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.