I have been overwhelmed today with GOD's goodness. I needed a strong wave of HIS love because my current battle with flesh is INTENSE.
I needed to be reminded of some KINGDOM fundamentals, and my struggle feels so overwhleming that some days I need reminders half a dozen times. I have a co-worker whose brokeness exposes itself in ugly ways (as does everyone's), and my heart somehow landed on the conclusion that her junk makes her "less than" me. My guilty self-righteous heart reacted to personal hurts with resentment and dreams of retaliation. And this...CRAP...has just been eating me alive for two weeks now. The manifestation of these evils has appeared all over: I disappeared to my friends, whom I should have drawn closer to, I had insomnia all of last week, and I began to overthrow my boundaries by bringing work home with me.
And GOD BLESS HIS timing, I have been bombarded by messages of truth and reality all week. And GOD, in HIS faithfulness, has brought individuals to me with wisdom and peace to calm the waters in my angry heart.
This evening Darren made some GOD-inspired points at The Garden. He explained that anger was designed with good intentions (to notify us that a boundary has been crossed), but we have been trained to feed anger in such a way that it becomes on-going resentment and bitterness. It is a misinterpretation and misuse of a once positive attribute. It is on-going anger that causes blow-ups, and turns our mind to devaluing humanity (like name-calling or keeping tabs on everyone else).
When we devalue humanity it is almost as if we wish to throw other people out of the KINGDOM OF GOD...and who are we to determine that.?!
I related Darren's point to Mike Erre's message from last week about a GOD who keeps no ledger. There is a parable in the bible that illustrates a king who has a ledger accounting for his debts to others and other's debts to him. One day the king's accountant finds a servant who owed an impossible amount; the king has the authority and right to have this person (and his family/belongings) sold in order to pay down the debt. The servant begs for mercy and promises to repay the debt (the original audience would have heard this promise and scoffed because it was more than a lifetime of wages). The king choses to "close the books," eat the debt, and let the servant go free. This, obviously, is a BRILLIANT illustration of what CHRIST did for us; HE ate our debt and we live because we are free.
The parable, however, does not end on that Hallmark point...the newly free servant turns around and finds another man who owes him money and demands it harshly. This debt cannot be repaid in one day, but it is a repayable amount. The debtor begs for mercy using the EXACT SAME VERBIAGE as the first servant to the king yet there is no mercy shown here. When the king finds out about this injustice he calls the first servant to him and explains that if it's the books he wants to play by then he too will play by the books. The king orders that the servant be thrown in jail and tortured until he should repay all he owed...which would be never. The point of the parable is that even though I have been forgiven and excused from my sins, I still carry around an internal ledger of injustices done to me.
I have been doing this with my co-worker. She has sent me e-mails and brought up points verbally of her observations; and in reaction to those things I have begun to keep a ledger. I have allowed my anger to fester, feeding it as I sleep,when I am not on the clock, giving it authority to spill over from my occupation(cite coordinator) to my vocation (a CHRIST follower). Although I have not acted on my dreams of retaliation, I should be deeply concerned that those seeds exist. Two weeks ago Mike Erre introduced me to the "Law of Retaliation," and he explained that no one wins in that game. Mike used Sampson as an example, and how a game of retaliation always requires "one-upping" your opponent; in Sampson's case it escalted from a domestic issue to an economic issue to a murder issue...no one wins that game. I am thankful for the wise words of my community not to retaliate, but I need to submit my heart to GOD for extractive surgery.
Darren ended this evening stating that we need to re-learn how to be angry. JESUS was angry when he walked the earth...but in the right way. When an injustice was done in HIS FATHER's house, or when the marginalized in society were abused or neglected. I am glad that I can be angry, but I know that I am not exibiting healthy anger right now. Mike made a point last week that forgiving someone does not always mean forgetting the incident, but it does mean sitting in the raw emotions of the situation and chosing to forgive them in the middle of all of it. I need to sit in the rawness some more and pray that GOD leads my heart to forgive IN those moments.
I have a meeting tomorrow with this co-worker to address some of her most recent comments and behaviors, and I want my heart to reflect CHRIST. I want my heart to recognize that I am angry over her behavior, but not holding a grudge and stuffing bitterness.
My BEAUTIFUL friend Liz Pham wrote the following (the link to her blog is on the right side of mine):
Much of our culture succeeds too often in molding its inhabitants into masterful Artisans of Trying.
Trying/striving in this worldly sense only succeeds in allowing us to:
-hide what we perceive to be flaws
-mask our insecurities only to give ourselves a false sense of worth
-outdo others' perceptions of who we are-outdo our perceptions of ourselves
-one up the people around us
-smack on band-aids over wounds that need the exposure to heal
The danger in this type of living isn't so much the desire to be something or someone else; rather, it's the lack of understanding and conviction in who we already are--who we are made in and through Christ's love and redemption: new creations, justified, adopted sons and daughters of the King, heirs.
Trying and striving are incredibly tiresome and draining. I liken this to what I wrote many blogs back--it's that tension that you feel in your gut when you can't be yourself around people. It's debilitating. There's no freedom there, and everything seems to be done in vain.
The shocking thing in the midst of all of this is how this manifests itself in the subtleties of my life. It's not at all blatant, others don't always notice it, and it's deeply personal. In fact, I often don't see this junk until it starts oozing in other places of my life.
I hate how I feel when I'm in the trying/striving mode; it's the result of many things, I'm sure. I perhaps am feeling off, not good enough or undervalued. It's in the very moments when I take my eyes off of Love and onto myself. My eyes then look through a faulty filter rather than the filter of the Perfect Lamb given on my behalf. How quickly my eyes shift! Someone mentioned this the other day in a conversation--it's like taking your eyes off one of those Magic Eye pictures. If you look away for even a split second, you lose the ability to decipher or see the image you're supposed to see. It doesn't take long to lose focus. Staring and being still enough to look intently upon that image--upon Him--requires discipline.
Sometimes I feel as though my life is lived out in a fog of ADD, and I just want to be sedated. Therein lies the danger--masking an issue rather than countering it with something far more potent. I want to continue to learn a very different art--the art of being still.
Being still lends itself to:
-an awareness of our surroundings (esp. the needs of those around us)
-an environment where we can fight the lies that come about in chaos and hurried lives
-an understanding of our present state (maybe even the ability to cry out, "I need You!")
-the ability to reverently come before Him in a posture of worship
-appropriate perception of the greatness of God as we're not walking before him, but waiting on Him-feeling what we need to feel, so that healing can come into those places of pain
-feeling what we need to feel, so that thanksgiving can be offered unto Him who is worthy
-knowing that HE is GOD
It's when we know that He is God that we live in a greater, fuller understanding of who we are. There--we find freedom to be who we are. There--we can worship. There--we can see Him.
There are moments when being still seems second nature and other times I suck at it big time. God knows I can't do it by myself--I've tried and that's when I see that I suck at it :). In my need and in my acknowledgment of it, there His strength facilitates room in my heart to simply be.
May we be inclined to lives of steadfastness and stillness--in times of suffering, joy and everything else that's in between so that we can see Him because He's worthy of our attention.
I love having that feeling of absolute freedom. That feeling of PURE JOY in knowing that you are clinging to GOD, seeking HIM in everything, and pouring back into HIS KINGDOM with the gifts HE gave you.
I need to re-learn how to be appropriately angry in order to be free.
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