I have something to say

For the first couple months after my marriage I didn’t write anything at all. When I decided to blog again, I wrestled through the question of ‘Why’. I settled on a few simple answers: 1. I enjoy writing; 2. It brings me life; 3. I’m good at it. So I kept writing. I promoted my blog meagerly on social media and got a few friends reading what I was saying.

Several weeks later I got some feedback on my writing from a man who’s come to know me well. He made some comments on style. Then he said this:

“You have something to say.”

Those words resonated in my spirit. I said, “That’s it! That’s why I write!” I don’t yet know what the ‘something’ is, how it will sound for me to say it, or who will be listening when it’s said. But I know that the Father of Divine Inspiration has given me something to say.

Building my Soapbox

I’ve noticed in myself a pattern. My primary response, when the Lord reveals to me a gift, is to work to make that gift manifest in my life. God reveals to me that I might have a gift of leadership. I try to insert myself into the position of a leader. The Lord reveals to me that I have something say. I go looking around corners to find what kind of thing I’m supposed to say. I try get people to listen even though, “I have something to say” gives me no indication that anybody will ever listen. I strive to validate what the Lord is saying. As if he needs me to prove it.

The Lord told me that I have something to say. Over the past couple weeks I’m afraid I’ve been trying to build a soapbox from which to say it. At the beginning of last week I wrote a post about how we relate to a local church. The next day I wrote a follow-up post. I sat at my coffee table tapping out the words. I hadn’t been sure of anything I was saying. In fact I was just processing thoughts that were wholly new to me. I got to the end and wasn’t totally comfortable with the apparent conclusions I had made. I wasn’t sure I believed what I had typed — after all I was just processing. I wasn’t actually done with the thoughts. But I published it anyway.

I had decided, without any prompting from the Lord, that the ‘something’ I had to say would be provocative. It would move people. It would cause them to think, to converse, to reevaluate their previous notions. So I set out to do that. I set out to say something provocative and conversational with no awareness of whether it not was actually true!

To Honor my Father & To Honor myself

The trouble with the approach I took is that it doesn’t honor my Heavenly Father and it doesn’t honor the word he spoke over me. I operate with a working definition of honor as “to say of people what God is saying of them.”

God said He will provide for my every need. I said that, while he might give me something to say, I would have to create the environment in which to say it. God said he had given me something to say. I said that what I had to say wasn’t good enough. I needed to, all on my own, come up with something to say that would move readers in the direction I thought it should.

The Truth about Blogging

There are a lot of folks saying things these days. I’m not convinced many of them have something to say. This is why I thought I could make a success out of blogging. I see a lot of people who are successful bloggers not necessarily by saying anything meaningful, but by working the system. They post at least three times a week. They get themselves a high google page rank and they make sure they’re writing guest posts. I know because I read their blogs.

Then there are the folks who are blogging successfully who do sound like they have something to offer. You know what they say? “Never publish something you’re not proud of.” Jesus would say it like this, “I only say what I hear the Father saying.”

Just before, and for a while after, I clicked “Publish” on my second post last week (which has since been removed, sorry if you missed it) I wasn’t proud of it. I didn’t feel comfortable with where I had been in my thought process. I said something that I hadn’t first heard the Father saying.

See, if one day God is going to give me SOMETHING to say, I need to make sure people know that I’m always saying SOMETHING. The guidelines need to be more than “is it something provocative?” or “is it ‘sticky’?” — whatever that means. I need to, every day, say only what I hear the Father saying. Then, one day, the Father through me will be saying SOMETHING.

I had intended to post more on Thursday and/or Friday, but the phenomenal conversations in the comments left my head spinning and I needed the weekend to collect my thoughts. Here are some of the take-aways I got from last week’s thoughts and conversations.

We relate to a church

I said this in the first post last week. I still think it’s true. We relate to a local church body in a very similar way to how we relate with individual people. We approach a local church body with wants, needs, and expectations. We need to manage those effectively to avoid disappointment and, in some cases, resentment or discouragement. At the same time, the structure or atmosphere of a given local church body may be such to expect specific things of us. We need to take stock of those to ensure we get the best worship experience possible.

The bottom line: finding life on Sunday morning will require more than simply showing up. For our relationship with our church to work, we’ll need to position ourselves to receive from the Lord regardless of atmosphere while offering ourselves for the betterment of the body on selflessness and humility.

For God and Marriage

Covenant relationships are primarily to be cut with spouses and with the Father (thanks to Michael Hindes for this insight). It seems to me that, while God often calls people to someONE — a spouse — for life, he rarely calls people to someTHING for life.

Even those people who seem to be defined by some singular monumental accomplishment or sacrifice had relatively minor experiences that, in the big picture, are no less divinely ordained. MLK pastored Baptist churches of different sizes in southern Atlanta. Mark McGwire was a “bash brother” in Oakland before he hit 70 home runs in one season as a St. Louis Cardinal. Moses experienced personal exile among the Midianites and Jesus was tempted.

So while we may have a relationship with a local church, that relationship probably shouldn’t be described or treated as a marriage. We need not be tied to our local church through Covenant. It may even be unhealthy to try.

Relationships are for a Season

Janina gave a really good explanation of this thought in the comments of last week’s post, The Marriage Bed. Seasons are built into life. Most folks experience cyclic emotions. Our spirits have cycles too. We’re in a place to learn a lesson and we move on. Refinement is progressive. The environment best for you today shouldn’t be best for you a year from now. Relationships may be temporary. They are not, however, useless…

Called to Community

These days it seems “we’re called to community” is a spiritual axiom — an unquestioned building block for a life of faith. I’m inclined to leave it at that and move on, but I’ll share a couple other thoughts on why we’d be called to community.

My brother likes to say “the Spirit works best in relationship”. I think what he means is something I’ve observed in my own life: We grow most when living closely with others, rubbing up against them to find refinement and encouragement. We need others to share a perspective of ourselves that we can’t see from within. Sometimes we need to be uncomfortable. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, but it’s actually really hard to pull any part of yourself by your own bootstraps. We often need other folks to help pull us out of a pit.

This is the second point Janina made in her comments. While we may not have a lifelong call to a local church body, we are called to be a part of the global — even cosmic — Bride of Christ. We are to be a part of the Church, even when we are between churches.

Thanks for the Conversation

These are all thoughts, old or new, that I revisited over the last couple weeks. Mine and Erin’s experience with our church in Gainesville made me reevaluate a lot of things I had thought about churches and Church. What about you? Did you get any fresh revelation after some of last week’s conversation on the blog?

We approached dating with a holy reverence. That’s how we tried to approach selecting a church to attend.

First Dates

I moved to Gainesville in late October of last year. Erin and I were engaged shortly thereafter and started looking for a church to attend together. We found a little church down the street from where we would be living after we married.

In the end we decided to start going to the church for a few reasons. We felt free there. We felt like we could worship as the Spirit led without anybody looking at us sideways. The spirit in the place seemed humble. And, finally, it was close. I, in particular, wanted to support a church that was as “local” as possible.

We knew we wouldn’t be in Gainesville very long, probably a year tops. We also weren’t sure what our work schedules were going to look like and how much we could commit to the church. But we decided to say, “We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but God has us together [with this church] today.”

Our time with our new church started promisingly. We had dinner with the Pastor and his wife to get to know them better. They were very nice folks. They were also tired. They had started the church 12 years ago and it still looked and felt like a church plant. Erin and I felt like, if we could dig into relationship with these two individuals, maybe we could make an impact and our time with the little church down the street might be fruitful.

Shattered Fairytales

We soon began to feel, however, as though we had different ideas about relationship than our new friends. They were certainly glad to have us at their church, but we weren’t getting to know them as we had hoped. We wanted to minister to them, but never felt like we were given permission or opportunity, even as we invited them into our home.

We noticed that while our new church prayed often for the Spirit to move on Sunday morning, folks rarely stepped out in ministry to stand in the gap. Everyone was pretty sure normal people could minister in the Spirit, they just weren’t sure they were capable themselves.

We had a hard time getting to the weeknight “small group”, but we attended on Sunday mornings and got together with our friends, the Pastor and his wife, more than a couple times. Still, our relationship with the church and our relationship with the people for whom we cared didn’t seem to change or to grow. We continued to feel like God had us together for “today”, but “tomorrow” started to look inevitably like more of the same. That’s not the kind of relationship we were interested in nor that we felt led to pursue.

We Should’ve Seen it Coming

Through the summer months we were out of town a lot. Still, on the two Sundays Erin and I were both in Gainesville, we elected to sleep in rather than make the half-block walk to our church for Sunday service. We found ourselves less and less interested in attending and engaging.

We talked about it. Erin asked, “Do we need to break up with our church?” We tried to evaluate based on the reason we decided to go to the church in the first place. We had been excited to dive into relationship. We felt like we had made the requisite effort, but relationship wasn’t looking like we had hoped. The church had seemed open to the ministry of the Spirit, but often the people felt more inadequate than empowered.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

The relationship wasn’t working. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. We, our church, and our new friends just had different expectations of how relationship should look and feel. We honestly had hoped the best. But as we continued to prioritize how and where we spend our time, we kept coming back to the fact that we weren’t seeing a lot of value in Sunday mornings at the little church down the street.

We worshipped with our friends this past Sunday morning and broke the news to the Pastor and his wife afterward that it would be our last Sunday with them. We told them we were entering a new season and we felt like their church just wasn’t the place for us anymore. Nobody was angry and it went about as well as could have been expected.

Can You Date a Church?

It was time for the break up. Which seemed like funny language at first. But when we shared the news with our friends, that’s certainly how it felt. It felt like a break up. It felt like the amiable end of a relationship. And when you think about it “Relationship” may be the very best word we can use to talk about what we have with a church.

Tomorrow we’ll answer the next logical question: If you have relationship with a church, and you can break up with a church, can you date a church?

On Wednesday I was sitting at my desk, strategizing a task I didn’t want to complete, when I realized that my distaste for the task actually led me to make the project more difficult. I realized that over the last couple of weeks I had stalled productivity and refused to take feedback. I had embraced a victim mentality and used anger to get my way. I was wrong. I had to admit it.

So I sent my supervisor a message. I apologized for a couple of specific instances and alluded to the fact that I needed an attitude adjustment. I wasn’t really sure where to go beyond that. She wanted to catch up the next day to go over how to approach my work more constructively moving forward.

All of Wednesday night I still felt terrible. I came face-to-face with my brokenness. It was ugly.

Here’s how I approached the next day’s conversation:

I recapped what I had done wrong.

I told my friend and co-worker the actions I had identified as wrong. I made it clear that I was not happy with myself or my actions. I said I was sorry.

I stated a better way to act.

I explained what I decided, after some consideration, would be a better way to approach my job. I did my best to identify why I hadn’t done these things already. I shared my new plan for working productively and contributing to our team’s success.

I listened for additional feedback.

I exhibited through actions that I was ready to approach our working relationship differently. I created space for my supervisor to share her perspective on my recent behavior. I filed what she shared as helpful information moving forward.

In spiritual circles, the action plan I just articulated might be called repentance. It was a pretty cathartic experience for me. The weight of guilt I had felt on Wednesday night was completely gone by Thursday afternoon. I took the time to meet with the party I may have offended and swallowed my pride enough to admit I was wrong. And that cleared the air.

I think all too often, we’d rather re-double our efforts to fix a problem we’ve created. I’d often rather work harder to prove why I’ve done nothing wrong, thereby digging a deeper hole for myself and hurting more people in the process.

Repentance can be a mulligan. You say, “I was wrong. I know it. I’m going to do better next time.” People respond well to that. In my case, my supervisor hadn’t seen my behavior as being quite as deplorable as I felt it was (she didn’t know the posture of my heart). The bottom line is that humility is rare.

If we can learn to admit that we’re wrong, we’ll find conflict much easier to navigate.

The story that got my wheels turning to try to define the term “grace” — particularly God’s grace — from my point of view was shared in a blog by my friend Matthew Snyder. Apparently, there was a group of individuals who created an online community of sorts around pedophilia. This group of folks employed street-gang-style initiation rites, requiring comrades to upload content of sex acts performed on children to a common Web site.

Matt shared the story, because it caused him to feel frustrated with the concept of God’s grace. He said he didn’t want to believe these individuals “even have a chance at the same kind of freedom that [he claims he walks in] every day”. I think a lot of people encounter this same struggle when they consider the grace of God. It’s the classic “you’re really telling me that someone can be an ax murderer his entire life, accept Jesus on his death bed, and go to heaven?!”

I think I would draw Matt’s attention to the fact that those individuals who took part in the online pornography ring are not walking in the same freedom he claims to walk in every day. They are hampered by a dark addiction and a crippling compulsion, some of it of their own making. And to the classic incredulous question on grace, I have to point out that the penalties of sin are not only heavenly in nature. An individual’s admittance to the “great by and by” does not mean she did not feel the weight of sin in this life.

God’s justice is absolute. It is without fail. The manifestation of the Father in this world is inextricably linked to His concept of justice. The thing we humans have trouble understanding is that justice, particularly God’s justice, does not equate to punishment. Justice is more the straightening out of perverted truth, bringing it into alignment with Life.

And this brings me to how the justice of God and the grace of God are not at odds, but actually work in complement.

I said yesterday that the grace of God is not a get out of jail free card. God does not dispense grace to wipe away our sins, rather he manifests grace that Sin would not be the last word. His manifestation of grace folds our sins into a bigger story that uses the correction of our sins, exacted through his justice, to form us into people aligned with the principles of Life.

At the core of this concept is the awareness that Sin is a spiritual force in the world feeding our iniquity and shackling us to destructive behaviors (sins). Justice deals with our sins, grace wipes away Sin. If I sow destructive behavior in my life, I will reap the correction of justice. Grace is available, however, to wipe away the iniquity (Sin) that led to the action (sins).

So we need not be frustrated with the concept of grace when we hear of individuals who have committed despicable acts, like the pornographers in the story that Matt shared. Grace less COVERS their sins. Grace more uses the retributive power of justice to SMOOTH OUT their sins. In so doing, the grace of God has led those pornographers to Life, breaking the power of Sin in their lives. Grace and justice together have taken what the Prince of Darkness meant for Death and molded it into a constructive force for Life.

Grace is that which gives us hope that this world, which often looks like a mess, is in the process of becoming a God-designed garden of Life. Although we commit sins, the grace of God is at work, rooting out Sin in our lives and in the world to make us beautiful people in a beautiful world.

There was the time we drove from Atlanta, GA to Clemson, SC to buy a keg of Yuengling beer, because Yuengling wasn’t sold in Georgia at the time. There was every fall when we’d pack 40 people into cabins designed to sleep 8 in the north Georgia mountains. We threw parties and played drinking games. We skipped class and went on spontaneous road trips.

I did some foolish things. And yet here I am. By the grace of God, I’m not a convicted felon and I don’t have liver disease. By the grace of God I am who I am today.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been hampered by the mistakes of youth. I will continue to encounter obstacles when sin rears it’s ugly head in my life. God’s grace in my life is not a “get out of jail free” card. Rather God’s grace is that which allows me to be a man in process.

God’s grace means that wounds will be healed, not because they’ve been wiped from history, but rather because the great Maker has woven them back into the tapestry of life. God’s grace means my mistakes will become victories, not because he turned his eyes away in my moment of weakness, but rather because he was watching me all along. He saw the intentions of my heart and his Spirit develops in me the strength to grow more into the man he created me to be.

These are thoughts in process. They were instigated by a post from my friend Matthew Snyder.

How has grace shaped your character? Do you regret the mistakes of your past? Can you embrace them as the building blocks of who you are today?

Naturally, marrying with little or no sexual experience can be a cause for some anxiety and a little curiosity. Being a community that regularly goes deep in relationship, questions and concerns about entering into the mysterious forest of sexual intimacy can become a fairly common conversation between the newly engaged and those who have experience with sexual intimacy in marriage, albeit very little — like five-months-worth little.

So a buddy of mine got engaged recently. His marriage is approaching rapidly (though not rapidly enough for he and his fiancé, I’m sure). The other day he started to ask the preliminary questions about what to know entering the realm of marital sexual intimacy. At first I was excited to relate and probably gave him too much information. I forgot that five months is, in fact, a pretty long time when it comes to these things. Then the wheels of my mind slowly started to turn.

I tried to think of the best way to frame a discussion of sexual intimacy in marriage for a young man who understands and values his relationship with his Heavenly Father, and longs for that relationship to impact his marriage.

Sex is like worship. When I first began to take seriously entering the presence of the Lord, the experience of worship was revolutionized. The power of the presence of the Spirit blew my mind. Also, I quickly thought I knew what I was doing. I called myself an expert.

Then I met people who worshipped differently than me. I wasn’t sure if they knew what they were doing. Then I came back to center, remembered it’s about relationship, and went deeper in intimacy with the Lord than I ever knew was possible. I didn’t lose my old understanding of worship, but instead added a new understanding that took me to new depths.

Having traveled the world, currently living in a community of young radicals, and often returning home to a church that is now a bit more traditional than my immediate environment; I experience a lot of different worship styles. I know a guy who once told me, “The Holy Spirit never comes the same way twice.” That’s certainly true of my worship experience.

Sometimes there are fireworks. Sometimes I’m so moved I feel more deeply than I thought I could. Sometimes I’m overcome with peace. Sometimes the Lord’s presence manifests and my Spirit experiences something that I can only describe as Zen. I’m outside myself, but more present than I’ve ever been.

And I think that’s what I want to tell my friend about sex in marriage. I want to tell him all the things I’ve learned about worship. The best you can do is to create an environment where it’s OK for the next experience not to be earth-shattering. Because the bottom line is intimacy. Whether it’s good, or bad, or new, or mechanical, or downright confusing it’s going to — no, it has to — take you to a place of deeper intimacy. And you can’t achieve the kind of safety that breeds intimacy unless you know you’re in the arms of the one who loves you.

The first thing Erin said when we rolled out of bed at 11 am on Saturday was, “OK, let’s go to the store. I need some things for my quilt.”

I reluctantly put on a t-shirt and some jorts. We bought her fabric and I spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon occupying myself with books and video games — the same things I’d been doing for the week she was in DC.

About 5 o’clock, as I’m thinking the quilting is winding down and I’ll get some attention from my wife, she says, “Maybe I’ll go to the barn!”

I said, “Whatever you want, honey,” thinking to myself, “Did she come home just to quilt and ride?”

Erin put on her riding clothes as she prepared to visit Gusto, her horse, at the barn. As she walked out the door, she looked at me with a smile so big I thought her face wouldn’t hold it. I couldn’t help but smile back. And I remembered that it’s not about me.

I’m not sure I could handle marriage if it meant I had to be the center of my wife’s attention all the time. We’ve been married almost six months. Until now it’s been new. Last weekend was one of the first times since our wedding that Erin has been excited about other things in her life more than me.

And that makes me feel good. It means our love doesn’t have to be tied to excitement. Our love can be a fact of our lives. A deep, true, enduring fact.

Instead of a chronological arrangement, the works have been installed around themes in Bailey’s work: “Blood,” “Blues,” and “Water.” Combined this way, Bailey’s references to the Middle Passage, for example, are brought into greater resonance through their appearance in works throughout the “Water” group. A massive installation, “Windward Coast,” dominates the center of the exhibition with a water-like arrangement of piano keys. The piece includes a clattering recording of Bailey’s process (scattering piano keys on the wood floor) emanating from a conch shell.

Bailey’s work is often influenced by, or makes reference to, African sculptural work, some of which has been installed alongside Bailey’s work to emphasize the link. In a press release, Carol Thompson, the High’s Curator of African Art, asserts, “Bailey’s art traces the complex network of his aesthetic DNA to create an antidote to cultural and historical amnesia.”

From the moment we stepped into the first room of the exhibition I was moved. I first noticed a piece that was part painting part collage. (I searched everywhere for a photo, but apparently it’s hard to find photos on the internet of fine art currently displayed in galleries and museums.) The image was a collection of photo prints of African statues all piled into a boat moving right to left.

There was a theme in the exhibition of passage and movement. This first piece brought to mind the thoughts I’ve been processing on inheritance. Bailey, throughout his works displayed at the High, was able to articulate African American culture as deeply tied to the passage from one continent to another without making it ABOUT the impetus for that passage — slavery.

It was as if in creating the works that made up the exhibition, Bailey held a string. The culture of his ancestors was manifest on that string in separate beads. Bailey gave the string a firm yank and all the beads were conjoined in this one expression. The whole of Bailey’s inheritance could be felt as I stood in front of each piece.

This got me thinking about the inheritance that each of us carries. We can each be an expression of that which has come before. In the same way that Bailey made me rethink the inheritance of African-Americans, we each have an opportunity to reframe the past in a contemporary expression. The passage of Africans to this continent is no longer ABOUT slavery, but about the culture that is so vibrant today. Both the pain and the victory of our past can yield a life-giving expression today.

Simon Sinek works in the business world and wrote a book called “Start with Why”. Apparently, when presenting a concept or product, most people communicate in a “What, How, Why” format. First they present what they are selling, how they created it, then they may eventually get to why they created it. Sinek says “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. Therefore, we must reverse the order in which we typically communicate, to “start with why”.

Sinek draws primarily on the example of the Apple computer company. It’s an example that’s easy to understand. Apple also happens to out-innovate and out-sell their competitors year in and year out. Sinek points out that if Apple were to communicate in the typical “What, How, Why” format they would say something such as, “We build excellent computers [what]. They’re beautifully designed and user-friendly [how]. Want to buy a computer?” Notice in this example, they say so much in “what” and “how”, that they never get to “why”.

Instead, the way Apple communicates is in a “Why, How, What” format. They tell you first what they believe, then tell you how they execute those beliefs in their context. So Apple usually communicates in this way, “We’re committed to thinking differently and innovation [why]. We design computers that are beautifully designed and user-friendly [how]. The product of that is excellent computers [what].” People don’t buy what you do — excellent computers — they buy why you do it — to think differently.

So what happens when this principle meets a Christ-centered, ministry-focused life? What if when communicating Jesus, we communicate in a “Why, How, What” format?

Typically we would say, “You need the intervention of the Holy Spirit in your life to secure the redemptive power of Jesus Christ to save you from Sin [what]. Cultivate a relationship with Jesus when you set aside ‘quiet time’, pray, go to church, and read your Bible [what]. Then you’ll be able to live an impactful, passion-filled life that leads to joy and fulfillment [why].”

Rather we should say, “Do you want to live an impactful, passion-filled life that leads to joy and fulfillment [why]? Cultivate a relationship with Jesus as you set aside ‘quiet time’, pray, go to church, and read your Bible [what]. Then you’ll experience the intervention of the Holy Spirit in your life, securing the redemptive power of Jesus Christ to save you from Sin [what].”

People don’t buy what you do — religion — they buy why you do it — a life lived fully alive.