Free to Weep
Are you free from the Tyrant? At least a little bit? Now that you’re freed FROM something you’re freed FOR something. Ready? Now that you’re freed from slavery to your emotions, you’re free to enter fully into others’.
Say what?! I thought I was just freed from my emotions so I could be happier. So I could hold my head up high and soar on the wings of awesomeness. Isn’t that the point of spiritual victory?
No. The point is freedom FOR the sake of others.
Please understand, I believe we are called to be freed from having to obey our emotions, not so that we can be aloof, unfeeling, untouched by the sorrows of the world. The point isn’t complete detachment, it’s freedom. It’s freedom to set my feelings aside so that I can enter in more fully to the needs of others.
Here’s the thing: My last post? If inwardly I’m thinking, “Oh you know who REALLY needs to read this??” Then I’ve missed the point. Sure, we may mentally identify those who are in bondage to emotions, but if we’re super eager for them to “just get over it” we aren’t actually following Jesus at all.
Jesus wept. (John 11:35)
We just studied this passage in Bible study. We considered it. The shortest verse in the Bible contains a wealth of wisdom for us. Why would Jesus weep? Didn’t He know that He didn’t have to be ruled by His emotions? Was He a slave to the Tyrant? Had He forgotten how wonderful heaven is? Didn’t He know that we should REJOICE when Christians die? Furthermore, didn’t He know that He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead?
Of course He wasn’t a slave to the Tyrant. Of course He knows how great heaven is. Of course He knew He’d resurrect Lazarus in a moment. Of course.
Jesus wept because Jesus cared.
Jesus, the most emotionally-healthy person who ever walked the planet, wept.
He didn’t weep because He was a slave to His emotions, He wept because He wasn’t.
When we are freed slavery to ours, we can freely enter into theirs.
Here’s what I mean: If I pursue emotional freedom in order to avoid pain, I have missed the point. Escaping pain was never Jesus’ plan. Jesus actually chose pain. He chose to enter into the messes of this world. He BORE the brokenness and sorrow and agony of this busted up world. His emotional freedom gave him the capacity to weep with others.
He was free to truly love.
If we exasperated with others’ emotional challenges, we don’t need to tell them off, we need more love. We need patience. We need long-suffering. Yes, we might need to speak some hard truths, that most definitely does happen. But that truth must be born from love, not exasperation.
Jesus didn’t rail at Mary and Martha, “Come on, you emotional women! Get a grip! Move on. Don’t you know how great heaven is? It’s all good when people die, it’s just a promotion, right?” Jesus didn’t say any of the idiotic things that people insensitively say in the face of others’ grief.
He wept.
And then He brought resurrection.
He was able to help because He first felt.
Before He was a Savior, He was a Friend.
Personally, that’s a word for me. Recently I swooped into a situation as a savior, before being a friend. I’m learning.
Will you learn with me? Will you choose to be free FROM slavery to emotions, and FOR the purpose of loving, caring, and serving those around you? We’ll probably make a few messes along the way, but let’s not give up. Let’s look to Jesus, again and again and again, and pursue emotional health so that we can reach out to the world with His compassionate love.
{Thanks for reading.}
Freedom from the Tyrant
Just imagine: Every single day, as soon as you wake up, the Tyrant comes into your room and starts bossing you around. He insists you immediately go his way, no questions asked. All day long, you are tossed back and forth by his every-changing demands. One minute, he insists on this. The next, it’s something else. It’s exhausting, never knowing what is next, as you bow before his tyranny day after day. Others can’t expect much of you, because you are constantly busy obeying the Tyrant. In fact, everything else and everyone else have to take a back seat to the Tyrant’s ever-changing will. It’s a full-time job to say the least. Actually, it’s more like slavery.
This sounds absurd, but sadly this is the reality, one one level or another, when we believe we have to live by our emotions.
In our culture, where we’ve rejected absolute truth, oddly enough our feelings are the one non-negotiable we treat as absolutes. Paul Miller writes,
“Modern psychology immobilizes us… Emotional states are sacred. If I’m grumpy, I have a right to feel that way and to express my feelings. Everyone around me simply has to get over it. One of the worst sins, according to pop psychology, is to suppress your emotions.”
For the month of January, two dozen ladies from my church family did a fast together. We all fasted various things, including fasting from fasting (ha!). It looked different for each of us, but one constant was that we each had marching orders from God: What He wanted us to abstain from, engage in, focus on, or give ourselves to. We had an ongoing email thread throughout the month to share the things God was doing and showing us. It was SO COOL because everyone had different experiences, but there were some common threads throughout.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, in some ways I feel like I “got saved” all over again. There were some significant shifts in my understanding of the gospel that have creoriented my perspective. I’m still unpacking it all, but I hope to share bits and pieces here as I’m able.
But one of them was this: You don’t have to obey your emotions. They are legitimate. But they aren’t absolute. They are part of my fallen nature that is being redeemed by Christ.
Christ is Lord, not my feelings.
His Word is truth, not how I feel.
In just one week, God allowed me to see several different situations where I had feelings about something, only later to discover the truth, and realize that my feelings had been completely mis-informed. Similarly, day by day He keeps reminding me that I don’t have to live out of how I feel. If I’ve been up all night with a baby, and my body is tired, that’s fine, but I don’t have to therefore live out of grumpiness. I don’t have to let that fatigue define me. If I’m irritated with my family, I don’t have to sulk or sigh or give them the silent treatment or whatever.
I can tell my emotions to please be quiet because I’m going to go ahead and be like Jesus who came not to be served but to serve and give His life for the sake of others.
Do you see it? Jesus! Jesus is our example, not this world that tells you to look out for yourself and “be true to yourself” by indulging in every emotion that comes your way. That’s just slavery. It’s bondage to the Tyrant of feelings, and as long as we shackle ourselves to our senses, we’ll never be free.
I can feel hurt, feel neglected, feel rejected, feel angry, feel agitated, feel forgotten, but I do not have to obey that Tyrant of feelings. I can choose Christ. I can choose love. I can choose forgiveness. I can choose to die to myself and take up my cross and love people who don’t deserve it because Christ did that for me when I most certainly did not deserve it.
Freedom, friends. Freedom.
Go, be free.
{Thanks for reading.}
How Christmas handles our hate
Burn in hell.
I could scarcely believe the rage that surged up and crashed like a stormy wave over my heart. I couldn’t believe those words actually whispered in my mind, seething words I have never spoken, never even thought before, but there they were, in an instant. I put my phone down and pulled Justice into my arms and fled to the closet where he sleeps. There, wrapped in darkness, I could let the flood loose of angry tears. I held him close, bouncing him to sleep, Justice in my arms while I cried out aloud to God,
Where is JUSTICE in all this? How is this okay? How can you let this happen?
From somewhere, all the dozens of similar stories filled my mind. Women hurt by men.
Just last night Jeff and I had sat up late talking about his sermon series. It has been my favorite one he’s ever done—the Mothers of Jesus. Each week he’s been preaching on one of the 5 women in Jesus’ lineage. Tamar. Rahab. Ruth. Bathsheba. Mary. He’s done a phenomenal job. He is truly a man who passionately pursues the good of women, who takes seriously his role of protector and provider. And not just in theory, I have seen him act heroically, in practical ways, on behalf of the vulnerable. It’s one of the things I love about him most.
So when I asked him, last night, “What’d you think about today?” He responded,
“Bathsheba.”
We both sighed. Long silence. Yes. Bathsheba. Another story of so much incredible heartache. The victim of power’s lust, she not only lost her husband, through manipulated murder, but she lost her precious child because of a sin not her own. Yes, she got to be in the lineage of the Messiah, but in her own lifetime she knew bitter sorrow.
But you know…I’ve never actually gotten angry reading those stories in the Bible. I’ve been mildly bothered, but not upset. I’m not, in general, an angry person. I don’t hate anyone. As a whole, I just generally like people. I’ve never been wronged in a way that’s made me enraged.
But what about when someone we love, fiercely love, is hurt? What about when you have to sit back and watch some of your most loved people in the world be treated cruelly?
What if Bathsheba was your best friend and you had snuggled that sweet child in your own arms before he died?
The truth is: It’s one thing to forgive something done to us, but when those we love are wronged, that mama bear protective tendency comes roaring out of nowhere and wants to literally devour the wrongdoer.
What do we DO with that?
The answer, I think, is Christmas. It’s remembering what God DID with that and DOES with that and WILL DO with that.
I love all the coziness of Christmas, but really—Jesus is Justice. Jesus is the birth of God’s justice, the “answer” if you will to all the profound wrongs of this world, the gift to every Bathsheba and every David. The gift to every victim and every perpetrator. We all need a Savior, and it isn’t that we’re all just one vague mess of sin. We each of us sins specifically, and it’s not all the same as if individual wrongs don’t matter. They do. And that’s just it.
Anger, burning hot boiling anger, is the right response to sin.
But not just to his. Or hers.
To mine.
In that dark closet, with tears streaming down my face, God showed me how my sin equally contributes to the heartache of this world. My own pride and selfishness are just seed form of the same gnarly vicious weed rearing its ugly head out in the world.
How can I plead for mercy and demand justice all in the same breath?
But I do. And miraculously, that’s what He gives.
Jesus is the Justice and Mercy of God, born as a vulnerable babe, to bear the ultimate injustice and give the ultimate mercy.
He, in His life and death, satisfies the justice of God and extends the mercy of God.
That’s what He did at Christmas.
And what He does, daily, in our lives, by redeeming what seems unredeemable. Rescuing the hopelessly lost. Resurrecting the long-dead.
And what He will do, in perfect fullness. Every wrong righted. Every tear wiped away. We will likely be appalled at how hopelessly skewed our perspective had been. This will most certainly not be the time where we demand God give account of his dealings during our life. I dare say there will be none of that. Scales will fall from our eyes and we’ll be mind-blown that God even let us LIVE.
And our hate will seem absurd, in light of all this. If only we could glimpse into His glory, how right and perfect and just and gracious and holy and beautiful is the Kingdom of God, we could freely forgive the greatest griefs and live above the fray.
That is, live something like this:
But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tuniceither. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
We need Christmas more than ever before. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her King.
When you need a hard reset…
This week I had the joy of curling up on the couch across from a dear friend, steaming cups of tea in hands, and a sweet squishy baby between us. It’d been a long time, and it was pure joy to hear her story. In person. Face to face. It’s so much better than liking a picture or even reading a post. The sharing of our lives and stories, in person, renews my soul like nothing else. God is such a creative, relentless pursuer of hearts. He’s always on the move. Everything He touches is changed. He makes all things new.
One of the things we talked about, as it related to both of our lives, was the supernatural power of Sabbath. We have both observed a prescribed, prolonged period of rest from previous ways of life, and the result has been healing, wholeness, peace, renewal, vision, focus.
In a word, Revival.
I was so grateful to take 2018 completely off from speaking. I also stepped away from writing, and my other formal leadership roles. I had the joy of just simply being.
Of course, God knew the timing would be perfect. This year brought relational demands that would require my whole heart, mind, and attention. I was so grateful to have the bandwidth to devote my heart to those I love so deeply. This year also brought a baby…a pretty big time commitment. 🙂 It also happened to be the start of the seventh year of our Renew Church adventure, so the timing seemed significant.
Over the years, I’ve reflected on the idea of Sabbath in various ways. It remains interesting to me that this is the one commandment we seem to completely disregard. In the famous Isaiah 58 passage, we constantly quote the part of about loosing the chains of injustice, but never follow the passage all the way to the equally strong exhortation regarding honoring of the Sabbath.
In the New Testament, Jesus rebukes people because they had completely missed the point of Sabbath. Similarly, I’ve often heard that Sabbath is simply “doing whatever makes you happy or brings you joy” and yet God clearly says that honoring it is “not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words.” It feels offensive to us that even our “day off” must come under the authority of and direction of One greater than us.
God wants our work days and our rest days to be consecrated to Him completely. Why? And here is where, I believe, the disconnect comes:
Because God actually knows what is best for us.
The very end of Isaiah 58, after the strong exhortations about justice and Sabbath, this is the promise:
then you will find your joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Yes, God wants us to have JOY, but He knows that if we pursue it directly we won’t find it. Only as we seek first the kingdom will “all these things” be added.
Do you want joy? Work tirelessly for others. Speak up on behalf of the voiceless. Feed the hungry, house the homeless. Refuse to point the finger or speak maliciously. And, in humble submission to the good plans of the Good Good Father … Rest.
I recently had to get a new (hand-me-down) phone, as my old one quit. It took awhile to power down, transfer over, and start up in the new phone. It was a hard reset.
The Sabbath is the hard reset. It is not just a nap, or a glass or wine or a game of golf or sleeping in once in a while. It isn’t merely a natural thing. Sabbath is a supernatural secret, a choosing to come into agreement with an authority above you, and recognize that He knows how best to live.
For Israel, every 7th year was the Sabbath year. Even the ground got a break. No tilling, planting, harvesting.
A hard reset.
And the result: More fruitfulness. More harvest. Renewal. Even the land needs revival.
Now, as 2018 comes to a close (I actually reached my “1-year off” mark last weekend), I’m slowly reintroducing items into life. Some things, like useless apps on my old phone, are gone for good. A few new habits have found their way into my day (learning guitar!), and more than anything I want to continue to give the lionshare of my time and attention to relationships right in front of me. My man, kids, our parents, church family. Our widowed neighbors.
Face to face. Shoulder to shoulder. Looking in the whites of each other’s eyes.
So, nothing earth-shattering here, but it’s been so long since I’ve said hello in this space, I wanted to give a quick update, and explain that I’ll be in and out occasionally in this coming year. One goal is to revisit the archives more often and share some sweet nuggets from years past. For now, Merry Christmas. Hug your people. Have your next political discussion in person, not online. Smile. Pray. Go to bed by 9pm. Sip tea. Read your Bible. Go for a walk. Skip the extra cookie. Hold a squishy baby. Visit someone who’s lonely.
Sit on the couch, sip tea, join hands, and pray with a friend.
Joy to the world.