Humble and Broken

I heard his voice booming from across the room. I blah, blah, blah. And I blah, blah, blah. Then I blah, blah, blah. This guy clearly had I trouble. And the person to whom he was boasting, I thought, was sure enough gonna leave out of there with ear trouble! Not long after this, however, I read of someone who witnessed a man treating his wife and children somewhat rudely. I realized this was probably the only control this man had in his life, she said. Her compassion struck me. So much mercy for someone so polarizing! But she was right, I'm sure.

Humanity requires compassion. Matthew 5:7 says, Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. The character of the citizen of the Kingdom of God is one of mercy. G. Craig Lewis has said, "We are human beings, not human doings." That being said, we are to be merciful, not simply perform acts of mercy. How so? By submitting to reality checks via the Holy Spirit that we might not be unaware or caught off guard by the condition of our own hearts. Then we repent and submit even further through obedience to God's Word. Our thoughts and behaviors which flow from the heart will build our testimony, our image which either resembles Christ or is anti-Christ.

So, back to the guy across the room. How does one have compassion on such an overbearing blowhard? --or, at least, that's how I would have defined him as I first listened. By listening when the Holy Spirit reveals my own pride. You see, pride doesn't always show up beating its chest and being obnoxious about its new boat at parties. In fact, I'd bet, most of the time, pride shows up quietly, unobtrusively, sneaking in where it is unwanted, but always finding that tiny crack in the foundation. Or like a weed pushing its way up through a broken sidewalk. The lady walking her dog each morning sees it and thinks to herself, "I should stoop over and pull that," but on second thought reasons she'll get it tomorrow. Day after day the woman passes, the woman procrastinates, and the weed grows. The sidewalk begins to shift as the size of the weed demands sufficient room. One day the woman trips: the tiny weed has been permitted to have its way, warp the landscape, and become a hazard. Pride.

I've come to find also, pride is the flipside of shame. Pride is the "solution" offered to us by the god of this age when we have allowed shame to nest easily in the dark recesses of our hearts. Rather than confessing and repenting of our sin, we dwell in its depths; one lie covering another, one drug masking the effects of another. Shame takes root and sucks any remaining truth from our heart; we doubt our identity, we doubt our ability, we doubt our relevance, we doubt the love of our family, we doubt our control over anything in our world, and we doubt there is any hope for us. Again, rather than taking shame and doubt to foot of the cross, we choose pride. We tell ourselves --to excess --we are the very things shame has assured us we are not. We surround ourselves with things and people who, we think, give us the clout, we think, we need. We talk over others and demand things of others and take the best seat at banquets and put on the biggest show, rather than defer to those around us. We are so fearful we will not be heard or served or honored or applauded, we settle for a manufactured, coerced type of recognition from anyone we can strong-arm into handing it over. We are worse off or, at least, more pathetic than when we were steeped in shame. Pride.

So, whether you're the guy across the room, the one longing for control, or whether you're the one who has simply, with time, let her spiritual guard down; whether your knees have buckled under the weight of shame, and pride has been your shield, mercy awaits. The One True God, patient and forbearing, longs for us to repent, to turn to Him, and to taste of the glory He lavishes upon His children --His children who are humble and broken and resting in Him.

Midweek: Step Two

What would it mean if you were unable to help yourself? Luke 13:10-13 tells of a woman who could "in no way raise herself up." Step One in recovery requires us to admit we are powerless over our addiction. To come to terms with our own inability to do for ourselves --to stop ourselves from using, to control our urge to spend excessively, to resist temptation and keep ourselves from falling into sin --to be powerless against the same thing day after day or trial after trial is necessary; but to stay in that place is deadly. When Jesus says, Apart from Me you can do nothing (John 15:5), He is telling us of the human condition, our condition: as mortal beings, we are fallible, finite, and fragile. We are subject to the curse placed on all of creation, and the sin that separates us from our Creator God leaves us unable to do anything --including help ourselves. But Jesus doesn't tell us this that we have no hope but to stay there; He makes us aware, diagnoses our infirmity and offers Himself as the only panacea. But we must choose Him. To remain in fallibility, finitude, and fragility, in a place where we can in no way raise ourselves up, where we fail to seek or refuse to seek His only cure, is to choose death over Life. His revelation to us is the awakening required, the verdict rendered that justice may be applied. Step Two moves us toward that justice: I came to believe that a power greater than myself, Jesus Christ, could restore me to sanity. 

We are triune beings: body, soul, and spirit. In Step One, we came to recognize the brokenness of our spirit. Acknowledgment of spiritual sickness was just the beginning of the process involved in healing our spirit; the cure appears in Step Two. Notice, however, this power, the power greater than ourselves (because we ourselves have come to admit powerlessness), this power is Spirit; the Holy Spirit of God ministering to our spirit. No reasonable person would go to a divorce lawyer for a toothache or take cold medicine for a flat tire. The treatment needs to be appropriate for the illness or problem. Spiritual sickness --though its symptoms can be mitigated --cannot be cured by behavioral or bodily routines. Chances are, if you "fix" the problem of smoking through behavioral changes, you'll develop another habit --say, nail biting. The spirit must be made whole by Spirit. (Romans 8:1-17 is a wonderful passage illustrating this point.) I can delete the number of every bookie I've ever known; I can avoid casinos and racetracks; I can burn even the UNO cards, but if I don't submit to the King of kings and Lord of lords, if I don't humble myself in obedience to Him, I will still want to do those things I am powerless against. My behavior might change, but my heart will not.

Step Two offers us the relief for our spirit's heaviest woes, the sustenance for our spirit's greatest need, the cure for our spirit's most lethal infirmities --Jesus, the Power greater than ourselves, the Way, the Truth, the Life. 

This Rivalry Is Guaranteed to End in a Win!

Rivalries. Sometimes they're just for fun. Our pastor and his wife like to play "boys vs. girls" when they get together to play games with family. They laugh and joke late into the night. Other rivalries can be a little more serious. Like living in the shadow of Philadelphia football, in a neighborhood that has what appears to be an abnormally large fanbase for the team from the Lonestar state --'nuf said. The season begins with equal trash talking from both sides. Each side knows its team is the better of the two, and we count on the passage of time to bear that out. Once the actual Ws and Ls begin to accumulate, things begin to change. Refs make "bad calls," teams get "robbed," history gets rewritten, and the rivalry gets serious. It becomes even worse when the schedule brings the teams together in competition. Trash talking erupts into cursing and bottles thrown. Team loyalty morphs into animosity toward one's opponents. 

I was thinking, however, about a more historic, more significant rivalry. Good vs. Evil. Strange how throughout humanity, we have exchanged stories of such a contest: mythology, morality plays, comic superheroes, 007. We not only love to see Good triumph over Evil, we love the tension of the foregoing struggle. 

When it's not ours. 

    When it's safe within the pages of a book or on a screen.

        When we are assured of a favorable outcome.

Sometimes our lives can be something of a rivalry. We want to do what's right, but old habits and past coping mechanisms continue drawing us back. Ephesians 4:22 (CJB) tells us those old urges, our old nature is thoroughly rotted by its deceptive desires. Thoroughly rotted! That, in and of itself is bad news, but "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel," right? Left unchecked, rot spreads. 1 Peter 2:11 (CJB) tells us it's a constant struggle --our old nature warring against the new in Christ. In Romans 7, Paul even wrote about his desire to do what is right, but the internal struggle that was taking place despite his best intentions:

For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.... For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.... I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

It is a rivalry that has caused us all from time to time to join the Apostle in crying out, O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? There is no love of tension there. 

We feel like failures. 

    We wonder if God will ever love us again. 

        We hear the enemy whisper what frauds we are.

But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:57) We are assured that the work He has begun in us, He will complete. We have only to position ourselves, reading His Word, obeying what we are told, praying for ourselves and others, fasting, worshiping, pursuing Christlikeness in every facet of life, crushing and squeezing out our old nature by strengthening the new. And His grace will do the rest! Grace teaches us and trains us, transforming our hearts and giving us the inner strength to not only want to do good, but the ability to do it. 

So much more goes into developing a successful team than heading out on the field to do battle with rivals. There are hours of studying plays and highlight reels; there is proper nutrition and training in the gym; day after day of practice, running the plays that were studied. And is it all executed perfectly on the first attempt? No, of course not! In fact, there are all sorts of variables that can impact the success of a play. The same is true of the rivalry in our lives, the desire to do what is good pitted against the familiarity, the muscle memory of doing what is wrong. Thank God for His grace! Your inability to quit smoking doesn't make you a failure. God hasn't stopped loving you because of your addiction to porn. If you are struggling with gossip, you're not a fraud; you are a human being. One who is running, training, disciplining yourself so that with every passing day, your rival, your old nature loses ground, and your new nature grows under the action and direction of God's grace.

Too many football seasons have ended with Birds and Cowboys alike commiserating on some middle ground --The enemy of my enemy is my friend --but whatever the final score, whatever the outcome as you sit biting your fingernails in a darkened theater, whatever the words on the last page of your favorite novel, the outcome for those of us in Christ is certain: When we see Him, we shall be like Him. (1 John 3:2) Good will triumph over Evil, of that we are assured.