Friday's Faith - CALLED BY GOD or... Killing my Assumptive Beliefs

Friday's Faith

CALLED BY GOD or...

Killing my Assumptive Beliefs

How many of us, when we think we're

CALLED

by God,

think we will

be

called to a

c

r

o

s

s

?

At that despicable thought, I am appalled!

NO! A God of LOVE COULDN'T LEAVE ME ON A CROSS!

NOR WOULD HE LEAVE ME TO SUFFER CHILD-LOSS!

All my dreams, hopes, and aspirations

of what

I

could bring to His kingdom...

PAIN, SUFFERING, OR LOSS

didn't cross

my imagination!

...So

was I looking for...

MY

kingdom

to come?

God forgive me that I cannot see

The joy for the pain,

the hope for the despair,

The end

for the

ugly beginning

or

middle...

I am not God...

Dare I decide what is fair?!

Forgive me for not hearing You when You asked,

Will you take up your cross, and follow Me?

You are not to seek to be first, but last...

Will you go to your death if I ask it of thee?

Forgive me, Lord for being

So short-sighted,

So disillusioned,

So misguided...

Help me to keep my eyes upon You,

where You'll teach me to have Your Heavenly view!

Would a God of Love leave His Son on a CROSS?

Why am I surprised

I

must suffer

L

o

s

s

?

From that time on Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke Him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!"

Jesus turned and said to Peter,

"Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Then Jesus said to his disciples,

"If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it."

~Matthew 16:21-25

Poem - CALLED BY GOD or... Killing My Assumptive Beliefs - Angie Bennett Prince 5/10/10

Friday’s Faith – Spiritual Train-Wreck (part two)

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Friday’s Faith

Spiritual Train-Wreck

(part two)

I am changed. I am a different person. I’m starting to get it… (I know; I’m slow. How could I have been so blind?!) The death of my child, as horrendous as it…is...has been…and will be…over the years, it has also given me something.

Merry Katherine’s death has done something for me that I am not sure would have happened any other way. I think God would put this gift in the category of “Treasures of Darkness” He gives to the hurting, weak, bereaved, to all those of us who are down-and-out. God—through my child's death—has opened my eyes…

**********

In a nutshell, what has happened as I begin to find God’s “Treasures of Darkness”…

Watchman Nee describes such an experience like mine as, in essence...until you’ve been taken to the cross in every part of your life—ALL of yourself, every part of you, to die on that cross—your motivations are suspect; all you have to offer to God is tainted with your “power,” your fleshly contributions that actually only serve to get in God’s way. With my child's death, I have been taken to the cross; every part of me has been nailed to that cross, for example, my child died, I died, my career died, my friend-relationships died, many of my family-relationships died, my “kingdom” here on this earth died, my dreams for the future died.

Instead of Alice going to Wonderland, or Dorothy going to Oz, Angie left glory (the glory of her former life), and went to the cross…to die!

The opposite of the happily-ever-after fairy tales, and yet I am at peace with my Lord! Bringing more joy-in-my-spirit than any magical endings to a Disney movie. And I have been moved out of the way, and God can move! Glory – His glory can shine and can move through me, and love through me to other people who are like me…who are also hanging on their cross—of loss, and pain, and hurt, and grief.

What sweeter place in the world would I rather be than with the other precious mothers and daddies who have been stripped bare, down to nothing, like me. Just pure, raw hearts, aching and longing, yet also tender, and vulnerable, and kind.

I am developing whole new sets of friends, beautiful souls, beautiful hearts stripped bare because of a depth of love for their child that when their child died, their lives too, have…stopped. And we meet one another and share that love with one another. In a safe place. In a place where we are understood. In a place where people care. In a place where people genuinely hurt for you. In a place where we compatriots simply “get it.”

**********

Next week, I will show you some of the new stones I am discovering within my “Spiritual Train-Wreck” that are rocking my world as they begin to make sense of my life as a Christian in the new light of my child’s death, and my death-wracked life.

Thank you for continuing on this painful journey with me and Merry Katherine’s daddy as we sort through the wreckage to find our very foundation—our spiritual groundedness—that we so sorely need to continue to walk through Grief’s never-ending “Trail of Tears”…

Please watch for Friday's Faith - Spiritual Train-Wreck (part three)!

Watchman Nee, Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things

“NO ROOM IN THE INN” FOR THE EMOTIONALLY WOUNDED

“NO ROOM IN THE INN” 

FOR THE EMOTIONALLY WOUNDED

by Tommy C. Prince

I happened upon a local church service on TV Sunday morning and was immediately sickened by what I saw.  The typical “elite” praise singers were up front, holding onto individual microphones looking up as if they are seeking the face of God, when, in my experience (twenty years of playing drums in five different churches), I found most are really seeking their own praise and glory.  The real reason they close their eyes when they look up is that the stage lights will fry your retina if you stare at them too long.  But they try to project that they are focused on singing to God.  In the background was the typical un-robed choir rocking back and forth, and each one was trying to out-sing the person next to him.  I couldn’t even leave the TV on long enough to check out the "praise band."

 

Watching this dog-and-pony-show helped me clarify one of the biggest reasons I don’t go to church any more.  There is no place for me in today’s church as I am now emotionally wounded from my 19-year-old daughter being killed 3 years ago.  I am not the same person I was.  Inside of me, I carry around a broken heart and a damaged soul.  How does talking about America-being-a-Christian-nation and God-blessing-America address my pain?  How does the way the music is being presented minister to my soul?  How does hearing about the "consumer" benefits of being a Christian help my woundedness before God?  How does a sermon on “sin management” have anything to do with what I am going through?

 

The good news is I still consider myself a disciple of Christ.  The bad news is the religious people think I am "at risk," as if whether or not I go to church has anything to do with the depth of my relationship with God Himself.   In a sense, I am "at risk" in that I am working through cleaning up a spiritual-train-wreck and will most likely come out the other side questioning ninety percent of what the church teaches.  

Taking ownership of my faith before God has been a liberating—but lonely—experience.

 

No church that I know of is teaching what I consider to be a dominant theme of the Gospel of Jesus:

 

“In this world you will have trouble.”

 

“You must lose your life to save it.”

 

“Blessed are those who mourn.”

 

“Consider it all joy when you have trials of many kinds.”

 

“Blessed is the person who perseveres under trials and trouble.”

 

“The Son of  Man must suffer many things.  Follow Me.”

 

“But be not troubled for I have overcome the world.”

 

 

These truths are soothing to my battered soul for they resonate with what I am living.  There is something wrong with the church-as-we-know-it-today when there is no place for the emotionally wounded to go and feel at home.

"No Vacancy" - http://www.neon-das.com/flashi16.jpg 

Written 8/25/09 - "No Room in the Inn" for the Emotionally Wounded - Tommy C. Prince

Suffering

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.

Suffering

It feels impossible to function with a broken heart. How do we endure suffering?

What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ?

Why does God allow suffering this side of Heaven?

What does it mean to be blessed by God?

Does being a Christian mean there's a "hedge-of-protection" around you?

Contrary to our Western views of life-in-Christ which at times could be characterized as a "prosperity gospel" which includes our mistaken notion of what it means to be "blessed," the scripture is very clear about Suffering being a natural by-product of being a disciple of Christ in this fallen world.

See the following scriptures throughout the New Testament regarding the suffering that will be a part of life-in-Christ on this earth:

Matthew 5:1-12; 10:22, 37-39; 16:21-25; 19:21, 29-30; 20:26-28; 23:11-12

Mark 8:33-38; 9:35; 10:21, 29-31

Luke 6:20-26; 9:23-25, 48; 14:33

John 8:31-36; 12:23-28; 15:18-20

Acts 9:16

Romans 5:3-6; 8:16-36; 12:14

1 Corinthians 4:9-13

2 Corinthians 1:3-9; 4:7-11, 16-18; 6:4-10; 12:7-10

Philippians 2:1-11; 3:7-11

Colossians 1:29-2:3

1 Thessalonians 3:2-4

2 Thessalonians 1:4-7

2 Timothy 1:9-12; 2:1-10, 3:10-12, 4:5-8, 16-18

Hebrews 2:9-10; 10:32-39; 11:25-27; 12:5-7, 10-13; 13:3, 12-14

James 1:2-7, 9, 12

1 Peter 1:10, 13; 2:20-24; 3:13-17; 4:1-2, 12-19; 5:6-11

GOD OFFERS HIS COMFORT

For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. . . .

And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. We do not want you to be uninformed ... about the hardships we suffered .... We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.

But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

2 Corinthians 1:5, 7-9, 3-4 (NIV, highlights mine)

So, When Will the Suffering End?

Until God ushers in His new heavens and new earth, there will be suffering in this fallen world from sin, evil, sickness, and death in this world. God does not leave us alone to deal with this suffering all by ourselves. He knows we cannot deal with it all by ourselves - not in any healthy way, so He comes along beside us. HE MEETS US IN OUR PAIN.

But when Jesus returns, according to Jesus in Revelation, death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire. When God then lives with us, He will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for AT THAT TIME, the old order of things (that we are living now) will be passed away.

We suffer now, but thanks be to God, for those of us who accept His offer of love through His Son Jesus Christ, our suffering will end.

Meanwhile, now - while we grapple with suffering now, God will meet us in the depths of our pain if we allow Him in, and He will comfort us in all of our suffering.

(See Revelation 1:17-18; 20:14; 21:3-4 New International Version (NIV), The Holy Bible)