relying on others, I am no longer in complete control (oh, there comes the judgment part!! [see "question 1" below]), and that is not comfortable for me.

Claim 2: People tend to begin viewing their personal preferences as the best or only way of going about things (p. 55; ch. 6). This is definitely true of me…. I think it is partly because people like me don’t want to admit our own weaknesses. If we recognize the value in other ways of doing things, it could potentially open the door to needing to be willing to be flexible in how we typically act and make choices. And that’s not always fun! Which leads right into the whole shadow thing he talks about.

Question 1: How much of me is the way it is because of how I was raised? Who am I really? (p. 62) I know I’m a super strong “I” and a strong “J,” but it is much harder for me to figure out if I’m an N/S or an F/T. I can see myself going both ways on both of them, and from some of the reading we did in this chapter I would keep flip flopping on what I think my natural self likes most. It’s hard to figure out how much of the way I practically approach these two is nature vs. nurture. (see below for more on this)

Insight 1: From the description on pg. 52, I had put myself down as an F because of the “need to please others” bit, even though my test results from the night before had put me as a T. But then I got to pg. 58, and his description of thinking people’s tendency to be “more ‘theological,’ more analytical and structural in their spirituality” fit me….well…to a “T.” As I’m sure I’ll talk about in my “Here I am” paper for Wednesday, my relationship with God in high school was definitely “slight[ing] the affective, emotional aspects of [my] relationship with God,” even though I felt a deep need and hunger for that. It’s like I was missing something and didn’t know how to fill the void I felt (see also pg. 60).

Insight 2: The “disintegration” of my one-sided spirituality between my thinking and feeling tendencies definitely led to some stagnation (pg. 63), as mentioned above. I was a super good kid – I memorized multiple whole books of the Bible for Bible Quizzing, knew a lot of the “right answers” about theology, read my Bible cover to cover when I was 11-12 years old, etc. But it was all a façade – It covered up a heart that was so hungry for a real relationship. I was dying of starvation for the feelings of love. I knew with my head that God loved me. The thinking side of me had that box clearly checked off. But I guess I was trying to sweep the feeling cravings under the rug – like I didn’t think that’s what a relationship with God was supposed to/could include. Until that day when God in His GRACE unexplainedly reached down and began pouring out His love into my life – but you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to read more about that.  :D

Anyway, going back up to the question I had earlier….I think a big part of this whole issue was that I was raised in a very conservative family that was not at all comfortable with the more charismatic practices of Christianity. The active, personal experience of God’s love and presence was mostly lacking from my life before I came to college. I think that’s because the kind of experiences I’ve had since are kind of scary to people who are trying to fit God into a system of boxes. It doesn’t feel safe to have emotional, affective experiences. And so we avoided them. There are still times I’m not sure what to do with certain things about charismatic practices. But I just keep praying to God that He would guide me into what is true of HIM – that my spirituality would not try to keep Him in some artificial box, but also that I would not start practicing in ways that are not true to His character. Sometimes all I can do is trust Him to be faithful to not allow a heart yearning for Him to go astray.