The Kingdom of Me

We reached a point in our family where we were tired of just going to church and doing the same thing over and over. While we were grateful to be saved and to be able to worship freely and to have loving, Christian friends, there was an emptiness brewing in our hearts. Gary Haugen referred to this feeling about going to church as "Groundhog Day" after the movie with the same title. That was exactly how we felt. We knew that we were blessed bountifully for a purpose greater than ourselves. But what? We just kept doing the same things every week, every season. Our lives were full of activity and stuff, but the nagging emptiness did not go away. If the Church is God's answer for a lost and dying world waiting for justice and you and I are the Church, what is stopping us from actually carrying out this call on our lives? What is keeping us in church "doing" church instead of "being" the Church to this world? I think there are a handful of real answers to that question, and today I want to talk about one of them.

I believe that there is such a vast gap among western Christians between their reality and their awareness of the world. What I mean is that in our culture it is easy to insulate ourselves from the reality of how the rest of the world lives. We do this by choice. We prefer not to know about suffering - perhaps because we feel powerless to do anything about it, perhaps because we do not want to feel guilty for how we live in comparison. We've become skilled experts in avoidance. It's easy to watch the evening news or put down the newspaper and then go back to our dinner table discussions that have nothing to do with a suffering world and everything to do with our own little kingdoms. I love Kay Warren's phrase "the kingdom of me". Truly our lives are built around our own problems, our own challenges and issues that we deem a threat to our own personal lives of comfort. We have grown to expect our lives to be easy and we squirm and fight when something in our lives becomes the least bit inconvenient. We are consumers of ease. We are suckers for the latest product that makes our lives "easier" because we perceive in our limited field of vision that our lives are difficult and that we have a right to want them to be easier.

But our perceptions are an illusion. We are so insulated that we are comparing our lives not to the rest of the world, but to the person sitting next to us in our cozy pew at church. We have to broaden our awareness of the world.

To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. That is what the Lord requires of us. But how do we do justice if we are so insulated from the injustice in our world? How do we love to administer God's mercy to a dying world if we can't see or connect with that world and can only relate to a world that is within the context of our own little kingdom? I truly believe that the Church today is God's answer for the injustice in our world, but we are living in our own little private worlds and can't even see the suffering world so how can we be the ones that God chose to deliver justice to a world we can't or won't see?

Statistics are not enough. I could sit here today and list some alarming statistics about our world and yet by dinner time you will probably have forgotten all about them. If I told you there are 143 million orphans on the face of this earth we live on, what effect does that have on you? Do you know any orphans personally? Maybe, but probably not. So, how can you relate? That number - 143 million - it sounds like a lot, but do you really stop to think about how many that really is? Do you contemplate that each of those children was created by God for a purpose here on earth and consider what is being lost by these little lives being wasted?

We are not completely heartless though. We do hear stories or see a muliti-media presentation at church that will stir our hearts beyond lunch time. We have given of our finances to some of these things, but I love what Kay Warren says in her book, Dangerous Surrender:

"Giving financially loosens the grip of materialism and selfishness that we all struggle with, but it can be a way of quieting our conscience while keeping our distance from those in need. Can you point to the sick, the poor, the prisoner, the orphan, the widow, the immigrant you are personally ministering to in Jesus' name?......As long as suffering people are a mere statistic to you, you will never become ruined for life as you know it. When suffering becomes personal - with faces and names - and when you hear their stories, you won't be able to remain disconnected."

We can't do justice unless we can see injustice. And we can't really see injustice unless we are willing to step outside the walls of our little kingdoms and go see and touch the suffering world. If the Church is God's answer for injustice in our world today, we have to be willing to embrace suffering and injustice and to get our hands and feet dirty. Sounds a little scary, huh? We'll talk about that next. Today, ask the Lord how to find the suffering world that lies just beyond the gates of your personal comfort zone and go there, just for a bit. I promise, though your kingdom may begin to fall, you will not regret what it will cost you, for truly, whatever you do for the least among us, you do for Jesus Himself. There is no greater way to experience Him.

Sacred Discontent

For some reason, I have had this weird nudge from God to relentlessly read stories of missionary heroes to my children. I wasn't raised that way. I was raised to fear everything. Like most people, I used to be more than content to have that life where I went to college and bought a house in a safe part of town and raised my kids to be afraid of anything that was too different - anything that would have the potential to "lead them astray." I made a lot of my early parenting decisions, I'm sorry to say, based strictly on....fear. Fear of my kids getting hurt, fear of them picking up bad attitudes or habits, fear of what other parents might think. But at the same time, I had this weird notion that I needed to read stories to them about missionary heroes - people who constantly laid down their lives and faced peril and danger to follow God and to reach the world with His message of truth and love.

I found myself wondering why I was so driven to give these stories to my children. Was it because I really wanted to live a life like that? Well, deep down inside, I think the answer for me was... YES. Did I think that I could or actually ever would live a life like that? Um, no. Did I want my kids to live dangerous lives for the Lord? Well, definitely not! I wanted them to live safe lives for God. :)

But is that possible? Contemplate that one for a minute. Is it possible to live a "safe" life for God?
Sure, I guess. Is it the life we are meant to live? Um, sorry....but, no. I don't think so. When I say "safe" I am referring to my comfort zone. Doing and being all that God created for me to do and be without ever feeling uncomfortable or unsafe - without ever risking my reputation, my finances, my life...

When my daughter started choosing stories about martyrs for her recreational reading when she was nine years old, I have to admit, I was alarmed. Was God preparing my daughter to be a martyr? Certainly not. I pushed that thought away and figured it was a phase she was going through that she would get over. For some reason, I continued to read stories to her, and then to her brothers about brave missionaries. Why?? For years I didn't know, but now I do.

I truly believe that when God created me - and my children - for this time on earth, He specifically wired us to be bring His heart to this present lost world. I was not born at another time. I was born for this earth at this time. I was also created to yearn for a life that matters. Pause. Think about that - deep inside each of us is this desire to carry out our God-given purpose here on earth - to live a life that matters. True?

When we begin to ask that "Now what?" question (see previous post), we come to a place of new understanding. Again, Gary Haugen gives voice to this understanding:

"This, I believe, is the voice of divine restlessness. This is a voice of sacred discontent. This is the voice of a holy yearning for more. This is the moment in which we can see that all the work that God has been doing in our lives and in the life of the church is not an end in itself; rather, the work he has been doing in us is a powerful means to a grander purpose beyond ourselves... This is the critical transition - when we who have been rescued by Christ come to understand that our rescue has not been simply for ourselves but for an even more exalted purpose. Indeed our own rescue is God's plan for rescuing the world that he loves."

My friend, the Church is God's answer - YOU are God's answer to a world waiting for justice. You have been set free for a purpose. You have been blessed for a purpose. You were born for such a time as this!

What is holding you back from making this transition - from rescued to rescuer? Ask yourself, "Why was I put on this earth at this time? Do you feel the tug of this divine restlessness to make your life matter? What is stopping you from living that brave, heroic laid-down life of a modern day hero?? It could be lots of things. Don't you think it's worth getting to the bottom of this question? I do, so I'm going to keep on.......

NOW WHAT?

There has been this storm brewing in my heart now for almost five years, and I am finally able to verbalize this chemical change that has happened in my heart and in our family. For these past five years God has led my husband and I down an unexpected path. For years we have been troubled by the oppression and injustice in our world, but like most western believers, we had no idea how to do anything about it. We would have those sad discussions about children being sold in the sex slave trade or about the overwhelming numbers of orphans on this earth, or about kids starving to death in Africa, or the AIDS epidemic....and well, none of those things personally affected our family. But beyond that, we cared. We just didn't know what to do about that caring. We could offer meager amounts of money towards people out there trying to make a difference, but somehow that never felt like enough. We reached a place where we had all the things we thought we ever wanted...and yet, we still found ourselves lacking. I owe so much of my ability to verbalize all of this to Gary Haugen, President of International Justice Mission, who writes in his book, Just Courage:

"Now what? Indeed, there comes a time in the life of every believer and of every church where a voice inside us simply asks, Now what? After we have been introduced to Jesus and have found peace with God through him. After we have been following Christ and have gradually been surrendering the compartments of our life to him. After we have asked him to redeem our past, to heal our wounds, to reconcile our marriages and safeguard our children. After we have asked him to purify our thought life, to sanctify our ambitions, to soften our hearts, to comfort us in tragedy, to lead us in wisdom through confusion at work, at home, and in our hearts. After he has filled our minds with the Scriptures, and taught us his Word, his songs, his ways and his love for us.

After all of that, there is a voice that remains and simply asks, Now what?"

Would you consider walking this path with us? This path leads to unknown, scary places that aren't "safe". I'm asking the hard questions here, and I want to try to answer them with others whose hearts are struggling with the "Now what?" question. To answer this question, I believe we have to answer so many other questions first. Questions like, "Can I really live a brave life for Christ and still be safe and know that my children will be safe?", "What can I really do about the terrible injustice that consumes our earth that we live in?", "Why was I the one born in the land of plenty, and what is my responsibility to others that is implied in scripture based on the abundance I live in?" (Hint: It is not because God likes me better than that precious mom on the other side of the ocean from me who is dying of AIDS while watching her children starve and wondering what will become of them when she passes.), "What do Jesus and the Father think about my church?", and other hard questions. Hard....but worth asking if they can lead us to find the calling and purposes stored deep in our hearts, placed there by a loving Father when he was forming us for such a time as this.