The Closest Thing To Walking with Jesus

This week, I would simply like to share with you a story from Francis Chan, which has been floating around in my mind since I heard it several weeks ago.

There was a missionary who spoke at our church years ago who had gone to Papua New Guinea and won a tribe to Jesus. It was a beautiful story. At the end, he mentioned the pivotal influence of his youth pastor, a man named Vaughn, who loved him and told him that his life was to be lived for the glory of God.

Then, the next week, we had another man come and talk about sponsoring kids, and when he was at the end of his presentation, he said, “Under God, I owe this all to the influence of my youth pastor Vaughn.” So I asked and found out that these two guys had been in the same youth group.

Then the next week another speaker named Dan told us about his ministry at a rescue mission in the inner city of L.A. After Dan's talk, I casually mentioned, “It was so weird: the last two weeks both of our speakers mentioned how much impact their youth pastor, Vaughn, had on them.” Dan looked surprised and then he told me, “I know Vaughn. He's a pastor in San Diego now, and he takes people into the dumps in Tijuana where kids are picking through the garbage. I was just with Vaughn in Tijuana. We would walk in the city, and these kids would run up to him, and he would show such deep love and affection for them. He'd hug them and have gifts and food for them. He'd figure out how to get them showers. Francis, it was eerie: the whole time I was walking with Vaughn, I kept thinking, If Jesus was on earth, I think this is what it would feel like to walk with him. He just loved everyone he ran into, and he would tell them about God. People were just drawn to his love and affection.” And then Dan said this, “The day I spent with Vaughn was the closest thing I've ever experienced to walking with Jesus.” (Francis Chan, 2010, “Think Hard, Stay Humble”)

Has anyone ever had reason to say that of you? When people leave your presence do they say, “Wow—that was the closest thing I’ve ever had to walking with Jesus”? Do we love so freely, see others so clearly, act so compassionately that the strangers with whom we casually cross paths or the family, friends, and colleagues who interact with us day-by-day see Jesus in us? Does the love of Christ dwell in us so richly that it spills out onto every path our earthly feet may walk?

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God's Word on the Subject

Over the last week, I’ve observed the word-slinging on social media and listened to the callers on our local NPR. To say the comments have been emotionally-charged would be an understatement. There is anger. There is hatred. There is fear.

These feelings are understandable. We watch in disbelief as horror piles upon horror. Innocent lives are extinguished. Our sense of safety is threatened. And as is typical in such situations, we want someone to blame. In this justifiable and righteous anger, it becomes easy to put a particular group of people into an “other” category. As soon as we do this, these “others” become slightly less human. We can more easily say they aren’t our problem, and we can distance ourselves from compassion—because we no longer see them as our fellow human beings, as our brothers and sisters. I could say more on this, but perhaps we should save that for another time.

I would not consider myself versed in politics or public policy. I typically shy away from such conversations. In fact, even as I write, I am second guessing the decision to add my voice to the fray. Let me be clear that I do not want to offer a definitive position on what should be done about the current refugee crisis. To be honest, I don’t know that I have a definitive opinion yet, largely because I think this entire issue is much more complex than we typically present it.

Please understand that much of what I’m about to say is inherently connected to our faith as Christians. If you do not consider yourself a part of that category, I think some issues of politics can become less complex, as they typically become tied to your own political and social perspective.

But for those of us who claim to follow Christ, we must be cautious that we don’t get swept up in a political ideology without considering what Scripture might have to say (and this applies to much more than simply the refugee crisis). As soon as we group a particular political party or position with our Christian faith, we have made a great compromise indeed.

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Saints of the Fire

There are many people I genuinely love to spend time with. Their presence is easy and enjoyable; laughter and good conversation come readily. And I leave our times together feeling like I have friends here in New England; I feel less alone, more at home. I treasure them.

Then there are people whose presence I leave feeling refreshed in the deepest parts of me, feeling challenged and inspired to be a better wife, a better friend, a better follower of Jesus. These moments, these dear people, are more rare—and I don’t usually realize it until after they’ve departed. It’s then that I release a deep, satisfied sigh. This is fellowship in its truest sense—bigger than a building, bigger than a planned event, bigger than just a few simple people spending time together.

I had one of these moments recently at a retreat, when I met a dear woman I will call, so as not to embarrass her, Alice. Someone introduced me to Alice; “she would really benefit from your workshop on pain,” I was told. I quickly realized this: Alice did not need to be in my workshop; in fact, she was much more qualified than I to teach it.

She understood the health struggles I experienced over the last year and a half, and she understood the added frustration of being hit with health problems right at the beginning of marriage, that which should be such a season of joy and delight filled instead with questions and doctor’s appointments. She looked at me with clear blue eyes—eyes that had seen decades of physical pain, dozens of surgeries, the loss of the ability to do or to eat what she liked, and challenges with struggling children—and those eyes pierced to my soul: “I can tell you, Diana, whatever comes for you, He is enough and He will walk with you through it. No matter what may come, you are not alone.”

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A Gospel to Make Our Eyes Wide

Before moving to New England, I spent a year in Central America living and working with a group of foster children. These dear ones had seen too much for their years, too much pain, too much loss, too much betrayal. They had been hurt by those they should have been able to trust, and they bore physical and psychological scars—and some even babies—as a result. The walls of the home we shared echoed with a dichotomous union of hurt and hope, anger and love, violence and embrace, truth and falsehood, tears and laughter.

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They often congregated around my kitchen table, drinking tea, eating freshly baked cookies, laughing, and talking about their days, their hopes, their dreams. On the wall was posted one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Isaiah 61, handwritten on green cardstock.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the blind,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
   and provide for those who grieve—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
    instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
    instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
    instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    a planting of the Lord
    for the display of his splendor.

They would stand silently reading it often, faces twisted in concentration as they worked out the words they didn’t know. Then they would turn to ask me about it—what did it mean; why did I have it hanging on the wall?

The number of times they had heard the Gospel was more than I could count. They could easily repeat what they had been taught: that Jesus loved them and came to die for them on the cross. It was repeated in some fashion nearly every time a “group of white people” came from the States to spend a week or two with them. It was presented at the church I attended with them each Sunday, always in a reductionistic turn-to-Jesus-to-make-your-life-better form. Some of them professed faith in and acceptance of Jesus. Some of them had tried it and bitterly turned away because Jesus didn’t answer their prayers, as they’d been promised he would.

But the form of the Gospel as we read it in Isaiah 61 was completely foreign to them. The Gospel in which Jesus meets us in our dark, messy, hurting places. The Gospel in which he doesn’t magically make them go away but walks with us through them. The Gospel in which Jesus came to buy us—and our world—back from the slavery of the pain, brokenness, loneliness, and betrayal they were all too familiar with. The Gospel in which Jesus could take the worst, ugliest, and most painful parts of our lives and transform them into something beautiful. This Gospel made their eyes grow big in astonishment. This Gospel surprised them. This Gospel actually spoke to their reality and offered hope in the midst of its confusion and darkness. And I pray it is the Gospel that rests in their hearts still.

Jesus himself used these words from Isaiah to announce his good news. In Luke 4, he reads them aloud in the synagogue and announces “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” When Jesus first preached the Gospel—this was how he explained it. Perhaps we should follow his lead—to preach not only of how he redeems our souls but also how he redeems, restores, and transforms our bondage to freedom, our mourning to joy, our ashes to beauty, our despair to praise. This, friends, is a Gospel that should make our eyes grow wide. This is a Gospel that offers hope not just for eternity but for the here and now of our messy, broken world. This is a Gospel that will make our roots grow strong and deep, enabling us to rise as strong and steady as a giant oak in a storm. This, friends, is a Gospel that is beautiful. 

Blessed are those who are out of breath...

“Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .” – Matthew 5:3  This first of the Beatitudes could also be loosely translated “blessed are those who are out of breath.”

How many of us have felt out of breath? Doubled over, searing pain in our side, light-headed, gasping for air, willing oxygen in our lungs.

How many of us have felt spiritually out of breath? Deflated, uninspired, desperate for God’s presence, needy, hungry, hurting, uncertain perhaps, willing ourselves to believe, barely hanging on…Jesus says blessed are you.

There is a beautiful mystery in this. It was summed up by a dear woman I knew in college:

Growing as a Christian isn’t about getting it all together—it’s about dependence. It’s about knowing how much we desperately need him.

Perhaps this is why Jesus says we are blessed when we see how desperate, how “out of breath,” we are—because this is when we see ourselves rightly. This is when we can see how much we don’t have it all together, how weak we are, how needy we are, and this realization is what can send us running to Christ, throwing ourselves completely on the Gospel, because we have no other hope. Blessed are those who are out of breath—for theirs is the kingdom.

What a different picture this is from what is often presented in many of our churches and Christian organizations. How often do you hear someone share about what they’re struggling with right then, what sins they fell into last night, instead of what they were struggling with several months or years ago? How often do we categorize people into Christians and “sinners,” forgetting that “but for the grace of God there would go I,” forgetting that we too still fall short? How often do we feel pressure—within our churches!—to have it all together, to put on a smile, to hide our hurts and struggles? How often do we look to the victory of Christ, but forget the deep suffering of the Cross?

It’s easy to look at the Gospel as our ticket into Christianity but something we graduate from into bigger and better things. But this is dangerous. The reality is that the longer we walk with the Lord, the deeper we go with him, the more profound the Gospel becomes, the more we see how hopeless we are without it, the more we see just how much we are in need of Grace. It is never something we graduate from - the Gospel is for Christians too. Perfection, independence, and self-sufficiency lead us astray, away from the Gospel, tricking us into thinking that we magically now have the strength to handle life and reach holiness on our own. These things lead to bondage in our own self-assurance and false security.

Maturity isn’t about becoming strong as much as learning just how weak and helpless we are without Christ. The beautiful paradox is that the weaker we become in this way, the stronger we become, for it is when we are weak we give up standing on our own two feet, and allow Christ to be our strength. It is when we realize attempting to fix ourselves or "try harder" is a hopeless cause, and we look to the Holy Spirit to work in our spirits to make us more like Christ. The message of the Gospel is not “try harder” but “lean more heavily on my strength.” Desperation, neediness, complete dependence on God—these are the marks of maturity, these are the signs that we really “get it.” Blessed are those who are out of breath—for theirs is the kingdom.