The Clearer Path

I thought this was such a great article, I wanted to reprint it here:

"The Clearer Path"

The answer to feeling spiritually lost is surprisingly simple: Listen to God’s voice.

by Tony Woodlief

It’s never helped my faith one bit to worry over how I compare to others. Unfortunately, that truth rarely stops me from envying the lives of Christians who seem to have it all together—good marriages, well-behaved children, stable jobs, positive attitudes. I watch them live their good lives and ask myself why I can’t be more like them.

How good it must feel, I tell myself, to be there. No deep worry or doubt, no secret sin gnawing at the heart, no days or nights of crying out questions to God and receiving the dread silence in reply.

What we learn, however, when we get to know those seemingly perfect people in our churches, is that nobody’s faith is perfect. They may bear their struggles with brighter faces, or keep their nagging doubts and sins better covered, but they feel no closer to perfection than the rest of us.

Anyone who imagines he’s worked out his salvation satisfactorily, in fact, who has no “fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12), well, he may be even more lost than us gossipers and lusters and worriers. At least we have our nagging consciences, after all, to remind us of the great divide between our sullied lives and God’s holiness.

For it is a wide gulf, yet we are each of us called along a path of sanctification into the very midst of God’s holiness. At times this seems hopeless, falling back as we do—as I do—into my persistent sin, my distractions, my feelings of weakness and futility and weariness.

We are called along this path all the same, our good works “prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). But it is such a long walk, isn’t it? A long and wearying walk, and at times we look behind ourselves and see only failure; we look ahead and imagine more failure to come, and we search out the heart of God to ask, Why me?

Why have You arranged for so many people to depend on me?

Why have You allowed this sin to be my struggle?

Why do You expect me to keep journeying on this life’s path when I am so very tired?

We ask why and we ask where. Where, Lord, does it end? What is Your purpose in this illness, this joblessness, this rebellious child?

More than once, I’ve tried to bargain with God—asking Him to just show me where I’m going, and I’ll give up asking why. A journey can seem endless, after all, without a map to tell us how close we are to our final destination.

Scripture says, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Rom. 8:28). But that doesn’t mean we always get to know when the good will emerge, or where life’s raging river will deposit us.

So we are, every one of us, searching. We are searching, some of us, for the path we once knew, because we have lost our way. We may be in church, we may be in a small group, we may even be in our Bibles every day, but we can feel lost all the same. It is exactly the same feeling we had as small children, when we looked up from our play and couldn’t see our mother or father. Some of us feel lost, and the bitter irony is that the more we seem to “have it together,” the harder it can be to ask for help.

Others of us feel lost, and everyone knows we need help, but we imagine we are too weary to do the work. Too weary to resist the call of that bottle, that pornography, that comforting fury, that inappropriate relationship. We feel too weary to pray, too fearful of the silence that results from having shunned God in our hearts. Deep within ourselves, we are still searching for God, if only because He calls to us: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27).

We who feel lost still hear God’s whisper, and we search for it even as we run from it. I imagine that whatever else hell is like, it is also like this—the heartrending urge to rush into the arms of God, and yet a debilitating terror at doing so, because it means we must forfeit the miserable little lives we’ve crafted for ourselves.

I have been “stuck” in my faith, and I have been lost; and each time, my instinct is to blame God for not speaking more clearly. If He would just tell me what to do, I say to myself, then of course I would do it. When my heart is in that stubborn place, I go through the motions of prayer and Bible reading, but it does no good. I can’t hear a thing—not a single thing—and I tell myself the lie that God has gone silent.

“Take heed what you hear,” Christ says. “With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given” (Mark 4:24 NKJV).

We are called along a path, and because we are faithless, we are prone to sit down along the way, like stubborn toddlers, because we can’t see the end. Maybe one reason we can’t see further along the path of faith is because we don’t pay enough attention to where we are right now. We hear, Christ tells us, as we listen. We can’t expect a richer faith, a clearer path, unless we are taking into our hearts those words of God that we already understand.

Words like: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31).

Words like: “Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you” (Col. 3:13).

Words like: “You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land” (Deut. 15:11).

Some of us call out for God’s guidance, and yet we haven’t heeded the lessons we learned in Sunday school. There is so much wisdom in the Bible, so much instruction from a loving Father, but we cannot hear it until we begin to heed the words we’ve already received.

I have often stood on the path, demanding to know from God what my next step is, not realizing that He’s already told me. Love my neighbor. Visit those in prison. Give of myself to “the least of these.” I don’t know how to move forward, because I don’t know how to live rightly where I am. I’m calling out, but I stop up my ears against the reply. I cannot hear because I do not listen.

We live the life to which we are called, not by staring off in the distance, wondering when we’ll get “there,” but in realizing that “there” is “here,” just as the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom is at hand because Christ is Immanuel—God with us—which means we needn’t get there because He has come here. He is here and He is speaking. And if we will just live out what our Sunday school teachers taught us, this world and our very lives will be transformed. That is the promise.

Copyright 2013 In Touch Ministries, Inc. All rights reserved. www.intouch.org. In Touch grants permission to print for personal use only.

DANGER: Slippery Rail

PLEASE tell me I'm not the only one.  Have you ever thought to yourself, "Boy, if I could just catch a good case of the flu/ if I could just break a leg -- I could get all the rest I need."  I don't want to catch anything life-threatening or spend days in a hospital, mind you, but just a small mandatory vacation -- you know, doctor's orders and all that. 

But, is it really the desire to lie in bed which afflicts us, or the compulsion that drives us on when we should be lying in bed?  If a doctor sentences us to bedrest, then we have to do it, right?  So why don't we just do it because it is the right thing? because it is good for us to teach our children how to rest? because we are better spouses, better employees, better friends, better people when we get the appropriate amount of rest?

Most of us are no different when it comes to spiritual rest.  Lately, I've been noticing how stressed and empty I feel from time to time.  Lately, I've been noticing that at every turn God is telling me to rest.

I said a few months ago, that I felt God was telling me to get out there and live the gospel, and I don't mean He has rescinded those orders.  But, I realize I have separated the life of the gospel into two distinct operations -- the personal and the public.  In the personal part of my life, I read and study God's Word, listen to radio sermons, pray and worship.  In the public part, I do some of the same things, but I also run errands for others, chauffeur folks to doctor's appointments or other commitments, deliver meals, write notes of encouragement, donate blood, financially assist others as much as possible, and serve with various groups, ministering to those in need.  Believe me, not a bit of this am I saying to toot my own horn!  In fact, quite the opposite.

My life has recently become a whirlwind of activity.  For almost weeks at a time, I have dashed from one activity to another, trying to keep in balance those things I must do -- like work and sleep -- and those things I feel compelled to do -- like be all things to all people.  Yup.  I said it.  That's what's been going on.  Perhaps some form of guilt, perhaps it's as arrogant as it sounds, but something has been driving me to believe I have all this "free time", and wouldn't it be great if I gave some of it away to those who do not.  Something has been stirring me to pour myself out -- even just one last drop -- to someone simply because I can, because it is there to be poured out, because it is not mine to start.  And all that might sound very wonderful -- that whole pouring out thing -- but...

A) Is my motivation to serve or to fix?  To bless, or to cause others to conform to my ideal of how life should appear?  Am I elevating myself to a position of superiority -- a "have" over a "have-not"?

B) Does my personal life take a back seat when there is so much to be completed in my public life?

C) Do my actions directly, clearly, humbly point to Christ, or is it some roundabout theorem demonstrating that, "because I am generous, I must be different, and because I am different, it must be something supernatural (because we are really all the same), and if it is supernatural, it must be Jesus, and if it is Jesus others must desire Him because He is really good, because I am generous."  See what I mean? -- almost sickens me to write it.

My public life NEEDS to be an outpouring of my personal relationship with Jesus!  And, I'm not saying it didn't start there, and I'm not saying it doesn't go back for a visit now and then.  BUT, when my public life supercedes my personal life, when I choose waiting in line at the DMV with someone over interceding in prayer for them, or discussing Christ with them while we wait, I've gotten off track. 

 

Romans 12

Dumbing It Down

"You are so strong!" my friend texted.

"When you're dumb, you have to be strong," I thought.

My past life, rife with dumb choices and dumb ideals, had left me strong for sure, but empty, and neurotic, and abrasive at times.  And as I fought with my daughter to stop pushing away the people that care most about her, and I lectured my son about wanting better things for himself, I realized just what a pandemic strength has become.

Sure, someone could say it was me -- that I raised them, some of it would have to rub off.  But, look around.  How many strong people do you know?  It's bad ass to be bad ass.  Who can wear the blackest black?  Who can dish out the best dirt or shoot the sharpest barbs?  Who has been through the most crap with their ex-wife, or has the most kids in jail, and is thereby raising the most grandchildren.  Who gets the drunkest and acts the dumbest at the after work parties, or has the most scars/ piercings/ tattoos below the belt!?  We measure one another by just how dumb we can get!

I've known the truth of Jesus almost since I could talk.  I liked learning, and getting good grades, and NOT getting into trouble.  I liked making right choices and having great relationships with people in authority.  Until one day, dumb happened.  (Now in my case, dumb sprang forth from a bad case of fear, but that's a whole 'nother post.)  Suffice to say, someone much dumber than I came along and made me feel like smart and good and innocent were not socially where I needed to be.  And I, being polite and respectful and wildly insecure, listened to their dumbness.  The funny thing is, it only takes one dumb person to louse things up for an entire group.  Soon, I found plenty of dummies to tell me I needed to "loosen up" and "stop being such a goody-goody."  By the end if high school, I'd left all of my smart friends in the dust, and become effectually brainless -- cool, but brainless.  I could feel the acceptance replacing the intelligence with every Sunday morning I slept in.  Aloofness and arrogance kicked respectful and obedient to the curb each time I headed around the corner for a smoke.  Alcohol pilfered from Christmas Past washed away my chances of a bright future and raised a toast to complacency and mediocrity.  Dumb. 

I tried to get it together.  Now matter how far from smart I'd get, I knew dumb was just... well, dumb.  But the choice given me -- to be popular and desirable, or goody-goody and alone -- it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which has a higher face value. 

But then other choices came: act right, or get out; lose the boyfriend, or stay married; get out of town, or go to jail; get an abortion, or ruin everything; abused or homeless.  LOTS of choices.  Dumb.

The thing about dumb is, when you make a dumb choice, you usually decide to make another dumb choice to fix the one you made in the first place.  It's like dropping a pebble into a smooth, clear lake -- the ripples can go on forever.  And so they did.  I was almost forty by the time the dumb wore off, but the ripples?  They're still going -- not nearly as large or as frequent as they were years ago, but trust me, I still find myself bobbing along in them every so often.  Someone said you have to start small -- one right choice after another -- and work toward stopping the ripples.  In the meantime, you hang on!

And I'm sure that's where the strength comes in, but I would have been much better off if I'd just stayed smart.

Psalm 28:7a
"The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me."

Simply, Part Two:

The day at the center had been hectic.  Four new families had been admitted to the program, and some of them required additional services.  One young mother had no idea how she was going to pay for inoculations for her school age son.  We set her up with an appointment at a nearby clinic, and even gave her some further information on state funded healthcare.  Another family was looking for someone to do some low cost repairs on the home they'd just leased from a notorious slumlord.  So much need.  It still boggled my mind how in this day and age, entire families can be displaced, uprooted, relegated to utter poverty without the cataclysmic shock of some natural disaster.  These days, poverty comes at you as you simply go about your day, trying your best.  One year you're celebrating Christmas, piling gifts up under the tree; the next year Christmas dawns the same as any other day in your lean-to under a bridge. 

As I headed to the shower, Scott drew my attention to the stack of blankets piled by the closet door.  I had promised Olivia we would drop them off at the SPCA in the morning, after I'd donated at the blood drive.  He offered to put them in my car, and I continued on.  Arriving upstairs, I realized Olivia was only in the first twenty minutes of her shower (how much do little people have to wash?!), so I hopped on the computer to check the latest news.  I've discovered that, as I age, I've become my mother.  I begin by quickly scanning the headlines, then move on to the important stuff -- the Obits.

Her familiar face smiled at me from the screen -- no black holes, no yellow shingles -- a beautiful, white, young smile; the smile of someone healthy and happy.  Immediately I began to recall the past few weeks; when was the last time I had seen her?  When was the last time I'd even questioned whether she was there?  Aside from her dilapidated appearance, she'd become as insignificant to me as a telephone landline -- another expense, and even sort of a bother while it's there, but not much of a liability when its gone.

The headline proclaimed, "Local Socialite and Philanthropist Dead at 73."  Socialite? Philanthropist?  I read on.  The life this woman had lead was nothing short of amazing!  She had earned numerous degrees, had served in the Peace Corps, and even met the English Prime Minister.  She'd become the head nurse at a prominent hospital, held positions of leadership in several local organizations, served on the school board, and received over a dozen awards for her equestrian skills.  She and her husband were still on the books as the largest donors of a local children's center, and together they had founded a commemorative military museum which had become a benchmark for smaller museums everywhere.

My mind reeled from the news -- not simply the news of her passing, I mean, let's not sugar coat this -- I hadn't even noticed her missing.  But, how?  What had happened?  And how did such a woman wind up here, in a program for the impoverished?  Why did I never know who she was?  She'd once had it all; she'd been someone who, in her abundance, had helped others.  To me she'd been another client on a far too long list.  She'd had love and family, talent and -- it seemed -- ceaseless energy.  To me she was destitute, and alone, with little to offer, and struggling with every breath.  To the local paper she was "Local Socialite and Philanthropist;" to me she was simply Mrs. M.