Stepping into the Light

In the 1986 film, The Fly, Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a brilliant young scientist who slowly and tragically turns into a giant fly after something goes horribly wrong with one of his experiments. Goldblum's amazing acting elicits equal parts of pity and disgust from the audience, aided by Oscar-winning makeup. The fear one feels for the life of Brundle's loyal girlfriend, played by Geena Davis, is electrifying.

As dangerous as a giant fly would be, I think I might deal with that threat more sanely than the invasion of dozens upon dozens of regular size houseflies that invaded my home last year. The incessant little buzzing and the fear of germs being spread around my kitchen by their little sticky feet drove me to the brink of fly-directed homicidal mania. Even when I finally found their breeding ground (too gross to be repeated, as I'm writing right before my bedtime), I could not get rid of the out of control fly population in my home. So I frantically called an expert fly killer, better known as Home Team Pest Defense.

It's often the same with spiritual issues. I may feel like I'm on pretty solid ground with plenty of faith to deal with major issues like whether or not I should steal, lie, kill, commit adultery, or take the Lord's name in vain. But sometimes it's the smaller issues--job stresses, money worries, car issues, personality conflicts, etc.--that seem to gang up on us all of sudden and seriously test our giant-killing faith.

When I get weak and worn down, I often think about Elijah, who had enough confidence in God to taunt the prophets of the false god Baal and to call down the power of the God of Israel against them. Yet, when he was done proving God in such a big, public way, Elijah turned and ran from Queen Jezebel. He cowered in the woods and asked to die.

Why?

Probably for the same reasons as we behave similarly. He was human and tired and it seemed like his troubles would not stop, and so he took his focus off God and put it on his own frail heart, just as we do.

Please remember, next time your own frail heart says, "I can't cope," you have someone to call on who can and will defeat anything that attempts to overpower you or chase you into the woods where your view of God is obscured. The same as the big things are never too big for Him to handle, neither are the little things too many for Him. Just call on the name of Jesus and He will feed you hope, as the angel fed Elijah physical food at his weakest moment. Jesus will let you use His strength to overcome all your fragility and fear. In fact, He's praying that you will lean on Him, because you operate more fully in His will then. This is what He meant when He told Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9a)

By the way, we have another influx of flies starting up. This time, I'm calling the expert sooner and much more calmly. I know what they can do. Do you know what God can do for you?

A few months ago, I published the piece below with a title that unfortunately scared readers away. I'm re-posting it with a new title because of everything I've written so far on this blog, I believe this post will help more people than almost any other.

Be the author of your own story. This is Think Correctly Principle #1 taught in Think and Make It Happen, by Dr. Augusto Cury.

Every person and event in my life has influenced my thinking, consciously or not, thus making a contribution--positive or negative--to who I am--my "self". According to Dr. Cury, my "self" is my identity--my ability to analyze situations, think critically, make choices, exercise my free will, correct my course, establish goals, manage emotions, and govern thoughts.

Despite the human mind being the most beautiful organism in nature, says Dr. Cury, it easily acquires "conflict" such as inferiority complexes, timidity, depression, insecurity, etcera--especially when we don't assume responsibility for what happens within us. Too often we passively watch our own lives being played out on the stage in our minds, believing ourselves powerless to write the script or direct the actors (our conscious thoughts), and to be our own leading players.

Jesus is Dr. Cury's model of a healthy-minded individual who authored his own story. Jesus was successful and at peace in his mission, certainly not because his life lacked conflict, but because he did not allow the conflict to direct him or to define who he was.

Think and Make It Happen is a book I didn't want to read. I signed up for the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers program recently and enjoyed reviewing my first Thomas Nelson book, Billy, about the relationship between Billy Graham and Charles Templeton. When it came time to choose a second book to review, my only choices were several children's and young adult titles, or Think and Make It Happen. I'm not a fan of the self-help genre, but I chose to review this book for the experience and with the hope that next time I'd get to read a book I cared about. With that negative attitude, the book began slowly for me.

When I gain insights in reading, I underline. On page 16, I read the line, "The mind becomes ill every time it doesn't act in its own favor." From there on, I've underlined and circled Dr. Cury's wisdom liberally throughout the book, all the time focusing on the unfortunate mental condition of someone I love who has variously been diagnosed with schizophrenia, manic depression, and OCD, but who has refused treatment for many years. I thought my new glimmers of hope regarding this person's case were going to be the focus of my review.

Then I had an epiphany about my own thinking. Because of Dr. Cury's insights, I've suddenly connected seemingly disparate dots into a more complete picture of myself.

Dot #1: Most of my life, I've been aware that I am not living up to my potential.

Dot #2: Only within the last five years have I become fully aware of the feeling I've lived with most of my life that I am "not good enough". When I became aware of this feeling, I first blamed my parents and my late husband for things they'd said or done to hurt me. Then I decided my feeling of inadequacy was my own fault for not having achieved my potential.

Dot #3: My mother says I was a bold, fearless, commanding and talkative toddler. This week I've been visiting with my two and a half year old nephew Marcus (and his parents), who also fits that description. Watching Marcus' behavior brought back the thought which occasionally haunts me--how did that toddler my mother described turn into a painfully shy child who went all through elementary school speaking barely above a whisper and hoping that no one noticed her? Even in early adulthood I did not like being watched. No one who has met me recently would believe I'd ever been shy, but still I wondered about that long ago negative transformation.

Dot #4: My earliest memory is of being called "nigger". I was four years old and walking alone on the quiet street where I lived, when two older boys on bikes blocked my path, and one of these strangers told me to "get out of our way, nigger." I haven't thought of this incident often. I took that boy, Chester, down with one punch three years later when he tried to steal the Easter basket I'd made in school, and I've told this second story much more often than I've brought up the "nigger" incident, which I shared just barely as a comment to a recent post on John Shore's Suddenly Christian blog.

Dr. Cury's book gave me the tools to connect these four dots.

Suddenly it's obvious to me that being faced with Chester's irrational hatred (and physical threat) at the age of four planted a seed of fear that grew into a weed of insecurity, fertilized by every other perceived threat or criticism I received along the way. At the age of five, I was once again caught off guard and with only my younger friend Sidney along on a short stroll in the suburbs, by three much older kids who had a gun that looked real to me. They called Sidney "Jewboy" and me a nigger and questioned what we were doing in their neighborhood. They told us to run back to Sidney's house or be killed and I wanted to spit at Sidney for crying. I refused to run even though I was afraid I'd be shot in the back.

I realize now that I began to withdraw my natural personality then and became "shy" to avoid more trauma.

Dr. Cury says an important task in authoring our own stories is to direct our thoughts. We can direct our thoughts by using his DCD technique--Doubt any thought that disturbs us, Criticize the validity of negative thoughts rather than passively accepting them, and Determine to be happy, secure, and strong.

The Doubt-Criticize-Determine process has to be done in that order. Determination to be happy does no good until I break the hold of negative thoughts on my life. But I can't break the hold of negative thoughts until I understand from where they stem.

I had assumed I felt "not good enough" because I hadn't lived up to my potential, but all along it was the other way around. Now I know what happened, thanks to Dr. Cury.

Thanks to God, I came across this book against my will and now I am free not to allow the past to determine my future any longer, free to be more like Jesus. This is what we in the church call deliverance.

In case anyone's lost track while I've been on involuntary hiatus because of my "inverted internet speeds" (no service) for four days, we're still in the midst of our "Children, Go Where I Send Thee" series. The line today is "I'm gonna send thee six by six; six for the six who couldn't get fixed".

Since the obscure reference intended by the unknown writer of this song has me stumped, I will blatantly switch from the question "who couldn't get fixed?" to muse briefly about the number six.

As I'm sure I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog, six is the number that represents the sinfulness of God's creation, specifically us humans, as it's used in the Bible. God spent six days creating Earth and everything on it, under it, and above it, including us, and He called His creation good. Then He put man and woman in charge, knowing it was downhill from there. But God had a plan even before the six days of creation began.

God wants us to do right, knows we'll do wrong, loves us anyway, and sent His son Jesus to pay our way out of the damnation we deserve, if we'll only accept the gift of His sacrifice and turn our will away from the direction of our flesh in order to follow Him gratefully.

I don't know anything about the "six who couldn't be fixed" but I know you and I can be saved forever because of Jesus. Hallelujah!

[Next: Five for the Gospel Preachers]

From the blithe, blond, bland Jesus pictured in so much Sunday School wall art, to an enraged avenger, we seem to enjoy inventing our own version of Jesus so we can worship who we desire.

Why do we love these false or at best incomplete images of our Savior? The real Jesus scares us, that's why.

It's not necessary to pretend that the real Jesus doesn't frighten you. I think this is what the Bible means when it tells us to live in fear of the Lord--not in fear of what He'll do to us, but in awe of what He wants to do through us. God is not our buddy; He is our master. Even Jesus' closest disciples were often frightened and confused in the face of His power and His prophecies of death and rebirth.

It's right to be frightened, but not right to respond to our fear by worshipping a fake Jesus who is either totally non-threatening or whose possible punishments keep us up at night.

We often get our false ideas of Jesus either from other people, when we don't read the Bible for ourselves, or when we pull scriptures out of context.

We have to read the entire Bible to get the best picture of Jesus. There is great danger in picking and choosing which scriptures to emphasize in our understanding and worship, but that is standard practice for Christians and our churches.

While the New Testament as we know it records just the highlights of Jesus of Nazareth's three year ministry, and extremely little of His earlier life, every chapter in both the Old and New Testaments can help us to see Him more fully.

When we do see Jesus more fully, any Christian with any sense should experience a healthy degree of fear. After all, to be a Christian means to follow this perfect Jesus the Christ, not just to believe in Him.

Who would not be scared at the prospect of developing a relationship with someone who sacrificed His life to pay for our sins and wants us to become just like Him? Though our sins are forgiven for His sake--just for the asking if we trust Him--we are called to sacrifice ourselves just as He did, for the sake of fulfilling God's will. We don't have to literally die on a cross for God, that work is completed; but we are all called to give up pursuing the wants of our flesh and to substitute God's will for our own. All of which is a little like dying--in a good way.

The ideal is for our flesh to be crucified as was Jesus, and for our spirits to be reborn as kindred to His.

This is scary only until we do it--again and again and again. The closer we get to God's will, the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit, who comforts us and enables us to continue on in the life God wants for us, without fear.

Today's guest post is courtesy of Lorie Newman, who I virtually met recently on Twitter. Lorie, who writes a blog called "Living as a Fragrant Sacrifice" , responded to my request for someone to write about a surprising aspect of or story about Jesus.

I could do the expected and build Lorie up in advance, gushing on regarding what a wonderful woman and fine writer she is, but I think the following post, being in Lorie's on words, will convey those attributes for her. Thank you, Lorie, from the bottom of my heart.

Here it is:

"Exuse Me, Mrs. Buffington, But I Think You are Mistaken"

For me, being raised in a Christian home meant attending church every time the doors were open and bible stories being embedded into my mind before I could walk. I can even remember Sunday School as a very small child. I remember Mrs. Buffington putting pictures of Jesus on the felt-board each Sunday as she taught us about miracles and God’s love for every one of us.

In my mind, I can still see the tiny felt pictures of a dark-haired Jesus with an outstretched hand. Oh, if I could just rewind my life back 35 years for just a moment and go back to that small classroom, I’d have to politely raise my tiny three-year old hand and say, “Excuse me, Mrs. Buffington, but I think you are mistaken. That’s not at all what the real Jesus looks like.”

Little did I know 35 years ago that I would one day see Jesus. And I haven’t just seen Him once, but many times. Oh my sweet friend, I have seen Jesus. Although, the bible is not clear about the details of the physical face of our Savior, in Matthew 25 the bible clearly explains that we will see Him when we minister to even one of the ‘least of these.’ “Whatever you have done unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

The most powerful lessons about Jesus that I have learned have not been through a godly friend, through a powerful Bible Study lesson, or even through a motivating sermon. They were learned through the eyes of the poor, the outcast, the widow, the forgotten, and the orphan. And it was there, among the least of these, that I have seen Jesus.

I have seen Jesus in a little boy with AIDS in an abandoned baby refuge center in Swaziland whose smile lit up the room and lit up my heart. I blew soapy bubbles and played pat-a-cake with him until my hands ached.

I have seen Jesus in the face of woman dying of TB in a hospital in Africa. She was alone and afraid, so our team prayed over her.

I have seen Jesus in a homeless man whose story broke my heart. My family ministered to his family on Christmas Eve one year. It was one of the most memorable Christmas seasons of my life.

I have seen Jesus in the eyes of both of my adopted children the first time they called me “mommy.” It is hard to believe they were once malnourished and abandoned in third-world orphanages. Now they thrive with so much life.

I have seen Jesus in Maria, a Liberian woman who left “the American dream” to live among her native people in extreme poverty so she could save abandoned babies.

I have seen Jesus in the smile of an orphaned girl in South Africa who had just been given her first pair of shoes. I had to hold back tears as she held those shoes like they were her most prized possession.

This revelation of what Jesus looks like has been the most astonishing aspect of my Christian walk. What about you? When was the last time you saw Jesus? Perhaps you are looking in the wrong place. Sometimes you have to get out of the Sanctuary and the comfortable pews to really see Him. But when we as Christians walk among the poor, when we minister among the homeless, the outcast, the widow, and the orphan, we’ll see Him. Oh, He may not look at all like you expected, but you will see Him. And friend, you will never be the same.

The first "S" word we'll look at this week is "surrender".

Christians talk a lot about the joy of surrendering to God, but who among us can surrender to Him once and stay surrendered? Surrender means admitting and accepting my own weakness versus the strength of another with whom I have some conflict.

You may now be thinking, Oh hold on, now, I certainly have no conflict with God, but forgive me when I tell you that such a claim makes you a liar. Human conflict with God, while He works to reconcile us to Himself, is the major theme of the Bible and the major problem in all of our lives.

Surrender to God means saying, "I'm weak, I've had enough of fighting you Lord, and I give up. Do with me what you will." As wonderful as it seems to surrender to the source of all power in the moments when we recognize our weakness or we are tired or distraught, God created us with free will which continually leads us to forget our promises to God in favor of our own desires, and the cycle of fight and surrender begins again.

Ezra, a biblical scribe and scholar (whose book is between 2 Chronicles and Nehemiah in the Bible), tells the story of over forty thousand Israelite captives who were freed by the Persian king Cyrus so that they could return to Jerusalem and rebuild God's Temple. God had commanded Cyrus to allow this, and the freed Israelites were happy to go and do the will of God.

When the Israelites arrived in Jerusalem, they were so frightened of the strangers who lived around the ruined city that they could think of nothing but praising God and built an altar immediately on which to worship Him. Some years later, though, after the Temple has been built and the Israelites are living more or less peacefully among their neighbors, God looks down and demands that they be sifted, the godly from the ungodly because so many of His chosen people have chosen foreign spouses and begun to worship false gods, so that the community of believers has become polluted.

We may think we are smarter or holier than those ancient Israelites who allowed foreign gods and false beliefs to waylay their faith in the one God, but are we? When we put too much importance on our jobs, homes, or cars; when we put too much faith in our bank accounts, our own brain power, or our spouses; when we spend more time planning what to wear or what to watch on television than we do in prayer--how surrendered are we to God? Those other concerns become alternate gods when we place them higher in our thoughts and plans than we place our own Creator.

We can't surrender to Jesus once and think we are set for eternity. Paul told us to "continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling"(Philippians 2:12b, NIV). This doesn't mean we should work for our salvation; we should know we are saved by faith alone (read Romans 9, and the book of James). But salvation is like a puzzle to be worked out. We're given all the pieces (and the picture to model them after) when we first accept grace, but we spend the rest of our lives putting those pieces in place and then having to re-do the puzzle each time with remove a few pieces by getting caught up in someone or something other than our Savior. Even religion can cause us to pull pieces out of our salvation puzzles.

Every day I need to re-focus my mind on Christ and remember our relationship and the grace that granted it. My family, my job, my finances, my happiness are all important and take work to maintain, but none are more important than my identity in Christ and none of these people or things has any lasting meaning without what He has done for me.

Do you need to re-focus and re-surrender to Christ today? Are you working out your salvation?

(Photography by Ryan Forkel)

The mother of James and John, two of Jesus' disciples, showed up one day and begged Jesus to save places for her sons at His left and His right in heaven. Jesus said that the family did not understand what they were requesting. He asked whether James and John were ready to drink from His cup and go through the baptism He would experience.

"Yes, we are!" said James and John (Matthew 20:22b, CEV).

Were they ready? Am I?

Faith is not just a matter of accepting Jesus as the Savior He claims to be, but about being able to crucify or deny our natural human desires as he did and to bear the grief He bore. Faith in Jesus is not only belief but loyalty and identification with Jesus--faithfulness.

I believe that God has given me all I need to be like Jesus, but I fully admit that the thought of doing what it would take to fulfill that potential terrifies and saddens me. I wonder if that is the feeling that Adam and Eve hoped the forbidden fruit would assuage. I don't know that, but I know categorically that every fiber of my being needs Jesus as my stand-in and redeemer.

Jesus is the first-born in the family of God. Romans 8:29 (NLT) informs us, "For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn, with many brothers and sisters." The world had to wait many years for Christ to come and show us how to behave as members of our Father's family, but Ephesians 1:5 (NLT) tells us, "His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure."

Until you know Jesus, the Bible may sound like a fairy tale: The Great God formed a family for Himself out of dirt and blew His own breath into them. He created an entire universe to supply and amaze them with more than they need. He provided them water, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and meat; fur, silk, cotton, and wool; stone, dirt, grass and wood--all the ingredients for food, clothing and shelter. He gave them flowers and snowflakes, sex and sunsets. He gave them rules for an everlasting, peaceful life, and when they messed up...God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. (John 3:16, CEV)

Are any of us ready to be like Jesus?

(Photograph by Dimitri Castrique)