Last Bedroom on the Right

So yesterday one of the women in charge of my internship told us this year is going to be a year of stretching, that however much we thought it was going to challenge us, it’s going to do so even more. She said it’s not her intent to make us uncomfortable, but it is her intent to help us become Christ-like, which means discomfort is going to be part of the package.

It made me think about how I probably landed in the hardest bedroom in my house. First it’s the only bedroom in the house with two extra beds in it, which means whenever there are extra visitors our room occupancy grows from two to four, something which could be in flux for a while. Secondly, I don’t deal well with drama, and God gave me a roommate that screams at bugs and spends a half hour trying to work up the courage to dip herself into the pond when we go swimming. Drama Queen with a capital D.

I know the truth, that she is a daughter of the King, that she’s in desperate need of extravagant love and the chance to mature in a safe environment, one her parents probably never provided. I know in a lot of ways she doesn’t know better. She’s never had any other way of living modeled out for her. I know she can’t change all at once, and if I think hard I can recognize small ways she’s already changing. However, knowing the truth still doesn’t change the fact that sometimes she’s hard to live with. On the way to the pond this afternoon I heard her say that she’s never heard me complain about anything, and I wanted to turn around and say, well why don’t you give it a try?

But I didn’t. Instead I’m writing this and becoming very much aware of my own sense of pride—pride that I don’t dwell on the negative, pride that I’m not as shallow as she is, as paranoid, as insecure. If I’m brutally honest, I’d have to admit that I’ve thought I’m better than she is, which is an untruth of the highest degree. Because the real truth is that I’m only the way I am because of the abundant grace of God. We’re both on a journey, and it just looks very different for both of us right now even though our paths are intersecting to use the same dresser and bathroom. And my immediate journey is that God is going to use her to strip me down again, to reveal another layer of selfishness in my heart and ask me to surrender. And that’s a gracious thing for Him to do, because I want to be a part of her story, to live in a way that brings her life and not death, to be compassionate and show her there’s a different way to view life than the way she’s been taught. Abba, fill my heart every morning with eyes to see her as you see her and the grace to surrender my will to your Spirit, because I know, if let on its own, my stubborn heart is going to kick and buck for its right to freedom and a pasture all its own.

B is for Binding and Loosing

Most commonly in the Christian world, the idea of binding is associated with immobilizing the demonic. Demons are bound and the Spirit of God is loosed. However, in reality the kingdom works in reverse. Let me explain.

There is one definition of the word bind that can mean “a temporary tying up,” but this is not a long-term solution. If you study Yeshua and His treatment of the demonic within the gospels, He doesn’t bind. He is more concerned with permanently destroying the works of the devil rather than entangling them up in knots from which they can later work themselves free. The real definition of the word bind is to tie together, knit, be in bonds; fasten or wind together; to obligate yourself. In other words, to take two things and make them as one.

The root of the word loose does not carry the assumed connotations of setting free in the sense of being released from confinement. Rather it means to cast away like a filthy garment, to destroy it, to dance upon it until it melts away.

If this is true, the last thing we want to do is bind demons to ourselves and send the Holy Spirit packing. So the second part of our daily liturgy is to bind ourselves to Yeshua, to ask Him to weave our spirits into His, to make us one.

Lord, I thank You that my spirit is bound to the Holy Spirit. In the name of Yeshua, I bind my mind to the mind of Christ. I bind my will to the will of God. I bind my emotions to the heart of my Father. I bind my imagination to God’s imagination. I bind my physical body to excellent health and prosperity that I might fulfill the destiny God has for me. In other words we ask that we can think as Yeshua thinks, feel what He feels, envision what He envisions, draw our hearts into alignment with His will.

Then we cast away the things designed to hinder our hearts. Yeshua, I loose all fear, doubt, unbelief, shame, guilt, intimidation, a spirit of religion and performance, stronghold thinking and behaviors, distractions… the list can go on. You fill in the blank. I love to think of throwing them out into a muddy street in the middle of a rainstorm, of dancing on them until they are swallowed up into the earth while the rain pours down on my upturned face to wash away any evidence of the effects they were ever there.

In the context of answering the Pharisees by what power He cast out demons, Yeshua describes, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder. He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters.” (Luke 11: 21-23)

The strong man is a spirit of self-protection. He is guarding his own home, or in spiritual terms, his own heart. But we weren’t designed to be our own protectors. It only causes our hearts and minds to shut down, to build protective walls, to shut people out or lash out in fear, something I have experienced before. But in this passage someone stronger attacks and overpowers the strongman. Attack is a faulty translation because in the original language it means simply to arrive. The mere presence of Yeshua, the More Valiant One, overpowers the strongman, no battle needed. He casts the strongman’s armor of self-protection away. He scatters it. He looses. Then to prevent the enemy from coming back into a cleanly swept house and causing more damage than before, we bind ourselves to Yeshua, we fill the home with His presence, with His truth. We rebuild with good things so there is no room for the broken to come back and make its home.

A is for Attention

On the farm we practice something called the ABCs, a type of liturgy we speak to God and over each other (usually in pairs) every morning when we gather, an invitation to open our spirits fully to God and close them to anything else.

A is for Attention.

In the name of Yeshua (Jesus), I call my spirit to attention.

Spirit is the best part of me, the part created to commune with God, the part stamped with His image. We are not bodies temporarily inhabited by spirit. We are spirits temporarily making use of bodies on loan. So spirit wake up within me and live to your fullest potential.

Spirit rise up and take your rightful place, seated with Christ in the heavenly places.

I am a daughter of the King and fellow heir with Christ. I belong in the throne room.

Christ is in the driver’s seat.

I relinquish control of my agenda for the day. I want God to lead, to determine what is important, to guide my thoughts, my actions, my interactions. He will see and hear things I will not. I want to be attune to Him, to hear and see those things too.

 Soul and body get in the backseat; submit to my spirit and the Holy Spirit.

The soul is made up of the mind, will, and emotions. Without the spirit my soul is left to earthly reasoning, striving to be good out of sheer willpower rather than grace. Living from the soul is living from the flesh. So we ask our will, our thoughts, and our emotions to be subject to the guidance and governing of the Spirit.

Then we speak blessing over one another. I bless you with revelations of the Father’s love. With joy welling up from gratitude. With peace that surpasses all worldly understanding. I bless you to know you are a daughter of the King, that you are filled with grace and beauty, that you have an inheritance in the heavenly places… every morning the blessings are different, but they fill our hearts with reminders of truth, with the space to claim our God-given identities and step into the day with confidence.

Orientation

My life is not my own, but I have been bought with a price.

I have left the United States as I know it and entered a mission field tucked away in a corner of countryside in Missouri. My time here is barely twenty-four hours old, and I already feel both more at home and more stretched than I anticipated.

I have nearly mastered the names of my new immediate family. Twelve women, living in one home. What that means is that my life is not my own, my room is not my own, my food is not my own. Everything but my bed and personal belongings are to be shared. Even my time is not my own. Living in this close of a proximity with so many people means schedules and structure are required to maintain order. Laundry happens on a schedule. Meal times happen on a schedule. Chore charts happen on a schedule.

My first instinct was to baulk. I’m twenty-six. I’ve lived on my own a long time. I’m used to buying my own groceries, having places for my books, going to bed without worrying when the light gets turned out, showering without checking with four others whether or not they need the bathroom. Many of the girls are much younger than me. It’s like being thrown back a decade into the days of camp or at least my freshman year of college with rules and regulations, designated lights out, and cleaning charts. I expected a house of seven with one roommate. What I received was twelve and a roommate both young and in need of a lot of healing, with two other beds in our room that could be filled at any time. I have to walk down the road to get internet. Not ideal. But I have a choice. As I walked the property this morning I sensed God saying this is a chance to die to self.

In Philippians 2 Paul instructs us to do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Here are those interests very tangibly in front of my face. Have this attitude in yourselves which is also in Christ Jesus. He laid aside His rights, his divinity. He emptied Himself and walked towards a cross with open hands and an open heart. Lord teach me to walk as you walked. Paul states later that even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with your all. Lord, fill my heart with joy as I learn to pour myself out. Lose myself to find you.

This year may very well stretch me more than India. What heat and spicy food, complicated travel, dust and sweat did not draw out of me, this little place in Missouri may. This year, like India, I will get up every morning with a desperate need for God to meet me, but that is the best place to be. I will face a choice to choose gratitude over selfishness. This year I will realize what has always been true. I am not my own, but I have been bought with a price.

Ann Voskamp, in her book One Thousand Gifts, writes about how joy is derived from gratitude. The more I have the eyes to see the good things God is giving rather than the things I do not have, the more my heart will find its capacity for joy. So this morning I rose and I chose to be grateful for these things:

A beautiful sunrise and cool morning to walk and pray

Time to linger over the Word and journal out my thoughts

The pleasure of not having to dig in a suitcase for the first time in weeks

Milk to go on my cereal

A houseful of people instantly becoming my community

The delighted eyes of one of the women supervising me. she is so glad I’m here

Teaching that makes sense to both my heart and my spirit

A sense that God has so much to bring alive in my heart

Rain

It’s raining. After months of drought and weeks of 100 degree heat I’m sitting on my neighbor’s porch wrapped in a shawl and it’s raining. Cool, steady drops in a gentle, falling symphony. It’s as if I can feel the earth sigh through its scorched covering of grass and open its pores wide to receive.

The rain reminds me to be grateful. Water is a life-giving thing, but one we can’t control. It comes as a gift, God’s way of letting us continue to survive. He is good to us. After months of scorching heat comes rain for my thirsty heart. After a year of flooding and being overwhelmed with more than I can handle he gives reprieve and time to dry and find my feet steady beneath me once again. Everything in the season of his timing.

Always I am grateful for His goodness. So often now it pours out of me in tears while I wonder at the gift of being chosen and carried and taught and invited into knowing this God who loves me so inexplicably. And this morning this goodness and gratitude come in the form of rain.

Injustice

The images of what greed can do fill the inches of my computer screen—white men willing to kill hundreds to find a little white rock, others willing to turn a blind eye to bloodshed to make a profit. Countries are war torn, children are forced to become murderers. Millions are homeless, refugees, starving, separated from their families. I can read in a book a thousand facts about poverty, slavery, abuse. I can watch a small Asian girl walk down the street with a white man in Thailand, knowing that before the night is over she will splay her legs to a man who paid another man some money, who doesn’t care that if her skin was a different shade she could be his daughter, or perhaps even his daughter’s daughter.

I can weep at injustice. I can pound my fists in rage. But it doesn’t change that fact that I will never really understand. At the end of the day, forever and always, I will always be white. American. Born within the safety of four sturdy walls, within my father’s salary, within health care, within education, within fifty broad states, within two oceans that separate me from real brutality, starvation, torture. I can travel across the ocean and step foot on soils soaked with the blood of what should never be, but my passport will always carry me back to those four sturdy walls, will always insulate me from what it means to be dark or untouchable or sold or cast off or eliminated without anyone to notice. I will close my computer, fold my book, stow away my passport. I will buy food in refrigerated aisles of supercenters bigger than an Indian village. I will drive a car without anyone else inside it. I will sleep in my own apartment, with three rooms of space for only me, with a mattress, and ten pairs of shoes. And most days I won’t think twice about any of it.

When I am sorrowful, my pittance of grief is a token, a child’s pebble in the face of solid mountains of injustice. I may long not to be white and ignorant and naïve, but to fully understand I would have to be born as one of them. And if I were born as one of them I would long to be within these four sturdy, American walls—if I could even think to imagine them. Two worlds. So diverse it would seem they could never exist within the same planet—yet somehow they do. Some of us work or buy our way into living like royalty, and some of us are born into rock quarries to live and die working off a five-dollar debt our grandfather owed.

So many things I will never, never understand. Never. But God forgive me if I fail to hurl my pebble as hard and ferociously as my feeble arm can at the rocky face of injustice. God help me.

Less-than-ideal

My sister came to visit me this weekend. I looked forward to it all week, having her presence with me. Then Sunday morning she woke up sick, and everything I had envisioned for the day—bringing her with me to church, venturing downtown to the bookshop, slipping into the ice cream shop, laughing together over a bowl of popcorn—couldn’t happen.

It strikes me that very few things turn out the way we envision them. I can’t be mad at my sister. Hardly even disappointed really. She can’t help it. I am compelled with compassion instead. So I join her for bits of the afternoon on the couch and we watch a movie. It’s not an intimate, joyful sense of being together, heads bent over common intrigue and experience. It’s more of a complicit agitation, me holding her feet in my lap while she tosses and turns on the other side of the couch. Me sitting quietly with my book on the next couch, just to be in the room with her, while she slips into another fitful sleep.

But we are together.

It strikes me that community is rarely what one expects. I tend to envision ideal relationships, as if I were an artist capable of crafting another’s response to who I am. It takes two to make a friendship which means there will always be factors of the unknown. Though what I am left with is never quite what I imagined, perhaps the point isn’t the trip to the bookstore, or the shared ice cream cone. The point is being together. The point is staying when I’d rather not be in a room that could make me sick, when it seems easier to slip out and find someone else. But that is just the moment when I can’t—when I shouldn’t—because my presence is not just a pleasure; it’s a need.

I’m not very often good at community. Sometimes I tell myself it is easier to be alone because I fear the sickness of being wounded. But the first step to staying in this place of relationship and forcing myself to engage is to realize that my ideals are just ideals. When it feels different than I anticipated, it doesn’t mean I’ve failed; it just means I forgot to take into account those unknown factors I can’t control. It means that God has something bigger in mind. Something messier. Something, I’m trusting, in it’s time, more beautiful.