During my childhood years, our family attended a church in a denomination that focused largely on controlling the external behaviors of its congregants: no drinking, no dancing, no cussing, no going to certain types of places or viewing certain forms of entertainment. The theory seemed to be that if you put in enough guardrails on behavior, you’d avoid all the pitfalls of immorality and produce righteousness in your life.

What it actually produced, from young to old, was a group of people who were highly skilled at lying about who they really were and who lived in fear of being known. In quiet, behind closed doors, lived drunkards, people with marital problems who couldn’t seek help in the church, arrogant jerks who looked down on others based on their own ability to abstain from select sins on the “really bad” end of the list, congregants who cussed proficiently and meant every word with malice, gossips, sexual involvement outside of God’s design… The list goes on. People did what they needed to do to keep the façade in place, but meetings were filled with prettied-up rotting corpses.

In short, the church was filled with human beings. Human beings who knew that their behavior was wrong, who understood that none of it was a good look, but who lived powerless to actually change it. When they went into public, they covered it up as best they could, endured the meetings that salved their sense of guilt a bit, then went home to live another day.

My heart breaks because it remains the same today. So many of our churches are filled with people who are lying their way through life, quietly hoping that they never get found out, desperately wanting to do better – BE better – but constantly finding their efforts to be in vain.

A people who serve God with their lips but whose hearts are far from Him.

The tragedy of it is that there’s a solution. The whole of God’s interaction with mankind was woven together to bring it to us. We weren’t created to live in this quiet desperation; we were created to live in victory and beauty, in relationship with God Himself.

The good news of Jesus is that because He died, He paid the price for all that rottenness in us. Because He was perfect and had no rottenness of His own, He was not bound by death and was therefore able to rise again to life. Because the purity of His perfection was enough to eliminate the whole of the rest of the world’s rottenness, we can be restored to life as well. Actual, new, from-the-inside-out life; not just a desperate, repetitive covering-over and patching-up of the externally exposed decay of a walking death.

That new life doesn’t involve hiding. It doesn’t have any need for falsifying the public record of who we are. It flows with true goodness, because the internal reality is one of goodness. We become able to do right things because it is coming out of who we really are; it’s not an act we have to maintain. It’s not exhausting. It frees us from the constant looking over our shoulder to make sure nobody’s watching; it allows us to put down our comparisons to others that lead to arrogance or despair.

The new life that Jesus brings also comes with a source of power – Holy Spirit – who keeps the old rottenness in us from gaining authority again, even though we are living in the same world with the same people around us. We don’t have to be afraid of what we know about who we were in the past. Holy Spirit in us, according to the Bible, SEALS us. He fills up all the gaps and makes us air-tight. The newness and goodness that Jesus brings doesn’t leak out, and the old rottenness doesn’t gain entry again.

We forget that sometimes. Just as we once covered up our rottenness with a false beauty, sometimes we cover up our new beauty with old activities and attitudes that make us look rotten on the outside. But here’s the glorious hope: because it’s just on the outside now, we can be cleaned up again. Over and over, we can allow the water of the Word of God to cleanse us, to wash away the grubby stuff we went and got ourselves into, and to allow the TRUTH of who we are because of the life of Jesus and the power of Holy Spirit to shine once more. The more we experience the joy and freedom of walking in that clean freshness, the less and less we find ourselves playing in the graveyards full of rotten flesh.
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I pray that if you are one of those rotting corpses dressing yourself up, doing the “right” activities to look good and beautiful but knowing that it’s all an act, you will let the mask fall to the ground. I pray that you’ll stop playing the game of dress-up and let yourself acknowledge that no amount of costuming can cover the reek of the decay inside. I pray that you will instead put on the new life that was bought and paid for by Jesus, and allow Holy Spirit to be your power, strength, and seal. You don’t have to be good on your own. You can’t. You know it. Won’t you stop lying to yourself and accept the freedom that comes from walking in Truth?
 

Roots. Little tendrils at the very base of a plant or tree weave themselves down into the soil. Taproots drive straight and deep, providing the stability and foundation that the plant requires to stay upright. Fibrous, lateral roots spread widely throughout the immediate environment, seeking nutrients and water for growth. Without this network, the plant’s growth is stunted and its life is cut short.

I have been wrestling this week with some of the words that the Lord has spoken to me. He has (as you heard in my previous blog) reminded me that His word itself brings testing. It doesn’t feel great. Remaining solid and unwavering as His word brings difficulties into your life is hard. Recognizing that there are areas where you need to grow, seeking out the sources of nutrition and the refreshing places that will water you to accomplish that growth – those things take effort that is sometimes exhausting.

As I sat with His word and put my exhaustion before my caring Father, He gently led me to Matthew 13. Verses 20 and 21  read:
               “And the one sown on rocky ground – this is one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. But he has no root and is short-lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, immediately he falls away.”

No root. The ground [the person’s life] that this seed [this word from the Lord] falls into receives it! This is not a parable of someone rejecting Jesus or His word. This person gets excited! They are joyful! Here is a seed worth growing! … But then stuff happens.

I’ve had to sit with this one and let the Lord speak. This isn’t just about how we respond to the initial word about who Jesus is, the forgiveness that He offers us, and the reconciliation back to relationship with God that we can have in Him. It’s about how we CONTINUE to respond as he plants His word in us.

How often have we heard the Lord, received His word into our lives, gotten really excited about it… and then within a very short period of time, abandoned it? Have we been convicted to start something, to use our gifting in some way, to practice a discipline, and a week later can’t even remember what we were so excited about? I have seen it over and over in my years in the church. There’s even language for it in organized religious settings: “the youth camp high,” the “mountaintop experience” the “Kumbaya moment.” We recognize that it is happening, give it verbiage, and then keep doing it!
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Lord, convict our hearts. Convict MY heart. Let us turn away from this endless cycle of getting excited about what You plant in us and then not leaning on the root system You provide to sustain us. The things You plant require YOU in us to grow. We need You. Let the tap root of our relationship with the Father through Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit run deep. Let the lateral root system of connection to other believers, of study and conversation, of relationship and rest grow strong and intertwined so that we are not knocked sideways without support. Father, as Your word in us brings distraction, distress, even opposition and pain, may the above-ground, visible part of our lives continue to flourish, flower, and produce fruit because we have established the root system well. 

I came. I saw. I conquered.

We like the neatness of that. The succinct progression from observation to overcoming. Somehow, we have subconsciously come to expect that to be the reality of life once we submit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. He is, after all, in us through the Holy Spirit, giving us power and authority. It should be easy, right?

But that’s not our lived experience.

Our experience is full of hardship. It’s messy and awkward. Our growth has fits and starts. Stuff doesn’t work out the way it should. Even when we are absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure that we have heard the word of the Lord on something, and we are walking in it faithfully, we have struggles and troubles. In those moments of trouble, we have a tendency to either condemn ourselves (Where is my faith? What is my sin?) or blame the devil (My enemy has come against me!). Sometimes we’re right; the fault lies in one of those two places, we identify it, and correct or combat it.

There’s a third option for why we’re going through what we’re going through. It’s a hard one to wrap our brains around. What if the circumstances and situations we are facing are exactly what we need to be facing to accomplish that word of the Lord that we heard and are walking in?

Psalm 105 is a recounting of the faithfulness of God. Amid praising God for His kept promises and upholding hand, his miracles and his righteous judgements, come these verses:

When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread,
he had sent a man ahead of them,
Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
His feet were hurt with fetters; his neck was put in a collar of iron;
until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him.
Psalm 105:16-19

Joseph was given a dream directly from the Lord. It prophesied his role in God’s Kingdom and his relationship to others. It was clear and promised greatness. And for the entire time in Joseph’s life from when it was given until when it was fulfilled, the very word of God to him caused strife in Joseph’s life.

He did not sin in recounting his dream to his family. His brothers’ sin against him in enslaving him was not a direct attack from the devil, although it was an outgrowth of their own fleshly desires. Nothing in his story recounts Satan asking God for permission to thwart him as in Job’s story, nor does it say that Joseph faltered in his faithfulness. He heard God. He believed God. He obeyed God. And he suffered. UNTIL the word of God came to pass.

Yet it was in the path of his suffering that his purpose was made possible. Without his enslavement, he would have remained at home. He would never have been in the right place to save his family and nation. Without false accusations against him by Potiphar’s wife, he would never have met the baker and the cupbearer in the prison and revealed his gift for the interpretation of dreams. The cupbearer would have no cause to present Joseph as a solution to Pharoah’s troubling dreams. Joseph would have had no opportunity to rise to the position foretold to him in the dream at his father’s home. Not only would his purpose never have been fulfilled without the path of suffering, but his family would have starved and his nation died.
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Y’all, sometimes God gives you a promise. It is clear and distinct and glorious. Be careful not to dismiss the struggles along the path to its fulfilment as your fault or the enemy’s attacks; often, the way of faithfulness leads through the troubles that are necessary to put you in the place of promise. Sometimes, it is the very word that God has given, the very faithfulness in its fulfillment, that is testing you. It is refining you and positioning you, revealing the giftings in you, so that when it comes to pass, His purposes and glory are revealed for you and your family…and maybe even your nation.  

I am missing two of my dearest friends this morning. As I sit here, hot peppermint tea on the side table, feet propped up, listening to the gentle song of windchimes and watching the sun rise over the horizon on my back porch, I am wishing I was sharing this moment with them. The funny thing is that the vast majority of our twenty-plus years of friendship has been spent NOT sharing moments like this.

We lived in the same place for about 7 years before I moved away, putting the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico between us. During that time together, all 3 of us added children to our families and the bonds that connected us grew unbreakable. In more recent years, all 3 of us have relocated, creating even more geographical distance. Yet, we continue to grow more deeply connected, more determined to support one another, and more sure of our love for one another. Our kids all see each other as extended siblings, having grown up together somehow across the miles.  We know how rare and precious this gift of friendship is in our lives.

As I read so much of what finds its way into my social media accounts, as I see the personal tragedies unfold on news outlets, as I watch local police blotters and hear the latest court dockets, it saddens me. Despite the ease of electronic communication, so many today seem to lack the kind of connection that I have described. The standard seems to be wariness, doubt, and distrust between people.
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How did we get so fortunate, then? What cemented us together? Could it be replicated in the lives of others who are lonely and desperate for people to walk through life with?

There’s not a fool-proof formula, but there are definitely some principles and practices that have formed the foundation of our friendship. They may be worth a try if you are looking to become one of those “friends that stick closer than a brother.”

First, I’ll tell you that not one of us is an extrovert. We’re all friendly. We love people. But, y’all, they exhaust us. Given that temperament, it is especially interesting that we found one another. We’re not even immediate peers; our ages span a decade. Each one of us had to decide at some point to make ourselves uncomfortable. We looked at one another, saw somebody that could probably use a friend, and offered ourselves. Cautiously, each of us accepted the offer. In the early stages, it was awkward silence sometimes as we figured out how much of ourselves we were willing to share and how to broach certain subjects. Bit by bit, we embraced the discomfort and learned together to listen without judgement and speak without fear.

On the foundation of that willingness to be uncomfortably vulnerable, we added “Parlor Prayertime.” This practice, more than any other, is what I believe made our friendship a permanent, life-long one. At the time, we all attended the same church which had a small parlor room for intimate gatherings.  My husband was a pastoral staff member and held keys (we lived on-property in a parsonage, too, so access was easy). We were all moms with little kids & little time to ourselves. But we made time to meet in this neutral place – no kids demanding attention, no housework distracting our focus, no job demands spiraling through our brains – just the three of us in a pretty room with one purpose: to pray for one another. That room saw our tears. Heard our frustrations. Was the safe place where we wrestled with our inadequacies. Rang with our shared laughter and rejoicing. When you bring your friendships to the Father in prayer, when you link arms and do battle in spiritual realms for your sisters (or brothers!), you learn to love them with a love that does not fail.

You may find, at times, that you deeply disagree on things that matter. You may have different interests, different life circumstances, and different family dynamics. It won’t matter. You’ll navigate it. You’ll have found ways to respect even in your differences. You’ll gain an understanding of what it is to “speak the truth in love.”  You’ll find ways to support and encourage that don’t diminish or belittle. You’ll have learned, in the vulnerability and openness before God, to see your friends as the Father does. And you’ll learn the value of forgiveness.
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Are you lonely? Do you attend church but lack friends there because you suspect that if you offered yourself, you’d just meet judgement and dismissal? Maybe you’re convinced that they’d only be interested in using you transactionally to fill a need of their own, not truly want you as a relational friend.  May I encourage you to ask the Father to highlight someone to your heart? Ask Him to give you the boldness to approach them and offer a conversation; let Him hold your discomfort and potentially make something lasting and beautiful of it. I promise you: you’re not the only one who needs that kind of connection.