Author Archives: Rebecca

I don’t love Jesus enough

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During this past Holy Week, as I contemplated the enormity and necessity of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf, I was struck again with a painful realization: I do not love Him nearly enough. I don’t love others enough either. This sad truth comes as no surprise to me nor to anyone who knows me. In fact, those who apply love as the litmus test for followers of Jesus — “By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you love one another” — no doubt could find reason to fear for the state of my soul. All too often, I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.

Even as I admit the sorry state of my pitifully stingy heart, defensiveness rises up in me. But, but, but…! I’m not as bad as some other people! It’s not as if I don’t love Jesus at all! Besides, I used to be much worse — look how much I’ve changed!

It is painful and difficult to admit is that I continually fail at the two greatest commandments we have as Christians: I don’t love God with every fiber of my being, and I don’t love others as much as I love myself. In fact, all too often my life is pretty much all about me, even when I am attempting to be at my most selfless, even when I am attempting to love sacrificially. No one who has met me would ever mistake me for Mother Teresa, and they certainly wouldn’t mistake me for Jesus.

I could trot out excuses. I love to the best of my ability, in my own way. I’m broken. Let me tell you about my past. I’m a trauma survivor. Introverts show love differently. And I do love — after all, I’ve raised six wonderful children and I’ve even been to Thailand twice. 

Someday I will stand before Jesus, and all my excuses and “sinsplaining” will become like ash in my mouth. I will be without excuse.

As Protestants, we all too often want to jump quickly past confession and repentance straight to grace and forgiveness. But the Catholic liturgy contains a penitential prayer that says in part: “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…” I encountered this prayer on Saturday night and felt so overwhelmed by grief and sorrow that I understood why many in the past, when confronted by God’s holiness, felt compelled to repent in sackcloth and ashes.

The gospel does not make sense until we confess our sins and truly repent…and not just via a one time “sinners’ prayer” either. I am becoming increasingly convinced that repentance is an ongoing lifestyle in which we renounce our sinful, selfish ways and acknowledge that, while there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus, we are in desperate need of Him daily… hourly… constantly.

It’s not just that I don’t love as I should, it’s that I can’t — hence my overwhelming need for transformation, for more of Jesus, for the constant indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I want to love what He loves and, in order to do that, I need to get to know Him a lot more than I already do. I need the constant presence of Jesus in my life so that, the more time I spend with Him, the more I become like Him. 

The good news is that He rewards those who seek Him…and in His presence is fullness of joy.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

– ‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭13:4-7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

May I learn, more and more, to love like Jesus. May my hard heart be continually and forever broken until I can truly love like I should.

Updated to add:

The other good news is that He is truly wonderful beyond words and, the more we know Him, the more He captivates our hearts. That in turn makes all the difference in the world.

  

Holy week

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Those of us who were not raised in a liturgical tradition, or in a faith community that observed the church calendar, often don’t know what we’re missing out on when it comes to the celebration of Resurrection Sunday — or what most of us call Easter. We may have wonderful Easter sunrise services and even meaningful Good Friday services, but we usually have not had the full benefit of putting the greatest events in Christianity in their context in a way that is both meaningful and practical.

We have not observed Lent as a season of preparation, personal sacrifice, repentance, contemplation, and longing for the glory of the Resurrection to be celebrated with joy. We have not set aside Holy Week as a time of somber prayer and reflection. We have not washed one another’s feet on Maundy Thursday, partaken in the Lord’s Supper together, and grieved the betrayal of our Savior. We have not wept on Good Friday at what our sins did to Jesus Christ, and mourned the suffering it cost Him to redeem us. We have not spent Saturday night in vigil, waiting…waiting…

The truth is that we need reminders. We need to make the gospel, the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, as personal as possible. We need to remember. We need to set aside the business of our everyday lives, and allow ourselves to walk through the events of Holy Week.

At least I do.

So today I read the old familiar passages about the Passover, both its origins and its new meaning as instituted by Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed. I read of the Last Supper, and of the betrayal. I read beautiful prayers of the Church. And I asked the Holy Spirit to allow all those words to grip my heart and break it anew and afresh. I asked Him to examine my innermost being and show me where I need to repent…to reveal to me my sins of omission and commission…to make me painfully aware of how I fail to love God and my fellow human beings as I should.

I don’t want this to be just another Easter season, one in which I live Holy Week as if it were any other week, sing a few wonderful hymns on Easter Sunday, eat a nice dinner, and then go on my merry way, untouched and unchanged by my celebration. I want to remember, and I want to be transformed by the reality. I want to truly live as one of the Easter people should. As Pope John Paul II said:

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

Why I’m glad that I’m no longer a Calvinist…

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…and some other rambling thoughts about suffering and stumbling.

I wrote this as a comment on a blog a few months ago:

I wish I had the rest of the day to respond to individual posts. As many of you so eloquently and heartbreakingly described, grief and suffering HURTS. Jesus showed us what true compassion and grief looks like when he wept with his friends over the loss of their brother — even though Jesus knew full well he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. Later, Paul would remind Christians to weep with those who weep, to bear each others’ burdens.

And, you know what? Doing that HURTS — not as much as the actual pain of the one grieving, but it hurts to sit with someone in their pain and totally open your heart, allowing their pain to invade your safe little bubble. It’s scary to admit that we don’t have neat, tidy answers to difficult tragedies. It’s scary to admit similarly devastating blows could strike us as well. So we blame people for their own pain in a self-righteous and desperate attempt to promise ourselves that this same sickness, this same tragedy, will never come near us. And, if it does, we will handle it better. We are made of stronger stuff and better theology, so we will never hurt as much as those other people. That’s what we tell ourselves.

I know. I was that person…until my world exploded about 6 years ago, and years of running from pain and being all “praise God, the past is in the past!” came crashing down on me. Thank God that I had left Calvinists and Calvinism behind before then.

There were no easy answers. I did not heal nicely, or neatly, or tidily. It was messy. I stumbled and fell a lot. I sinned — not by grieving or hurting or being a mess, but by actual sins. I met a ragtag group of beautiful fellow sufferers who showed me what true, loving acceptance looks like. The best thing that eventually came out of the evil that Satan intended for me — and he intends evil for all of us because he is all about killing, stealing, and destroying — is that God showed me that he is a redemptive God. Sin and evil and sickness has no silver lining, but God can redeem the worst thing. And the best way he redeemed all that ugliness in my life, all the pain that came to a head in recent years, is that he revealed himself to me as the perfect, loving Father that I’d never dreamed he could be. It was in relationship with him — and some of his representatives who shared his love — that I have been able to walk out my healing journey. (It has felt like stumbling and even being dragged more than walking at times.)

This longwinded comment is to say that I think when we begin to comprehend the enormity and tenderness of God’s love — especially in the midst of life’s ickyness —when we begin to experience how deeply personal and intimate his love is for us, it makes all the difference. The Calvinist view of God is much safer. It keeps God at a comfortable distance. God up close and personal is beautiful and healing beyond all comprehension, but it’s also overwhelming. After all, this is the God of the universe we’re talking about.

My world has been rocked. My heart has been broken. I’ve lost my taste for nominal Christianity. I have no easy answers. Sometimes all I can do is hug someone, pray for them, and weep. And that hurts, even though compassion is a good hurt, a good heartbreak.

That’s what I was running from when I was a Calvinist. I needed a small, safe, understandable, predictable God who provided security and a safe haven from pain and messiness. What I’ve found now is this huge, wild, mysterious, incomprehensible God who has captured my heart, melted and broken it, healed and tenderized it — and turned my world upside down.

I wish everybody could know that wonderful, amazing, magnificent God.

It’s time we stopped throwing Jesus under the bus

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If we claim to be Christians, and have any understanding of our faith at all, it should go without saying that Jesus Christ is the central figure. He is, in fact, the chief cornerstone. He is the author and perfecter of our faith. In Him we live and move and have our being. Those are all Biblical words and statements, not mine.

The apostle Paul continually pointed to Jesus, and emphasized that the entire thrust of his preaching was Christ and Christ crucified. But, then again, he also warned that the Cross is a stumbling block for many.

It is certainly true that we are to love our neighbors (meaning everyone) no matter what they do or don’t believe. I get that. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not merely an obscure suggestion, but something Jesus said was one of the two greatest commandments, second only to loving God. I can even understand the longing to declare us all — Muslims and Christians — to be brothers and to claim we worship the same god, so we can hopefully pursue peace and understanding…perhaps while joining hands around the campfire and singing Kumbaya. “See, we’re not that different after all!” I wish it were that easy.

But love is not genuine love if it comes at the expense of truth. Love is not love if it leaves others lost without Christ just so we can feel warm, inclusive, and tolerant. Love is not love if we pretend to love God with every fiber of our being while feeling awkwardly reluctant to address the totality of His being and acknowledge fully all three of His Persons.

Jesus is either Lord or not. We are either Christians — those who have chosen to bear His name — or we’re not. If we feel embarrassed or uncomfortable about Jesus’ claims of “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” perhaps we would be more comfortable thinking of ourselves as Abrahamic monotheists.

True disciples follow their Lord and Saviour — their King — no matter the cost. In some parts of the world today, that can mean torture, rapes, and beheadings. In America, that may mean someone insisting that we’re ignorant, backwards, and too fanatical about Jesus. It may even mean losing friends who will find our view of Jesus to be outdated, offensive, narrow-minded, intolerant or unacceptable.

Jesus warned us that the way is narrow. Wishing it were broad and easy negates the words of the very One we claim to base our beliefs upon. We either follow…or not.

Reblogging: Purity: Can’t be taken, can’t be given away

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This says so much better what I have tried to express:

The Purity Culture movement might just be the single most anti-gospel doctrine in the American Church today. Yes, I said it. I don’t think any other doctrine in the Church has been responsible for more hurt, more shame, more pain or more dysfunction. I don’t think any other doctrine has damaged relationships and the souls […]

http://revolfaith.com/2015/12/11/purity-cant-be-taken-cant-be-given-away/