Death rattled through my ears.(Don’t throw me under the bus.)
this is the one where i talk about my deepest hurts.
I’m very defensive. But not of myself. Most people don’t really speak ill of me. For years I’ve been coached to live a life above reproach, both through scripture and through the mentors that God has placed in my path to speak into my life. i still make mistakes like everyone does. but I’m not held down by the weight of my sin anymore. i get that Jesus paid for it. I understand that more and more everyday. I’m happy; I take on challenges with joy, and I respond well under pressure. I’m learning how to work well and work well with others. I know that my joy and confidence comes from the grace of God and the fruit of The Holy Spirit in my life, and I know it’s Jesus shining though me in those moments when people speak highly of me. Honestly, I only know of one guy for sure today that likes to tell lies about me to make himself feel better when something in his life doesn’t go the way he planned it. Yet, by the same token, he’s the first to defend me when someone gives me a hard time.
I don’t have to put up a lot of barricades around my heart and around my personal life these days, because my heart is open to what God has for me, and my personal life is pretty much consistent. It’s an open book. Honestly, my life is a Barnes and Noble. It’s full of stories, issues, art, good and bad covers, and random facts and faces, and smells like coffee. I work, I do stuff with my family, I do art, I write, I play music, and I spend time meeting with people about supporting me on this radical mission trip called The World Race. I’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices this year to raise money. I’ve given up a lot of time with friends. About half the time I could have gone contra dancing or swing dancing, I stayed home and invested that money into gear or into my main travel funds for my trip. These sacrifices have become normal for me now.
You’re blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God. By His words we can see where we are going, they throw beams of light on our dark path; I pray that by His strength I never turn back. I have something great before me to strive for. I realize what lies ahead is truly greater than anything behind me. I have a bright future, an infinite and intimate life with God.
He is my place of quiet retreat.
He has spoken life eternal into me,
Has called me out into the deep,
His love unravels me;
I must again repeat
that I am very defensive, but not of myself. I’ll always seek to see the good, and fight for the good in people, even people that truly are cruel to others. It’s strange to think that God has worked this into me. Before I knew Jesus, I was all about revenge. Defending is a good thing; its a new thing that He is doing in me. It’s a deeper compassion and empathy that God has given me, both to serve the victim and the oppressor. I can look at myself and see that it isn’t naivety, but the truly healthy perspective that we are all castaways in need of rope, that we all need Jesus to save us from drowning in sin. I am no worse or better than anyone else in the eyes of God, and God loved the world furiously enough to send Jesus to save it.
My righteousness doesn’t come from me, but comes from Christ.
I am not mine,
I was bought with a price, and I am hidden with Christ in God.
With that being a truth emblazoned on my heart, I have dealt with my abuses and abusers in a similar fashion. This is where a paradox came into my life a few years ago. It also took a year to the day for me to realize just how distressed I was.
I served in a youth group of a huge church a few years ago. I would volunteer there when I had a job and when I didn’t. I loved being in the fellowship of men that served as leadership over the high school and middle school ministries. They spoke into my life very bluntly and it helped me grow in leaps and bounds. I was honored to walk beside these men, because they helped me see my blind spots, and they always pointed me to Jesus. I spoke well of these guys to everyone I knew, and everyone I knew also spoke well of them. I saw their issues and they saw mine, and we always directed each other back to the grace of God that had been lavished on us. They helped me get my footing with the right mindset towards education and career options, and wanted to see me succeed.
Though I was a volunteer in this community, I was being fed and taught in the college ministry, as well as through the main services of my church. I also listened to podcasts from multiple churches. My feet were firmly planted and healthy. I had friends from other churches that I would hang out with randomly during each week and we would sing praise to Jesus around a bonfire. My life was shining and healthy. I knew what the kingdom of God was like. I saw freedom around me. I saw reconciliation around me. Wow, God is faithful! I have a great hope, and a future, and the future and abundance starts now.
During my time serving in this ministry I saw several students give their lives to Jesus. One guy even said that my presence in his life helped him have a clearer picture of what Jesus was like. What an honor. I had a lot of late night conversations. I prayed with all of these dudes at some point or another. I saw boys turn into men of God and run into their Fathers arms. God did some radical stuff.
One of the guys that led the high school ministry had a shift in his life. He decided that he wanted to get married. When he and his soon-to-be fianc é sat down and began discussing this, they wrote out lists of areas in each others lives where they each needed to improve as individuals before they came together as husband and wife. Now, of course they loved each other unconditionally, but it was healthy for them to take these steps. They have a beautiful marriage and are a great example to the youth today.
The problem with this, at least from my experience, was that he applied this same check list approach to me.
After a while, I had a job that ate a lot of my time. I started studying, and I was going to an incredible discipleship school. I could only serve in the high school ministry maybe twice out of each month. It made me sad, and I made a lot of choices, out of fear of an overbearing manager and losing my job, to not doing the things that I knew the Lord had called me to. It was a painful time in my life because I ached to be with these dudes that I had been mentoring. That manager has since been fired for his issues, but at the time he was in authority over me, and I didn’t know if I would be dealing with a happy or angry person from day to day.
Around that time, I was sat down by checklist leader and another fella, and they told me that I couldn’t be a part of the high school ministry anymore, for multiple reasons.
They said I wasn’t consistent. (Which was true, though I longed to be.)
They said I had inappropriate friendships with some of the girls(which wasn’t true, and I was actually consistently praised by the female leadership in the ministry for always pointing the young women to them when they approached me.)
They said I made the ministry a stage to glorify myself(which wasn’t true. I always sought to glorify God in what I was doing. I was never trying to persuade anyone to me.) I certainly wanted people to like me, because walking in, I thought being a 23 year old speaking into the lives of 14-18 year old guys was going to be impossible. I thought I was going to fail miserably. I was so insecure it wasn’t funny. But God blessed it. Endlessly. During that time I got to exercise my creativity through leading worship in the ministry. This was huge for me because I had never had that chance before. The world, I thought, had honestly beaten it out of me. God showed me who I could be if I was simply faithful, as He was faithful.
They said I didn’t respect their leadership. (I loved these men. They we’re my closest friends and new all of my closet’s skeletons. I praised them and protected them. I honored them whenever I had the chance. For real. I brought all of these guys up joyfully in conversation whenever I could. I saw that God had clearly placed them here for a reason, and I saw the Holy Spirit do incredible things through them everyday.) They said this because of how I questioned how this conversation could be happening, and how awful it was and how I asked if they would regret having this conversation with me.
These were their reasons why I could no longer serve.
Checklist leader said that I also really needed to take a look at my heart and my actions. He and the other fella said I really needed to focus on my issues for a while. Get right with God. Sin no more, and then we will not condemn you.
Jesus said I do not condemn you,
now go and sin no more before something worse happens to you.
Of course I knew their issues and struggles as well as they knew mine, but I had no intention of using my knowledge as firepower. I had prayed for them, everyday, so how could I turn on them? I loved these dudes so much.
You can imagine I was completely devastated throughout this entire conversation. These men had always pointed me to Jesus. Always. I lost my friendship with these two guys in that conversation. The rest soon followed. I knew I had been hung out to dry by my brothers in Christ. It was the worst.
However,
Checklist leader said that if I didn’t attend another place of ministry, and I consistently attended just that church, essentially as a probationary period, I may be able to serve again someday. So I did. I actually attended for several months, and after that I still wasn’t good enough. I was sad and heart broken, driving to and from that church every Sunday. Students asked me when I was coming back. I would always have to make something up.
I eventually gave up. I just went to work everyday angry. I hate to admit that. But it’s true. I actually stopped going to the other communities and churches I was a part of. I stopped hanging out with people. I would go home after work and watch Netflix and play Xbox. I lost a lot of weight out of stress. I didn’t want to eat.
I attempted to call and message all of these guys to spend time with them or reconcile with them in some way. None of them responded. I could even see where they saw the messages, or were on Facebook messenger. I couldn’t believe it. I only talked to the people I worked with, and people at the mall. I knew I had been wronged, and I knew they had done me wrong.
I got beat down by this one destructive conversation. Death rattled through my ears. Instead of accepted, I heard rejected; instead of redeem,I was refused.
The truth is, we are chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do His work and speak out for Him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference He made for us.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies
of of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are Gods people; once you had not
recovered mercy, but now you have received mercy.
-1st Peter 2:9-10
I did not want to stumble in the dark.
The problem was, I still spoke well of these guys. I shouldn’t have. I should have been honest and real about what I was feeling. I should have been real with the right people. I should have brought someone with me to meet with them to express my hurting heart. I had been unfairly treated. Judged. Without grace or mercy.
There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Jesus
-Romans 8:1
It’s amazing how these scriptures interjected themselves into my heart during this. But in this, I was aching tremendously.
Because I still protected them, and spoke publicly about them with honor and respect, I could only really think that what they said about me must have been true to some degree. It didn’t give me room to heal. What they said and what I knew to be true, from Jesus, did not come together in my heart; the conflict was always present.
From being a man who loved his church passionately, I had just become a statistic of someone mistreated by the church. I can now relate to the judgement that people have felt. I went from blue collar proper to the guy on ground getting dirt kicked into his eyes…
(I don’t hold that church accountable, and I have incredible friends who still serve there, who pray with me and for me, who bless me every day.)
……
So I suffocated.
I forgot a lot of the freedoms that God had shown me throughout the past few years.
I still knew all the lines, and could say all the right stuff.
I still believed the Gospel to be true.(which I know is the Holy Spirit giving me the gift of faith)
I just didn’t feel it.
It’s like I was stuck on a setting of apathetic.
But I wasn’t missing. God hadn’t lost me. I wasn’t forgotten. God had his loving eyes set on me. Like a father wanting to hold his boy when he falls down.
This was a trial by fire. I was being tested. My faith in Christ never shook. But I was no longer being shaken by my faith. i wasn’t driven. I wasn’t pouring over with that joy anymore. I wasn’t asking God to fill me up. I wonder what my Father was thinking when He was with me in those moments. He was literally lifting my head up and the entire time I was keeping it hung low. He’s a good Father, and He wouldn’t let me get by, living a crappy life like that forever. Though I was mistreated, I was mistreating myself not forgiving these guys.
Time passed.
Then I went to Disney with my family that Christmas.
After that I wanted to work as an Imagineer.
I started doing a lot of art again.
I started studying for CLEP exams.
I met a girl that I dated for a bit; she invited me into her church community, and helped re-start seeds of hope in the Gospel in my life once again. We didn’t date for long, but I’m thankful for what God taught me through her. I still pray for her even to this day. Towards the end of our relationship, I realized that I would never be able to lead a family to Jesus until I could walk with Him through what I today consider a very small storm. She and I broke up. I was sad. But nowhere near as sad as I had been, driving to and from that church everyday.
I was holding back forgiving these men; it actually stopped my being forgiven by God.
In the eternal sense, I am saved for eternity, but in the temporal, I was holding evil in my life that I needed to let go of. I couldn’t forgive them and I couldn’t forgive myself and I couldn’t walk in all of my gifts and callings because of this sickness in my bones.
So,
A year had passed almost to the day that I had had that awful conversation with those men I cared for so deeply.
In a passionate move, honestly a move birthed from a groaning of The Holy Spirit in my life, I drove from work to the church that still hurt me to see, and met checklist leader and talked to him. I told him about my past year and how much his words had wounded and rotted me away.
But I told him I forgave him.
I felt this burden like a boulder fall off my shoulders.
He said he was sorry that his words made me feel that way, which wasn’t really an apology. But I didn’t need his apology, because I felt the Love of God deeply for the first time in a long time.
I love checklist leader today, though I no longer do life with him. I see him every few months, but that’s about it. He’s my brother, and I love Him. I pray he continues to walk in the light.
A few months of spending time with some new friends, hanging out, hiking, and dancing went by. One day, as I was walking my dog, I felt this calling to Google this thing called The World race and sign up for it.
Crazy, right?
Now I have a rich community again. Now I can be real again. Now it feels like an unrehearsed sort of real, you know, without all the right answers, without always having to say and do the right thing all the time. I don’t feel like i am putting on a fake face. I can truly be me and I’m learning how to be. I’m leaving a life here to live a life with people who don’t throw me under the bus when I mess up or say something dumb. No one’s junk is too messy for Jesus to clean it. He’s a better savior than I am a sinner. Life is a journey we must travel with a deep consciousness of God. What a marvelous love the Father has extended to us, that we may be called children of God! We are being made more and more like Jesus everyday! The truth of the Gospel, it will refrain. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves, and let myself be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life for me, a life energetic, and blazing like a galaxy with holiness.
I’ve been crucified with Christ,
It’s him that lives inside,
I’m not dead but alive,
The old fear has fallen aside,
And Christ in me is rising up on the inside,
All I can do is thrive,
His Glory is where I abide.
