Spiritual Birthday Reflections

A year ago my life changed dramatically. I've been thinking about this change very much lately. I want to write about this change and tell you about it, but I don't want start on the wrong foot. The most important thing is, I didn't change me. Well, I've changed things about my life. I've changed routines, the media I consume, the way I spend my Friday nights...I've changed the way I act in many ways. But the change in me is much deeper than those things. The changes I've made have been in response to the deeper change God has made in me. I've been walking as a disciple of Jesus Christ for 365 days now. On June 3, 2012, I had an encounter with God where I truly grasped the simple beauty of the gospel message. The idea that I was unable to have a relationship with a holy God because I was a slave to my sinful nature. And yet, even in that state of separation, God loved me so much that He died to make it somehow possible that I could have a relationship with Him. So a year ago, in my sister's basement, I committed myself to knowing more about this God and living in that relationship which He paid so much to make possible. That same morning, I gave my heart and life to Jesus after a beautiful gospel message I heard at City Church in Madison, WI.  So with that said, I hope to get across the idea that I cannot take credit for the change in me, the Holy Spirit rightfully receives all the credit for this regenerative work.

A new man...just three weeks after my encounter with Jesus in 2012.

So, what's happened this last year? Well, seeing as how we serve a God of order, it seems only right that He brought me through four quarters of lessons and growth. The first quarter was amazing. It was a time where the joy of salvation was the dominate theme of my life. I realized why Christians used the phrases that they use, like Born Again for example. I felt Born Again. I felt like a new man. He freed me from the anxiety and depression that marked my adult life. I used to worry about everything. When I heard the gospel preached that June 3^rd morning at City Church, I heard Jesus tell me that I didn't need to worry about my life anymore. Matthew 6: 25-34, what a life changing teaching. Anyway, the point I'm trying to get across is, for three months, I lived in the joy of salvation. Scripture came alive with a richness I cannot explain. God was speaking to me in everything. From what I was reading, to the sermons I would listen to online, to the things I heard at church as I began to integrate myself into the body of Christ. It was awesome. 

The second quarter though, that was a different story. The old doubts came back. You see, I was raised in a Christian home, and I professed to be a Christian for many years, but when I left home after high school, I drifted further and further away from God. In my mid-twenties I started looking into (and buying) philosophical arguments against the existence of an all powerful, all knowing, all loving God. The problem of pain, suffering and evil caused me to abandon the God of the bible completely. I lived like a complete pagan for many years, finding my own spirituality in a weird mix of Eastern mysticism and New Age...stuff. So here I was, three months into this new relationship with the God of the bible, and these old doubts came back. I wrestled against them and came to a point where I felt so close to chalking my whole conversion experience up to some kind of brief psychotic delusion fueled by repressed emotional longings for a god who isn't there. But I learned something very important in that season, the promises of scripture are true. First, faith doesn't come from me. I can't just make it. Faith is a gift from God. The journey of faith with God requires that we immerse ourselves in His Word (Titus 1:13-14). In His Word, I was reading that there were people who struggled with their faith, and they asked Jesus to increase their faith, and he did. So I asked him too. I asked God to help me, because I didn't understand so many things, and it was kind of hard to believe that this whole story was true. I mean, who orders their entire life around a collection of writings which are thousands of years old? It's 2013 for crying out loud...we have the Internet! But little by little, God increased my faith. I can't really explain it. I did find things like debates and other videos on the internet where really smart people would discuss these things, and what they said helped. I mean, William Lane Craig is truly a blessing for Christians who struggle with believing the Bible and being intellectually satisfied. But it wasn't just some video I watched, or some treatise I read. No one really answered the deep objections I have to the problem of evil, and I'm still mulling over those things even today...but something is different now. I have faith now, and I can't really explain it outside of the idea that it is truly a gift from God (not to open any doctrinal worm cans about where faith comes from). For me, I can't really explain it any other way. I pleaded with God to help me through this valley of doubt, to not leave me, to help me understand, to give me faith...I had many people pray with me and for me, and I really struggled through...and then one day, I just believed..........the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus helped ;)

And speaking of doctrinal cans of worms, that brought me to the next quarter, the School of Amateur Doctrine. For the next three months, I was brought through this place where I was really concerned about doctrine and all that. I really struggled with the idea of Biblical inerrancy and what it meant. Did Noah really fit a million different species of animals in the ark, or was it okay to view it as allegory? What about Calvinism vs. Armenianism. What about the sign gifts...tongues and prophesy and people falling down and all that weird stuff? You see, God put me in a pretty charismatic church in City Church, and I really struggled with a lot of the doctrine stuff because I was learning things from my own perspective, based a lot on what I had learned in the fundamentalist church I was raised in. I dove into the doctrine stuff to see what I believed on things like soteriology, eschatology, and the sign gifts. And I've come out to comfortable answers on each of these major questions. I lean pretty heavy on the reformed side...I believe the 5 Doctrines of Grace are what scripture teaches about the nature of man and the nature of salvation. I believe the sign gifts are not for today. I think I'm amillennial, but still have no real clue about what the heck is going on there. So yes, I've worked out some of these things, but that's not the point. First off, I've only been doing this for a short while and still have so much to learn. More importantly though, the Lord taught me something extremely important in this whole process. You see, at first it was about me finding the right answer. There had to be a right way and if you didn't believe the right way you were either ignorant, misled, or a heretical wolf in sheep's clothing trying your best to do the devil's work of deception on us elect chosen ones. Ha. But seriously, I was really hung up on this stuff and allowed it to rob me of that joy I experienced so much in that first quarter. I'm still pressing out the doctrine stuff. I know it's important, and I'm not just going to be like, “Oh, doctrine is not really important, all you need is love.” I think that's a wrong attitude which leads to misunderstandings about the nature of God and His desire for how we should live. But what the Lord really impressed on me was this idea that He sees my heart. He sees our hearts...that inner part we can't disguise. We cannot fool Him. We cannot heap up the right platitudes, the right words. There is nothing we can do externally that will cause Him to miss the internal. Looking at Christian life, at church life, and at doctrine from this perspective has really helped me move away from some legalistic quest to figure it all out, into a more comfortable place where I accept different interpretations on the non-essential doctrines and have more liberty to allow people—and myself—to worship God with their heart.

My best attempts to mimic a great theologian during my transition from Doubt to Amateur Doctrine.

Lastly, like any good period of instruction, the Lord put me through a season of practical application. I drove a taxi cab for the last three months leading up to my departure on this great African adventure. You see, what is the point of the Christian life? Why does God keep us here after we receive salvation? I think the easiest answer I can come up with is that God wants sons and daughters...and to do that, He sent His son, to redeem us and bring us in to relationship with God. Then the Holy Spirit renews us and makes us more like His son, which is to say, God sends His Spirit into us to make us more like Jesus, or to put it a different way, God is making us more like Himself. Not into Him, but into His likeness. So what does this actually look like? Well, we know a lot about Jesus' character from the four gospels. He gave us pretty clear instructions on how we should live. He told us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and similarly, to love our neighbor as our self. Two commandants to replace/restate/summarize the whole of the law and the prophets. So, in that taxi driving season, God showed me my neighbors. He showed me poor people, drunk people, rich people, honest and hardworking people, reallllllly lazy people (who takes a taxi two blocks?...*cough*...frat girls...*cough*) kind people, arrogant and rude people...people from every walk of life. I played a pretty intimate role in their lives: I drove them around on their errands, heard their conversations, listened to their stories, and was able to see life in my city from a new and different way. He showed me all kinds of things in people, taught me all kinds of practical lessons about humility, patience, preconceived notions and prejudice. He showed me the reality of poverty (even in wealthy city like Madison). I shared several painful moments with people...the two separate times I drove women to the ER while they were miscarrying their unborn child come to mind. I prayed with complete strangers. Tried to speak God's truth and the message of His joy into their lives. I tried to be like Jesus more and more. I practiced listening to people, really listening to them, not just letting them talk or waiting my turn either. I don't know. Maybe I'm being dramatic, or maybe when God says we are being transformed into His likeness, He isn't kidding. Again, I've only just begun this journey, and there is much work to do. But in these last three months, the Lord has impressed on me the importance of imitating Christ, and the importance of loving my neighbor.

So that's a year. Three months of Cloud Nine, three months of the Valley of the Shadow of Doubt, three months in the School of Amateur Doctrine, and three months in field, living out the gospel. What a work the Lord has worked. What's more amazing is how He worked that work...namely through His people, speaking His truth into my life. I am so very grateful for the men and women God has put in my life this last year. Those who took time to pray with me, to encourage me, to share with me, to listen to me, to guide and mentor me, to show me, through their example, how to be more like Jesus. For some reason—I haven't quite figured it out yet—God chooses to accomplish His will through humans. He works through His people. I don't understand it, and I would surely do it differently if I were Him. But He does. How will the world see Jesus? He will transform the lives of sinners so that they will exemplify His love for the world. For some reason, I think that's going to be a big part of what He teaches me over this next year. He took a pretty serious sinner—washed him, clothed him, fed him, taught him, equipped him and now, He's sending him. I don't know what this year in Kenya will bring. I don't know what lessons the Lord has for me to learn. I don't know how many months will be spent on the mountain, or how many in the valley, but I do know this....He who began a good work in me will carry it out unto completion. That's pretty cool. 

Full circle...a year to the date in Washington for IJM Orientation.