Grace in Motion
What motivates
you? What keeps you up at night? Gets you out of bed in the morning? What captivates your heart so completely that
you compromise other goals or values to achieve, preserve, or prevent it? One of the most powerful motivators in the
human experience is fear. Unfortunately,
I had never given much thought to what my greatest fears are and how they
affect my life.
Most people are willing
to admit “surface” fears, or common fears.
Some may even be willing to admit deeper fears, the kind that may not
seem shared by most people. But few are
willing to engage in the open heart surgery of dissecting how deeply their
fears affect their lives. I know that I’m
not! Actively probing the areas of your
heart that are so sensitive, so painful, so tender that you would prefer to compromise
other values or goals than face these fears – that is the kind of crazy step
that few people take until circumstances force them to.
This is the path that
God, the Good Shepherd, has brought me to in the past few months. At our small group a few weeks ago, Kristy
shared that she felt like I was emotionally distant from her. Her heart desires
to have a marriage that feels like a friendship, where we enjoy each other and
talk freely, openly, and deeply – just because.
There’s a part of my
heart that for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, God doesn’t have full
control over. For years I have been
afraid of my marriage falling apart. Now,
I must clarify, Kristy has done nothing to cause this fear in me. This is on me alone. But boy is it on me. Out of fear, I try to protect myself. I close off emotionally. Out of fear, I don’t invest in my bride as I
should, afraid that one day I’ll be made out to be a fool. I’m afraid of getting hurt. So I pull back. I protect myself.
Paradoxically, this
kind of self-preservation causes the emotional distance in a relationship that
contributes to many marriages falling apart.
So by trying to protect myself, I’m actually advancing the circumstances
that lead to the very thing I’m trying to avoid. I thank God that He took the initiative to
lay my heart on His operating table, a step that I would never take on my own
initiative.
One thing that fear
does is expose our idols. John Flavel
says that the strength of our fear is directly proportional to our love for
this world. When I can look at a
situation with so much fear that I would say, “God if that happens, I can’t be
faithful to you,” that reveals that I am worshipping some other god. In my marriage, when I instinctively choose
to protect myself instead of entrusting myself to God by being faithful to His
commands, then I’m telling God that I know better than He does. That my will, my desires, my heart, my hurts
are more important than His glory. And that
is a very scary place to live.
Beyond this, I believe
that God has been preparing my heart to cling to Him as we leave the church that
has become our family. The last few sermons
I preached at Faith Community Church elicited more compliments and criticism
than I have received in some time. In
general, this is an issue leaders must deal with. Some people love your ideas, some hate them,
and some just want to use you to advance their own agenda, whatever that may
be.
From so many angles, my
heart is being pried open by the hand of God and He is teaching me to trust
Him. Am I going to feel better about
myself when people loft praise in my direction?
Am I going to feel worse when they sling criticism? Am I going to protect myself from even the
potential of pain? Jesus alone offers our souls rest from all of
these pressures.
Whom shall I fear? What shall I be afraid of? At the cross, the God of heaven abandoned the
greatest Treasure in the universe to rescue my soul from the pit of
despair. Not only that, but He did this
while I was still His enemy. If God is
willing to sacrifice His son for us while we were His enemies, how much more
will He lavish His grace on us now that we have been adopted into His heavenly
family?
Will I be puffed up by
the praise of people? Because of what Jesus
did for me at the cross, God looks at me and declares I am an ambassador, a
spokesman for the King of the universe! Why
in the world would I settle for such a low goal of hearing people say, “good
job,” when I have the potential of hearing God tell me on that Day, “well done,
enter my joy.”
Will I get crushed by the
criticism of the crowds? I AM
guilty! People can only criticize me for
what they see. And what they see is only
the tip of the iceberg of one messed up heart.
And at the cross, Jesus absorbed my guilt, fully paying the penalty for my
sin. What’s more, He rose from the grave
and placed His Spirit within my heart, renewing my soul and rearranging me,
from the inside out. As John Newton
said, “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I
hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the
grace of God I am what I am.”
Oh the freedom that
only comes from the cross! What can
compare to living a life surrendered to the glory of God!
Planters Progress
The last two months
have been an emotional whirlwind filled with the painful joy of closure. Both Kristy and I served during a worship
service at Faith Community for the last time.
We served at Faithworks, our church’s mission trip to our own town, for
the final time as well.
Beyond this, I have
been working to transition out of my pastoral responsibilities at Faith while
getting all of the logistics of moving worked out on the Milwaukee side of
things. Other than this, we’ve continued
to pound the pavement raising support, as we’re still not fully funded AND we
have been given a great opportunity to set up this new church on sound
finances. An extremely generous donor has agreed to match all gifts contributedto our work funds before September 30th, up to $30,000! Through this extravagantly generous gift,
God could set us up to be an extravagantly generous church, right off the
bat!
Next Steps
The next month is going
to be busy for us. On Sunday we are
going to be commissioned by our church family.
After this, we are hosting an event to share the vision that God has
given us for Milwaukee. This Sunday will
be a long, emotional day.
On August 1st
we’ll be picking up our Uhaul and on the following day we’ll be signing the
papers to close on our new home in Milwaukee.
Then over the next five
weeks, I’ll be preaching at four different churches on four different Sundays. On the one Sunday that I’m not preaching, I
have the privilege of coming back to New Richmond to officiate the wedding of a
fantastic couple. It is simply a joy to
marry kids that used to be in your youth group and have grown up to be young
men and women who love God.
Thank you so much for
all of your support! As you can see,
there is much going on and much to pray for.
We can’t do this without you! And
even if we could, we wouldn’t want to!
No comments:
Post a Comment