Power to Choose

In the last couple of days I have been thinking about the bad rep that God gets. What I mean is that He gets blamed for a whole lot of stuff that people choose to do, whether done by the ones who say they believe in Him ... or not.  

Found through Google Images at
http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/False_Grail

I am a self-admitted Indiana Jones fan.  Especially the first and third movies.  There are so many images in those films that are supremely symbolic - they remind me of important lessons that often get either overlooked or pooh-poohed. There is such a thing as right and wrong. There are things that are beyond our understanding.  Actions have consequences.    And people are responsible for their own actions. 

One poignant scene is the one in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" where Donovan, the bad guy, gets dibs on choosing a cup from which to drink the water from the fountain of youth.  The knight warns both Indy and Donovan to choose wisely, for only when the water is in the Holy Grail does it bring life to the drinker. The same water in a false Grail will bring death.  With the help of an expert, he chooses a beautiful chalice which he deems "befitting the King of kings" - and drinks.  The results are not pretty (click here to see this classic clip and I hope you've turned up the volume; the video will open in a new window).  Some call this scene funny or corny.  For me, it's a reminder.


When Indy chooses the correct Grail, things are not suddenly sunshine and roses for him either.  Yes, he doesn't die - and yes, he's able to save his dad's life as well.  But his struggles are not over either.  Neither are his temptations to choose poorly.

We were created with the ability to choose, something upon which God places a great deal of value.  We could have been automatons, but what would have been the point? He wanted us to WANT Him. 

Sometimes bad stuff happens to us and there seems to be no reason for it.  Bad things - and good things, for that matter - do happen to ALL people.  But much of the bad stuff that happens to us is of our own making.  Many of us make bad choices and the consequences are ... let's say they're unpleasant. The irrevocable law of the harvest, "You reap what you sow," kicks in.  The tendency we have at those times is to question God, to question His goodness or His love, when in fact it is our own choices that have led to the outcomes and ... God is just a handy scapegoat we use to avoid taking responsibility for "choosing poorly." I've heard people do it all the time: blame God for for famines and poverty, for wars, for religious persecution. But in most cases whatever horrible thing for which folks blame God arises out of a poor choice, or a series of poor choices, made by people who have the power to choose.

That 1989 movie reminds me that choosing wisely MIGHT bring consequences I might not like.  Yet it is still preferable to choosing poorly. 

Faking It - Part 3

I have this recurring nightmare.

It's Sunday.  I go to church.  I'm keenly aware of my own inadequacies.  I look like myself, like I always do.  But when I walk in to the entryway and see all the people chatting before the service, something is wrong.  All the women look like Barbie dolls and all the men look like Ken dolls.  Plastic smiles abound. Blank stares.  Perfect bodies, perfect smiles, perfect clothes.

I try to get them to talk to me.  They won't.  There's no relationship, no frame of reference at all.  I look at my clothes: rumpled.  I go to the rest room and look in the mirror - yellowed teeth, acne, and greasy hair.  I want to talk to someone about real things but all I hear are perfect conversations about perfect families and perfect kids with perfect Grade Point Averages.  Nobody seems to have any problems.

I know it can't be true.  I run from perfect person to perfect person, begging them to come outside their plastic shells and talk about what's real. Surely someone can relate to my pain; surely someone is struggling too.

But all I hear are the condemning voices telling me, "That's not speaking in faith!" and then these Barbie and Ken people talk about fashions, curtains, private schools, and the stock market. They wax poetic about this conference or that speaker, this singer, that skiing trip.

All attempts at conversation about real feelings, real relationships, are met with disdain. 
 

Where AM I anyway? doesn't anyone understand what it means to connect with each other and quit faking it?

Thankfully I wake up.

I ... DID wake up.  Didn't I? or did I?

You're the only you you have - Be you!

It's so easy to slip into a role and hide my true self from people.  For years I thought that nobody would like the real me so I hid myself, showing people what I thought they wanted.  For decades I pretended, berated myself when I had any kind of emotion - apologized for it.  All my life I was under the impression that I wasn't allowed to have an opinion, or needs, or dreams.


Until relatively recently of course.  

In all that hiding from myself, from my feelings, from people who might hurt me if I let them know what I thought or wanted - I lost myself.  I didn't know who I was anymore...if I ever knew.

God used an incredible set of circumstances (certainly not one I would have chosen) to rip off the facade and allow the real me to emerge. I had to get desperate enough to go to any length to find the one thing I had longed for but which had eluded me all my life:  a sense of peace and happiness.

Allowing God to unwrap that person was not easy.  There were some real issues to face - and I know that I was empowered to do that because I had tried to change on my own and failed miserably.

Now I feel as though another chapter has been started in my life and that there are exciting things ahead. Even the last 3 to 4 weeks have been so incredible in opening new doors previously tight shut to me in so many areas.  Work, family, ministry, and even my writing have taken on new dimension for me and I have a great sense of anticipation as the days unfold.  The healing has only begun; the possibilities are beyond what I can imagine.

I have no clue what path God has planned out for me. But I suspect that it will be an adventure.

Where the wheels are

A few times when I was growing up, my dad would take it upon himself to try to teach my mother how to drive.

He didn't get very far.

She had to get someone else to teach her.  He would get too impatient with her because he would instinctively know what was the right thing to do, and he couldn't find the words to communicate to her what he wanted or how to do something he thought was so simple.

Even after she learned how to drive - at least enough to get her license -  he would get frustrated with her.  One day, in exasperation, he half-sighed, half-groaned and told her, "You don't even know where the WHEELS are!"  To which she retorted, quick as a wink, "I do so!  They're under the car!  if they were on top of the car ... we'd have a problem!"

There are a couple of young people in the house who are learning to drive.  I know myself enough to know that I would be the way my father was, so I leave the teaching to hubby.  It's interesting though, to hear the conversations they have about how frustrating it is and how important it is to practice, practice and more practice to know exactly where the front of the car is, where the back is - and - you guessed it - where the wheels are!

It takes a lot of focused concentration to learn where the wheels are and what end is up.  Lots of hard work.  Eventually, driving will become second nature to these young folk and they will take their place on the public roads of Canada.  It's like learning anything.  It takes time to get used to something new, whether it's a new mattress, learning to drive, or learning a whole new lifestyle of serenity, courage and wisdom. Even with a lot of practice it sometimes feels like one step forward, two or three steps backward.  It's so easy to get discouraged and give up, to go back to the old comfort zone.  It's hard to keep trying to do things a new way - to exercise new muscles, to learn a new way to relate to people. It takes time and effort!

But the payoff is so worth it.

Marketing? the Faith?

I was reading a friend's blog and she was talking about a couple of men coming to the door to proselytize their religion.  Of course they called it sharing their faith.

Some of these door-to-door folks can be quite ... persistent.  I wonder if they're trained not to take no for an answer (or not to walk away until someone gets angry and yells at them, thus scoring a "win" by being persecuted.)


Somehow that reminds me of a brief stint I put in as a telemarketer several years ago.  Yes.  I was desperate.  Yes.  I hated the job.  And yes, I did sell stuff people didn't want to people who probably couldn't afford it.  That's why I hated it - and I quit as soon as I possibly could.  I think I lasted about 3 or 4 weeks actually.  Ughh!

In my telemarketer training, I was told that as long as a sales prospect (note, they are not people, they are prospects) had an objection, a reason for turning down the incredible offer-of-a-lifetime, we "had" them - for there was a scripted answer to every possible objection.  The only statement a telemarketer can't refute is "I'm not interested.  No, no reason.  I'm just not interested.  Goodbye."

Huh.  There's food for thought.

But I digress.  I was also thinking that sometimes we as Christians have bought into this whole "marketing" thing, to our own detriment and that of the cause of Christ. Maybe it's not telemarketing but it is marketing the gospel, making it palatable, pushing and pushing until people hate to see us coming.  (Last night my daughter answered the phone after the 8th time from it ringing with an 800 number on the caller ID; she yelled in frustration into the phone, "QUIT CALLING!!" We all cheered when she hung up!)  

We Christians, especially those in leadership but also those of us (and I can be this way too) who just can't seem to let God be God - do ourselves and the world a great disservice.  We seek the best platform, try to find the right program, buy into the right gimmick - and basically use the world's marketing methods to do something that (according to the Bible) God's Spirit is supposed to do: convince people of their brokenness and bring them to Jesus.  We treat human beings outside the church (at best) like sales prospects ... and forget that they are really people: people who have real lives, real circumstances, real feelings.  All we need to do for the world (and even for that, God is the One who enables us, for without Him we can do nothing) is love God, love each other and love the hurting ones without judging them.  

Melody Beattie says in her book, "The Language of Letting Go" - (©1990 Hazelden) as she speaks about letting go and letting God lead and guide in our lives, "We will know when to go, to stop, and to wait. We will learn a great truth: the plan will happen in spite of us, not because of us." (February 11 reading)

It's so simple.  At least that's what the Good Book says. We quit doing God's job for Him and let Him be God in our own lives, let Him love us, let Him love others through us. That will naturally spill out into the lives of those with whom we come in contact and change the world, one life at a time.  

Each one, reach one - with love.  God will take care of the rest.

An Awesome God

There's a little chorus that our kids grew up in church learning.  It was the first song that we sang together in harmony as a family and occasionally the kids still want to sing it with us.

Our God is an awesome God -
He reigns in Heaven above
With wisdom, power and love
Our God is an awesome God!

Such simple words.  


I was reminded of this little chorus one night last week as I gathered with a group of believers and listened to a song by Chris Tomlin called "Our God (is greater)" - it's from his new album I think.  If you haven't heard it yet - go to Youtube (yes, that's the link) and listen to it.  It is FABULOUS.  The message is much the same as that little chorus.  

I need songs like that.  I need to remember that God is bigger than me because even though I give lip service to it, sometimes my behavior and my attitude is that I'm bigger than He is.  

Nature itself screams that He is greater, bigger, higher than I am, a consuming fire against which nothing and no one can stand.  I'm not talking about a nice little campfire that people like to poke sticks at and roast marshmallows in.  I'm talking about a raging inferno, a wildfire that goes where it wants.  I guess this post is an expansion of my last one on God not being safe, that I ask Him if He will do something for me but don't assume that He will just because I follow a certain formula or say certain words or quote scripture or really get myself worked up.  (Didn't the prophets of Baal have much the same attitude on Mount Carmel? OUCH!)

And yet with all His incredible power and majesty, His awesomeness, He still cares about the little things.  He still wants to have a relationship with me.  Puny me.

It boggles the mind.  

Who am I that He should even think about me?  Yet He does.  Why should He care about what concerns me?  Yet... He cares.  He cares enough to have foreseen my bankrupt state without Him and sent a way for me to come into relationship with Him - my only hope.

There is a sort of credo that describes the unadorned Christian life, one which I have come to hold dear lately.  Part of that credo is that I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.  The kind of life I was living, even as a Christian for decades, was so full of contradictions, doubts, fears, things that didn't work, resentments against "all-that-is-not-of-God", fault-finding, seeing demons in dishrags, that kind of thing.  It was insane!!  All the while, I was ostracizing the very people I wanted to reach, more and more becoming the object of ridicule - or pity, or contempt - by those who saw what I was doing to myself by toeing the Christian party line and having my head stuck in the clouds - or somewhere else, it could be argued.  SO out of touch with reality that even my speech was affected ... saying Amen after every statement and turning it into a question... Christianizing my everyday speech so much that nobody could figure out what the heck I was saying - I could go on at length but I won't, since that's another topic.  

But the word "greater" from that statement / credo jumped out at me recently, and it is that concept on which I've been meditating.  Someone put it to me this way - "God's got broad shoulders and good ears.  He's not deaf and He doesn't need you to defend Him.  He's got everything figured out.  So let Him be who He is!!"  At that point I realized (once again) that I was the god of my life and I was treating the God of the universe like a puppet, pulling strings to try to get Him to do my bidding.  It was time for me to decrease and for Him to take His rightful place as 'somebody bigger than you and I.'  When I gave Him back the strings, it was amazing how He grew in my life.

Sometimes I usurp His role; I end up flat on my face every time.  But when He is greater than I, He can be truly God - to me. 

Telling versus Asking

For a long time, I spent time endorsing and espousing the idea that if God promised a certain thing, then all I needed to do was "claim" it.  To "take authority over the enemy" and to "speak those things that be not as though they were." But the more I get to know Him, the less sure I am of that kind of attitude, which I once thought was "faith."  

I agree that Jesus has given us the victory.  I agree that He is more powerful than satan.  I firmly believe that He has all authority over the powers of darkness.

But more and more I am convinced that I don't.  That I am not more powerful than satan and that I win NOTHING, that if it wasn't for God, I would not even be breathing.  Moreover, I don't need to defend God on the debate battlefield, or to labor or travail as if trying to push Him through a keyhole into the world or reality I want Him to occupy.  It is a form of manipulation, even of self-aggrandizement, to "take" the authority that belongs to Him and use it to clobber someone or something.  He's far bigger than I am, far more powerful.  All I need to do is to ASK.  

Not TELL.  More and more I cringe when I hear people "command" God to do something for them (or satan to stop doing something).  They screw their faces up and strain and grunt and groan as if by their effort the supernatural could happen. Such faces would scare little children.  Heck, they even scare ME.  I need to be clear on this.  God is supernatural.  I am human. I am not supernatural, don't want to be, can't pretend to be.  

Asking involves saying Please.  Now THERE's a concept.  That God has the right to say no.  He is not obligated to do anything - at all!  I need to ask Him in a near-forgotten attitude called humility.  And leave the decision up to Him. And accept whatever He decides.

My primary concern must never be how much money I am giving to missions, or whether this hot political issue is right or wrong, or what I'm going to do with my rebellious teenagers... as tempting as that is for a recovering control freak (I was so deeply into judging people that I pushed people of all stripes, even my teens, away from me and robbed myself of having a voice with them.)  No - my primary concern needs to be one thing and one thing only: intimacy with God.

And I must make no mistake.  God, as much as He loves me, as gracious, merciful and forgiving as He is, is not "safe."  

There is an interchange in the book "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" when Lucy asks the Beaver if Aslan, the great Lion, is "safe."  The Beaver replies something like this: "Safe?  I should think NOT!  After all, he's not a tame lion.  No - he's not safe.  But he IS good."  That epitomizes the respectful closeness that I have with God.  

Intimacy with God is definitely not safe.  But in my relationship with Him I have found that He is good, He does what is good, and He seeks the highest good.  Not necessarily for me, but for His purpose.  

So when I ask Him anything now (and I find myself asking for less and less; I thank Him more and more) it is to know His will and to have the courage from Him to do it.  Or if for someone else - I ask for His highest good in their lives, trusting that He will do it, whatever that is.  The only thing I tell Him now is how I am feeling; He already knows it, but ... it helps me to get it out into the open.  I am learning to let God be God ... and to stop taking that role upon myself.    

Some bridges must never be burned

During a time when drunks were jailed, kept in hospitals or mental institutions, or forgotten on the streets, a drunken stockbroker named Bill Wilson decided that he was powerless over his addiction and asked God for help while in hospital for the 4th time.  He called out to God to show Himself, and experienced what he called a "white light experience" as God showed him that He was real.  

Since Bill was a stockbroker, he traveled a lot.  After this spiritual experience and early in his fight against temptations to fall back into drinking, he found himself in a hotel in a different city , and in that hotel there was a bar.  After battling several urges to go into the bar, finally he called members of the local religious organization of which he was a member in his own town. After several calls, he met Dr. Bob Smith, to whom he explained his new-found knowledge that alcoholics need to help each other recover from their obsession to drink.  Thus began the seeds of Alcoholics Anonymous, back in 1934.

AA has kept its mandate and helped millions of hopeless self-confessed drunks recover from their addiction.  The primary purpose of AA is "to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers." 

I wonder what might have happened if Bill Wilson had fully embraced the church and turned his back on his alcoholic brothers, thinking "that life is behind me now."  Many of us, it is probably safe to say, might never have been born, and countless thousands, even millions, would still live in hopelessness and despair.

The idea that one who has been delivered is in the best position to deliver others from the same thing, can be seen in the story of two starving lepers who decided one day to throw themselves on the mercy of their oppressors.  They set out after their city had been besieged by an invading army for weeks to the point where mothers were resorting to cannibalizing their babies to survive. When they arrived at the enemy camp, to their amazement, they found it deserted, with food and supplies aplenty.  Something (or Someone) had frightened the invading army so much that they had all left everything behind to beat a hasty retreat.  

The lepers ate their fill, unable to believe their good fortune.  And then they started feeling guilty.  "Our people are starving and here we are filling our stomachs!  Yes, we're outcasts - but we know where they can find food and lots of it!  Let's go back to the city and get them to come back with us!"  They did, and after the king sent emissaries with them to make sure they weren't sent by the enemy to trick them, they brought an end to the desperate situation of their town.  

What would have happened, though, if the lepers had decided to clean themselves up and get dressed in the clothing that was left behind by their enemies?  Upon their arrival back in the town they would have been killed, that's what!  But because they didn't remove themselves from their identities as lepers, it gave their story enough credibility that they were able to save their people from certain starvation.

A similar thing happened a few centuries later.  A notorious man, known throughout the countryside around his small village for his insane and violent behavior, met with an individual who exorcised his demons and left him in his right mind.  "I'll follow you wherever you may go," he exclaimed in gratitude.  But his deliverer said, "No.  Stay here.  Show the people who know you best what great things God has done for you."  And he did.  And many people were convinced that God still touched people and transformed their lives.

A dear friend of mine wrote a song a long time ago.  It is a parable about a spider who built a grand web in a very good spot for catching flies.  He started the web by anchoring a single strand from the ceiling.  The web was huge and caught many flies; the spider grew fat and never wanted for anything. One day he was surveying his kingdom, and saw a strand of web that looked out of place to him. To quote my friend's song -  " 'What need have I of this strand?'  A pull - and then a cry!  Down came the web, the home that fed, now dead the spider lie..." (© D. L. Shannon, circa 1972)

The bridge across which we ourselves crossed from the dark, oppressive world of our own failure, addiction, and loss is the bridge we must never burn.  We may wish to distance ourselves from it.  We may fear that should it remain it will tempt us back across to the abyss. 


But it is the only way others who are in that very same world will be able to get out of their own prison.  If we lose touch with that, if we forget the passageway we traveled from there to here and think we don't need it anymore, we run the risk of becoming disconnected from the very people we are suited to help.  We may think we are better than they, as if by our own efforts alone we were miraculously transported into the light.  We forget Who built the bridge.  And we risk falling into a deeper pit - a self-righteous, delusional one - than the honestly painful one from which we were delivered. 

Worst of all, who will be able to carry the message to the ones who still suffer?

From Refugee to Nomad

I finally got a decent cubicle at work after two moves due to scents and the traffic patterns that spread scents.  

Then the company that looks after the building decided it was time to re-carpet the room I work in.  They started with the hallway outside, and after 3 to 4 days of putting up with the encroaching fumes from off-gassing, and with the knowledge that it would get far worse when they laid the carpet, I requested alternate accommodations.

Thus began my status as a refugee.  I worked in a cubicle in a different unit, on a different floor.  I was not allowed to use their printer for official documents, but had to print to my old printer on the network, and have someone from my old area bring my print jobs (decisions on eligibility for benefits) to me, wait around for me to sign them, and take them back to the "completed files" table.  Oh yes, they also took my completed files back, and brought me new ones to work on.  And supplies.  And other assorted stuff.  I joked about not being able to get used to "not having a staff anymore" when my sojourn would eventually be over.  In fact though, it drove me nuts to have to depend on other people, especially if they started criticizing the content of my decisions.  But I digress.

  There was a delay in the carpet-laying.  My time in the refugee camp was getting more and more uncomfortable as new tenants had moved in who were either unaware or decidedly disrespectful of the scent-free policy.  So I asked if there might be somewhere to move, even temporarily.  After one failed attempt last week, this week they found a workstation that was temporarily tenant-less.  One of my co-workers was going on a 2-week vacation for Christmas.  And I was planning on staying if I could. So today I packed up my few belongings and made a couple of trips to get "settled" in my temporary digs, in the farthest corner of the other room (our unit takes up two rooms) away from the new carpet, bordered on three sides by co-workers, and on one side by a large window.  I even have access to a printer, and if I hold my mouth just right I can print things...  

I am living out of a box, a bag, and a couple of inboxes, but I do have my chair, my plants, my essential office supplies, and a photo of my girls to keep me company. I can get my own files, print my own letters, and take them to the right place ... by myself.  Yet I am keenly aware that the place I'm staying in is not my own.


So now I am a nomad.  I have no clue where I will sit come January 4, 2011.  

I will probably know on December 30 or 31, 2010.  

Until then, I'm content to sit where I'm sitting, enjoy the quiet in my far corner by the windows, and do the next right thing for my clients.


I look at it as an opportunity to practice living "one day at a time" and to not allow myself to get attached to things too much.  And someday, I'll enjoy the move when I will finally be able to return to my old cubicle or get placed in a permanent one elsewhere.  On that day, I will be so tempted to put up a sign I saw once :  "Cubicle sweet cubicle."

Put it in the pages

Honestly.  I wonder just what the Apostle Paul would have thought of 20th and 21st century church.

I'm sure he would have had something to tell us.  


Yes, I know we live in a different culture, I know that our government doesn't overtly persecute Christians.  I know that.  I am talking about the things we obsess about in the Western church.  What clothes to wear on the platform.  Whether to use hymn books.  What version of the Bible to use.  What style of music to worship to.  Whether or not to just tell the undiluted gospel and minister to people's souls, or to do a social gospel and only minister to their bodies (never about both).  Who is the better speaker.  What colour the carpet should be.  

Fifty years ago the questions were different.  Whether to wear a hat or not in church. What colour the hymn books should be.  Hymns versus choruses.  Whether or not to go to the movies.  Whether to use music in church at all. Whether to wear makeup or not. Two piece versus three piece suits.  What denomination is the right one.

Hmmm.  I guess the questions aren't that different.


I was recently visiting a friend's blog ( Merge the Village ) and he had put a clip on it from a keynote speaker by the name of Francis Chan.  I'm including it here - it's about seven and a half minutes long and poses the question, "Does my life fit ?" It gels something I've thought for quite a while and couldn't seem to put into the right words.  Have a look -

What if - just what if - we could live life the way the people did in the book of Acts?  I'm not talking about the culture of the ancient Middle East here.  I'm talking about living in the moment, every moment, in touch with and listening to the Spirit of God.  Wow - wouldn't that be transformational not only to us individually but to the church - and then spilling out into the world around us ?

The people in our culture are just as broken - if not more so - than the people who lived in the days of the 12 apostles and so many others who lived in this lifestyle of dependence on God, like Dorcas, Aquila, Stephen and Philip. They all had families to feed too; they had stuff to do.  The things they did that are recorded in the book of Acts are those that transcended those mundane details.

The human suffering is just as real.  And it's not just limited to the people addicted to crack or selling their bodies on street-corners.  

It's in respectable living rooms, bound up in hopeless people watching soap operas and wondering if their lives could ever matter that much to anyone.  It's in church pews, stuck in empty religious tradition and "true lies" people tell to each other to keep them at arm's length, afraid of intimacy, afraid of rejection.  People so afraid that someone will judge them that they pretend to have it all together - and inside they're dying, crying, sighing.  Wondering if this is all there is.  Wondering where God went.

The answer is not in doing more, or in railing against the way the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, or in electing more Christians to office.  The answer is heart-based.  It's in allowing God in to those dark places in us and shining His light, transforming us from the inside out.  Accepting that He loves us - forgives us - in spite of our failures.  And living in that love, being grateful enough to spend time with Him and hear His voice every day, every moment.  

That's where the adventure begins. 

Work at Rest

"Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." - Jesus

There are a few seeming paradoxes in the Bible and especially in the teachings of Jesus. Lose your life and you will find it. Give and you will receive. Humble yourself and you will be exalted. You get the idea.

Perhaps the most mystifying is the directive in the book of Hebrews that tells us that there is a rest promised to the people of God and that we are to "labor to enter into that rest." Prior to that the writer of Hebrews talked about ceasing from striving, just as Abraham ceased from his own efforts and just believed. So did a whole host of others, as Hebrews outlined. So this rest is not Heaven; it is a state of mind, of contentment.

"Labor to enter into that rest." Sounds weird. Kind of like when Jesus talked about the yoke He wanted us to wear. How anyone could find rest with a yoke (physical OR spiritual) strapped on, is beyond human understanding. Until you realize what a yoke does. It focuses the animal on the task in front of it. And ONLY on that task. It trains the ox to live in the moment, to cooperate with every step, to listen to the master. Further, when a young ox needs to be taught how to function in the yoke, how to receive instruction for that moment and that moment only, it is paired with an older, more experienced ox, who will keep the younger one on the path and teach it to respond to the master's commands.

That Jesus would use that illustration not only spoke to the farmers and others in that rural community, but it gave a very powerful hint at the secret to a happy life. That secret is living in the NOW. This is where the illustration above comes in. The New Testament calls the Holy Spirit, who comes to live in us the moment we personally cling to the sacrifice of Jesus as the only way to relationship with God, a Counselor. The Greek word used here is parakletos, meaning advocate, or one "called alongside to help." Fighting against the yoke, being distracted from the moment, causes much distress to the young ox until it gives up its own agenda and works with the older, more powerful ox. Instantly the task becomes much easier, and the drag on the yoke ceases. The job is done in half the time. "My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

In fact, once the ox has learned to live in the moment, it is common to see the pair chewing their cuds while working side by side. A ruminant like a cow or an ox will not chew its cud if it is stressed. Such an animal chewing its cud is a picture of rest, of contentment. It has learned to listen; it has submitted its will to the care and instruction of the master, and it has found peace.

Finding that place of peace takes work. Not busywork. Not following a set of rules and regulations. It takes work to make a priority out of spending time with Him and listening to His voice. Not because we're "supposed to" but because He is our life. Once that willing communion, that ready fellowship and cooperation happens, there is rest.

When God Says NO

A guy I know is currently going through what I'd call a "crisis of faith."

He prayed earnestly and with all the belief in him for a certain thing to happen. He honestly believed that not only COULD God do this thing, but that He WOULD do it because - well, because he believed.

It didn't happen.

Now he is far less assured when he prays. I am not sure exactly what his thought process is, but it might be something like this:

God said no. God is all-powerful and He is also good. He can't be at fault for this. So the problem must be me. I must not have enough faith to please Him. I thought I did, but I guess my faith needs work. I can't imagine how this could not have been His will. He always wants to heal, to work miracles... so the problem must be me. What did I do wrong? How can I make it right? Is God dissatisfied with me?

I've been there. I've had those questions. Everyone does at one time or another. And while I don't have all the answers - nobody does except God - there are some things I've learned and I'd like to share them.

1. God always does what's right. Even if we don't understand. Even if it doesn't make sense.
2. It isn't necessarily that we don't have enough faith. He simply chooses to say no. He has that right; He is God.
3. We don't have the right to order God around. He is God. We aren't. We ask; we don't demand. He is the One who has the power and the will to answer.
4. When we read Romans 8:28, ("And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, who are the called according to His purpose,") we need to read it in context along with verse 29 because that verse defines the word "good" in verse 28. The ultimate good that God is seeking to work all things together for, is that we are "conformed to the image of His Son." He knows best what will do that. Sometimes that will mean an answer we don't expect, or the opposite of the one we were hoping for.
5. God always answers prayer. "No" is just as much an answer as "Yes."

I believe that we in the Western church have a spirit of entitlement - the idea that God is obliged to do what we want just because we're His kids. If my kids treated me that way (and sometimes they do) I would not be a very happy camper and I might say no just because they were so presumptuous to take my "Yes" for granted.

I'm not saying that God is like that. I'm just saying that God is a Person, not a vending machine. He doesn't operate according to a prescribed formula, and one thing I've learned in my relationship with Him is this: He absolutely hates "being pegged." He will do something differently the next time just so I don't try to reproduce the same conditions that got me a "Yes" the last time. His ultimate goal is conforming me to Jesus' image. That might mean I am in an uncomfortable position for a while, or that someone I love might have to suffer for a while - maybe even a long while. Or worse. And since He knows the end from the beginning, maybe He knows that if I got what I wanted, I might become arrogant - or the person I'm praying for might be worse off spiritually after being healed than before. Maybe they need the affliction to keep them close to Jesus and transform them into His image.

It's His call.

A poem I read once - by L. B Cowman, author of Streams in the Desert, comes to me as I write, and I think that today I will share that poem here as well. It talks about the trials we face every day - the testings, one of which is (of course) the question of "unanswered" prayer. It doesn't mention this specifically but I think the concept Cowman speaks of, is broad enough to encompass this topic as well.

Here is the poem:

He sat by a fire of seven-fold heat
As He watched by the precious ore,
And closer He bent with a searching gaze
As He heated it more and more.
He knew He had ore that could stand the test,
And He wanted the finest gold
To mould as a crown for the King to wear
Set with gems with a price untold.
So He laid our gold in the burning fire
Tho' we fain would have said Him, "Nay,"
And He watched the dross that we had not seen
As it melted and passed away.
And the gold grew brighter and yet more bright,
But our eyes were so dim with tears,
We saw but the fire - not the Master's hand,
And we questioned with anxious fears.
Yet our gold shone out with a richer glow,
As it mirrored a Form above,
That bent o'er the fire, tho' unseen by us,
With a look of ineffable love.
Can we think that it pleases His loving heart
To cause us a moment's pain?
Ah no! but He saw through the present cross
The bliss of eternal gain.
So He waited there with a watchful eye,
With a love that is strong and sure,
And His gold did not suffer a bit more heat
Than was needed to make it pure.

Pillow Talk

Maybe we need to rethink our whole concept of prayer.

We are in a relationship with God. Jesus is our Bridegroom. He has proven to the ultimate degree His love for us, His passionate desire to enter into intimacy with us.

What if prayer is just talking to Him? There's a concept. Not pleading, not manipulating, not groveling, not demanding. Just talking. Talking based on relationship, on a love that is strong and sure on His part, and can only grow deeper and more pervasive on ours. It wasn't by some whim that God has referred historically to His people as His spouse, His bride. We get to know Him intimately, and we know what makes Him pleased, sad, frustrated, joyous. As our love grows for Him we find ourselves not wanting to make Him sad or frustrated by our behavior. And not because that's what we "should" do - but because He loves us and we love Him. We let Him into the deepest recesses of our being; we allow Him to "know" us, the real us - not what we want to show Him or others, but the deep-down stuff. The relationship, the intimacy, is too important to us to want to jeopardize it. We look for His smile, we live to hear Him laugh.

From that place of intimacy, our prayers begin to look (and sound) different. Gone are the trappings of changed vocal tones and repetitive chanting, gone are the petulant and selfish demands, gone are the attempts at sanctified arm-twisting, it's just "Jesus and me - talking." Like best friends, like husband and wife having a bit of "pillow talk." That's when what really matters to us comes to the fore, and all the barriers and façades are stripped away and we share our heart with Him. Not what someone else is doing, not what the accepted prayer format is, not anything less - or more - than just talking about real things with Someone who's real and who really loves us far more than we can even begin to understand. And He begins to share His heart with us, to gently teach us what matters to Him.

I was reading the Psalms this morning in the Message. Psalm 25:14 jumped out at me. "God-friendship is for God-worshipers; they are the ones He confides in." Our picture of "what worship looks like" aside, it is basically seeking His face - not for what He can do for us but because of who He is: love, compassion, gentleness, goodness, acceptance, grace, - everything. Those very things make it possible for us to have a relationship with Him in the first place. To walk with Him, as Adam did in the cool of the evening before the fall of humankind, and as Enoch did in the days before the law was even given.

Not because we are worthy of it; we aren't. Not because we have a right to it; we don't.
But just because He is ours and we are His - we're wearing His ring in our hearts.

Please Sir

We hear of two different extreme attitudes regarding asking God for something we want or need. Anything from a job to an inner healing.

One is the attitude of entitlement. Don't say please, just barge in and demand it. God's obliged by His word to give you anything you want. That's akin to a spoiled child demanding his own way and throwing a tantrum when he doesn't.

The other is an attitude of unworthiness. Don't ask Him for anything if you can help it; He's too busy to bother with you. If you HAVE to ask Him, grovel. And don't expect Him to give it to you either. At least not before you've done a whole lot more groveling. This is the picture of the one who has come to expect nothing from abuse from a parent.

The picture above is of the character Oliver Twist, still hungry after being given a meager serving of food. "Please sir, I want some more." Respectful. Yet he identifies his need. And he won't go away until he gets an answer, yes OR no.

He is neither cocky nor afraid. He is just needy, going to the only one who can meet that need and asking politely.

Wow. When I realize that God is so much more powerful and so much more loving and compassionate than that workhouse master who withheld food from the children to keep them in line, I find myself taking a lesson from Oliver Twist, knowing that God has my best interests at heart. His heart.

One Story of Forgiveness - and More

The phrase "Like mother like daughter" made me cringe when I was growing up. My voice sounded like my mother's voice when I answered the phone and often even her close friends would launch into a conversation with me, thinking I was her. It was embarrassing.

Even more embarrassing because she was the last person I WANTED to be like.

I grew up terrified of her. Her temper was ... red-hot and dangerous. At 8 years old and less than half her height, I ran away when she lost her temper; that only made her more angry. After she caught up with me, well, it wasn't pretty. Though I would have denied it at the time because I protected myself from the truth in order to cope, deep down, I believed she was a monster.

That was my unconscious perception of my mother for over forty years. Everyone thought she was a saint; I even deluded myself into thinking that she was, that I was being brought up in a "Christian" home, that I was lucky she was bringing me up right. But she wasn't. When she got mad, I'd better not be the one in her cross-hairs or I would be in for it. Aside from the times she lost her temper and lashed out physically, the constant criticism became second nature to her. She didn't even know she was doing it. In fact, she thought she was raising me right.

I hid from the bare facts of my childhood until I was 42 years old. And when I finally faced them, I nearly went insane with rage. How dare she! How dare they!! Everyone in the family was complicit. We weren't allowed to talk about what went on inside those walls. Only after I couldn't run from it anymore - not that long ago - did I realize how very angry, hurt, and resentful I was against her for robbing me of the right to be a child. For over five years I was unable to forgive her. For the first two of them, I couldn't even stand the sight of her. I cut her completely out of my life. I did come to some modicum of tolerance for her. I thought I had forgiven her, but I had only made excuses for her behavior and never really faced my own feelings.

So as I got into a spiritual process of recovery and began to systematically look at these hurts, I realized that I had to forgive her, but I was a very long way from that. And it was suggested to me that as a child, I was never allowed to feel my feelings but had to stuff them deep inside. Feelings, I was told by my counselor, were healthy to express in safe ways. Feelings are for feeling. That's what they are designed to do. They are a pressure relief valve, a signal that something is wrong and needs to be righted, or that something is right and needs to be enjoyed in the moment.

I journaled my forgiveness journey. I wrote down all the big - and little - things she did and said that hurt me and how that affected me at the time, the messages her behavior gave me, how terrifying it all was, the repercussions throughout my lfe, and how limiting it still was for me as an adult. In putting this all on paper, I gave myself an avenue, and permission, to express all those feelings that should have come out when I was a child, but I didn't have the self-awareness or the emotional maturity - or a safe enough forum - to do it at the time. I was too busy surviving.

I cried and cried and cried. For weeks. All that hurt poured out of me, in tears, and in ink on paper... I poured out to God all the bitterness and the anguish that a small child of eight years old could feel after 40 years of holding it in. Occasionally - and these times were precious - I spoke to my inner child and told her the things she should have heard, true things that countered the lies that she was no good, that she was evil, stupid, crazy. Truthful things like she was special, that she could be herself and people could like her just the way she was, that she didn't have to change for anyone, that what happened to her wasn't her fault. Day after day - all that garbage poured out of my spirit. It needed to come out into the open; it was killing me inside.

As all of this emotion came to the surface, it became clear to me that what she did to me was wrong. It might have been for the right reasons sometimes - but the way she went about it was wrong. She didn't know how to praise or encourage. She thought it shouldn't be necessary because she didn't need it growing up. She felt sorry for her mom, who was herself a victim of spousal abuse, and so my mom did everything in her power to make her own mother's life better. It was different for me; I was terrified of my mom and did my best to avoid her attention, because the attention was doled out in criticism, fault-finding, and abuse.

As the built-up pressure came out of me, as the tears washed away the hurt and the rage, the storms subsided and more and more often there was a calm. The knowledge that what she did to me was wrong ... was a revelation to me. I had taken the first step in forgiveness. "What you did was wrong." And the second followed it: "What you did hurt me - in ways you can't even begin to imagine." And the third, "I have a perfect right to be angry!"

Expressing that anger - to God, whose shoulders are so broad and who loves me so unconditionally, was the only safe outlet for that amount of rage. He was so patient, so kind. He held me and let me rant, let me weep, let me do whatever the child in me had to do to get that poison out.

Slowly, a new realization dawned on me. I began to understand that I wanted her to pay for what she had done - not just pay, but pay ME back. And then I remembered something that Joyce Meyer said. Something about what happens when someone hurts you - it's like they stole something from you. Something irreplaceable. Like self-respect. Or self-esteem. "But they don't have it anymore," she said. "The moment they took that thing from you, it flew from their hands and they couldn't give it back to you even if they wanted to!!"

It was like being owed a bad debt. They owed; they couldn't pay. It could stay on the books for a long time, or ... I could write it off.

All that was left was for me to make a choice. Was I going to keep that debt on the books or was I going to write it off - the way a bankruptcy trustee writes off the debt of someone who's unable to pay his or her creditors?

I struggled with this for quite a while. The words of a speaker I heard once at an AA meeting came to me. She talked about having to forgive her mother over and over and over, and that it came slowly after a long time of consistently doing that. But she kept at it and it eventually reached her heart. That made such a big impact on me!

Finally I prayed, "Lord, I'm willing for You to make me willing to forgive her in my heart. By the power of the sacrifice of Jesus, and definitely not my own strength, I choose to forgive her, as often and as many times as it takes to be real to me."

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure when it happened. It was gradual, as I kept turning that over to Him again and again, being honest with Him about it, asking Him to take it one more time, yet again, and ... thanking Him for His patience. But as I did, I started to see my mother in a new light...as someone who herself was emotionally stunted at the age of two years old by her abusive stepfather, and who was deeply bound up in her own fear. One day as I was thinking about her, I found myself - well, misting over. I looked within and found that God had given me compassion for this woman. I found myself wanting to help her, not retaliate.

That's when I knew that I had forgiven her in my heart. What an amazing feeling!

That's when I started noticing other things too. I believe that something spiritual happened in the heavenlies when forgiveness finally won. I remember sitting across the table from her during a visit, blown away as she opened up in detail for the first time to me about her growing-up years. She, who just a few short years previous had been unable to understand how I could be upset about things that happened 40 years ago, admitted to me that she grew up in fear, and that she was still afraid. "I guess things that happen to you when you're little really do follow you into your adult years," she mused. I nearly fell off my chair. Finally she understood... something I thought would never happen.

Since that time, our relationship has deepened. I call her and we talk for an hour or an hour and a half at a time, when before, I'd avoid doing that and she'd call and send me on a guilt trip, and then I'd call her or write her out of a sense of duty, and even then the conversation was superficial. Now, it's so different. We talk about "real" things - spiritual things, important things, things of the heart. Often.

And the best part is I've noticed a softening in her, a desire to be free of the fear that has been such a part of her life for over 70 years. She has asked me some very pointed questions. Me, of all people - the one before whom she did not dare be wrong. How ironic is that! She's nearly ready to admit that she is powerless over other people, the very first step in healing.

I couldn't be more pleased for her. She's about to start an amazing journey.

How far He will go -

The most amazing miracles that happened during our time of want, during the bankruptcy, the court case, and the time when we were paying off the court fine, happened where it counts most: on the inside.

We learned to depend on God - yes. Out of necessity. We saw some financial miracles happen during that time and since - yes. God knows our needs; that's not in question. But the biggest miracles can't be measured in a measuring cup or by dollar signs. These are the ones that happen in the heart. One of the biggest ones that happened - and perhaps one of the major reasons we had to go through all that - was in relation to my attitude toward my husband's mother.

What I'm about to say might sound harsh, but at the time before we went into bankruptcy it is really how I thought, what I truly believed about her.

I thought she was evil. Not the "Hannibal Lecter" kind of evil. More like the Hitler kind - the kind that really believed it was doing what it was doing for the greater good.

She had bipolar disorder. It is a horrible mental illness caused (in large part) by an inability of the body to extract lithium, a mineral salt, from foods like spinach, lettuce, leafy greens, etc. It meant that she had extreme highs and lows of mood - it used to be called manic-depressive psychosis. Sometimes, yes, it seemed as though she had lost touch with reality.

She took medication for it but she hated what it did to her: weight gain, kidney problems. She would sometimes flush it down the toilet when she was feeling on top of the world. Her better self knew it was not good to stop taking her medication, so usually she remembered that she had to take it. Without it - she was ... scary. Even with it, she still had highs and lows that were far more pronounced than most people's. When she was on a manic phase, she'd talk and talk and talk. Her mouth got her into more trouble. Indiscretion was her chief enemy then - she'd tell anybody anything, her deepest darkest secrets - or ours. When she was depressed - she'd talk and talk and talk - but this time it would be in bitterness, resentment, and frustration over her lot in life. Sometimes it was hard to tell if she was on one phase or the other.

As with most people with a chronic and overwhelming condition, sometimes she excused her erratic behavior with her condition. "I can't help it. It's just the way I am."

I got so sick of hearing her say that.

It seemed - to me - that she would lay awake at night thinking up ways to screw up our lives. Then after only 2 hours of sleep, she'd get out of bed at 5:30 a.m., (there should only be one 5:30 in a day and it's not the morning) call us - no - call my husband up on the phone and refuse to talk to me but only to him. Not even hello. "Is my SON there." I lost count of the times he would just lay in bed with the phone propped up against his ear, mumbling "mfff" into the pillow as she droned on and on incessantly about how hard her life was, how nobody appreciated her, how it was so difficult to have a handicapped child (whom she depersonalized by calling her "a Glenda" - like this: "You don't know what it is like to have a Glenda..."), how her husband never told her he loved her, etc., etc. Once she'd carried on her monologue for 45 minutes or more and the night's sleep had been thoroughly ruined for both of us, she'd hang up ... and the next morning it would start all over again.

That's when we got the answering machine. One with a 30-second cutoff.

Resentment built up in me as the years went by and she made no effort to change. She'd say horrible things, usually about her daughter, and when we'd confront her about them, it was, "I never said that. I would NEVER say that!!" But she did. And always, "It's my condition."

She'd do things for us, and then expect us to return the favor. At least that was how it seemed. I believed there were always strings attached to whatever she did. I began looking for ways to avoid being around her. My husband had learned long ago to just let her talk - she would only get worse if he contributed to the "conversation" by injecting some truth or confronting her about how indiscreet she could be about our own lives in front of complete strangers, and being an extreme extrovert as well as having bipolar disorder.

I remember distinctly my breaking point. I was having breakfast at a local restaurant with my family - my husband and my two small children. We were in a secluded spot so as to be away from view to people coming into the restaurant; we wanted this to be "our time." The door opened and in they walked. She got within line of sight and made a bee-line for us while her husband sat at the table across the room from us. I knew that she would sit down right next to us and monopolize our time, this one time when we just wanted to be the four of us. How dare she!

I felt trapped. I felt like this was our last bastion, and she had ruined it.

I lost it. I was curt, clipped, and very rude to her. After about ten minutes of my downright nasty attitude and my inexcusable behavior, she went back to her table to sit with her husband. She was perplexed. I was still fuming.

My husband was silent for a few minutes. Then he spoke; his voice sounded hurt, bewildered. "Why did you do that? She didn't do anything to you just now. All she did was she happened to come into the same place you were in. She didn't know you were going to be here. What in the world is wrong with you?"

I opened my mouth - but nothing came out. I was without excuse. I had been wrong to attack her like that, and I knew it. And it was at that point that I knew that whatever her motivations were, I was the one with the problem. It bothered me - all that day.

I wanted everything to be all right. I wanted to feel what I knew I SHOULD feel for her. But I couldn't get past the hate, the hurt, the preconceived notions. I couldn't get past all the horrible things she had said to both of us, about us, about her own daughter - in front of her, no less. I could see it was ripping me apart to hold onto this. But I couldn't bring myself to be open to seeing her in a different light.

God put His finger right on that very thing that made me squirm. I wanted to do what He wanted me to do. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. However - because of how important my relationship with HIM was, I was willing to be made willing... and so I prayed, "Lord, whatever it takes - I want to be willing to let this go."

Within a few months, we sat in a bankruptcy trustee's office.

God had to let everything be taken from us. The pain was so deep, He had to start from scratch so that I could see how wrong I had been regarding my beliefs about her.

The woman I thought was so evil turned out to be one of my - our - strongest allies. The other ally we had was her daughter Glenda, who had been in our corner from the get-go (see my August 3, 2010 post.) My mother-in-law took it upon herself to buy about 50 to 60 dollars' worth of groceries (meat, no less) for us every week - and she kept it up throughout the bankruptcy period. She knew we could never pay her back. She didn't care. She never once asked for anything in return. That spoke volumes to me. She didn't know she was preaching that kind of sermon to me. She just lived it. At every turn, she never ceased to amaze me.

During that nine months and beyond, I had a lot of humble pie to eat, and I ate it alone - nobody knew. Even as we had to deal with the court case and the fine, she stood solidly behind us and refused to believe what the paper said, refused to believe that my husband intended to defraud the government, and kept on just giving and giving. Even when Glenda died in 1999, she kept her heart open to us, and as we helped her go through Glenda's things in the weeks after the funeral, she gave to us out of those items things that she believed would be special to us. And at last, when she realized that we could finally accept financial help, she took what little she had and made sure that we would be provided for in such a way that we knew we didn't ever have to pay her back.

I remember an incident that happened shortly before she passed away that illustrated to me just how much my thinking had changed - in fact, it shocked me when I thought about it afterward.

She'd already had the first heart attack. I had been to her house where there was a meeting going on between the members of the family to decide "what to do with Mom." I heard the words, "institutional care." I was told to leave, just take the children and go - I wasn't part of this decision. That stung. But I left and decided to go to the hospital to see the person they were all talking about. I found myself strangely looking forward to seeing her.

She was so glad to see me, as I knew she would be. I remember seeing a half-eaten meal on her tray. It wasn't like her not to eat. Anyway, I told her ... and I meant it ... that I liked to come and see her because she was always so pleased to see me. Then I said that I had just been at the house and was made to feel like I wasn't welcome there, that nobody wanted me around.

She fixed her gaze on me. There was fire in her eyes. "Well - that's THEIR loss," she snapped.

I was speechless. I didn't know what to say - and I doubt if I could have said anything at all even if I had tried. The last hurdle was gone. I knew that she had been generous all those times because ... she was just generous; giving was her way. And when she wondered why I treated her so badly after all she had done for us, it wasn't a guilt trip. She really was befuddled by it. In those moments, as the children played quietly at the foot of her hospital bed and the clock ticked in the background, I knew I had been so very wrong. So very wrong.

I reached out for her hand. She took it and squeezed it. "Will you do something for me?" she asked. "Will you make sure that that son of mine comes in here to see me? I miss him." I told her I would be able to bring him in, on the coming Monday evening.

She had a second heart attack in the hospital on Monday afternoon, the day I was to bring my husband in to see her, and she passed away before they could revive her.

And I grieved. I grieved for all of the lost time I had wasted being angry with her, all of the special times we could have had if she had been around longer, now that I'd just figured it all out. The resentments had fizzled and disappeared. Love and forgiveness reigned; in fact, it had already happened without me realizing it.

And when I realized (a few days later) just how generous she was, and just what great lengths God went to in order to answer my prayer ...

I sobbed.

Bankrupt!

I was talking to a friend of mine today about how we know that God will provide for our needs ... but what exactly ARE our needs?

"Oh God, I really NEED a Porsche."

We might laugh at that kind of prayer. But it shows how deeply ingrained our western culture is and how it has seeped into the church.

What do we mean when we say that God will provide for our needs? Does it mean that we'll never, ever, not in a hundred years, go without? Is there room in our theology for a God who would allow a Christian to suffer want?

Is it ever God's will for a Christian to declare bankruptcy? There now, I've said it. The B word.

It's not something that is all that easy to do in Canada. In the States, declare bankruptcy and within six months you have at least some credit rating back. But in Canada, it's a very grueling process. You have to list all your assets and liabilities, then your bi-weekly (or monthly) income and expenses, itemize it, have a bankruptcy trustee go over each one and allow or disallow each one. The debts are forgiven in the sense that you don't ever have to pay the creditors back - at least not all of it. They are prohibited from calling you up to demand payment. That in itself is a great relief.

But for nine months, every expense is scrutinized, and every last cent that isn't spent on necessary (and approved) items is given to the bankruptcy trustee to be distributed to the creditors at the end of the nine months. If you've kept your nose clean, at the end of that period, the bankruptcy is "discharged" and you don't have to report to the trustee anymore. So that means there is a little more money at the end of the month.

However, that's not the end. Your credit rating is absolutely ruined. And it stays ruined for years. YEARS. Seven years, to be exact. And then you have to start from scratch.

The whole process is designed to make a person think very hard before committing to that kind of step. And it's also designed to teach people who have not managed their money well, HOW to follow a budget.

The mechanics aside - what is the will of God in this matter of a Christian declaring personal bankruptcy??

The truth is - I really don't know for sure. All I know is what we went through.

We had tried to operate a business. "Spend money to make money," we were told. So we got a fax machine, and spent money on faxes and on long-distance telephone calls to grow our contact network. We got lots of good contacts - but no sales. More and more money disappeared into the phone bill. We were spending some $700 a month in long-distance alone. This went on for quite a while. We borrowed to pay the bills, and we borrowed to pay the loans we got to pay the bills. The debt was crushing us. We felt like failures. We were stressed out all the time wondering where the next meal was coming from, or who would call us next asking for a payment.

In desperation, we went to the Orderly Payment of Debt (OPD) office. They looked at the debt load and (bless them, they didn't laugh) told us that if we went for OPD, we would be mortgaging our children's future for the next 30 years. They advised us to declare personal bankruptcy.

That period of time was the most wrenching of our lives up until that point. We were dealing with the possibility of being stigmatized by the very people who claimed to care about and love us - as long as we measured up to their expectations, we found out. The internal struggle, the pain of daily wondering when it would all fall apart around our ears - early on in the mortgage with no assets to call our own - we agonized about this decision.

And that's when we got a first-hand dose of "Christian love and concern." When I mentioned to one person that we were having significant financial problems and we didn't know what to do, she said, "Well, THAT's not speaking in faith...."

OUCH. And then she started telling me that she knew how I felt, how she and her husband were struggling to have enough money at the end of the month, and how God always made sure that they were able to pay the bills, yada, yada, yada.... She just didn't understand that it wasn't like someone could write us a check for a thousand dollars and fix everything. We needed over fifty times that amount just to make things manageable.

Another lady called me on the phone every day. She assured me that she and her husband were praying for us, that they were believing for a miracle. "Did you get your miracle yet?" was her first question, every time.

Finally, we knew it was time to declare bankruptcy when we sat across from a loans officer at a finance company to take out our second loan to buy groceries.

So, that week we decided to go to the trustee and declare bankruptcy. Although the initial setup was a difficult experience to say the least, the trustee looked at us at the end of the meeting, and said, "None of your creditors is allowed to demand payment of this debt ... ever again." For me it was like a two-ton weight fell off my shoulders.

And the next day the phone rang. It was this lady again. "Did you get your miracle?" she asked. "Yes," I said. She was excited and wanted to hear all about it. "God used us declaring bankruptcy to erase all of our debt," I told her. She stammered, cleared her throat, and made some excuse to hang up.

She never called again.

OUCH again.

We learned not to let anyone know about our predicament unless we had to. It was our experience that nobody wanted to hear anything about financial difficulty in the life of a Christian unless it was already resolved. It was a taboo subject, and fodder for criticism and judgment from many in the church. It went against some people's theology, a theology started by Wall Street and legitimized in the Christian community by such charismatic folks as Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, and Robert Schuller.

I'll tell you what I think. I think that God can use ANYTHING for His purposes. I think that in some cases (not all) it IS God's will for a Christian to declare personal bankruptcy. It's not something a Christian would enter into willy-nilly. Going that route is not without a whole lot of heart-rending soul-searching and prayer.

I also think that Christians need to cultivate a response to the shocking news that someone has failed financially (or for that matter, morally), a response that isn't based on snap judgments, but on a desire to understand. Not a desire to understand the mechanics of the failure or to comprehend whose fault it was, but to really hear the heartache and the shame that is behind such an admission... and to focus on THAT rather than whether it's right or wrong.

God taught us so very much through the bankruptcy. He showed us just how powerless we were to get out of this mess on our own, and that was an object lesson to us of the spiritual predicament that ALL of us are in - unable in our wildest dreams to have a relationship with a holy God based on our own merits. When our debts were forgiven, we got a true picture of forgiveness - we never had to wonder whether this company or that company would come after us for payment. We knew they never would. "Just as if we'd never owed," was the perfect illustration of the Christian concept of Justification by Faith.

We did learn how to live within our means. Cutting up the credit cards, living on cash only, was a huge adjustment but we learned how to do it. It made life so much easier after we were discharged from the bankruptcy and nobody would give us any credit for years afterward. And we resolved never to get into a debt we couldn't pay back - ever again.

And there were so many experiences where God really came through for us and met our everyday needs through the kindness and the generosity of His people - for not ALL people in the church judged us. Some of them actually loved us... and showed us they loved us. God Himself worked a couple of really amazing miracles of provision along the way.

I think I'll save those miracles for another post.