Thursday, March 24, 2016

Blueprints

There's a ton of prep work when you’re going on an Emmaus walk. I was called to serve on the live in team again back in January. At the time, I didn’t feel as if I was able to be the type of Christian leader it took to serve. I was almost done with facilitating a men’s Bible study at church, but I had yet to feel that closeness I’ve had before. I was faking it until I was making it, but that approach made me feel hypocritical and judgmental of myself. I was going through another binge with pornography, which in itself was another attack on how I viewed myself. My appetite for food was just as bad. When you tell yourself that you’re a failure, every vice you have becomes magnified.

In order to prepare for the live in team, you meet on Thursday evenings for about 2 months. There’s tons of logistics to cover. You hear previews of the weekends’ talks (think of it as a short course on Christianity.) and you have fellowship and prayer with the team. At home there's preparation too, getting the schedules right, spending time with your family, packing. The night before I was to leave I brought up my nice overnight bag (again, waiting till the last minute is not suggested!). Our family cat decided it was a good time to sniff around the bag. I was folding clothes (again, I waited until the last second to wash the clothes I needed) and noticed him sitting in the bag. My kids pointed and said, “Dad, look.” Indeed the cat was sitting upright and rigid, and I began to think, is he pooping? I run over and the cat leaps forward, leaving behind a puddle of pee. In the moment it was both funny and maddening. My kids were rolling on the floor laughing, snapping pictures for Instagram. Despite the fact that I was as ready as I could be, the cat reminded me that no amount of smugness and prep was good enough for what God was going to do. Here’s what I think of your Christianity. That pee was metaphorical!

The weekend did not go the way of the cat (my pastor says that cats are a product of the Fall and now I see why). God showed up big time. 17 men gave their life to Christ, sealing covenants that were made before they were a heartbeat in their mother’s womb.

There's a moment during the weekend when we release those moments that are keeping us in chains. I was reminded once again that God seeks the unqualified, the lost and the broken. We like to think, men especially, that we have to have it altogether in order to receive the love of Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is the one that qualifies our calling, that shines light on our path and heals our brokenness. The same could be said for me. I was reluctant to take the next step in my faith, my calling, simply because I felt unqualified. I had this idea that by now I was supposed to be this Rock of a man. No wonder the cat decided to piss on my idealistic chest thumping!

In my talk this weekend (for those who have been to Emmaus, I gave the Growth Through Study Talk. For the uninitiated, it was a speech on giving your mind to God) I used a metaphor by way of George MacDonald in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. In Mere Christianity, Lewis quotes MacDonald, who wrote, “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

Each word I spoke from the podium just seeped from a reservoir I never knew I had. The words weren’t just for the men, but it was for me.. Here I am thinking God is using me to change the hearts of the men all the while he was transforming mine. And that’s what the passage above meant to me. When I gave my life to Christ, I allowed God into my heart for the first time. I knew there were things to be fixed—the rotted wood of my foundation, the leaky pipes, the holes in the roof. My life after Emmaus has been God doing the house mending. But like MacDonald says, I was looking for the comfortable life. I wanted what I thought all Christians had—a life of ease and joy.

It’s funny what I project onto others. Just because I became a Christian didn't mean I swore off the lenses on which I viewed the world. The congregants that sat around me seemed so much “put together” than I was but I chalked that up to Christian maturity. I'll get there someday, I thought. I’ll be that elder that some young guy will look up to. I’ll have that look! You can see the family cat just getting ready for that chest pumper to open up his luggage!

I have heard time and time again that “God gives you only what you can handle.” It’s one of those Christian-ese sayings that make as much sense as hedges of protection, travel mercies and taking Bible quotes out of context. But God doesn’t want us to just “handle” life. MacDonald compares that to our “decent little cottage.” I so want the decent little cottage. But God is into big and bold. He’s building a palace! A palace takes new additions, a breaking down of walls, and a new blueprint. He’s the ultimate contractor.

So I had a chance once again to lay down my failures at the cross that weekend at Emmaus. Who else could take these chains? I took a realistic look at my 2015. Why was I still making these same mistakes? Why didn’t I believe in myself? Laying that failure down is giving the contractor of my life full reign to do what He desires. My life wasn't made for me just to handle, it was made to radically live out God’s plan.

I don’t know where that path will take me. Already I have a renewed vigor for my family. I haven't viewed porn for almost 3 weeks and I am making the needed heart adjustments to stave off my thoughts of lust (which is just another form of idol worship!). The Spirit has been at work, that's for sure. All the new, bold steps I took for God during this babe-in-Christ season was a step into the unknown—mission trips, work camps, facilitating classes, etc. I can't wait to see what He will do with this unqualified, broken, failure of a man. What he sees is a blueprint for success. It’s what He sees in all of us. Take that scary step, dear reader, into what he wants for you.

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