March 2018 – rhythms of grace

When we decide to follow Christ, we are given a huge and beautiful responsibility:

To love others.

We are given the opportunity to lay down our own needs and wants and to serve one another in love.

Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction.

~2 Corinthians 1:3-4

It’s actually not a choice to love others- it’s a command. And it happens because we were loved first. We received love from Christ, and now we get to spread that love to a very broken world.

It’s a privilege.

However, when I think about all the people that God has placed in my life to love, I feel overwhelmed. There’s a lot of people, and a lot of pain. A lot of complicated stories and murky waters. Something cold in my heart tells me to back away, to not become too involved or engaged- because I already have enough to deal with. I don’t need to absorb others hurts. I don’t need more pain in my life. There’s a fierce protective mechanism inside of me that tells me to shut others out. To only get so close. If I get too close I might get burned, or lost in someone else’s story.

What a strange idea.

Sometimes I feel like people need too much from me, and I don’t have enough to give. I wish I had the energy to love everyone as they need to be loved. I wish I could always disregard myself and have a heart only for those around me. But it can be so exhausting.

Because I’m looking at it the wrong way.

In my pride and selfishness, I’m taking it on as completely my own responsibility. It is a responsibility, but it’s not fully mine. The way that I love others is not by sheer effort and determination. My weak and selfish heart could never handle that burden; I am so limited as a human- I don’t have the capacity to love the way I am supposed to.

I can’t do it on my own. I can’t love well- not when I am trying to do it by myself.

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

~1 John 4:7-8

Here’s the beautiful part: God loves for us. He is Love.

So the love we have for others does not come from ourself, from our own efforts. When we choose to love the people God has put in our lives, we are not left alone to figure out how to do it. He will show us how, and can even change our feelings about people (although love is by no means just a feeling). He will give us His spirit of discernment, to help us see what they really need instead of what they may want. To see our specific role in their lives, instead of trying to be everything for them.

We can’t be everything for anyone.

Loving people is not about pleasing them, or making sure they are comfortable all the time. It is about pointing them back to the Father, who is love Himself.

When I know to my core that I am deeply loved by God, I am able to love others well. It’s as simple as that. Our relationship with Him will overflow into our relationships with others, for better or for worse. When I am trying to love people in my own strength, my love will not be strong enough.

And then it’s no longer really a responsibility at all. Then I am free to enjoy people because I am not trying so hard- because I am not carrying a burden that is not mine to bear. And something wild and natural begins to happen: real love begins to grow as I see the person for who they are and meet them where they are at. I can see how God is showing up in our relationship- how He has orchestrated things so that we would connect in a certain way, through a certain conversation or circumstance. It only happens when I remember that it’s not up to me.

I’m so grateful that the best way to love others is by loving God the most. Because God is easy to love, whereas people are not. God’s character is perfect and consistent, and He has proven Himself faithful over and over again. I never have to doubt His motives with me, or question His authority in my life. I know He will always be there for me, and knows just the way to speak to my heart.

A love like that has to be shared.

As Christians, we often think that we are not fulfilling our purpose unless we are out in the world doing something “big.” We narrow the scope of ministry to preaching, teaching the Bible to kids in Africa, or traveling around the world on missions. By elevating this kind of work to be “God’s work,” we are diminishing the every day, ordinary ways God uses His people. We forget that God is not only in one place and in one kind of vocation.

We forget that we can (and indeed are called to) minister right where we are- right where God has placed us.

In fact, that is exactly where he calls us to His purposes for us.

I feel the resistance in my own heart against the mundanity of every day life, as though if I’m not doing something glamorous or being recognized for the gifts and talents God has given me, I am somehow not fulfilling my purpose. As though my purpose is really mine at all.

There is a restlessness inside of me that’s screaming to be discovered- I’m all too eager for my “time to shine”- my moments of glory. A sense of invisibility and anonymity has overtaken me, which reveals the unseemly state of my heart- I’m looking for human approval and affirmation instead of God’s.

God sees everything.

There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven

~Ecclesiastes 3:1

He sees the work that I’m doing now- the way I am stewarding what He’s given me. He’s watching to see how I will be faithful to Him in the present. He wants me to bring everything I do before Him:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

~Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)

If God allowed us to do the big things we really want to do right now, we would take God’s kingdom work into our own hands and minister out of a place of self-sufficiency and pride, because of our own immaturity and that desire for human approval. God knows we aren’t ready to step into those things until our hearts are utterly inclined toward Him and Him alone; at the point when we no longer crave man’s applause but are so Gospel-centered that, like Paul, it doesn’t matter to us what people think or what our status is, as long as the truth is told:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

~Philippians 3:8-10

Before we can ever do something large-scale like we dream about, we have to go through seasons of preparation and maturity. And those seasons aren’t sexy. They aren’t glamorous. They are messy. They involve deep heart work that can only be accomplished when we come to the end of ourselves and learn to fully depend on God. We don’t come to this place by our own strengths or talents or gifts- we actually usually come here by our failures and weaknesses.

Since moving to Santa Cruz, God has taught me a lot about my main purpose in this world, and it’s not to be in a ministry internship. It’s not even to be a leader in the church, even though that is something He has placed on my heart.

My main purpose is simply to love Him. My purpose is to enjoy Him, and to bring everything I am and everything I do before Him to allow Him to transform me.

And guess what? I can do this in any job. I can do it any place, with any people. His purpose for me is to seek Him daily, and He is available to me everywhere I go. It really makes no difference to Him whether I am in Santa Cruz or somewhere else, part of one church or another. He can accomplish what He wants to in any circumstance I find myself in, as long as I am open and willing to receive Him. If I’m not, then He can’t use me anywhere.

Maybe this season is not about “fulfilling your calling.” Maybe it’s about seeing what He’s placed directly in front of you and finding Him there.