I can't really put my finger on this or perhaps fully articulate it, but I have got to confess that I am strangely worried these days.
Anybody else?
This is a hard thing to describe. A knot in my stomach. A lingering doubt. It really seems closest to that feeling you get as a child when you are about to get caught for something you did wrong. About to get found out. I suppose there are plenty of reasons to be afraid these days: the economy, swine flu, the wait for interest rates to hit my target before they spiral up and out of reach and blow my chance to refinance this crazy loan (ok, that last one is a bit specific). Heck, I'm sure I've done several things - recently, even - that I really could get caught for, if I'm going to be honest!
But here's the problem: In spite of the economy and the swine flu and all the other things that could be worrisome, I'm actually doing pretty well. Great job. Great family. Great friends. Deepening relationships. A future so bright and all that... So what is this pervasive and disquieting doubt?
I have, for the last year or so, been working to unify myself. I've been watching for signs of "work Tom" or "home Tom" or "church Tom" and, little by little, drawing them all into a single "Tom" that doesn't have to work so damn hard all the time at matching his circumstance. In my small circle we call these "other me's" The Poser(s) - a simple and accurate label for a wide ranging problem. What is far less simple, for me, is the manner in which I discern The Poser from The Real Me...I mean, honestly, who can tell? My 36 years of hard work in this regard makes that answer far tougher than you might think.
So this idea of "being caught" makes some measure of sense, given the whole Poser issue, right? And I think the circumstances of life (Global Warming, Economy, Interest Rates, insert-universal-concern-here) are likely accomplices in hightening my fear. I mean the implications of failure, of being caught, really are severely hightened, right? The stakes in this game are fairly great, aren't they? This all makes so much sense that I'm nearly ready to move on, to stomach my fear and "man up." I'm ready to get back to the work of life save for this one, lingering question:
Who am I afraid of?
I mean, really, who exactly is going to do "the catching?"
I do not believe that my God is in the business of lurking nearby, lying in wait to pounce on my failings... ready to celebrate my losses. Or do I? "The currency of the kingdom is belief," my friend Tad often says. Doesn't my ongoing fear betray my supposed statement of belief?
So now I'm in trouble. My fear is obviously symptomatic of my disbelief...my doubt...my sin. I'm blowing it - no wonder I'm afraid of being caught. I fundamentally doubt it all, doubt God's goodness, and my life reflects that doubt through anxiety and fear. So now I've got fear and I've got guilt over my fear and I better find someplace quiet to pray and repent and hope for rescue. Man - where is an altar when I need one?"
Oh, wait. Hope. Rescue. A "unified" me. Transformed.
Man - the enemy moves fast in my life; spiraling through layers into ever deepening darkness. Fear. Death. Anxiety. Bad news yet to come. And guilt over it all. Didn't Christ say something about the sparrows once? Didn't He say "so much more than they?"
I heard a quote today from a fella named Irenaeus: "The Glory of God is man fully alive." Unified. Fully. Alive. No Posing.
And the enemy hates it.
Is it more likely that God is convicting me in all this, or that the enemy wants me to live convicted? If I am living toward His glory by becoming more fully alive, and I can count on that movement being opposed by the one who seeks to devour and destroy, it doesn't make a lot of sense to credit the fear OR the guilt to the Lord...does it?
I do not know how soon God will unknot this fear. I do not know His plan for me in detail (though I think this writing, this working through, is a part of His plan). I do not know what else to do but try to remember, "I believe...please help my unbelief." But I do not choose to carry this burden or the rest of the baggage that the enemy conspires (yes conspires...implying "with me") to heap on top of it. I do not choose to live in my fear or even to "man up" in spite of it.
"The opposite of fear is love," my Dad once said. It is perhaps the truest positive lesson he ever taught me. Heck, it even sounds biblical (ok, see 1 John 4:18 if you like to connect the dots).
Unifying Me is my labor of love to God's greater glory in the midst of fear and doubt...in this face of this fear, I guess I'll choose to love.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Mamer's Lesson
I went to my Grandma's funeral this past weekend. This is my Mom's mom...a great woman, the second-oldest of seven (all six of the rest were boys), who emerges in some of my best childhood memories alongside my Grandpa, now nearly 30 years deceased himself. "Mamer," as we called her (though I don't know that any of us really know why) actually died before Christmas but we laid her ashes to rest this spring in the family lot beside her husband, Tom, my namesake.
We held a brief and informal ceremony for her in the chapel at the resthome of her only surviving sibling, my Great Uncle Randy, before heading out to the cemetary. It was a small service but afforded my mom and her sisters each a chance to remember their Mom to us all.
The three eldest sisters, my Mom included, each focused on the lessons they learned from their mom - a normal topic for such an occasion, of course. They spoke of the expectations she set for them and of the difficulties they sometimes had living up to her standards, though all the time crediting that standard for making them into the women they are today.
Her daughters were giving credit to her for requiring them to become something better - a wonderful tribute...yet somehow this very idea was entirely disconnected, if by nothing else but time, from my personal experience of my Grandma.
Circumstances intruded on my participation of the service at this point. One of my sons was losing interest, demanding my attention, and I was only able to half-listen to the youngest sister share her thoughts. There is about an 11 year difference between the oldest and the youngest in my Mom's family, so my Aunt Cathy had an understandably different recollection of her mom. From what little attention I could spare for her talk, I culled one clear idea:
She remembered her Mother as a friend.
As cool as this was to hear it still somehow missed the mark for me. Though slightly. I remember Mamer as a playmate and hug, as a lap and a bedtime story, as a destination for adventure somehow different from a normal weekend. Yet none of that is quite right either.
Now I don't know about other folks, but I have a hard time attending a funeral without at some point hearing this phrase play out in my head: "we don't mourn as those who have no hope." That's actually my memory's paraphrase of a passage in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 - something I wouldn't normally be able to reference very handily, but I took the time to look it up this week. I never before realized that this passage of hope comes at the tail end of a fairly long list of what I traditionally think of as, "thou shalt not's." Basically, Paul spends the first 12 verses of this chapter seeking to give us clear directions on "Living to Please God" (or so the NIV labels it).
I think it is incredibly easy to read Paul's words as a list of obligations...an outline of ideals that we should each try to attain, to maintain, yet which we could all agree we're likely to fall short of in one way or another...eventually. But one thing is clear:
Paul is describing a standard.
Sitting in Mamer's funeral, listening to my Mom and her sisters speak, I had a hard time connecting with their remembrance because my experience of my Grandma is so fully encompassed in my memory of the times we came together as an extended family - truly some of the purest joys of my youth. My memory is of four sisters and their Mom telling story after story - interrupting and correcting one another - enjoying their shared history and laughing through it all. My memory is of excited (though long) journeys and anticipated arrivals...and of tearful goodbyes. My memory is of the depth of love and relationship that these women, and me by extension, enjoyed whenever they were together.
The four sister's memory at this time of loss is of the standard their mother set; a standard they all held in common. And of the memory of a friendship lost.
My memory is of the relationship shared and enjoyed between us all.
You know, even on my best days I so readily lose sight of God's promise in my life. His promise of freedom in Him and the idea that He really does have my best interest at heart. I lose sight of it because I all too easily focus on the standard that I continually fall short of...as if the standard was the prize. But its not. Its the springboard to joy. It is imperfectly lived out in my life. It might be perceived by many as rigid or crumbling or ill-stacked...certainly ill-fitting...but for me it is buoyant and even joyous when I recognize it only as a stage that enables my relationship with God to play out. Imperfect though it may be.
The standard, the lessons, the growth are valuable and important and even critical perhaps. But they are not the relationship. It is the relationship I covet. It is the relationship with God that I will never mourn because I do not live as those without hope.
In the midst of our shared loss, it is the relationship that lives on between my mom and her sisters that continues to celebrate the life of the woman we lost. Thanks Mamer.
We held a brief and informal ceremony for her in the chapel at the resthome of her only surviving sibling, my Great Uncle Randy, before heading out to the cemetary. It was a small service but afforded my mom and her sisters each a chance to remember their Mom to us all.
The three eldest sisters, my Mom included, each focused on the lessons they learned from their mom - a normal topic for such an occasion, of course. They spoke of the expectations she set for them and of the difficulties they sometimes had living up to her standards, though all the time crediting that standard for making them into the women they are today.
Her daughters were giving credit to her for requiring them to become something better - a wonderful tribute...yet somehow this very idea was entirely disconnected, if by nothing else but time, from my personal experience of my Grandma.
Circumstances intruded on my participation of the service at this point. One of my sons was losing interest, demanding my attention, and I was only able to half-listen to the youngest sister share her thoughts. There is about an 11 year difference between the oldest and the youngest in my Mom's family, so my Aunt Cathy had an understandably different recollection of her mom. From what little attention I could spare for her talk, I culled one clear idea:
She remembered her Mother as a friend.
As cool as this was to hear it still somehow missed the mark for me. Though slightly. I remember Mamer as a playmate and hug, as a lap and a bedtime story, as a destination for adventure somehow different from a normal weekend. Yet none of that is quite right either.
Now I don't know about other folks, but I have a hard time attending a funeral without at some point hearing this phrase play out in my head: "we don't mourn as those who have no hope." That's actually my memory's paraphrase of a passage in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 - something I wouldn't normally be able to reference very handily, but I took the time to look it up this week. I never before realized that this passage of hope comes at the tail end of a fairly long list of what I traditionally think of as, "thou shalt not's." Basically, Paul spends the first 12 verses of this chapter seeking to give us clear directions on "Living to Please God" (or so the NIV labels it).
I think it is incredibly easy to read Paul's words as a list of obligations...an outline of ideals that we should each try to attain, to maintain, yet which we could all agree we're likely to fall short of in one way or another...eventually. But one thing is clear:
Paul is describing a standard.
Sitting in Mamer's funeral, listening to my Mom and her sisters speak, I had a hard time connecting with their remembrance because my experience of my Grandma is so fully encompassed in my memory of the times we came together as an extended family - truly some of the purest joys of my youth. My memory is of four sisters and their Mom telling story after story - interrupting and correcting one another - enjoying their shared history and laughing through it all. My memory is of excited (though long) journeys and anticipated arrivals...and of tearful goodbyes. My memory is of the depth of love and relationship that these women, and me by extension, enjoyed whenever they were together.
The four sister's memory at this time of loss is of the standard their mother set; a standard they all held in common. And of the memory of a friendship lost.
My memory is of the relationship shared and enjoyed between us all.
You know, even on my best days I so readily lose sight of God's promise in my life. His promise of freedom in Him and the idea that He really does have my best interest at heart. I lose sight of it because I all too easily focus on the standard that I continually fall short of...as if the standard was the prize. But its not. Its the springboard to joy. It is imperfectly lived out in my life. It might be perceived by many as rigid or crumbling or ill-stacked...certainly ill-fitting...but for me it is buoyant and even joyous when I recognize it only as a stage that enables my relationship with God to play out. Imperfect though it may be.
The standard, the lessons, the growth are valuable and important and even critical perhaps. But they are not the relationship. It is the relationship I covet. It is the relationship with God that I will never mourn because I do not live as those without hope.
In the midst of our shared loss, it is the relationship that lives on between my mom and her sisters that continues to celebrate the life of the woman we lost. Thanks Mamer.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Repenting my Independence
I recently spent some time studying and seeking God, an admittedly rarer occasion in its intentionality, for me, than I like to confess! I’m working my way through a book called “The Way of the Wild Heart” and I found my beliefs disrupted by this passage:
“…we turn from our independence and all the ways we either charge at life or shrink from it, this may be one of the most basic and the most crucial ways a man repents. I say ‘repent’ because our approach to life is based on the conviction that God, for the most part, doesn’t show up much. We must be willing to take an enormous risk, and open our hearts to the possibility that God is initiating us as men – maybe even in the very things in which we thought he’d abandoned us. We open ourselves up to being fathered.”
A strikingly different interpretation, for me, of the term “repentance.” I mean, don’t I repent of the things I’ve done wrong? Of the mistakes I’ve made? What in heaven is this idea that I should repent of my “approach to life?”
At church this past Sunday our pastor delved into the 4th chapter of 1st Corinthians – a chapter that has Paul asserting himself as a father might assert himself to his (wayward) children. I was reviewing this in “The Message” and found Paul chiming in with a similar theme: “There are a lot of people around who can’t wait to tell you what you’ve done wrong, but there aren’t many fathers willing to take the time and effort to help you grow up. (within 4.14-16)” And then, in 4.20, he says “God’s Way is not a matter of mere talk; it’s an empowered life.”
So I’m staring at this page in a workbook that is asking me to consider “What must I repent of?” and I’m struck by the utter frankness of it. That my “repentance” has, for most of my life, been a very shallow and childish thing. Something I felt in earnest and sought faithfully for the errors I made; but something I never dove deeply enough into to truly be washed clean. Rinse, wash, repeat. And now, here is someone essentially saying, “your attack plan for life – running into the battle against your fears or succumbing to them, either way – it is all built on your false, fatal notion of independence…you have been ‘repenting’ of symptoms and overlooked your illness!” Not just that, but because I haven’t recognized my fundamental, basic distrust of God… my basic belief that He “doesn’t show up much”… I’ve broken my relationship with Him in a way that makes me feel abandoned! In a way that makes me fatherless. In a way that makes me un-empowered.
And so now this new repentance is not just a command: Repent of Your Sins! It is an invitation to disavow the lie that I am independent and begin living the truth that God is involved and that He wants to initiate me as His son! Is it selfish to seek repentance for this, apparently “truer,” sin when my real motive is to clamor over it as a hurdle, a wall, a mountain, that keeps me from God? My repentance of things has always seemed more meek, more self-effacing than this! Or is it the truth: that repentance isn’t about feeling bad for my failings, but grieving my brokenness as it separates me from my Father and rushing toward Him in the desperate hope that He will open His arms and embrace me, completely, with His love!? Isn’t THIS the hope (and the promise) of the Prodigal Son?
I do not in any way profess to have this “figured out,” but I’m on a journey of discovering the truth: I really can trust God, He really does show up, He really wants to be my father and to initiate me and to see me more whole and more empowered and more alive tomorrow than I was yesterday. And when I am journeying into that new and growing belief, the failures that so recently seemed to own me – the symptoms that I so frequently “treated” – have little, and lessening, sway in my life.
We happy few...
“…we turn from our independence and all the ways we either charge at life or shrink from it, this may be one of the most basic and the most crucial ways a man repents. I say ‘repent’ because our approach to life is based on the conviction that God, for the most part, doesn’t show up much. We must be willing to take an enormous risk, and open our hearts to the possibility that God is initiating us as men – maybe even in the very things in which we thought he’d abandoned us. We open ourselves up to being fathered.”
A strikingly different interpretation, for me, of the term “repentance.” I mean, don’t I repent of the things I’ve done wrong? Of the mistakes I’ve made? What in heaven is this idea that I should repent of my “approach to life?”
At church this past Sunday our pastor delved into the 4th chapter of 1st Corinthians – a chapter that has Paul asserting himself as a father might assert himself to his (wayward) children. I was reviewing this in “The Message” and found Paul chiming in with a similar theme: “There are a lot of people around who can’t wait to tell you what you’ve done wrong, but there aren’t many fathers willing to take the time and effort to help you grow up. (within 4.14-16)” And then, in 4.20, he says “God’s Way is not a matter of mere talk; it’s an empowered life.”
So I’m staring at this page in a workbook that is asking me to consider “What must I repent of?” and I’m struck by the utter frankness of it. That my “repentance” has, for most of my life, been a very shallow and childish thing. Something I felt in earnest and sought faithfully for the errors I made; but something I never dove deeply enough into to truly be washed clean. Rinse, wash, repeat. And now, here is someone essentially saying, “your attack plan for life – running into the battle against your fears or succumbing to them, either way – it is all built on your false, fatal notion of independence…you have been ‘repenting’ of symptoms and overlooked your illness!” Not just that, but because I haven’t recognized my fundamental, basic distrust of God… my basic belief that He “doesn’t show up much”… I’ve broken my relationship with Him in a way that makes me feel abandoned! In a way that makes me fatherless. In a way that makes me un-empowered.
And so now this new repentance is not just a command: Repent of Your Sins! It is an invitation to disavow the lie that I am independent and begin living the truth that God is involved and that He wants to initiate me as His son! Is it selfish to seek repentance for this, apparently “truer,” sin when my real motive is to clamor over it as a hurdle, a wall, a mountain, that keeps me from God? My repentance of things has always seemed more meek, more self-effacing than this! Or is it the truth: that repentance isn’t about feeling bad for my failings, but grieving my brokenness as it separates me from my Father and rushing toward Him in the desperate hope that He will open His arms and embrace me, completely, with His love!? Isn’t THIS the hope (and the promise) of the Prodigal Son?
I do not in any way profess to have this “figured out,” but I’m on a journey of discovering the truth: I really can trust God, He really does show up, He really wants to be my father and to initiate me and to see me more whole and more empowered and more alive tomorrow than I was yesterday. And when I am journeying into that new and growing belief, the failures that so recently seemed to own me – the symptoms that I so frequently “treated” – have little, and lessening, sway in my life.
We happy few...
Reflections on Top Gun '08
In March 2008 I reluctantly attended an event in Rockbridge, VA called "Top Gun." This 4-day retreat marked the beginning of a new journey in my life, one that seems far more authentic and Christ-like than the life I've tried, or failed, to live in the 30-some-odd preceding years. A year later this journey is reflected in my humble commitment to share my thoughts openly online through this blog - but the beginnings of the journey were first articulated in an email I sent to the organizer of Top Gun late last spring. The beginnings of this journey mark the kindling of the first small flame in my life of true desire and hope...the hope that my heart's desires might just be my closest and most reliable connection to God.
Here is my remembrance of the impact of that long weekend:
Coming into Top Gun a few weeks back I was struggling to hear God in my life. I felt very separate from Him – like I was going through the motions and catching an occasional glimpse, far more like a memory of what it used to be like to have a relationship with Christ than any true relationship “today.” I was nearly totally isolated and could feel what little remained slipping away from my grasp. In fact, as we prepared to go to Rockbridge, I challenged God to meet me at Top Gun – a bit of a frightening prospect given that I honestly felt that He would likely not arrive and that my fears and doubts would only be confirmed: God either wasn’t as real as I thought or didn’t care enough about me to demonstrate Himself more clearly and overcome my doubt.
Friday night after the last session I was overwhelmed with these fears – I wandered the grounds of Rockbridge, avoided anyone else at the event, and finally found a spot by myself to pray and think. For some time – an hour perhaps – I wrestled with prayer and with my own intruding thoughts. Something would occur to me and I would think, “Is that Him?” and then doubt my own question as quickly as I’d had it… wouldn’t God be more obvious if He came? Why wouldn’t He come now? I was writhing in this cacophony of my own fears and doubts when, though I couldn’t really describe to you how or when it resolved, the noise of jumbled doubt and darkness faded in the distance as I realized there was a more certain clarity somehow in the midst of it all. It wasn’t a “stopping” of one thing and a “starting” of another as much as it was like stumbling over a certain thing that had been overlooked while in plane view… and, in discovering it, everything else simply faded away.
The thing I’d stumbled into was this simple phrase: “Lay hold of that for which you were laid hold of.”
For the time being, I could only “lay hold” of those words. They were both familiar and “other” to me – not that I had any sense that I’d evoked them (quite the contrary), but more that they had been given to me despite their odd familiarity, if that makes any kind of sense. I got up from my isolated spot and went to find a bible, all the time repeating those words in my head like a mantra. Back at my room I was fortunate to have my wife’s thick, black bible with me (mine doesn’t have all the bells and whistles) and was able to search through the concordance for help finding the simple word, “lay.” The phrase, I discovered, comes from Philippians 3 (12-14):
12Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 13Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
I was somewhat surprised and amazed to find that this was a verse I have known for some time, though not at all from memory. One of my favorite sermons from a former church focused quite a bit on verses 13 & 14, “forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward the prize.” In fact, that “forgetting” seems to have been a recurring theme in messages that resonate with me…but the “laying hold of” portion was clearly what God intended me to hear. To tell the truth, I was less impacted by the scripture itself than by the clear sense that God had spoken – He had heard my cry for help, understood my need, and shown up! That was remarkable enough in my book!
That night I slept just fine.
Saturday was a new day – I felt rekindled in my journey and buoyed by my experience the night before. The sessions were good and I even decided, last minute, to take the zip wire plunge into 50 degree waters! I can’t tell you now, looking back, whether it was during the morning session or later in the evening, but God still had something left to reveal for me that draws this long, long story together. During one of the sessions the speaker was talking about the difference between forgiveness and freedom. The illustration he used hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks: a tollbooth. He said (paraphrasing, of course) that forgiveness is a tollbooth that we must all pass through in order to find freedom, but that all too many of us (men in particular) spend our lives circling the tollbooth, managing sin, rather than walking through the tollbooth to embrace the life and freedom that God intends us to have.
In other words, you were explaining to me how I was called…
“To lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”
God’s overwhelming message to me on Top Gun weekend was to finally break through my internalized cycles of failure & my continual struggle to make myself “do better” – He made clear to me that His METHOD to lay hold of me is FORGIVENESS but that I was not laid hold of for FORGIVENESS’ SAKE!
I was forgiven so that I might lay hold of LIFE…not forgiveness! And instead I’ve been circling the tollbooth for years.
I’ve been circling the tollbooth thinking I was reaching for the prize, and all I’ve been doing is reaching into my pocket for another quarter of repentance. Not that repentance is unwarranted or uncalled for…simply that it is not the promise.
SO, now I stand on the other side of the tollbooth, battling sin not as a peasant battles for crumbs from the table, but as a warrior battles through the flames and past the dragon in pursuit of the princess. Freedom and life are my battle cry – sin and failure are not defeated for their own sake, but are hacked through as hurdles to overcome in pursuit of God’s promise in my life. And I can trust that the promise is good and that Christ is real and alive…because he spoke to me in the midst of darkness in the middle of Top Gun.
And that’s my story.
Like many “awakenings,” I suppose, it at times appears to have only modest impact in the moment-by-moment life that I lead – another reason to give thanks for Friday morning coffee with my “band.” Yet it offers such clarity of vision in moments like this (this taking time apart to write) that its impact is obvious and true and reverberates to my core. I have walked down the aisle in pursuit of forgiveness – “kneeled at the altar of the tollbooth” – over and again my entire life (I mean this literally, by the way). I have listened to men preach about the pursuit of the prize, of running the race, and somehow had that message twisted into a strange vision where the tape at the end of the track…the finish line… was Forgiveness – that it was the prize. Now I am truly free to run the race because I finally understand that Forgiveness came at the sound of the starter’s pistol – Freedom and Life are the race and the finish and the ever after; the promise of Christ!
Here is my remembrance of the impact of that long weekend:
Coming into Top Gun a few weeks back I was struggling to hear God in my life. I felt very separate from Him – like I was going through the motions and catching an occasional glimpse, far more like a memory of what it used to be like to have a relationship with Christ than any true relationship “today.” I was nearly totally isolated and could feel what little remained slipping away from my grasp. In fact, as we prepared to go to Rockbridge, I challenged God to meet me at Top Gun – a bit of a frightening prospect given that I honestly felt that He would likely not arrive and that my fears and doubts would only be confirmed: God either wasn’t as real as I thought or didn’t care enough about me to demonstrate Himself more clearly and overcome my doubt.
Friday night after the last session I was overwhelmed with these fears – I wandered the grounds of Rockbridge, avoided anyone else at the event, and finally found a spot by myself to pray and think. For some time – an hour perhaps – I wrestled with prayer and with my own intruding thoughts. Something would occur to me and I would think, “Is that Him?” and then doubt my own question as quickly as I’d had it… wouldn’t God be more obvious if He came? Why wouldn’t He come now? I was writhing in this cacophony of my own fears and doubts when, though I couldn’t really describe to you how or when it resolved, the noise of jumbled doubt and darkness faded in the distance as I realized there was a more certain clarity somehow in the midst of it all. It wasn’t a “stopping” of one thing and a “starting” of another as much as it was like stumbling over a certain thing that had been overlooked while in plane view… and, in discovering it, everything else simply faded away.
The thing I’d stumbled into was this simple phrase: “Lay hold of that for which you were laid hold of.”
For the time being, I could only “lay hold” of those words. They were both familiar and “other” to me – not that I had any sense that I’d evoked them (quite the contrary), but more that they had been given to me despite their odd familiarity, if that makes any kind of sense. I got up from my isolated spot and went to find a bible, all the time repeating those words in my head like a mantra. Back at my room I was fortunate to have my wife’s thick, black bible with me (mine doesn’t have all the bells and whistles) and was able to search through the concordance for help finding the simple word, “lay.” The phrase, I discovered, comes from Philippians 3 (12-14):
12Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 13Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
I was somewhat surprised and amazed to find that this was a verse I have known for some time, though not at all from memory. One of my favorite sermons from a former church focused quite a bit on verses 13 & 14, “forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward the prize.” In fact, that “forgetting” seems to have been a recurring theme in messages that resonate with me…but the “laying hold of” portion was clearly what God intended me to hear. To tell the truth, I was less impacted by the scripture itself than by the clear sense that God had spoken – He had heard my cry for help, understood my need, and shown up! That was remarkable enough in my book!
That night I slept just fine.
Saturday was a new day – I felt rekindled in my journey and buoyed by my experience the night before. The sessions were good and I even decided, last minute, to take the zip wire plunge into 50 degree waters! I can’t tell you now, looking back, whether it was during the morning session or later in the evening, but God still had something left to reveal for me that draws this long, long story together. During one of the sessions the speaker was talking about the difference between forgiveness and freedom. The illustration he used hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks: a tollbooth. He said (paraphrasing, of course) that forgiveness is a tollbooth that we must all pass through in order to find freedom, but that all too many of us (men in particular) spend our lives circling the tollbooth, managing sin, rather than walking through the tollbooth to embrace the life and freedom that God intends us to have.
In other words, you were explaining to me how I was called…
“To lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”
God’s overwhelming message to me on Top Gun weekend was to finally break through my internalized cycles of failure & my continual struggle to make myself “do better” – He made clear to me that His METHOD to lay hold of me is FORGIVENESS but that I was not laid hold of for FORGIVENESS’ SAKE!
I was forgiven so that I might lay hold of LIFE…not forgiveness! And instead I’ve been circling the tollbooth for years.
I’ve been circling the tollbooth thinking I was reaching for the prize, and all I’ve been doing is reaching into my pocket for another quarter of repentance. Not that repentance is unwarranted or uncalled for…simply that it is not the promise.
SO, now I stand on the other side of the tollbooth, battling sin not as a peasant battles for crumbs from the table, but as a warrior battles through the flames and past the dragon in pursuit of the princess. Freedom and life are my battle cry – sin and failure are not defeated for their own sake, but are hacked through as hurdles to overcome in pursuit of God’s promise in my life. And I can trust that the promise is good and that Christ is real and alive…because he spoke to me in the midst of darkness in the middle of Top Gun.
And that’s my story.
Like many “awakenings,” I suppose, it at times appears to have only modest impact in the moment-by-moment life that I lead – another reason to give thanks for Friday morning coffee with my “band.” Yet it offers such clarity of vision in moments like this (this taking time apart to write) that its impact is obvious and true and reverberates to my core. I have walked down the aisle in pursuit of forgiveness – “kneeled at the altar of the tollbooth” – over and again my entire life (I mean this literally, by the way). I have listened to men preach about the pursuit of the prize, of running the race, and somehow had that message twisted into a strange vision where the tape at the end of the track…the finish line… was Forgiveness – that it was the prize. Now I am truly free to run the race because I finally understand that Forgiveness came at the sound of the starter’s pistol – Freedom and Life are the race and the finish and the ever after; the promise of Christ!
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