Reform & Revive

 I fight with pride a lot. As I was telling a friend today: if you take a guy that is fairly smart, can put disparate concepts together, can talk well, and you make him a Christian, you get something very dangerous. He starts believing the press others say about him and begins to think he is much more mature than he actually is. This is me. My entire life people have set me apart for “something big for God.” Being able to understand and communicate even the deepest truths of God and His Word doesn’t equal maturity one bit. Seminary has certainly been showing me just how independent I try to be from God.

But nevertheless, something does resonate within me when I think about my place on the national/world stage. I feel like I’m being tailored by God for big, visible things out there in the world. I don’t know for sure what this means, and I’m fine with it not coming to pass, but I feel like I’m being prepared for a weight I could not bear apart from prior work by God.

But that’s not the point of this post. Now, like I said, I was grabbing coffee with that friend of mine - a friend who is quite visible on the national and international stage. But he’s been struggling with something recently that really struck me. He pointed out that no person ever used by God for really big things ever did it apart from great levels and displays of suffering. His problem was that he shirks from suffering while seeking comfort - the very thing that is antithetical to what he’s called to. I have a similar problem.

I’m only 22 and I feel like I haven’t suffered much. Some really dark family stuff, spiritual dark months of the soul, and severe emotional pains (loneliness and heartache, mainly), but really no classic forms of real suffering. Yet, in spite of this, God has given me a very developed theology of suffering and God’s Sovereignty within it. This terrifies me. I can not get away from this haunting sense deep in the recesses of my mind that severe trials lie ahead of me. So severe that God needs to prepare me now to survive the pains to come.

In one sense this reaffirms my desire to be well-known, influential, and in front of many people. On the other it sobers me, realizing (perhaps for the first time) what it means to “count the cost.” So perhaps all those that have been praising and building me up for big things in the future have actually been painting a target on my soul for the refining pains and trials of God.

So for those of you out there seeking renown, fame, and exposure. Know that if you really are doing it to God’s Glory, then no servant is greater than his Master, and you should expect nothing less than fulfilling in the body the sufferings of Christ, that His life might be seen through your death for your good and God’s Glory.

Entering in a new degree thereof
Against one’s will
I will be enabled
To live once more again

Ah, to live!

And give glory to the One who gives glory
To the meek
Of which
I am
Not

Yet . . .

Being thrust to moment to moment
In my life-long “awkward stage”
Into lives I don’t want to
But must,
and will,
for my will
Has been seized
And captured
By another.

Another so beautiful
All-wonderful
Satisfaction of satisfactions
Pleasure of pleasures
Joy of joys
Pain of pains.

Then one lost is now one found

Like the pink head
Of a plastic hippo
Whose heart is blue,
Whose unrenewed mind lies lonely at the bottom
Of a dirty garbage heap.

And the Renewed stands in silent reflection
Amidst the sounds of little children-
The sounds of an innocence they have not.
While dancing in circles swirling in safe adoration
Of a will they have not either

But may.  At some appointed time.

As I sit.
In this park.
On this day.
With these thoughts.
On this heart.
And this mind.

Contemplating the eccentricities of a life
Lived with purpose
in the Already But Not Yet.

Lord do I praise Thee at all times?  Is that Biblical, even?  What is worship?  That which declares and proclaims the Glory of God, through treasuring it, I suppose.  Could Creation then worship?  Could I, even when eating, drinking, and making merriment with fellow embattled saints come to treasure, declare, and proclaim all You Are, Say, and Be - Your Glory?  Your Manifold Perfection breaking through my leisure and feast and satisfactions to be ushered in as a herald to Your coming Kingdom already at hand?  Does this prose and poetry bring the Reality of You and Your Kingdom that much more into this world?  Is this the way you made us - made this system - to work?  This whole “Christianity” thing?  Perhaps obedience is worship.  Perhaps I must end this now and worship.  Command what Thou will, and give what Thou commands.

In love,
Your favorite.

Now looking through the glass not dim, Coltrane all around;
he sets a tone of dissonance, rightly now it seems.
For as the beauty clothes me in, a tragedy is found:
woodchips below - a resting place - long for love supreme.

For there he lies with outstretched span, stricken by a car;
afflicted by our fallenness, and smitten by our thorns.
He struggles with the weight of pain, not getting very far.
To stop, release his spirit’s breath - give way to Death’s dark door.

I prayed a prayer, and thought some thoughts, and something in me burned.
Oh I see my Savior, the pains he took!  For me: protect,
for prone to wander, weak I am, to that which I once yearned.
Until you did in me and Him- my soul: You resurrect.

Now to show He heard my prayer and strengthen my weak frame,
up pops the bird, into the air.  My soul shall do the same.

The Nature of God is the defining Nature against which all things are measured.  Let me unpack that a bit.  What God loves above all things is Himself.  His Glory, His Presence, His Work, and His Son are the things which bring Him the most delight, hence why those who are saved are being conformed to the image of His Son - they must be or wouldn’t be accepted by him.  So, at the end of time, everything and everyone will be compared to the Nature of God and He’ll keep that which stands up, and cast away what doesn’t.  Believers will be found in Christ (God-incarnate) so they will find themselves with Him forever.

So, it is that which does not exist in accordance to God’s Nature (the defining, upholding, creating, outside of creation thing it is) that is considered sin.  That’s why all sin is described by the Bible in “realtive” terms that all imply missing, falling short, or perverting a pre-existent standard.  Words like “perverse”, “de-praved”, “fallen”, and “sin” (an archery term meaning to miss the bulls-eye) all show this.

This means that what exists in line with His Nature is the truly natural.  This makes the present fallen reality of the world - all things not in line with His Nature - not what’s “natural” but indeed “subnatural,” making the things of God not “supernatural” but the truly “natural.”  Everything God does then to break into this world is a matter of justice, restoration, and redemption - a matter of purchasing from darkness to bring to where all was meant to live.

What does this have to do with life as we know and experience it?  Simply put, it means freedom.  The idea of “supernaturality” creates this sense in us of impossibility, and we proceed to live life out of that notion that God is so “unattainable” for our little wills to obtain.  But the truth is more wonderful and terrifying all at once.  It’s not that he’s so far above, but it’s the fact that we’ve sunk so low that causes this gap.  But though we are trapped in this valley, Christ still descended and did the work required to make us truly natural humans again.  This means that in Christ we are more ourselves than we ever were apart from him.  We don’t lose our humanity, we gain it.  So the fight of this life is to live as you were naturally meant to live.

We must fight the subnaturality of this world to attain that which is truly natural, and in that find the rhythm of life that resonates in the most ancient and basest part of our souls that hearkens to a time in a garden long ago, and in a city that is yet to come.