Burn the Bridges

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." Psalm 23:4

I have been found in the valley a time or two. In fact, I would say that I have lived a good portion of my life there. But you wouldn't know by talking with me that this was the case. I learned at an early age that nobody talks about the valley. Christians are not supposed to be in the valley. Its a dark place full of evil and sin. How could someone who "claims" to be a Christian struggle with sin? Jesus came to save us from sin after all. So how can you who claim to love Jesus have a consistent struggle with the same sin over and over? Whats wrong with you? Why aren't you changing?

The shame grew and I suppressed the truth about my condition deeper and deeper. I developed stories and ideas about myself to compensate for the times that some of my valley became visible. I would say things like, "thats not who I am really... I am a new creation" or "that was the enemy who pulled me down. I did not want to do that" and so on. Comforting thoughts - kind of -  but they did very little to effect any change. I hated the pretense of myself and others but I knew that we were all doing what we had to in order to survive. We were saved and therefore not allowed to be in the valley.

So in my own strength I found that I was able to partially scale up one side of the mountain and  I began to construct a bridge to the other side. Finally, I had a taste of freedom from the misery of failure. The thrill of being above the valley and being on my way to holiness was awesome. Sometimes I was able to keep my bridge building going for weeks. "Ha! No valley for me! Oh yah." I would think. Honestly though I was terrified of the darkness that was lurking below me. I had to watch my footing carefully. One wrong move and I knew that I was toast. It was exhausting. Much of my energy was devoted to the careful management of my behaviors so as to make sure that I did not slip-up and fall back into the darkness below. I was so tired of being stuck in the same spot and dealing with the same issues. This bridge that I was constructing was my only hope because the bible made it clear what was expected of me. Jesus was perfect and He showed me the way. Down in the darkness of the valley, in the place of my weaknesses and failures, I was unable to see a way to the other side. I had to climb up on my own and build a bridge across.

Gods way of Salvation is by showing us how to live and then giving us the strength to live that way. Right? Is not the way that Jesus saves us is by somehow energizing us and motivating us to obey the law? If we can live in way so as to not sin ever again, that would fix things and make us like Jesus - because that was what made Him so special; His ability to refrain from sin, right?

How could you be living in sin if you love God and know that what you are doing is wrong? Don't you know that Jesus died for you??? Doesn't that make you want to live the right way and worship and serve Him for the rest of your life?? He loved you that much. Doesn't that make you want to love Him in return?

One question. Does any of this work? This is what many Christians believe.... does it work? Has it produced anything more than a bunch of people who are afraid to be real and honest and therefore live a life of shallow pretense? Has it affected any kind of change other than the perfection of our exterior and death our interior? We sing about being dry and thirsty, desperate for encountering God, and it is true. We are. Because we are dead inside. We are longing for the abundant life that Jesus promised and do not know how to get it. We are stuck with our fake outsides and our valley of the shadow of death inside.

We try to worship and pray our way out of the valley. We work on building that bridge and fighting the good fight - pressing on towards our goal of being awesome like Jesus. Just when it feels like we are getting somewhere - oops - another fall. Back in the valley, we have to find the strength to worship and pray our way out again. I have heard it said that what makes a Christian different from a non-believer is that when a Christian falls, they get back up. There was that song a while back that went like this: "We fall down, and get up... x3. and the saints are just the sinners who fall down....(dramatic pause)  and get up." Wow.... how epic. This is abundant life? Sign me up.

Honestly, that was inspiring to me during my bridge building years. It kept me going because it was all that I had. But I knew that there had to be something more.

It all changed when the Holy Spirit set my bridge on fire. I gave up after fighting the fight for almost 20 years. I watched as all of my hopes of being able to make it - burned to the ground. I can not remember who said it, but I read recently that someone said, "I pray that I may be quit of God, that I may truly know Him."

That was me. I quit. It did not make sense anymore. I was all tangled up and confused by all the meaningless christianese rhetoric. I knew that Jesus was real and I knew that I did not know Him. I started asking the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to me. I told the Spirit that I truly wanted to know Jesus; not as I thought He was but as He truly is. I invited the Spirit to destroy and burn down everything that I was depending on that kept me from knowing the truth - that kept me from trusting Him.

That began quite the process in me. I let go of so much during this time, the hardest of which was Jesus asking me to let go of trying to do the right thing. He made it clear that He did not want me to try to stand up, climb up, or build anything again. He asked me to surrender responsibility of my morality to Him; to stop trying to obey Him and to simply trust that, in the midst of the valley, He was okay with me being there. That was hard to do.

What was even more difficult was that He told me that He wanted to be with me in the valley. In the midst of my brokeness and weakness - He wanted to have fellowship with me. The valley is the most vulnerable place you have. To have fellowship with someone in the valley you must trust them implicitly. God designed our psyche in such a way that we will deny access to our valley to anyone who we do not feel safe with.

I did not feel safe with Jesus. I felt that He was disappointed in me and that His countenance dropped when I made mistakes. I feared being rejected by Him but I was out of options. My bridges had been burned and my efforts to climb grounded. Jesus became my only choice.

One morning, I started singing a song that I had heard the night before. I memorized the words so that I could sing it over my kids. The words are, "I'm so proud of you, so proud of you. My child I am so proud of you. I am proud of you when you are sleeping. I am proud of you when you're awake. And whatever you don't stop trying, 'cause learning makes lots of mistakes."

As I was singing this little song I sensed the Lord speak to me and say, "Sing that over yourself." I felt really silly but with much reluctance I replaced "child" with "Jacob" and began singing as drove my garbage truck off into the country. I sang it through once and the Lord said, "sing it again." So I did. I kept singing for more than an hour. Every time I sang it, I heard my voice less and the Fathers voice more. I got to the point were I could barely hear myself singing and it was at about that time that I broke inside. I started sobbing uncontrollably. It wasn't a happy cry. It was the overflow of years of feeling like I had failed God and that He was disappointed with me. It was not the result that I was expecting but my heart was so full of doubt that it came out in sobs as I started to dare to believe that His heart was for me.

The real fruit did not come until the next day. I made a big mistake. In the midst of my failure, the Father started singing over me, "I am proud of you, so proud of you. Jacob, I am so proud of you..." It was so clear and so loud that it almost startled me. I was not expecting that. It felt awkward and unreal that God would be singing those words to me in the midst of me doing what I was sure disappointed Him. But it was real.

That day was a turning point for me. I slowly began to believe that His heart was for me. I began to look to experience His affections for me while in the valley. The more that I felt His heart towards me regardless of my performance, the less I feared making mistakes. There was nowhere that I could go - or fall - where He was not with me, loving me, telling me He was proud of me.

There is a Psalm that says, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there. If I make my bed (inhabit) in Sheol (the valley), You are there." I believe that this is actually a prophetic writing of what was to come. Before Jesus, man was separated from God and lost in the valley of the shadow of death (Sheol). There was no way out. God even gave them the perfect Law to stand on and see if that got them high enough to get out of the darkness of the valley. It did not. It was not until Jesus came - who was the Light; who was the Truth; who was the Way - that man had a way out of the darkness. He died so that He could cross over into our darkness and be with us in our place of weakness and brokeness.

The Psalm continues, "...even the darkness will not be dark to You. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to You." Can you see it? Your darkness is not dark to Jesus. The black of night that you feel trapped in shines like the day from Jesus' view. There is something that changes inside of you when you let the Light of the world into the darkest place in your heart. It doesn't seem dark anymore. What you feared would ruin you if you exposed it to Him, actually goes through a metamorphoses (going from immature to mature) in the Light of His love and total acceptance of you. We are shaped by who we trust and feel safe with the weakest places in our hearts. Please understand, this is not the goal of Jesus - that you would be changed. But, you will be. He loves and accepts you because that is His heart, that is His goal. That you would know His affections for you.

You see, what is so hard for us to understand is that we are frozen and imprisoned in our sin until we experience the complete love and acceptance of Jesus in that very place. And He is not in a hurry. His goal is not to love and accept you and then quickly move you someplace better. No, He sits with you for a while. He puts His arms around you and just holds you. It is awkward because you know that you are filthy and He is so clean - but He doesn't seem to mind. He waits and looks in your eyes to see if it has sunk in yet - that He loves you as you are. He does not expect you to change. If you get it - that He loves and accepts you as you are without a clause that you have to change at some point - you will change.

Let me say it again. When you stop trying to change and realize that He is not trying to change you; that He only wants to simply pour His love out on you - you will change. It is only when the deepest darkest place in our heart encounters the Light of the depth of His love and acceptance of us - that we are changed. And the only way for that encounter to happen is for the only goal to be knowing His affections for you. "Deep calls out to deep..." Does the deep in you know that the depths of Him longs to embrace you - all of you?

I know that it is counter to the way that we have been taught to believe. The world rewards good behavior with love and acceptance and bad behavior with anger and rejection. That is not the Father that Jesus reveals though. He rewards you with love and acceptance because you are His child. Period. It doesn't change based on your performance.

My story above is about my struggle with pornography. For almost twenty years I have been in an intense battle for purity. I read every book on the subject and went through counseling and conferences and deliverance and so on. None of it changed me. I learned a lot of tools through those resources like ways to avoid bad behavior by setting boundaries and safety nets and accountability partners and so on. But the problem is that all of that is all fear based and did not address the deep need in my heart to be loved and accepted. Fear is of the darkness and you can not fight darkness (the valley) with darkness (fear and rejection). In this case a negative multiplied by a negative does not equal a positive. It just equals more darkness and the reinforcement of the prison of sin.

Jesus came to me and held me in the midst of my brokeness - in the midst of my mess. I laid on the dusty, dirty, desert floor of the valley and He sat with me and loved on me until I got it. When I finally trusted Him with my life - all of my life - He picked me up and carried me out of the valley. I am now free. Not because of what I have, but because of who has me.

I don't try to do the right thing anymore. I don't have to. My life is in His hands and my heart is shaped by His. Pornography no longer has a hold on me. And that is not a theological declaration trying to speak things into being that are not - as if God gave us magic spells that we can speak over ourselves. That is a bunch of crap. No, I am really free. I can be face to face with pornography and it does not touch my heart or pull on me in any way. Not because of what I've have, but because of who has me.

Do I still have dark places in my heart? Yes. There are other areas in my heart that are orphaned and alone, cowering in the darkness of the valley. Places that have yet to experience the loving embrace of the Father. But a homecoming is not far off for them. Guaranteed.

Living in Yesterday

...Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I know that You always hear Me...” John 11:41-42

A few days ago I wrote extensively about experiencing the reality of the Fathers love. It was very difficult for me to write about this subject because, while I believe very passionately in experiencing God in this way, I was not. I wrote out of past experience. The things that I shared about I have experienced many times and when I write about them I get to relive them. It seems so real when I recount these moments that I have had with God. It warms my heart and makes me thankful for the goodness of God.

What’s the problem then? The problem is that while I was busy remembering all that God had done, I was growing increasingly distant from the present reality of His affections for me. Meaning, I was doing exactly what I was writing about. I had a really cool memory in my head but no present reality in my heart. Therefore, I was dying; I was experiencing sin. My patience wore thin. My attitude sucked and I hurt those around me. Life was growing dark and dim.

The reality of all this culminated Sunday evening when I was sitting on the porch with my wife. She told me about concerns that she had for Samuel and the way that my behavior was affecting him. He was really feeling hurt and rejected by me. I was aware of this already but was thankful to hear her perspective. All the prior week, God had been telling me that I was rejecting Samuel. It really grieved me but I felt powerless to change.

But as my wife and I talked that evening, I realized that I had been writing to myself. My blog about the love of Father and about not living in the abstract, was for me. I was living in the experiences of yesterday and was not experiencing the love of my Father today. Therefore, I was empty and unable to give my family what they needed.

So, I resolved to come to the Father to receive His affections for me. It was hard though because I realized something; I was afraid. I had been avoiding coming to my Father because I was afraid that maybe He wouldn’t be there this time. Or maybe, this time His love would not be as good as it was last time. Maybe, when I ask Him for love, I will only hear silence. I realized that I have a deep-seated fear of abandonment and rejection. I am afraid that God is going to be holding out on me or that if I come and be vulnerable before Him that He will just leave me without saying a word. That is reality. I may “know” different in my head but in my heart, that is what I struggle with.

But I was honest with Him and just said, “Father I love you. Thank you that you love me.... What are you doing Father?” I asked. He said, “I am loving you.” In that moment I began to feel my heart swell with His tender affection.

My heart changed that day and I was a different person with my son. He has now changed as a result of that (just ask my wife).

Why is that we have to keep coming back to the Father for love? Why did He create us with hearts that leak and need to be refilled? I am not sure, but I think that it has something to do with Him wanting us to experience the goodness of His heart in a new way everyday - moment by moment. There is so much that He has to give and He wants us to experience His fullness as Jesus did.

This morning I sat down in my lazy boy to spend time with Abba. I was once again confronted with my fears. But I heard Jesus say,

“thank you that you always hear me Abba.”

I realized, with tears in my eyes, that I don’t have to be afraid because I am not alone. Father always hears me. He never leaves me. All I need to do is believe that Abba is as good as Jesus says He is, and surrender to that goodness.

It may seem faint at first, but try this and you will begin to feel the arms of Abba encompass you. There is no better place to be than in the arms of Eternity.

Part 2: Obstacles to Grace

*This is a continuation of a story that I started a few days ago. Please read that first so that you can understand the context of part 2.

“Once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you will long to return.” -Leonardo daVinci

I am well qualified to write about grace. Not because of what I have experienced or know, but because of what I lack. Not because I am whole, but because I am broken. I have been struggling with writing part 2 because I have been very aware of my brokeness recently and it makes me feel unqualified. But that is exactly what makes me qualified. One of the hardest things for me to grasp is that God is not asking me to be perfect but to know Him perfectly. He gave me a glimpse of His affection for me and now I spend all of my days looking skyward, longing to return to where I have been. But how? I did not know the way. There have been many obstacles that have obscured the path from my view. I am beginning to see the way home to grace more clearly now and would like to share some of the things that I have learned. 

In my last entry I told the story about how I had received this word from my friend:

“Jacob, I see that you have been there. You know the place. You know the way. The Lord says that the door is open to you and you are welcome anytime you want.” - John MacGirvin

This word kept me honest in a way. It stuck in my mind as a constant reminder of what God was calling me to and that the way back to that place in His heart was obvious - to Him - and that it should be to me. I knew that I was on a journey of discovering the way back home. But I also knew that whatever that way was, that I had missed it. I had missed the way. I had missed the point. I thought that I had arrived and that all of my hard work had added up to me encountering His heart. So I tried to duplicate my awesomeness again and again. I came to the Lord with confidence because I knew the way; I knew what it took to find Him and to cause Him to respond to me. But the truth was that I was empty; I was full of myself and my abilities but empty of love and real relationship with Jesus. I did not know Jesus apart from my efforts to know Him. I was so caught up in everything that I was doing to be a christian that I missed the reality of actually knowing Jesus.

I knew a lot about Jesus but I struggled with questions like, what does it mean to believe in Jesus? How is it that Jesus is the way? How do I follow Him? It was all very abstract to me. A God who exists in concept and theory alone, but never touches the reality of my life and heart, serves only to inflate my head. It is the spirit of pornography that values appearances and accomplishments instead intimacy and real relationship. I was blinded by the temporal superficial skin of talents, abilities, knowledge, supernatural experiences, etc, and was thereby rendered dull and numb; unable to experience true intimacy and connection with the heart of God. 

As my pastor said recently, “we know how to do church well...” We have bible studies and church services and times of worship and prayer but have little to say about Jesus or the Father. That kind of talk is reserved for evangelistic outreach. The majority of preaching is focused on the functions and duties and responsibilities of the institution of the church. We have lost our way. We have lost Jesus. 

In order to be saved from our vain thinking and way of doing church we need to learn from Thomas when he says to Jesus, “...we do not know where you are going so how is it that we know the way?” (John 14:5-6) I am so glad that Thomas asks this question because it shows that he was actively listening to Jesus and trying to apply it to reality. I mean honestly, who really knows where Jesus is or the way to get to where He is? You can quote me all the scriptures about where He is or the way to get there - but who of us have actually experienced the reality of this? Thomas was concerned because he wanted to know the truth in the reality of his heart and not just have an abstract concept in his head that led to no where. That is where I was. I had a bunch of concepts about God that led to no where real. I “simply believed” what the scriptures said because I was afraid to question God.

Thomas, however, felt safe enough in the presence of Jesus to be honest about His confusion. I think that we are often forced to accept scripture because it is “God’s Word.” We do not dare to be honest with Jesus about what we are really thinking. We say, “well, this is the truth and therefore I believe!” That may appear spiritual or even noble but in reality it divorces you from reality - that you are where you are. Jesus knows where you are and does not expect you to be in any place different than where you are. If we can not be honest about this, then we will miss what comes next and will be stuck in our confusion - and still worse: be deceived into thinking that we have accepted the truth. Please do not settle for abstract religious concepts. Jesus is real - and He has an answer.

The answer that Jesus gives to Thomas is the answer that He gave to me after five years of trying to understand “the way” back to experiencing the Fathers heart. Jesus answers Thomas and says, “[Dear Thomas,] I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” I knew that what I had experienced that day in KC was the Fathers embrace but what I did not understand was the way to be embraced again. The way to the Heart of the Father - to encountering the very Person of love and acceptance - is Jesus. 

But how is it that Jesus is the way to the Father?  For hundreds of years before Jesus, man was unable to hear or see truth about the Father. They were darkened in their understanding by the shadow of doubt that was cast by satan in the beginning. Man believed the lie that God could not be trusted; that He was self-seeking and unloving. There were those like Moses and David and others who caught glimpses of the truth but their perception of God was mostly marred. There was no way for man to get to the Father; they were unable to hear the truth about, or receive the life of the Father. They were captives of the dark kingdom.

Life apart from the love and acceptance of the Father is no life at all. It is death and darkness. We are so steeped in this dark mindset that when we view Jesus today, we see the merciful and kind Son who is trying to appease a wrathful, vengeful, and judgmental Father. What we miss is that the Father had been misrepresented for hundreds of years and Jesus came to be a revelation of the true nature of the Father and thereby becoming the only way back to the Father. To believe in Jesus is to believe that His representation of the Father is true. That is how Jesus is the way.

When we see Jesus with the woman caught in adultery we are actually seeing the heart of the Father being revealed. Do you remember the story? Jesus challenged the woman’s accusers to go ahead and cast the first stone if they themselves were free of sin. One by one, they dropped their stones and left. Jesus, now alone with the woman, says to her, “woman, where are your accusers? Who is it that condemns you?” She answers Him and says, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you: go and sin no more.”

Did you catch that? “I do not condemn you.” This is the revelation of the Fathers heart towards this woman (towards us). I feel like Jesus is saying, “You have been living under the impression that God is distant from and angry with you. He isn’t. I do not condemn you. Know my heart and do not misunderstand me anymore.”

Sin can only exist in the absence of the Light of His love. In fact, it could be said that sin is the absence of knowing His love. In the greek, sin means to miss the mark. If knowing Him and living in His love is the mark, then sin is to misunderstand His heart towards us. Jesus’ remedy for the adulterous woman was for her to know His love and not misunderstand (miss the mark) His heart towards her anymore.

One of the greatest obstacles to grace is in the thinking that His forgiveness comes after we say all the right words and repent. But the truth is that His forgiveness and acceptance of us is independent of anything that we say or do. The goal of His forgiveness is not that we would repent but that we would know His love and acceptance of us. One of the peripheral result of this is that in response to His love and complete acceptance of us - we are changed. Not that we work to change but that His love changes us. The question on judgment day will not be, “were you changed and did you live rightly?” but instead, “did you receive my love and forgiveness in the person of Jesus my Son?”

We are often blinded by focusing on ours or others behaviors, somehow thinking that this is the point of being a christian. We write “come as you are” on our church welcome signs but the dirty secret is “you better not stay that way - we’ll be watching.” The church is filled with people that feel confident because they abstain from certain things and proud because they do other things like pray a lot and read the bible every day. The person that finds comfort in doing all the right things is no less sinful than the prostitute. Both are trying to numb the ache in their souls for the Fathers embrace. Sin has little to do with behavior and much to do with the extent how much you are missing the mark. So you have to ask yourself, “what is the mark?”

I think that another one of the greatest obstacles to grace is this issue of sin. Most of us who have confessed our sins and asked for forgiveness are still separated the love of the Father.  Like it or not. Maybe we are not separated theologically but in the reality of our hearts - we are cut off from His love because we think that unless we had confessed and until we change, we will not truly be forgiven. We find comfort from our dis-ease in our efforts to do things the right way and tell ourselves that we have done everything that is required for us to be forgiven and accepted - to be on good terms with God. But this way of thinking actually separates you from Him because you are not believing in Jesus but in yourself. Jesus invites you to simply receive His love and acceptance - to believe in Him. It is not something that you can, in any way, earn. 

The point of me saying all of this is that I found a place in Jesus where I no longer have to do anything. A place where my record of rights and wrongs does not exist. A place where I am nothing but a child in His arms, completely loved and accepted. 

I am glad to say that Jesus made a way for me to return to that place in the Father’s heart - and I have. It has almost nothing to do with me and everything to do with Him. My part looks like me standing on the edge of a cliff, closing my eyes, and falling into His love and acceptance. Honestly, it is too much for me. I am quickly overwhelmed when I realize that I am falling into an ocean of love that has no bottom or shore. But the few times that I have returned to this endless ocean of love, I am moved beyond tears because He is so much better than words could ever describe.

This is abundant life. This is eternal life. This is what Jesus died for you to know. This is knowing the Father. 

This is home.