My thoughts last night as I lay emotionally overwhelmed.
How to live each day with what I am given, and with my limitations as a human being
How to care for the wounded soul
How to hold a high schooler in value and worth
How to pursue a high schooler in love
How to talk to a high schooler about addictions
How to be healed of my own addictions while talking to high schoolers about theirs
How to be wounded and still want to help them
How to love the high schoolers with my brokenness
How to pray and ask God for help
How to be bold about the gospel
How to declare the gospel as beautiful
How to declare God to the high schoolers
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This is heavy, and this is hard to handle every time I think about it. The more the youth group, which I work with at my church, opens up to me the more I feel responsible to help them, save them, love them, heal them, pursue them somehow because that's what Christ did for me. But something strange always happens...my intentions of good become rotten in my bones because I start to feel scared, overwhelmed and incapable of taking on such a huge load. My mind begins to race at all the ways I could do what I think I needed to do to help them get God, and those ways are the things that become so heavy. I am flattened by my humanness, by my limitations, my fears and my insecurities. Until God constantly washes me again and again in the truth of Isaiah 55:11
“so My word that comes from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.””
And when those words really sink in, I can breathe again! I can breathe until I forget those words the very next moment when I start to think "I can do--" or " I can try that to help so and so by--" and "how about I try to help my self get better with more of this or less of that" and then fear threatens me with failure, and all over again I break apart at the heaviness and God reminds me that it is His word from His Mouth that will not return to Him empty, and will accomplish what He wants because He had sent "it"-- in other words, I can't stop God from being glorified or getting what He wanted done! Yet that is what I am unknowingly implying when I begin to carry the heaviness of helping the high school students and myself. God will have His way because it says right there! He said there in Isaiah that His will never returns to Him empty, but always gets done. Absolutely, no doubt about it, sealed and secure.
(Assuming you are at the point of at least admitting that you want to believe God is good, that He loves you and is real. If these 3 things are not yet established in some big or small way in your heart then the rest of this will not mean much to you.)
So why am I worrying about helping the kids or helping myself? If God wants this or that to happen then God will get what He wants done regardless of my involvement. God always gets His way because He is God. He is in control, He is in charge of anything considered created by His creating hands, and His ways are perfect and absolutely fail proof. His methods or processes may seem hard to understand, but the moment you question that is the moment you think you know how God should do it. You think your way is better than God's way. Or, if you're like me, you think your responsible for helping God get His work done. It's self-righteousness cloaked in false humility.
I rest in that truth, that God will have His way no matter what. I just need Him. That's it. If I do this or that or try helping the high schoolers with this idea or helping myself with that idea...then no matter what I do, God will have His way, so as long as I have God, I have what I want for the methods and processes I am going through.
It's a bit strange to have the final goal or the final reward before having worked for it. Actually it's extremely weird and questionable...because it doesn't make sense in a culture where you must always go through a process of some sort to get what you have. You earn money, you develop good relationships, you work off your last 10 pounds, you climb the corporate ladder, you run to get the prize at the finish line, and you try to help people that you feel a desire to help.
But what happens when you have the final reward for every one of those efforts before you begin putting forth the effort? Or even more astonishing to consider is what happens when someone else put forth all the effort for you?
I heard a story the other day about a psychology professor who took a group of his students for a hike and gave each of them a load of 75 pounds worth of weights in a backpack to carry uphill. A week or so prior to beginning the hike he had assigned each of them to read a book before going on the hike. As a group of college students he was aware of the probability that some would complete the assignment while others would not. As the day approached to go on the hike, each student picked up their 75 pound pack and with varying degrees of determination they began the ascent. Struggling to stay together, they sweated and continued to follow the professor uphill. Halfway up the trail the professor stopped everyone and asked the group how many of them had finished the assignment of reading the book. Not knowing the reason for his inquiry other than to make note, about half the group raised their hands in confidence while the other half did not in honesty. So the professor told everyone to drop their packs, and gave instructions for the students who had done the assignment to each pick up a pack of their fellow students who had not. This meant that they now were to carry 150 pounds the rest of the way up while the students who did not complete their assignment carried nothing. So who was more angry about this turn of events? What the professor found was that the students carrying nothing were much more angry, indignant and upset at this because they were giving their burden to someone else and it was embarrassing and humiliating.
Oh how we hate grace. We say and talk and profess to believe that Jesus paid it all, but then we turn around...I turn around and start to pull my burdens off of His cross and take the load of carrying my cross because, I mean, the bible says we must take up our cross and follow Him, doesn't it? So I'll handle my life and it's outcomes, all the crap in it, I'll deal with it on my own, thank you very much. No one needs to be burdened by my needs or my desires or my problems. No, no, no, that won't be necessary, I can carry my own pack up the mountain, because that's what Jesus did for me, so I hear everything He does is RIGHT, so I'll do that too. I don't want to burden God. I want Him and all the heavenly hosts to like me, to see me and say "wow, look at Jamie, she's doing her part, she is being faithful." Because after all the bible says that at the end of time we want to hear God say, "well done, good and faithful one." Right? Right?! Am I right?? I'm not wrong, right? Am I right?
Breathe.
Take a knee. And submit to God because He carried your pack up the mountain and it was so heavy that He died because of it.
You and I killed Jesus with our pack of burdens, problems, and sins. Is that offensive to you? Or is it the most life saving love you have ever experienced? Because not only did we kill Jesus, but He chose to carry our packs all the way up until death, and then He resurrected into New life. This was the joy set before Him! To show us the new life in Him. So that we wouldn't have to carry our own packs on our own backs in this life. That we have this new life in Him now that He carried our packs to the finish line and we just be thankful and run to Him with the love He first showed us.
This means that every time I begin to think I need to or must try or have to help my self or my high schoolers in some way that causes me to feel the burden of it all, the fear of failure, and the worry of messing up, I stop. I breathe in the air around me that is freedom and pack-less because I look at Jesus. The fight is not about being right or wrong. The fight is about living in freedom. If the Son sets you free, you really are free, in (every) deed! The fight is believing in Jesus.
"Therefore, if the Son sets you free,
you really will be free". -John 8:36
We soon find out how much we hate grace when that truth sets in. I'm not free, stop taking away my anger! Stop taking off my fears! Stop taking away my worrying! Stop it! It's humiliating and embarrassing and it's offensive to our desire to be good and right. Because the person who is left without a pack to carry is the person who watches someone else carry their packs until it kills Him.
We are free. We have reached ultimate perfection. We have the reward of new life forever. We have the deepest love. We have the wisdom of God. We have all the right answers in completion. We have what all of us deep down fight to have for all our lives: we have our way back to God.
We have the reward before any efforts begin. Which means from here on out no effort is required, and none can be done for something that is finished. Instead, with deepest love in my heart and fullest freedom to breathe, and for the joy set before me in the face of Christ who gave life to me, it is now my honor to serve Him. It is an honor to serve Him with whatever He so wills for me to do, whether that is with my high schoolers, my family of origin, my graduate school studies, my dating (or lack thereof), my exercising, my eating, my sleeping, my being hungry, my being in pain, my having a headache or my losing a job--whatever happens from here on out is just the process and method of God of which I cannot stop. I only believe in Jesus for giving me what I wanted all along already. I walk in His will because it is finished, I'm on my way to see God.
Are you?
If so, walk boldly in the truth today. (Even if the truth leaves you weeping or drowning in despair on your knees.) weeping comes in the night, but joy comes in the morning. Let the truth set you free.
What is your reward that you are running in this life for? Are you running to be right and good, or are you running to Jesus who finished it and welcomes you into divine love forever? Everyone is running toward something or someone thinking that is the reward, but Jesus is the only way to Life. If you're running toward Jesus you are running toward grace, meaning you are running without a pack or any effort to get what He gives. It helps us to indicate where we start to swerve the moment it gets heavy to be "right" or "good." The only heaviness we should feel is our gratitude. That is really heavy.
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it."
-1 Corinthians 9:24
Jmegrey
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