When I reread some of my past blogs, I often get nervous. Though I do try to sprinkle my blogs with photos, I sometimes wonder if the blogs have too much to say about the nature of God, if they make huge issues out of little happenings, and if they fail to give adequate summaries of what day-to-day World Race life is like. Finally, though, God has given me peace about my writing style, as silly as that sounds. I’m a nerd and I know it.
Personally, I would rather deliver what I believe to be the life-lessons God has been teaching me—long-winded and circuitous as their delivery may be—than provide you with carefree, bullet-pointed blogs about the peculiarities of each individual culture I experience. Such blogs grow tiresome when the reader has no firsthand appreciation of them. Stories of physical and spiritual poverty, when delivered only emotionally and without thoughtfulness and clearly-stated cross-cultural implications may do more harm than good in that they desensitize us to the stark realities of this world. With that being said, I want to provide you with a short update on how Bangalore ministry has been progressing before diving deeper into some breathtaking threads that God has been weaving in my life.
As ministry in Bangalore has continued, God has increasingly burdened my heart for the country of India. Granted, this could certainly be an emotional response to the newness of it all, but it could also be God planting a seed. Only time will tell. The feeling of sensory overload I wrote about earlier has definitely faded. My nose has become acclimated to the smells of garbage, smoke, feces, and dirt. My eyes have become accustomed to the site of tin shacks and wandering cows. My ears have become able to tune out the frequent, staccato honking of auto-rickshaw horns and even my taste buds no longer beg my stomach for mercy with each additional plate of spicy chicken curry.
This cultural acclimation has allowed me to dedicate more of my mind and energy to ministry. With that, I have really come to appreciate the work of the native Indian Christians. We have continued to work with the four ministries I wrote about in my last blog (Snap Back To Reality, Oh There Goes Gravity!), only in new villages, new slums, and new orphanages. Recently, we have been working most frequently with M.E.M. (Mobile Enrichment Ministries), taking part in children’s programs and medical aid programs.
Though I admittedly used to question the value of children’s ministry, I now appreciate it greatly. I would ask myself: “are these children really learning lessons from our Bible teachings and are they really contemplating the lyrics of the songs we sing?” I’ve realized, though, that even if our discipling is going in one ear and out the other at this age, they are still experiencing tangible love—love that many of them are not used to experiencing. Furthermore, not only will they grow up associating this love with Christians, but when they do become old enough to really comprehend life’s most important questions, they will likely seek their counsel from the mentors that have proven themselves to be the most loving and faithful towards them during their formative years—namely, Biblically-solid men and women of God. Win the children and you win the nation for Christ. It’s no wonder the Gospel is spreading like wildfire here!
In addition to our typical ministries, we have also had opportunities to speak at and participate in other locations, as well. College meetings, YWAM worship sessions, a home for the elderly, and a drug rehabilitation center are only a few among the many places God has been using us to share the Gospel. The varied ministries are exhausting, but highly rewarding.
Though our ministry schedule has been quite full, the greatest things God has been teaching me this month are actually not related to any of our specific ministries. God, in this last week especially, has taught me three very important things. I am realizing more and more, however, that these three things are not completely distinct in such a way that they can be listed. Rather, they are intricately interwoven by God, the master of all weaving. It is no surprise that we are told God “knit us together in our mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). I will try, as best as I can, to explain how these threads are woven together.
The first thread God has been weaving in my life is the thread of my own depravity. The thought of our own depravity typically isn’t what turns non-Christians on to Christianity, nor is it on the tip of most preachers’ tongues either. Though it doesn’t look good on t-shirts or coffee mugs, it is a fundamental truth of the Christian faith. Ben Friedman is ugly and depraved. Though this sounds like a real self-esteem killer, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be! This low self-esteem does not lead to depression and timidity, however, because in its place is high God-esteem, and from that esteem flows wellsprings of both joy and courage. When Joshua was encouraging his troops to be bold in seizing Canaan, he did not speak to their self-esteem, reminding them that they were well-trained warriors. He made absolutely no mention of it! To the contrary, he said “Be strong and courageous…do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9). That is God-esteem.
I worry that my blogs and facebook statuses too often bring more glory to myself than they do to God. I worry that they cast me as faultless, when the only faultless one is God! I worry that they cast me as courageous, when nine times out of ten I am timid! Those times are “conveniently” absent from my blogs. I even worry that you will glorify me for my “humility” after reading these last two sentences! I worry even more about the fact that this Ben Friedman-glorification is often my own intentional doing! My weak flesh often desires more to be seen as a man of God than it does for God’s name to be respected. Oh, the ugliness! Here’s another trade secret: sometimes I even wait to post my blogs on facebook during the times where they will get the most site-hits!
Often times during ministry, when my stomach is hungry for dinner, I lose my patience. Though I smile at and play with the children and talk patiently with the people of the slums—who may not eat any dinner that night—my flesh is screaming on the inside and my mind is more focused on my coming dinner than on their Gospel. Often, I am not nearly as loving to my teammates as I should be. Sometimes, when I hear about the successes of the other World Race teams, I am more jealous than happy—I wanted to be the one to lead those people to Christ. Sometimes, when I talk with the locals, I sneak glances at my watch. Oh, how ugly are my thoughts and how fallen is my flesh! I’ll stop this list before it costs me facebook friends, but I think you can get the picture! There is nothing in me that is worthy of being lauded—anything good I may do is not an improved me, but rather Christ in me (Galatians 2:20).
Often times, we have an incorrect view of sanctification—and our prideful flesh encourages this wrong view. We view sanctification as an improvement process, rather than an elimination and replacement process. Sanctification is not the process of upgrading the hardware from Ben 1.0 to Ben 2.0. To the contrary, it is the process of downgrading the hardware from Ben 1.0 to Ben 0.0, then smashing the computer with a hammer and replacing it with a holy and perfect God. Everything that I do that is agreeable to you is God acting through me.
The result of God’s revelation of my own depravity is the one thread around which the second thread is tightly woven. The more I realize my own depravity, the more it results in the glorification of God, because I have eliminated myself—the most frequent usurper of glory—from the picture entirely.
Pastor John Piper’s says, “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.” Satisfaction in Christ is the second thread. The phrase “Satisfaction in Christ” bothered me for quite a bit of time—until about a week ago, actually. “Satisfaction in Christ” is one of those bits of Christian jargon that gets thrown around so recklessly that it causes real damage in the lives of Christians who are unsure of its meaning—and I would, until very recently, include myself in that category. Of course, as a Christian you have to say you are satisfied in Christ. But are the majority of us really satisfied in Christ? And if we really are satisfied wholly in Christ, then why do so many of us—myself included—feel so unsatisfied and flustered when our college football teams lose?
Of course, I have heard many testimonies of people who claimed to have formerly felt unsatisfied but now feel “completely satisfied in Christ”. Without experiencing it on my own, however, I wondered if they were all faking it—each one of them too afraid to either call one another out or admit that they were the only ones struggling. “There needs to be a whistleblower to expose this thing!” I thought. Won’t somebody step up and admit that “satisfaction in Christ” is a loose, impractical term that nobody has ever tangibly experienced?
Even more unsettling was the logical problem that the idea of satisfaction in Christ seemed to propose. On the one hand, we, as Christians, are supposed to be fully satisfied in Christ. We are also told, however, that it is good to hunger after God and to pursue Him daily. Hungering after more God and being satisfied in Him seemed, on the surface, to be incredibly contradictory. Though I knew, deep down, that these ideas couldn’t be contradictory (after all, many brilliant theologians have subscribed to both), I couldn’t see a logical way to find them compatible. I had pondered this day and night to no avail.
Finally, three days ago, the answer came to me as I was praying. It is no surprise to me that a) there was an answer—for God does not contradict himself, and b) that the answer was found by the Holy Spirit inside of me. Though you may groan and roll your eyes at this “Holy Spirit” nonsense, I at least urge you to consider the opposite—the fact that my logic couldn’t have found it. Yes, our logical brain searches the depths of our memory even after our consciousness has moved onto other subjects, but this only applies to things we already knew, had forgotten, and are searching for again. It does not apply, at least in my experience, to complicated, puzzling problems that we’ve never seen the answer to in the first place. I’ve never left a Sudoku puzzle blank, walked away from it, then had the entire answer pop into my brain out of the blue as I ate my dinner! The thought of such a thing is ludicrous! (If you do want to write off the occurrence as the former, however, and credit my logic to instantaneously finding the answer, you would at least have to believe that the answer was indeed something I once knew, had forgotten, and was hoping to find again—a surprisingly succinct summary of the whole of Christian Doctrine.)
Thus, the Bible would explain this strange happening as the Holy Spirit finding an answer. 1 Corinthians 2:10-12, tells us that, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”
While my spirit was in submission to God during this time of prayer three days ago, God provided me not with an answer, but with a feeling. It distinctively marked the very first time in my life that I had ever felt such a feeling. It was an overwhelming feeling of, “If I were to die today, I would be totally fine with that.” I was so excited about what seeing Christ will look like and so content with what Christ had already done that I literally felt as if the thought of death didn’t alarm me. Death didn’t have its “sting” (1 Corinthians 15:55)!
Though, as a Christian, I also knew that I was supposed to say that I would be okay with dying at any moment, I had never truly believed that. Truthfully, I would not be okay with that at all! I still wanted to get married to a beautiful wife, sleep with her (let’s be honest about this one, Christian men), have children, and become a father before that happened! I wanted to see the pyramids! I wanted to go to Rome! I wanted to have an occupation! For the first time, though, I tangibly and sincerely felt as though I would be completely fine if I died and saw the glory of Christ before any of those things had the chance to happen. It was at that moment that I realized the answer had come! That was satisfaction in Christ—satisfaction in my worldly situation, through Christ! It was the unspoken rumbling of the Spirit, though, that answered this for me. This rumbling preceded the logical knowledge.
Of course, the one issue that this satisfaction brings up is the issue of other people’s feelings. How are my friends supposed to feel when they hear, “I could never see you again, and still my soul would be satisfied?” More than that, how is my family supposed to feel? How is my future wife supposed to feel when she hears, “I would have been satisfied even if I had never met you”? This is only unsettling, however, when we ascribe to God a finite amount of love. No such limit exists, however, because God is infinite. Thus, it logically follows that when God imparts both his method and his amount of love unto me for me to then impart unto others (1 John 4:11), he provides me with an infinite supply of it.
Because my supply is infinite, I can desire to see the Glory of God more than ever, while still doggedly desiring to be reunited with my family in New Jersey! And oh, how I do desire this! How I do miss my father, and mother, and sister (note for future World Racers: You will miss your family.) God’s infinitude humbles our logic and renders possible the seemingly impossible. In fact, the more of this new satisfaction feeling I feel, the more I will take on the character of God—and this character will prompt me to love my neighbors all the more! God’s infinitude is the way that the apostle Paul can say, in one sentence that, “My joy knows no bounds” (1 Corinthians 7:4) and in another sentence say, “I have unceasing anguish in my heart” (Romans 9:2), when the two feelings seem to be diametrically opposed. Also, lest we argue that Paul simply felt joy at one time and anguish at another, the context of both verses tells us that he was feeling both of these feelings continuously, because of the constant state of his brothers in the world. If God was not infinite, then Paul would not be able to feel these feelings simultaneously. Every ounce of joy he felt would have erased an ounce of anguish and every ounce of anguish he felt would have robbed him of an ounce of joy. Praise be to God, however, that He is infinite!
The last thread is tied to the second thread. The last thread is “The Glory of God that is to be revealed.” As I felt this overwhelming feeling of satisfaction, I also felt an overwhelming feeling of excited anticipation. My senses and my knowledge could not even come close to comprehending what it would be like to see God and to see the great multitude praising His name. I know I will not giggle or clap, but rather I will fall facedown in worship—immediately. Such has been the response of everyone in the Bible who has seen God, even in small glimpses. I have no idea what the sight will look like, but I know it will be incomparable. Romans 8:18 says the sufferings of our present time “are not even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed…”
The best analogy I can think of—and even this does God a shameful injustice—comes from something a friend told me a few months back. My friend works for Pepsi and from time to time she is able to drink the freshly made Pepsi straight off of the conveyor belt. Supposedly, it is the freshest, purist tasting Pepsi ever. I, having never worked in a Pepsi factory, however, can’t even comprehend what she is talking about. I’ve had many old cans of Pepsi out of beat-up vending machines, but the Pepsi in those cans tastes delicious to me. When I first pop open the can, the Pepsi is strong and spicy, and the carbonation burns my nostrils. I still, to this day, cannot imagine how something can taste more pure than that. I will have to take my friend’s word that fresh factory Pepsi would blow my mind in ways that I currently have no ability to comprehend.
I liken our future experience of unhindered fellowship with God and the ability to gaze directly upon his face to factory Pepsi. Any great feeling I perceive now—be it a beautiful sunset, a kiss on the lips, or a delicious meal, is merely God’s original intent for our senses, translated, dulled, and watered-down many times over due to the fallen nature of this world—it’s all vending machine Pepsi! I long to experience the incomprehensible factory stuff!
How do these three threads—my depravity, satisfaction in Christ, and the Glory that is to be revealed—all relate, though? Shouldn’t they be three separate blogs instead of this one, obnoxiously long one? Perhaps they could be, but that would rob God of the credit he is due for the beauty of what he has woven together!
I could not appropriately glorify God until I had realized my own depravity and when I could finally glorify God in the most unhindered of ways, I could glorify him both for the satisfaction he’s already provided and the excited promises He will provide. Furthermore, the anticipation of the glory that is to be revealed provided much of the basis for my current satisfaction (in much the same way that we are quite satisfied, despite our circumstances on Christmas eve, because we know great gifts are coming in the morning!), and my satisfaction in Christ allowed me to freely admit my own depravity! All three threads are intricately interwoven. Praise be to the weaver.
