:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

When I think about God as a protector, I want someone who will shield me from the hardships of life. I want him to protect me from flat tires, heartbreak, cancer, persecution, and, just being painfully honest here, the Tea Party.

It’s tempting to read the verses in the Bible of God as a protector with a kind of absolute interpretation—applying these verses to myself directly as true for all times and places. If I read about God as a shield, I want him to be a shield in all situations.

Such a line of interpretation is tough to sort out. In one sense, we’ll never know how many times God actually protected us. However, in a world with free will to one degree or another, we can’t get around the fact that hardships await us—Jesus promised us as much.

If we want to preserve our relationships with God and avoid the crushing disappointment of misplaced expectations, it will help to examine some ways that God’s protection may work. I understand that my experiences may not be normative for everyone, nor could this post be exhaustive, so I welcome your feedback and stories in the comments.

God Guides Us

God speaks to his people who are willing to listen—Jesus said my sheep hear my voice. That doesn’t mean he reveals everything to us—not even Jesus knew when God’s Kingdom would be fully restored to earth. Nevertheless, we can benefit by the guidance and wisdom of God in certain situations. That may result in our protection and will certainly help us accomplish God’s work on earth.

God Wants Us to Ask

Jesus makes it clear that we should persistently ask God for what we need, but that doesn’t mean we’ll always ask God for what is good for us, what is realistic, or what is God’s best for us. In fact, I’ve sometimes asked God for things that weren’t good for me—things that would have only continued my dependence on idols. It is good to ask for God’s protection sometimes, but only after we have listened for God’s direction and have said, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done.”

God Does Not Follow Formulas and Incantations

Tim mentioned yesterday in a comment that there is no magic formula or prayer that binds God to act in a certain way. In addition, God’s deliverance in one situation does not mean it will be replicated. There were prophets who were both delivered from their enemies and prophets who were attacked.

God Can Protect Us

All of this points to the fact that God can protect us, but his first goal is to shape us into his chosen people who know him intimately and who can bring his Kingdom’s loving rule to earth. That means our protection is more of a by-product of God’s Kingdom coming than a perk we get in return for our allegiance. The more we embrace the Kingdom, the more we can enjoy the healing and restoration it brings, even if we may face trials and hardships at the same time. 

God Can Use Hardships

This sounds like a terrible Christian cliché, but I’m pretty sure I can say that each hardship in my life has been used by God in one way or another to help someone else or to draw myself and others closer to himself. Perhaps this is because pain shocks us out of our routines and forces us to encounter God in fresh ways, breaking the hold of bad habits or false perceptions.

God’s Perspective on Tragedy is Different from Our Own

As much as I like the idea of the world having an Ed Cyzewski around, the reality I’ve had to confront is that God has work for me to accomplish, I need to seek him and his Kingdom first (asking God what I can do for him), and then God will call me to himself when my time is up. Paul writes about being absent from the body and present with God, which certainly makes death seem more like a transition into something better than the end of something good.

In fact, I’ve had to accept that God’s perception of pain and tragedy is a bit different from my own. While the Bible consistently reveals God as compassionate and mourning with us, he also sees the many good things that we cannot. I want God to give me a long life, but then again, I’m here to love God first and foremost. If my purpose in life is to love God, then it’s not exactly a tragedy if I leave this world to be with him.

God’s Ways are Hard to Understand

We’ll never really know how free will and God’s sovereignty work. The Bible offers us glimpses of both at work. I don’t know why certain prayers are answered and others are not. I don’t know how God’s protection works. One friend of mine asked whether God even protects us in the first place. Perhaps that’s a matter of perspective. I don’t know. Any time we try to say, “I know God is just like this…” I get nervous.

At best we have approximations and informed opinions based on scripture, tradition, and experience.

We know that God wants us to pray, to ask for things, and to trust him as our shield. It sure seems like he wants us to trust him for his protection, but not before we’ve sought him out and made his Kingdom our primary concern.

I think that’s why folks with Stephen, Paul, Aquilla, and Priscilla were able to face mobs and executioners. They saw God as their mighty deliverer and protector, but they also understood that they needed to lay their lives on the line for his Kingdom and not count their lives as anything worth protecting. The Kingdom came first, God’s protection either followed or didn’t follow.

However, in a more eternal sense, God does protect and deliver his people from sin and the power of death. That is the ultimate victory.

Shane Claiborn writes that the beauty of Christianity is that even if we are killed, God will resurrect us. In a sense, God’s people are unstoppable. Even in the seeming loss of death, we’ve actually taken another step toward our victory.

What This Means for Us

There is a lot at stake when we pray. We have very good reason to listen, to wait on God. If we want to ask for God’s protection, we’d better make sure we’re on the same page as God, moving in step with his Kingdom.

We can misunderstand and misrepresent God if we always expect him to deliver us from pain or hardship or if we always expect him to answer our prayers precisely. It’s far more important to seek his Kingdom and his Spirit’s leading voice. That will lead us to safety and security in him, even if our life circumstances seem anything but safe.

For those seeking first God’s Kingdom, Jesus promises trials and hardships, but he also promises healing, protection, restoration, and provision. Until we wrap our minds around what God’s Kingdom means for us, we’ll probably never quite understand what that healing, protection, restoration, or provision will look like.

The Only Item on My To-Do List

I used to have a Christian growth check list. It read something like this:

• Daily prayer time.
• Daily Bible study time.
• Sin-free day.

If I had a major revelation during my prayer or Bible study time, I added a star or a sticker to my Christian growth list. OK, maybe not, but you get the idea. I had a clear picture in my mind of what a successful Christian looks like.

Follow the list and grow as a Christian.

It was exhausting.

I knew lots of other Christians who really enjoyed their prayer time, even if they had to discipline themselves into making a habit of it.

I knew lots of other Christians who found life-changing truth in the Bible, even if they had to drag themselves out of bed at an indecent hour.

Why was I struggling? Why didn’t I know how to make it work? I had the information, but it wasn’t clicking.

A former pastor of mine used to say, “Keep Christianity simple.” I’m all for that. I mean, it’s not like I had a very extensive list, right?

The problem? I wasn’t keeping it simple enough.

It started with a prayer time, in which I confronted the reality that God loves me. It shocked me. My life was swallowed up into something more accepting and powerful than I could have ever imagined. As I opened myself up to God’s Spirit, his leading, and the love he gave to me, I found my desires changed and shifted.

I wanted more of God.

I wanted to spend time with him.

I wanted to listen.

I wanted to obey him.

The result? I began to grow as a disciple.

Prayer, obedience,  and scripture became sub-points under the single item on my new to-do list: fall in love with Jesus.

Love prompts me to seek the leading of the Spirit, toss aside my goals and priorities, and steer clear of sin. Love drives me to greater discipline in prayer and study of scripture.

A wise man once said, “If I do not have love… I am nothing.”

Without love all of the best intentions, all of the hardest work, and all of the to-do lists in the world will just wear us out. May we never grow weary because we rely on God’s unfailing love.

Following Jesus takes a lot of work and effort, but it isn’t necessarily the kind of work we expect. In fact, the effort that following Jesus requires often looks like nothing.

While the Christian faith is ideally an active one, one of the most important acts a Christian can do is this: rest. Sitting, listening, and making ourselves available to God are all part of the “active work” of resting.

I’ve felt called to spend more time sitting lately, and it has done so much good for helping me focus on God’s Kingdom and the needs of my relationship with Jesus. In addition, I’ve become a little more focused on praying for others and far more aware of the self-centered nature of many of my prayers.

More than anything else, I’ve learned that I need more time to rest in God’s presence. A little can make me aware of my need for so much more of God. I’m grateful that he has given me this kind of discontent.

I pray that we all can figure out ways to seek God and his Kingdom first by resting in him before the worries of our to-do lists take over.

For More About Rest: Check out Bonnie Gray’s post “One of the Biggest Rest Killers.”

Tomorrow’s Post: How Christian Writers Teach Us Theology

When playing baseball in Jr. High, I used to watch with relief when a ground ball streaked toward shortstop or a fly ball soared into right field. So long as I didn’t have to deal with it at second base.

If I didn’t make any errors and at least hit the ball once, I could usually go home happy.

This is not the attitude you want if you plan on actually winning a game.

While the members of a youth baseball team can coast through a season within thinly veiled disinterest, the stakes change significantly when we start dealing with the Christian life. In fact, half-hearted interest is a huge problem.

Paul speaks of the Christian pursuit of God as something we throw ourselves into with complete devotion, straining to win. We aren’t just in the race. Being in the race as a Christian won’t do much for us.

In fact, if we aren’t actively trying to win the race, we may be in trouble.

We need to be careful that we don’t allow the results or numbers focus of the business-world to influence us. We don’t have to freak out about bringing verifiable data to God. A PowerPoint presentation of our quarterly spiritual growth and progress is not required. 

I have the sense that God is searching for people who are deeply committed to him. That means besides believing in him, we are reordering our lives in the short and long term around him.

God is looking for commitment on par with Rocky: rising early for an egg drink, charging up the Philly art museum steps, and pounding hunks of meat at the local packing plant. His life revolved around his goal. I doubt anyone would punch meat for the fun of it.

Our time in the car, waiting in line, or lying in bed before falling asleep are all opportunities to draw near to God. We can find moments to advance throughout our day, and other times we’ll need to change our schedules in order to make God our top priority.

Drawing near to God is our goal. 

If we aren’t making progress toward giving ourselves completely to God, we are in danger of being distracted by an unhealthy focus on things such as money, sex, power, or listless amusement. That isn’t to say we can’t have those things in their proper place. However, if we aren’t moving toward God, we run the risk of being pushed away from God.

I see the Christian life as this ongoing process where we’re continually learning to surrender more and more of ourselves to God. We don’t arrive at a place of complete surrender or deep holiness overnight. It’s a long-term training process with some short term rewards leading to the greatest reward at the end.

Ask God where you should begin.

I started swimming laps back in November. It was more like splashing a lot and drowning a little. I needed lots of breaks, and I couldn’t do the freestyle/crawl stroke too much. I mixed all of these made-up strokes together. A few months later I still struggle to keep a fast pace during my laps—“no pain” is my unofficial work out motto—but I can swim relatively well for 30 minutes with a few breaks.

Training myself to exercise regularly has been a difficult process, but it’s paying off in the short and long term with better health, less stress, and sound sleep. Those rewards were not apparent at the beginning, and there were moments of frustration, but winning the mental battle of the first few swims was the worst of it.

God can help you ask those first questions, take those first steps, and sort out what needs to change. God wants to be found—at least eventually. Finding God may not be easy sometimes, but I’ve often found that those times of waiting and uncertainty were generally part of him breaking down unhealthy patterns in my life or teaching me something I’m not expecting.

God wants us to thrive, experiencing the full peace and joy that he gives us. If we want those things too, we won’t find them by doing the bare minimum.

I was praying recently for God to provide for some of our needs. It was a tough time. While God has not failed to provide for us, it was hard to wait.

What did I have while I was praying? Hope. That is to say: nothing. At least, nothing at the time.

I didn’t have any one thing guaranteeing that God would provide for our needs. I didn’t have anything developing. I just clung to hope and the memories of God’s deliverance in the past.

Still, I had nothing. Our problems weren’t going to solve themselves. I was asking God to do something about them.

Hope takes the stories from our past and from scripture, applies our past lessons to our current circumstances, and projects a future in which God walks with us and provides what we need—not necessarily what we want.

Hope feels like a flimsy thing. It’s not exactly comforting. Hope is not the solution.

However, hope helps us endure because it takes stock of our circumstances and then enables us to face the future by applying the lessons from our past to it. Even our hope in the Gospel takes God’s past revelation and our experiences with him into account as we hope to be fully united with him some day.

We may not have anything when we have hope, but we trust that this will one day change. And when we have hope, we leave the door open for God to work among us, to provide, and to give us gifts that surpass our greatest hopes.

For more posts about hope, visit the Thursday Faith Jam at Bonnie Gray’s Faith Barista blog.

Tomorrow’s Post: Another Shocking Reason Why I Go to Church (Part 2 of my Friday series)

Do the Disturbing Passages Negate the Rest of the Bible?

I’ve read quite a lot about the disturbing passages in the Bible, and I know that many learned authors have tried their best to sort out the nature of God and possible explanations for events such as the conquest of Canaan. Some of us may accept their theories, but I’m going to guess that many of us are dissatisfied by them.

I’ll admit it. I don’t have satisfactory explanations for certain events in the Bible that I simply can’t match up with Jesus.

What now?

For me, 99.9% of the Bible fits together relatively well. There are just a few instances that are hard to stomach. I don’t want to set myself up as a judge of God, and therefore I have an important choice to make. We all do.

Do we let a few troubling passages overshadow everything else in the Bible and the experience of God in our midst today?

After spending so many years studying theology and wrestling with tough passages, I hit a point where I just needed to follow Jesus, worship him, and live in a daily loving relationship with him. There are some gaps in what I understand, but I take these gaps as further evidence that I am not God.

I’m sure my wife appreciates that.

What blows my mind is that God has created us with intelligence and the ability to discern moral choices. I believe he wants us to wrestle with these issues. He wants us to read about the conquest of Canaan and ask him, “What the hell?”

However, he doesn’t want us to stay there feeling bitter, self-righteous, or superior. We have to bring our honest questions to God, while also remembering that we aren’t in this to get 100% on the test, to prove the Bible is flawless, or to prove we are most clever with our theology.

We are committed to Jesus because he is passionate for his people. He doesn’t have to explain every single detail to us, even if we can’t quite understand why he’d leave us hanging sometimes when we bring questions to him.

At the end of the day, we can rest assured that we know quite a lot about God based on the Bible, Jesus is right Savior to follow, and we’ll have to rely on faith when we run into mysteries. I’m OK with that.

I don’t need to spend my time knowing every little thing in the Bible because I am fully known by God, and, despite this, God still wants to be with me.

We Don’t Expect the Bible to Disturb Us

I know this may sound hard to believe, but most days I’m not interested in waking up, opening the Bible, and running into questions about God’s relation to things like genocide or the way divine election works. Call me hopelessly idealistic, but I thought the Bible was supposed to just tell us how to love God and to love others, making it easier for me to follow Jesus in my everyday life.

We are told to read the Bible devotionally, for the purpose of “spiritual growth.” Preachers lament our lack of biblical literacy. Commentators posit that our problems would be solved if only we opened the good book more often.

Lost in this push to get our noses in “The Word” is any notion that the Bible may disturb us, feed our doubts, and possibly even push us further away from God sometimes. For all of the comfort and joy I find in the Bible, we can’t overlook the times, even if they are few and far between, that the Bible rattles us.

Disturbing passages in scripture throw a wrench into things.

We could mention the flood, the conquest of Canaan, or the particulars of divine election. All of them bring up potentially troubling issues for us and have divided Christians over the years. God’s relationship with violence has been especially controversial of late in some circles.

As a follower of Jesus, I believe that these are tough questions, but we ultimately have nothing to fear from them. I have no intention of messing with anyone’s faith here. The questions are out there, so we need to figure out how we should deal with them. I’m sure there will be some who walk away dissatisfied by my conclusions. However, when I wrap this series up on Wednesday, I hope we’ll arrive at a place where we find a healthy mix of logic, faith, and mystery.

This week I’m not aiming to explain away any particular problem in the Bible. Rather, I’d like to take a broader look at how we approach disturbing passages in the Bible, what’s at stake, and how Christians committed to following Jesus can live in the tension they create. 

Tomorrow’s Post: What do we gain by explaining disturbing passages?

Some days I want to just want to wake up and feel joyful.

Is that too much to ask?

It’s not like joy is a nonrenewable resource. Don’t you think God could be a tad more generous in doling it out, making for happier people who enjoy their lives and aren’t moping about?

Sometimes I wonder if God is stingy with the joy he gives.

However, it’s far more likely that the problem is that I’m stingy with the joy he has given to me. And that gives us something a bit more constructive to talk about…

I’m not a big fan of pat solutions or those holy hand grenades that go something like, “Just read the Bible and Jesus will make it better! or “Pray to make it go away!” or “We have the Holy Spirit, so what else do we need?”

No human being can actually live in our complex world for long on those mantras without going insane. It feels insultingly elementary to suggest that joy is readily available for me from a God who gives it freely.

I mean, are all of the problems in the joy pipeline a result of me plugging it up?

I can’t speak for you and your situation, but from what I can tell, that may be the case. I can’t remember who told me this first, but I’m guessing it was my mother-in-law. She said that we find victory in worship.

It’s like we’re hardwired to worship God. When we worship God and experience him, we’re running on the right kind of fuel that brings us joy and puts us in the place God intends us to be.

Can you imagine trying to run a car on old motor oil or vegetable oil? It’s not like either will work just because they are a kind of oil. Cars will sputter and go kaput without the right kind of fuel.

And therefore, if joy is our destination, it’s not like we have a lot of different options in order to attain the true joy that God offers us. It’s not like we can pursue money, pride, or career advancement all week and then drop a complaint in the comment box at church when we don’t have the joy of God in our lives.

We reap what we sow. That’s the hard, but simple truth that Christianity pounds into us.

If we desire the joy of God and we don’t have it, then the chances are that we are either distracted by something else or not clearing a space to be with God for times of worship and devotion. I can’t speak for everyone on this, and Christianity rarely boils down to one-size-fits-all answers. However, if we want to experience the joy of the Lord, I think we at least know where to start.

Looking for more posts about joy? Drop by Bonnie Gray’s Faith Barrista blog now for more thoughts on joy and a blog post that actually manages to fully develop only ONE metaphor.

Worry can act as a signal that something may not be quite right in our lives. If I begin to worry about money, work, bills, or anything material, that’s a good indicator about my priorities. I have an opportunity to ask, “What am I seeking first?”

Yesterday we began looking at worry and how we deal with it. I often deal with my daily concerns through lists.

I’m a big fan of to do lists. I often make them long and unrealistic, providing plenty of opportunities to avoid the stuff I don’t want to do. My to do lists generally indicate what I need to accomplish for my work, though sometimes I don’t include things that I know I should be doing on a regular basis.

For example, I try to write some fiction daily, but I haven’t included fiction writing on my to do list until this year. Oh, and then there’s that whole thing with God and Jesus. They haven’t exactly been on my official list either, even if I try to set aside time for them daily.

And here’s what has been happening: I get worried about the state of a project or something urgent comes up, and so I redouble my efforts. Time has to be drained from somewhere else. I usually protect my exercise time, my sleep, and a little bit of leisure time, and therefore the time with God suffers.

It’s not a conscious choice, and it’s not on the official list either. I just start skimming off time from God.

Of course I end up worrying about everything anyway, even if I spent more time on whatever project it is.

This taps into some key questions we need to ask ourselves regarding worry:

1. Do we believe God knows what we need?

2. Do we believe he will give us what we need at the right time?

3. Do we believe his Kingdom and righteousness are worth seeking ahead of our “needs”?

I don’t think making God’s Kingdom first and breaking free from worry is an instant change. Much like yeast working its way through bread, God’s Kingdom advances in our lives, revealing the places where we need to surrender, trust in him, and seek his Kingdom first by faith, even if we have to wait before returning to our to-do lists.

We gradually learn to place God and his Kingdom at the top of our to do lists, realizing that before we need anything else, he is our living water and sustaining bread. We are starving without feeding on him first and foremost.

The trick is making ourselves believe that we need God more than financial security.

Tomorrow’s post: How to seek God in the midst of uncertainty.

I realized a year or two ago that I wasn’t always the most redemptive Christian. I mean to say that I was wasting my time on all kinds of stuff that didn’t help me or anyone else. I was sometimes relating to others in ways that didn’t have their best interests in mind.

Yesterday I wrote about my hope for redemptive Christian conversations in the coming year: “What to do when someone dares to disagree with you.” I have been asking myself, “Is this a redemptive approach?” when I leave a comment or write a blog post.

The word “redemptive” has been huge for me.

Sometimes I flop, but let me tell you, there is quite a lot that I have NOT written. And that is what has really made a difference in my view.

In 2010 I learned what I shouldn’t write. In 2011 I hope that I write more redemptive material, rather than just avoiding non-redemptive material.

Asking “Is this redemptive?” really changes how I view tweets and blog posts now. Oftentimes I find that I’ve just written about something that’s interesting, but really does very little to benefit others. This forces me to emerge from my head, take the needs of others into consideration, and pull from the things God has been teaching me.

A redemptive approach to my writing and communication has highlighted many places where I’ve gone off course, and I pray that I can serve as a positive, constructive ambassador for God’s Kingdom in the new year.

Find out what other words are taking on fresh importance in 2011 for other Christian bloggers by starting with Bonnie Gray’s post: “What Builds Your Confidence?”