Kingdoms

Mind if I treat this one like a bit of a journal entry for a second and start out with some candid, honest dismissal? I should be wrapping up a homework assignment right now. That is, I "should" be according to the part of me that tends to pipe in with great insistence that I have to put a high priority on academics. That being said, here comes the dismissal bit: as you can see, I'm not doing my homework at the moment. Don't worry, I'll get to it. I'll just probably have a bit of a clearer head to do it well once I get some things transferred from mind and heart to words. I'm weird and function that way. Now, to get more to the point so I can get around to that homework and thus ease the pain for those of you who may or may not be lecturing to your screens right now as if I can hear you...

I am not my own.

I know a lot of us Christians tend to say that a lot, but lately it's been hitting me harder and harder. It's counter-cultural, in a world that tells me my life is mine, that I should do my thing and pursue my desires and do things that will better the kingdom of Me. Well, in my limited time on this planet I've come to the conclusion that the Kingdom of Me is pretty crummy and quite a bit boring and pointless. There's another kingdom, though, that I'd much rather throw my allegiance into--a kingdom that's all about a whole lot more than me.

At the heart of this other kingdom is a King who not only has all the authority there's ever been, but who deserves such authority far more than me or you or anyone else--so much so that it's a pretty pathetic comparison. There's no one to compare with this King, for not only does He have all this power, but in His sovereignty He chooses deliberately to rescue the broken and frail and helpless--basically, the people who could never have any hope of either doing or being anything close to what this holy King deserves. Not only does He rescue us, though, He turns around and chooses just as deliberately to use these broken containers to transport His message--His heart--to others who are just as broken and incapable (hint: that's all of us).

Now, I know you're not necessarily too familiar with the Kingdom of Me, but doesn't the Kingdom of Him sound a whole lot more glorious than a pitiful one-man show squeaking about its own importance amid a crowd of other solo-citizen kingdoms fighting their way through this life for their own fading glories? I think so.

I had a conversation with a friend a little while back in which we were discussing happiness, and I remarked to her that I've noticed in my own life I'm never happier than when my life is more about other people than it is about just me. There's really no quicker way to misery for me than for all my thoughts, prayers, and desired to be centered around the Kingdom of Me. Don't get me wrong; I still find myself wandering down that miserable trail sometimes--in fact, it's a lot more often than my prideful self would like me to admit. But it's still miserable. It feels empty and pointless and lonely. And it reeks of self-pity, judgmental harshness, and failure.

I don't like that path. But to get off it, I must allow Jesus to shift my thoughts, prayers, and desires toward what (who) He is thinking of and praying for and desiring. And to do that, I have to let go of the many and mini concerns of the Kingdom of Me. I have to hand it over to Him all over again and remind myself that He's a much more capable ruler than I am, and that His Kingdom will remain long after my fleeting time on this earth is ended.

But although His Kingdom is far better than mine, it still doesn't mean an easy road for its citizens. It means my life is not my own, that it's not about me, which means it's actually a whole lot about others. It's all about Jesus, but I find He very often has people on His heart, and has this tendency to put them on my heart as well. And so there are times when my own individual life may seem to be going pretty smoothly along with work and school and only the usual, rather insignificant issues or struggles of normal everyday life.

Perhaps it would be so simple and straightforward, if His Kingdom were somehow still all about the Kingdom of Me. But it's not. And because it's not, I carry around with me pieces of other people's lives. I get to rejoice in the triumphs of what God's doing in one friend's life, and meanwhile be absolutely aching for what another is going through. I get to stand hopeful and expectant, and I get to weep tears of anguish, pleading for redemption or victory or peace in the lives of people I love. It means sometimes I am compelled to say things that sheepish me would rather not bring up. Every once in a while, it even means giving a complete stranger a hug. But no matter how awkward or outright difficult the things He calls me to walk through are, I would never ever trade the beauty and glory and deep-seated joy to be found in living for His Kingdom, for the pitiful and temporary happiness of living for the Kingdom of Me.

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith--that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  -Philippians 3:7-14

Press on.

Ache

Late at night--or is it early morning?--
My head on the pillow, I hear You whisper,
Asking me to forsake sleep, to die to myself,
Come away with You, and share Your heart.

"Will you ache with Me in the watches of the night?
Will you watch with Me for the dark to break to light?
Will you weep for what I'm weeping for,
Reach for those I'm reaching for--
Will you bear My heart tonight?"

I know it's not because You need me.
What's even better is the way You call me,
Inviting me to join You in Your mission for this world,
To walk with You and bear Your heart.

I yearn to ache with You in the watches of the night.
I want to watch with You 'til the darkness breaks to light.
I long to weep for what You're weeping for,
Reach for those You're reaching for--
Let me bear Your heart tonight.

   So I'll walk with You in the watches of the night.
   In the darkest times and seasons, I will look to Your Light.
   Help me welcome inconvenience and trust You with the rest,
   For there's joy that lurks in suffering,
   There is peace within this aching pain,
   When I care for what You care about,
   When I yield to be, myself, poured out
   By following my King.

I will ache with You in the watches of the night.
I will watch with You as the darkness breaks to light.
I will weep for what You're weeping for,
Reach for those You're reaching for--
Help me bear Your heart tonight.

When Writing Becomes an Act of Worship

Two and a half years ago, God asked me to give up something. At the time, I wasn't sure if He meant put it on hold for a while, or actually give it up forever. All I knew was that He was asking me to trust Him and to entrust what had become one of the defining aspects of my life into His hands. This exchange took place early on in the summer of 2010, during my time at Ellerslie LeadershipTraining. I had come to Ellerslie with as clear of an idea for what my future held as I'd had up to that point, with several specific things God had highlighted that I felt He was calling me in. Among those things was writing. And it was special to me. 

See, a few years before that was when, through one comment from my Dad, I first began to realize I had any talent for writing at all. During the remainder of my time in high school, I began to branch out and write more than just school assignments and journal entries. I embarked on writing stories, and about a year before Ellerslie came around, I had written the first draft of a book meant to call my generation to rise up and live out what we say we believe. I felt strongly that God had led me to write it, and reasoned that therefore I was supposed to pursue self-publishing it once I had opportunity, which wasn't likely to happen before my time at Ellerslie was over. In addition to this completed draft, I had several stories in-progress I had been working on.

But then, when I least expected it, God asked me to give it all up. He wanted my gaze on Him, and though at the time I could not understand why He was asking this of me, I knew I needed to trust Him. The summer of 2020 was life-changing for me in more ways than I can probably come close to describing, but in the area of writing it was also pivotal. What I could not see then, when a large part of my identity was wrapped up in "what I could do for God," was that surrender was to be the avenue to something greater than I'd ever dreamed. God was drawing me to a life of worship--of adoration and communion with Him, not just part-time, but constantly. 

Surrender is not a one-time event. It means a constant, repeated act of choosing to yield to another's will. The beauty of true surrender to Christ lies in its continuation and the way God uses it for His glory. 

For me, I went through a season that summer where I literally could not write. It wasn't that I felt I shouldn't; it was that I tried over and over again, and found my attempts clumsy and inadequate. Part of it was that I was encountering things I had no words for, no way to adequately describe. In fact, that was probably a larger part of it than I realized at the time. But the reality, for me, was that for a time my ability was stripped away from me. And during that time, rather than collapsing into hopelessness, I found myself further enraptured by my God, by who He is and what He was doing in and through and around me, and lost sight of me and my own abilities. I became more satisfied in Christ than I had ever been before, and found that He truly was enough, even if everything else in my life was taken away. 

Toward the end of the summer, God surprised me by giving it back. We had an "assignment" of sorts, to write or compose something, some sort of remembrance, of what we had seen God doing during our eleven weeks of Basic Training. And as I sorted through the many things that had taken place in my own soul and those around me during that ridiculously short amount of time (for it seemed like so much longer, considering all that happened), inspiration struck. I found myself writing in a way I never had before, not just with the way I was trying to use an analogy to describe something, but with the sense of worship that accompanied it.

I had prayed during the writing process of that first-draft book I finished the year before, but by now something had changed within my soul. It wasn't just that I enjoyed writing more now that I had walked through a season without it. Something had changed, and suddenly writing became an act of worship. 

Two and a half years later, I am still in the process of discovering what it means for writing to be a form of worship. See, worship isn't just singing songs on a Sunday morning. It's more than a feeling that fades with the situation. Worship is a spiritual posture of surrender and trust and reliance and sweet fellowship with the God who created us to know Him. And it's meant to characterize every aspect of our day-to-day lives. If those in heaven are constantly worshiping the Lord (see Revelation 4:8-11), then "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10) looks the same, doesn't it? "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Rom. 11:36-12:1). It's the beautiful, indescribable, joyous surrender and communion with our Creator that we were designed for. 

And recently, quite possibly more than ever before in my life, I have been experiencing times spent writing that are indeed simultaneously times of worship. I'm no longer writing for myself, out of simply a desire to create a story. It's not about trying to write something that will merely entertain people anymore. During a recent car ride on the way home from visiting relatives up North, I typed out just under two-and-a-half pages (which may just turn into a later blog post) about how I now perceive writing and why I write. 

But in the end, it's not about the writing or even what it produces. It's not even about the impact or effect it could have on others. Ultimately, it's about the worship, because that is what I was created for. Not stringing groups of words together on paper so that they make sense or prove some point. Not eloquence or lack thereof. Worship. 

Because we were created to live and thrive in a constant state of worship, of prayer, of communion with God. So "worship" may look different at different times. One moment, it may be singing to the Lord, and the next, it may look like loving the person next to you the way that God loves them. Sometimes it looks like picking up trash, and sometimes it looks like having a conversation with a close friend or a complete stranger. Sometimes it looks like getting alone with God, and sometimes it looks like sharing the Gospel. Sometimes it means painful sacrifice, and sometimes it means crying tears of astonishment when you see what God is doing or has done. Sometimes it looks like being completely still and silent and reflecting on God, or waiting on Him, listening. Simply put, worship means living in the center of God's will, every moment. Seeking Him, seeing Him, knowing Him more with each passing day. Sometimes, it even looks like sleeping--peacefully resting in His promises while you lose consciousness for a time...

And sometimes, it looks like writing.

. . .

Restless

Many times in my life, I have been restless. The reasons for restlessness have varied, but it's definitely been a recurring theme in my life. Sometimes, it's been a literal lack of rest--when I am not choosing moment-by-moment to trust in the Lord and His ability to work all things together according to His purposes, which are always far better than my own pitiful plans. Other times, however, I have experienced the type of restlessness that is more characterized by an earnest desire to see righteousness lived out, in my own life and the lives of others. And sometimes, it's sort of a combination of the two, when I want to see God's will happen, but fail to rest in His ability to accomplish it. 

There is, however, a certain restlessness we're called to as followers of Christ. It's the restlessness that cries out for God's Kingdom to come to this earth as it is in heaven, just as Jesus did (Matthew 6:10); the restlessness that relies on Him while yearning for Him to deliver and to have His way (Psalm 70:5), that shouts "Rak Khazak!" to others as it faces the seemingly-impossible, knowing that the Lord will overcome (2 Chronicles 32:7-8; Romans 8:31-39). It's the restlessness that causes us to forsake the temporary comforts this world offers us, and to plunge recklessly ahead into pursuing the fullness of the life Christ has given us--the eternal life which is defined as this: knowing Him (John 17:3; Psalm 16:11)...to count everything else as a loss compared with the greatness of knowing Him...to go all-out and be willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of following where He leads, trusting Him with everything He's given us. 

And so, today finds me restless. Restless in the desire to know Him more, restless to some extent in wanting  to move forward in certain things that He has shown me are part of His will for my life in the future, but also restless for the faith to trust Him more in everything, to seek His face and know His heart more and more, and to believe He will have His way. Restless for the world around me to see and know that He is God. I am restless to move forward in these things by continuing to entrust them to His perfect timing, for my ideas have never once proven to be better than His. So no matter how long I must wait, I will rest in confidence that the God who has never once failed to work all things together according to His good and glorious purposes will by no means fail to accomplish what He has promised. 

For example part of me wants to move into the Hood...now. In fact, if God were to suddenly tell me to drop out of college and move there, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But He hasn't, and it actually looks like He still has other plans for me in the meantime. And as I said, His plans are always better than mine, for He alone knows all things. So I will continue to trust Him with it all, to lay my life at His feet every day in surrender to His will, to follow where He leads and trust His steadfast faithfulness, knowing that when the time is right He will move things forward and it will all be far better than anything I could dream up or enact myself.

"I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; 

my soul waits for the LORD more than watchmen for the morning,

more than watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. 

And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities."

-Psalm 130:5-8

Watching for the Return of Manhood

We live in the midst of a generation which, for the most part, has no idea what real manhood looks like. Sure, we might catch a glimpse of it every now and then, in some character from a book or a movie--but it's more the stuff of legends, it would seem. Very rarely do we encounter real Men in everyday, normal life. 

In Job chapter 29, Job is reminiscing on his earlier years, and winds up giving us a poignant picture of a godly man. He talks of a life saturated with the presence of God, a man who is respected by all who know him, because he is moved by the God's love to actually do something about injustice around him and to pour his life out on behalf of the weak and the destitute. That's what real manhood looks like. 

And yet in our generation and our culture we're inundated  with examples of "manliness" that fall so short of the real thing. The role models young men have to look up to are rock-stars in skinny jeans with voices that can easily be mistaken as female if the listener is not paying close attention. That, or the football players who work and sweat to be "tough" but at the end of the day go home to cushy homes and wide-screened televisions where they can relax from a long day of training to chase a pigskin from one end of the field to another. Then there's the other side of the spectrum--the brilliant entrepreneurs and businessmen who work hard and eventually become successful millionaires. Okay, so there are better role models out there...like perhaps the scientists and activists who strive to make an impact beyond themselves with their lives, or those who devote their entire lives to a particular field of study with the same intention. 

But where are the men?

Where are the fathers worthy of the title "hero" even when their children have outgrown their phase of being enamored with Batman or Captain America? Where are the men who live out their calling and their faith to such an extent in their day-to-day lives that the Life that dwells inside them is poured out into their wives, their kids, their friends, their neighbors, total strangers, their communities, and this world? Where are the men who can say to those younger than them, "Follow me as I follow Christ" (1 Cor. 11:1)? Where are the men who can look back on their lives like Job did and say "I delivered the poor that cried for help...I put on righteousness, and it clothed me...I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame" (Job 29:12, 14, 15)? Where are the men of faith and courage who will dare to truly surrender all like this guy did? In our day of esteeming the famous and the popular, we just don't see much of the real stuff that manhood is made of.

But this post is not about inspiring depression and pessimism concerning manhood, but rather, hope. Why? Because I believe God is in the process of raising up men with the characteristics I just mentioned (and others I haven't touched on). I'm about to borrow an illustration from Eric Ludy...

Fossils and other remains have been found of a certain species of deer known as the Irish Elk, which once roamed the earth with a shoulder-height of about 7 feet and a rack of antlers spanning a massive 12 feet. Irish Elk are extinct now, leaving us with only their smaller  relatives for comparison. Elk these days grow to a maximum of about 5 feet tall at the shoulders, with antler racks only about 4 feet wide...

But can you imagine what it would be like if elk suddenly started growing as big as some of their ancestors used to? What if a generation of elk started growing to the magnificent size of their predecessors?...What if a generation of men started growing into the fullness of genuine manhood as portrayed in Job 29 and so many other passages in the Bible, not to mention church history? =) Now maybe you see what I'm getting at with this post. 

The amazing truth is, I've seen a glimpse of this very thing happening here in our generation, in our day and age. I've been blessed to know and come into contact with a fairly significant number of brothers in Christ who have begun to catch the vision God has for manhood and masculinity, and who are following hard after Him and desiring to be made into the men He has created and called them to be. But that's just the start.

Ultimately, when you get to the heart of the matter, any society, culture, or generation is defined by the individuals that compose it. Blanket statements and stereotypes are often utilized to try to convey a broad or generalized view of a large (and often very diverse) group of people. This is why stereotypes don't wind up working on the individual level--nobody fits the mold exactly. Even so, such generalizations can be useful in depicting overall trends or characteristics that the majority of a given group may tend to have in common. So if I were to generalize the current state of manhood in my generation, I would have to say we're faced with some (no offense) fairly depressing stuff...I was about to try to describe and sum up the current state of things, but perhaps it's better if I refrain and leave that to the men to address. 

So why is a girl writing about manliness anyway? What am I, of all people, doing writing this blog post? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that for the past several years, biblical, godly manhood has been something I've felt pressed to pray for God to restore and instill in the men of my generation. In this time, He's brought some specific brothers-in-Christ into my life at various points and directed me to pray for Him to further various things I could see He was starting to do within each of their lives. And along the way, I've become aware of the fact that sometimes it takes a female's perspective to know to pray for certain aspects of manhood. God created us as women with certain longings and sort-of "instincts" in regards to what a man ought to be. Not that we can always go by the desires of our hearts, for it does still ring true that "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9). However, where our feminine hearts' longings and ideals of what manhood is to look like do line up with the examples found in Scripture, we must do more than just lament and long for those ideals to become the norm. We must pray.

No great movement or change towards ultimate good in all of world history has ever come about without God enacting and enabling it and carrying it through to completion. Apart from Him, without Him, we can do nothing (1 John 15). But when God moves, so do His people. After all, we are His Body. So unless His Body has become disconnected from its Head, which is Christ, it will move in accordance with His will. But in order to do that, we must abide in Him, and remain abiding in Him. 

So let none of us cop out. Men of God, each of you have the unique and individual responsibility before Him to continually seek His face and surrender your life to His will. You have the privilege of coming before the Author of Manhood and Masculinity and asking Him to forge within your soul that which He created you for in the first place, to make His Name great in and through you as He works that which no human being is capable of in your life. Women of God, each of us, likewise, have a unique and individual responsibility to seek the face of our Creator and plead with Him to work in us that which He created us for. May we come before Him and plead to be made into what a woman of God ought to be. May we ask Him to consume us to such an extent that His radiance is the only beauty we care about the world around us seeing. 

Manhood and Womanhood were created to work together and to build upon one another. The rise of true masculinity will help make it easier for true womanhood to blossom and grow in our generation, and likewise the growth of true femininity will help to encourage and strengthen manhood as it ought to be. 

I genuinely believe that God is at work in our generation right now to raise up men and women after His heart and to do a greater work than any of us have either seen or imagined. And I believe that a rise and return of true, biblical manhood is a crucial element of what He intends to do in our lifetime. 

There is a quote from Keith Green's journal that has resonated in my soul ever since I first read it in his biography: "Lord, let there be a revival and let it begin in me!" It has struck me over and over again that praying for revival is empty and pointless if we are not simultaneously asking God to work according to His will in our own individual lives. For one thing, how exciting will it really be for us if the whole rest of the world gets set on fire by God to shine and live for His glory, but we're left out? If I settle for less than the fullness of God's will for my life--If I pick a spot and say, "Alright, I can stay here for the rest of my life and be content,"--I'll be missing out on the much bigger picture of the entirety of God's will. God doesn't stop with the individual. He uses one heart to ignite another, and in the process the flames should grow brighter in both. May we not hold back from asking and seeking after the fullness of what God desires to do--in our generation, yes, but also in every facet of each of our lives. 

Rak Khazak!!

Leaving Memphis...Again

In a few short hours, I will be on the road, saying goodbye to the city I love and feel so called to as I follow God's calling elsewhere for a time. It's not the first time. The first time was a little over two years ago, when I left my family, friends, hometown--pretty much everything I'd known and was used to--in order to attend a discipleship training school called Ellerslie all the way in Colorado.

I remember crossing the Memphis Bridge and feeling torn between the place I was leaving behind and what God had in store at the place I was heading to. It wasn't just the city--it was also having to leave behind my family, friends that were so close they almost might as well be family, and all the people I knew and had grown up with here--but deep down, there was a painful awareness that I had to leave Memphis for a time, the city I had grown to love while so many I knew merely tolerated, if not hated, living in.

After I came home from Ellerslie about six months later and spent the subsequent six or so months here in Memphis, I found God calling me to leave once again--this time for college. That transition was rougher than the one from Memphis to Ellerslie, not because the move held more of an unknown (when I left for Ellerslie I had no idea what I was getting into), but somewhat because of the opposite; I knew I was heading into a completely different sort of environment and that even as I was going to college, I was going against the flow of our culture. I knew I wasn't going to college for an education and wasn't called to keep my head low and simply make it through. It was going to be hard, a different kind of hard than I had ever known before. And as we left Memphis, I once again felt torn between my more long-term calling to Memphis and my current call to this college three and a half hours away.

But it was a good kind of torn, even as the extremely similar bittersweet ache I am feeling right now is a good kind of pain. It's the kind of pain that comes with leaving someone--or a group of someones--you have grown to love deeply. This summer, God brought me to some of the front lines in the battle for Memphis. Through living and working with Street Reach this summer, I have gained a better perspective of that battle, as well as getting to know specific people who are also fighting it and other specific people whose souls hang in the balance.

The good news is that I do not have to be here to continue to fight in this battle. Prayer reaches farther, deeper, and faster than any weapon of this world. Still, it is painful to physically leave Memphis. But the One who has called me is faithful, and as always, He has a plan and will not fail to carry it out as He leads me on from here. His has a purpose for taking me back to Mississippi, and He will not fail to use me there or to use this season to draw me yet closer to Him and to prepare me for what lies in store. Just as He perfectly orchestrated the timing of leading me to Street Reach this summer--from preparing me for it even when I had no idea what Street Reach even was, to walking me through every day of it this summer--He has perfectly orchestrated everything about leading me back to MC this school year.

So, as bittersweet as leaving Memphis is going to be, at the same I am excited for what lies ahead. The same God who led me from here before into adventures I never could have dreamed of, who led be back here and walked me through even more, has infinitely greater plans for what is yet to come than I can possibly imagine. It's going to be hard, but at the same time it will be infinitely rich and beautiful because my King will never leave my side nor fail to draw me closer to Himself.

Here goes.