When asked what lies I was buying into, I struggled to find an answer. Only when we are faced with the truth can we see the lies, but the best lies are disguised as truth. 2 Corinthians 11:14 says, "Satan disguises himself as an angel of light." so why would I not expect the lies he uses to be any less difficult to spot. As I went through a list of truth statements, about who the bible told me I was, I found it hard to find any that specifically resonated with me. There wasn't one that stood out above the rest or that I found hard to believe. I understood and really felt that every thing I read was how I viewed myself or at least I was intentional about trying to see myself more that way. However as I sat on in class and pondered something completely different a word popped into my head. Fear. A fear that had long been disguised as a desire to be seen as capable, excellent, gifted, specifically in the art of social interaction. This was not confined to one on one interactions but included, public speaking, writing, small group discussion, letters and any other form of communication. I had viewed it as a desire that people would see that I was a gifted communicator, and it is a desire, but overtime it manifested as a fear that people would think I was not particularly good at speaking and therefore ought not to speak. That my thoughts would be unheard and my opinions unvalued.
I think it was a highly successful technique of the devil to twist a great deal of compliments and encouragements into a fear. You see I hadn't always been particularly gifted at speaking or writing. Growing up I was awkward in conversation, often feeling as though I couldn't hold my own side of the conversation. I felt guilty that (in my eyes) the other person had to cater to my social ineptitude. As I grew up I became increasingly better at speaking and writing, as I understood the rules, techniques, and forms for each format. As I continued to develop as a communicator I began getting encouraged that communication was something I was particularly good at, and that I could convey ideas in an effective and interesting manner. I wanted these compliments to be true, I clung to them and desired to become an even more effective communicator. As I began to internalize these compliments and treat them as truth I began to be less motivated by becoming a great communicator and instead became motivated by convincing others that I was a great communicator. My motivation switched from a good desire to become better to a unhealthy desire to prove that I was good. The confrontation to this lie was for me to bask in the truth that in the end the Holy Spirit is at the root of every changed life. I could be the best communicator in the world and write books that sold billions of copies and at the end of the day if the Holy Spirit was not moving I wouldn't help a single person. At the same time I could be incapable of saying anything intelligible and if the Holy Spirit was active in that it could revolutionize the world. The freedom came when I confronted that lie with the truth that I don't ever have to worry about changing the world or even a single person, that is the Spirits job and only He can do it. All I have to do is give the message to the best of my ability and let the Spirit work.
When this came to me it took me little time to process or confirm. The light of truth shone in on my crap and all my senses were awakened. The metaphorical sight and smell wreaked of a real issue at hand but the truth held the solution. My assignment was to read a list of attributes I was through Christ every night and morning and to look at a card we were to carry with us when ever the lie we felt was awakened. But my change came the first night. I pondered this discovery the night after class, closed my little eye lids, and fell fast asleep. That night I had a dream I got to go flying in three different manners. The first time I was in a hot air balloon with a group of friends, it was safe, slow and fun. How freeing floating through the air truly is, not confined by the chains of gravity. The second time I had to fight a man who had on his back the balloon part of the hot air balloon. Once defeated (he stood no chance) the watching police officer said that I could have the guys balloon as a reward. This seemed fair to me and I was dying to try it. I slipped it on and away I went, up out of the city I was in, floating far away fast with little to no control. I thought in the dream, "this should be really scary, 'cause I have no control...but I'm not afraid." With a big grin I drifted off to the same landing sight I landed the hot air balloon at and said hi to my friend's father whose backyard the site happened to be. The final time I found myself high up on a mountain overlooking a lush green valley, this time I was paragliding. I found myself leaping off the mountain with nothing but my glider and the backpack it was attached to. I watched the children playing below as I glided this time with great speed and agility over the fields. This ride ought to have been the scariest yet and all the while I felt nothing but great joy and peace.
Now I'm not one to interpret dreams. I don't think that many of my dreams have much to any meaning apart from usually manifesting some aspect of what I've been thinking about. However, when it is a manifestation of what I have been thinking about it, the meaning is usually pretty obvious to me. The key to me is always what I remember thinking in the dream. "This should be scary...but I'm not a afraid." The second I stopped trying to forget the dream and was able to really think about it I knew what the dream was a manifestation of. Freedom. There are somethings in life we realize and then have to work for years to find freedom from. In others the freedom comes with simply realizing the issue. As I realized I had this fear of seeming incompetent in social settings and confronted that fear with the truth of my role in the grand scheme I found freedom and my unconscious mind knew it. So whether I'm speaking in front of 50,000 or 5 I know my role and can find freedom in that.
Of course this doesn't mean I won't be incredibly nervous, but as I lean into this truth I know the reality of my part in life will set in. Allowing me to slowly but surely drift into the background and stop trying to hog God's stage.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Uncertain Ramblings
I like to write very succinctly. I often write long lines of description, with the intent that the reader will understand both the internal dialogue occurring and the external environment in which it occurred. Whether or not I succeed at this I'm not sure, but I know that concise description and precise diction are at least ideals I strive for in my writing. That being said, this time I don't feel like I can fulfill those hopes and expectation placed on myself. Sometimes I just need to ramble on. The reason being that sometimes I'm forced to write before I'm sure my own thoughts on what I need to write on. So I hope that through throwing my disjointed and still forming thoughts on paper (or an electronic screen) that I might come to some conclusion.
This past week I was assigned the task of making a cross at least 2 ft. tall and then carrying it with me all week, everywhere I went. The reason we were supposed to do this? As far as I could tell it was to see what would happen if we took Matthew 16:24 literally for a week and actually bore our crosses daily. Would God work tremendous miracles, would people be drawn, would we get persecuted, or would we just get a lot awkward looks and maybe a few questions on it? Well it turned out it was the final one, not much happened when carrying my cross around. Unlike some others in my class I did get a few questions about it from strangers. One wanted to know what kind of wood I used, one wanted to know if the school I said had assigned this assignment was the local community college (which made me laugh. The public education system is usually fairly weary of religious expression), and one wanted to know if it was a wooden sword. Not the most thought provoking questions. In the end, the week came and went and nothing much happened.
Now don't get me wrong, I had plenty of funny random experiences because of it. One day my car wouldn't start so I ended up having to run ten minutes to work through downtown Salem in jeans, a t-shirt and carrying my cross. That little adventure got me a, "Don't drop it!" and a, "Well, would ya lookie there!" yelled at or about me. Another day I had an opportunity to go shooting and me and two other students got to walk in store to buy ammo for the gun, all of us holding crosses. Needless to say the woman asked for identification and I'm pretty sure she is still scanning the news to see if there has been a radical christian shooting incident. I also had several good conversations with Ex-Christian co-workers about the relevance of the cross, our societies discomfort with overt religious symbolism, and the possible existence of nothingness. It also led to a conversation in which I had to joy of telling a co-worker that I did not fear death, after he asked on the topic, with the reasoning being, "It helps when you think you're going to heaven."
So plenty happened, but nothing extreme. In the end when asked about my thoughts on bearing my cross by an acquaintance my conclusion was, "Mildly inconvenient." My main concern became the inconvenience of carrying another item around with me and having another hand filled. In the end I came to a point of simple uncertainty. With no directly influential conversations coming out of my cross experience and no strong persecution (Except for one trucker who yelled something out his window but I couldn't tell what he said...so it doesn't really count) or any other miraculous experience I simply became uncertain about the whole experience. One person told me that the Cross represents death and every time I carried it I was supposed to be dying to myself...but I never really felt like it made me die to self. Another person told me it was supposed to make me remember Christ constantly, but in the end I was usually more focused on how many flips I could get my cross to do while throwing it up and catching it, or how much I did or did not look like I was carrying a wooden sword. This whole cross experience came in a time of uncertainty as well. I had thought that I had felt the Holy Spirit telling me that by October I would have or at least know of a new job I going to be going into...but October 1st came and went and nothing happened. So in this time of realizing that apparently I'm not very good at discerning the Holy Spirit's voice in my life, I was again faced with a task that yielded uncertain results.
Therefore, my conclusion is to trust God. God knows what is going on and if I needed to know something I'm sure He would make it clear. I don't know how carrying my cross effected others. Maybe somebody was encouraged, convicted, challenged, or given peace through seeing me with the cross. Maybe my conversations with my co-workers will be used to unforeseen effects. Maybe something miraculous will happen, maybe not. I have no idea either way, but I trust God is at work. If there is one thing I realized about carrying my cross it is that, while it did feel like all eyes were on me, it also gave me a great deal of confidence. The cross is powerful, it is the symbol God chose to save the world through. Carrying the cross made me realize or maybe just remember how powerful it is, and as a Christian I am carrying a great weapon to slay the enemy. A demon-cleaver in it's own right. "All authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to [Christ], (Matt. 28:18)." It's time to remember we have been saved by the one with the power over everything and that we have been given access to Him. Therefore we should not fear. That is what I learned this week. We have been given access to great power, and through the uncertain times, when we know not what is happening or why, we do know that the one with all authority has saved us. So what should we fear other than God himself?
This past week I was assigned the task of making a cross at least 2 ft. tall and then carrying it with me all week, everywhere I went. The reason we were supposed to do this? As far as I could tell it was to see what would happen if we took Matthew 16:24 literally for a week and actually bore our crosses daily. Would God work tremendous miracles, would people be drawn, would we get persecuted, or would we just get a lot awkward looks and maybe a few questions on it? Well it turned out it was the final one, not much happened when carrying my cross around. Unlike some others in my class I did get a few questions about it from strangers. One wanted to know what kind of wood I used, one wanted to know if the school I said had assigned this assignment was the local community college (which made me laugh. The public education system is usually fairly weary of religious expression), and one wanted to know if it was a wooden sword. Not the most thought provoking questions. In the end, the week came and went and nothing much happened.
Now don't get me wrong, I had plenty of funny random experiences because of it. One day my car wouldn't start so I ended up having to run ten minutes to work through downtown Salem in jeans, a t-shirt and carrying my cross. That little adventure got me a, "Don't drop it!" and a, "Well, would ya lookie there!" yelled at or about me. Another day I had an opportunity to go shooting and me and two other students got to walk in store to buy ammo for the gun, all of us holding crosses. Needless to say the woman asked for identification and I'm pretty sure she is still scanning the news to see if there has been a radical christian shooting incident. I also had several good conversations with Ex-Christian co-workers about the relevance of the cross, our societies discomfort with overt religious symbolism, and the possible existence of nothingness. It also led to a conversation in which I had to joy of telling a co-worker that I did not fear death, after he asked on the topic, with the reasoning being, "It helps when you think you're going to heaven."
So plenty happened, but nothing extreme. In the end when asked about my thoughts on bearing my cross by an acquaintance my conclusion was, "Mildly inconvenient." My main concern became the inconvenience of carrying another item around with me and having another hand filled. In the end I came to a point of simple uncertainty. With no directly influential conversations coming out of my cross experience and no strong persecution (Except for one trucker who yelled something out his window but I couldn't tell what he said...so it doesn't really count) or any other miraculous experience I simply became uncertain about the whole experience. One person told me that the Cross represents death and every time I carried it I was supposed to be dying to myself...but I never really felt like it made me die to self. Another person told me it was supposed to make me remember Christ constantly, but in the end I was usually more focused on how many flips I could get my cross to do while throwing it up and catching it, or how much I did or did not look like I was carrying a wooden sword. This whole cross experience came in a time of uncertainty as well. I had thought that I had felt the Holy Spirit telling me that by October I would have or at least know of a new job I going to be going into...but October 1st came and went and nothing happened. So in this time of realizing that apparently I'm not very good at discerning the Holy Spirit's voice in my life, I was again faced with a task that yielded uncertain results.
Therefore, my conclusion is to trust God. God knows what is going on and if I needed to know something I'm sure He would make it clear. I don't know how carrying my cross effected others. Maybe somebody was encouraged, convicted, challenged, or given peace through seeing me with the cross. Maybe my conversations with my co-workers will be used to unforeseen effects. Maybe something miraculous will happen, maybe not. I have no idea either way, but I trust God is at work. If there is one thing I realized about carrying my cross it is that, while it did feel like all eyes were on me, it also gave me a great deal of confidence. The cross is powerful, it is the symbol God chose to save the world through. Carrying the cross made me realize or maybe just remember how powerful it is, and as a Christian I am carrying a great weapon to slay the enemy. A demon-cleaver in it's own right. "All authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to [Christ], (Matt. 28:18)." It's time to remember we have been saved by the one with the power over everything and that we have been given access to Him. Therefore we should not fear. That is what I learned this week. We have been given access to great power, and through the uncertain times, when we know not what is happening or why, we do know that the one with all authority has saved us. So what should we fear other than God himself?
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