Nail it to the Cross

The other week, I was asked to teach Senior High Sunday school a few days before I was actually to do it. No problem, I can usually pull any number of things out of my overcrowded brain to discuss from the Bible. Had a few ideas, but none of them really seemed quite right. My brain knew what I would discuss was Biblically sound, mostly acurate (it's not like I have a degree in Biblical studies or anything, just years of sermons, lessons, and an almost photographic mind), but there was one crucial part missing: the ok from the Holy Spirit. Usually, I trust my gut on these kinds of things, waiting for the uncomfortable feeling to tell me, 'no, something's not quite right' or the excitment that stems from my heart that is the H.S.'s thumbs up signal. Randomly, I was getting neither; so I decided to keep on going with what I had planned out.

Back/side track (sorry for the slight bunny trail, this will make sense, I promise):
I grew up in a Christian family. The way I tell it, I was a Christian since the womb practically. So I know a lot about the Bible, Christianity, and Jesus. But for the first 14 years of my life, it was just pure memorization: I couldn't tell you what it all really meant, let alone if it meant anything to me. But somewhere in my teenage years I realized that I was just saying out of duty that God was my friend, but wasn't actually meaning it. I didn't like that, so I asked Him to show me who He really was, and that I could actually call Him my friend. That went on quite well for many years (is still a growing friendship and always will be).

But my first year of college, things advanced a little more. I started realizing that a lot of the things I 'believed', all these wonderful doctrines of the Christian faith, I didn't actually understand. It began with hope, because I suddenly realized I didn't have any (oh, the drama of becoming an adult!), and didn't actually know what it meant. So, I go to my Friend and say, "hey, what the heck is this anyway?!" And again, we go on a journey of learning what I really believe for myself, and making my faith my own.

All this has led up to the last year or so, when my wonderings has led me to the cross. We sing about the cross. We take communion once a month, if not more. We have a cross hanging up at church, on the wall, all over the place. But I started to realize that I didn't actually understand what it meant, what Jesus' death and resurrection meant for me. So, like before, I just asked Him so show me. Now, I was expecting some intense "ah-ha!" moment to just hit me, maybe during a communion time, or a ministry time after a sermon-you know, one of those 'slain-in-the-Spirit' moments where God uploads new data into your heart between the end of the sermon and lunch. But I shoulda known that my Friend hasn't taught me in that way before, so why should I expect it now.

The Friday night before I was to teach Sunday school (see, I told you I'd get back to it), I blessedly had the whole apartment to myself. And boy, did I need it! I'm an introvert, which means to recharge my "batteries" I need time by myself to internally process all that's been going on in my life. This alone time had come at the end of a really stressful week, and I was so overloaded with stuff mentally that I wasn't even sure where to start processing. I was sitting on the floor, talking with Jesus about it, and He says, "I'll take some of that for you. Why don't we nail it to the cross?" I've always had a hard time asking for forgiveness from Jesus, or asking Him to take away my burdens. I've always pictured myself holding a heavy bundle in my hands and looking up at Jesus on the cross, not wanting to give Him my burdens and sins because it would be put on His shoulders; He's my friend, and I don't want to hurt Him. But that night I was so done with the stress I said, "Sure!" and gave it to Him.

I then pictured Him taking the bundle of stress from my hands, carrying it over to the cross, nailing it there, and then coming back to sit with me. We looked at each other for a moment; I looked at the cross, back at Jesus, back at the cross, back again to Jesus. "You're not there," I said, pointing to the cross. He smiled. "No, I'm not. I rose again, remember?" I looked back at the cross, empty except for my burden, then back at my Jesus again. And then, "Oh, I get it," and smiled.

And that was it. No flashing heavenly lights, no choir of angels, no falling on the floor and shaking at the practicaly manifest presence of God. Just me and Jesus sitting and having a conversation; and me finally getting that He died on the cross, taking our sins and burdens with Him, but then got off of the cross, LEAVING THE SINS THERE, and rose again three days later, defeating death and making a way for us to have life with Him. No biggie....only probably the most amazing revelation I've had thus far in my 25 years of life!

I realized that I could give my burdens and sins to Jesus, and while He would have to carry them for a while, it was only the length of time it took for Him to nail it to the cross and then leave it there. Now, especially with the sins that keep trying to come back and take control over me, I can point to the cross and say, "Nope, you don't have hold over me anymore. Jesus left it nailed to the cross, and that's where it's gonna stay!" And it's such a freedom to be able to give Him my burdens, almost like a literal weight is taken off my back sometimes. Like in the book Pilgrim's Progress, before Christian was renamed, he had that huge burden on his back, and when he got up the hill to the cross, the burden fell off and down into the grave, never to trouble him again. (I think I saw in some book where it looked like Christian had a literal lump on his back, like he was hunchback or something; makes for the 'falling off his back' part a little grotesque-I think the image of a backpack full of rocks is better). The idea is that I no longer try to carry the burden on my own terms, under my own power, trying to be independent and do it myself. God wants me to trust Him with my burdens, and to come to Him for forgiveness for my sins. At the cross is grace and mercy and freedom! so much freedom!

So, it's Saturday night, and my roommate and I are talking before we fall asleep, and I tell her about the conversation Jesus and I had. In my half-asleep state, I say before thinking: "Maybe I'm supposed to talk about that in Sunday school tomorrow." And then realized what I just said, and the H.S. said, "Bingo!" I was like, "Huh? But, I haven't preped anything about that, and I won't have time to do it tomorrow morning before church." H.S.....said nothing, cause He'd said what He needed to. Fell asleep. Next morning, got to church, still prepped for what I had planned to do earlier (might still do it in the future, who knows), but during worship, finally admitted..."Ok, I'll talk about it." Frantically looked up worship songs on my iPod to have as background music, got into class, and spoke. Afterwards, had the kids all write down something they wanted to leave at the hastily sketched cross on the pushpin board, put on the music, and sat there, hoping I did alright. I needn't have worried, cause it was the Holy Spirit's talk, not mine. The kids pounced on it! I had several come up to me afterwards saying that it was really good, one of them saying he'd never thought of it that way before-that he'd had the same problem of picturing Jesus on the cross and actually nailing his sins and burdens onto Jesus, but now had that same revelation as I had that Jesus wasn't there anymore!

Isn't it amazing how something you've always known can suddenly be so profound as to change your whole life?

What Grace is Given Me

I've had a paradigm shift. You know when you know you should know something, but understanding is just out of your grasp and you put every mental effort towards understanding it, but all you get is a headache? Yeah, it's been kinda like that for me in regards to viewing God as the One in charge. Oh, don't get me wrong: I know that He's in charge, but in a Sunday school answer sorta way. For a while now I've been realizing that I probably don't view God the way I should. I mean, the concept of "God" is pretty huge. I've known Him as my Friend for so many years, and can easily talk with Him as such. But something's always been missing in the area of treating Him with reverence and awe. The way I've viewed Him before was mostly just, yeah, You're there, and I talk with You pretty regularly, but I never really felt direct influence from Him. His love has been working subtly in my life these past 12 years, but it's been just that: subtle. I've never really been able to talk about the stuff I do as directly God working through me, and my self-absorbance has been nagging on me for the last few years. But last week during Plunge, I was given the most amazing gift: the recognition that God was working through me, and that it was not in my own strength, but only by His grace.

You see, for the previous three years I've led on Plunge, I've always felt my ineptitude at doing any sort of spiritual mentoring. I feel the expectancy from the kids and from the other leaders, and it sends me into a performance spin that ends up plummeting on the Friday nights-the most expected and intense time of worship and ministry. I usually end up sitting in the back of the room at the Rock International church, looking around at all the kids and wondering how in the world I'm supposed to speak into their lives when I'm either too exhausted or too wrapped up in my own spiritual need. Then the self-pity just gets worse when I see the other leaders going around and praying for my kids, and even more guilt is added onto the pile.

But this year, this year was different. Maybe it was the fact that I was one of the few older leaders who had experience in getting through the week, and I needed to step up. Maybe it was that I had a smaller family group and didn't feel so much pressure. It might have been some of those things, but all week long, I felt such grace from God to speak what was on His heart to those around me. It was like I was given new eyes to see what He was doing. I didn't feel any pressure, just relaxed and let Him lead me. All I did was watch what He was doing....if He was kneeling in front of one of the kids during ministry time, telling her how special she is to Him, I felt His heart moving in mine, and went up to her and said His words out loud. At one point, I saw Him whispering into a young man's ear that He is a gentleman-nothing more, just that. It took me a few minutes to ask, 'Lord, anything else? Really, that's it?' before I went up to the young man and told him just that, no more, no less. It was stretching, but so exhilerating!

I realized that my view on "Jesus working through me" needed to change. We get so wrapped up in our own importance that we think Jesus will come alongside what we're doing, when all along He's asking us to come alongside Him and what He's doing. When we do that, we are being His hands, feet, voice, hug, tears, laughter, smile, and cheers. And there is so much freedom in that, not only for the people we minister to, but for ourselves: freedom from the burden of trying to do it our own way, a burden we were never meant to carry in the first place.

Keep Moving Forward

It's funny how God will speak through pretty much anything. I watched a Disney movie tonight called "Meet the Robinsons". The main character, Lewis, is a braniac orphan who wants nothing more than a family, but he is rejected by over a hundred potential parents. Lewis decides that his real mom is the only one who ever wanted him, so he invents a memory scanner to try and find her. All his endeavors of looking in the past fail, and it's only when his son comes out of the future to help save him from the wicked antagonist that Lewis realizes that it's better to "keep moving forward", live who you are in the moment, and trust that things will turn out all right in the end.

I've said over and over again for several years that I was born in the wrong century on the wrong continent. Ever since I was a preteen, my heart has gotten fired up over stories about Narnia, Middle Earth, Robin Hood, Merlin, and Pocahontas. I would watch that one scene from "Beauty and the Beast" over and over again, where Belle runs out to the field and sings: "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere! I want it more than I can tell." To say that I've never opened my closet with my eyes closed, hoping beyond hope that I would find a land of fauns, centaurs, kings, and great battles on the other side would be a lie. I was born for something more than this! The problem is, in all my years of reading fantasy novels and watching epic films, I've allowed the "something more" to be set in a scene that will never be. I will never fight with a sword, or ride a horse over leagues of hillside to warn a neighboring country of invasion, or live in a great castle at the side of a handsome prince. Capes and crowns, swords and shields are only a thing of the imagination (unless you attend a Renaissance Festival, of course). So the hunger for adventure rises within me, only to fade into a brooding melancholy as the sensible part of me whispers, "it can never be."

But today, as I looked into the DVD cabinet, trying to pick something to watch, my eyes passed over "Gladiator", "The Matrix", "Indiana Jones", and "Star Wars". For a moment, I settled on one of my all-time favorites: "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe". I look at that cover, and instantly I feel the warrior within me rise up, anxiously waiting for a two-hour release into a world where I feel I would fit in so easily. But tonight, I didn't want it. I didn't want the let down at the end, where Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all go back through the wardrobe, I turn the TV off, and I'm right back in my own "humdrum" world again. I want more, and I can't have Narnia; Aslan isn't here for me to see. So instead, I pick a cute movie that I've seen before and knew would give me a few laughs, but yet keep me vaguely in the present.

Sunday at church, the speaker talked about Ephesians 2:8-10; how we are God's workmanship, and how that word "workmanship" in the Greek implies a Masterpiece, not a bench. God has created an adventure for me, and it's an exciting treasure hunt of an adventure. A good story has danger, mystery, romance, trials, purpose, interesting characters, and always, always a good ending. My life is a story that God is writing, and Jesus danced like a wild man when they first came up with the plot line! It has always been difficult to view my life as an adventure story. 20th century, normal life, ok jobs that pay enough to get me by if I spend wisely (still learning), rent, bills, occasional hang outs with friends, normal family stuff (aka: mildly dysfunctional but no more than the normal American family). I mean, what kind of setting is that for a great adventure? For a year I broke away from it and lived in England (Lord, take me back!), no work, no money, living in a house overflowing with people, serving Jesus and the city I lived in, crazy adventures like getting stranded in London the day after Christmas...now that is what an adventure should look like!

But is it the adventure I'm called to?

If Lewis had stayed at the orphanage, continuing to think that there was no one else in the world that wanted him except his mom and did not go ahead with his dreams of inventing, he never would have met his loving adoptive parents, who would give him room to be himself and become one of the greatest inventors the future would ever see. Everyone kept telling Lewis, "Keep moving forward!" "Congratulations! You make a mistake! Now you can learn from it; just keep moving forward!" Eventually, Lewis got it, and when given the ability to find his mom, he gave it up, because he knew that his future was exactly what he wanted. And he would get it.....if he kept moving forward.

When I sit, contemplating a really good book set in medieval times, with chivalry, honour, courage, nobility, and romance (yes, I'm a woman, so sue me), and I wish that I was there, in that time period and setting, I'm stranding myself in the past. And mine is worse: at least Lewis was focused on something that actually happened in his lifetime! But God gently reminded me that I need to keep moving forward. His future for me is such an amazing adventure story that I can't even imagine how great it will be! All it takes is TRUST! Trust that He is who He says He is. Trust that He is the omniscient Maker, and that He created me to fit my story, and my story to fit me, and for both to give Him the glory and honour and praise. Unstick yourself, Sara Beth! While it is hard to lay down these heart dreams, they must be uprooted to make way for something so much more grander and magnificent than could be imagined by human thought! I will trust You, Lord, and take a step forward with You. Grant me grace, courage, and patience to walk only where You lead, neither looking to the right nor the left toward the other adventures that may beckon to my pride but are not mine to pursue. My life is Yours, lead me as You will.