Author Archives: PearlS

Hungry in Rio

When I was in college, I flew down to Rio de Janeiro for a semester. Within six weeks, I realized I was in trouble. Not because I’d have to take courses like psychopathology in Portuguese (thought this was a serious concern), but because I barely had enough money to pay tuition and rent. How was I going to eat? My cash flow wasn’t restricted; it was nonexistent. I walked everywhere because I couldn’t even afford a fifty cent bus ticket.
Every month or so my mom would send me a twenty dollar bill, not knowing I was dependent on it for my meals. I began getting bad headaches. Some days I was too dizzy to attend class. I’d ration out the money mom sent, buying myself a two dollar cafeteria meal once a week where I could eat all the beans and rice I could pile on my lunch tray. 

I didn’t tell a soul. There was no way I was going to let anyone know I was failing. Me–the girl they thought brave enough to move a hemisphere away for school–I was too proud. I wasn’t going to fail because I was out of money. I’d rather starve than admit I was failing.
It’s funny how hunger chips away at pride.

Around this time I began attending a church. It was a tiny little group that met in an upstairs room on Sunday evenings (I suppose to give everyone time to enjoy their morning café and beach excursions). In Brazilian churches they call their worship service culto. Once I realized it wasn’t a cult even though they didn’t meet on Sunday mornings (mind-blowing for this mid-westerner), I began walking the hour long journey from Gavea to Botafogo. Past the lagoa and through the concrete jungle I ambled,  wondering at the smells and sights of the tropical city. I tried not to get there too early so I didn’t seem overly eager. But even introverts can get lost and lonely, and my feet picked up the pace when I knew I was near.
The tightly knit members became my weekend family. I was safe there. No matter what happened during the week, I knew on Sundays I was welcomed and loved.

No one ever asked me to put my money in the offering plate, but I felt a Holy Spirit dare to put in what I had, my widow’s mite. I emptied my pockets–a bashful promise to keep my hands open. Each week as I walked home in the dark I wondered, Jesus, did you see what I just did? What am I going to eat tomorrow? 

I did this for months, which, of course, stripped me of food security. I was barely covering my rent and tuition, but I was definitely not eating enough. I stopped eating beans and rice in the cafeteria. I relied on the occasional exchange student meet-ups to temporarily fortify myself with complimentary salgados. I took up every invitation to homes of friends, dates, beach hangouts–any social opportunity where food was offered. 

In the mornings, I had coffee and a slice of white bread with a layer of queso crema. For lunch I boiled a piece of pumpkin and sprinkled it with cinnamon. At night, I slowly ate my bowl of runny grits as I watched (and tried…and failed to understand, pre-google) the popular telanovela, O Clone. 
Looking back, I don’t recommend starving, but no one stopped me. How could they? I didn’t tell a soul about my dare. My mom knew funds were short in other areas, but I was making ends meet. She didn’t know the details, and I wasn’t going to worry her. I was in a big city and I was making big girl decisions. It wasn’t so much about pride anymore, but survival, endurance. Released from the need to overcompensate my physical needs (I was eating a little, which was more than nothing), I was able to taste possibilities I’d never before considered. It was physically uncomfortable, but my experiment in giving was unintentionally turning into a form of fasting…and was growing into an intimate dependency on God. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Trusting Him became sweeter in a way I’d never known.

I’d stare out my open bedroom window at the Cristo Redentor statue, his arms held out to me. I was reading my Bible and begging for wisdom. How do I navigate relationships? How do I express myself in a different language? What is socially and culturally acceptable? Why was I raised to think only in terms of black and white? God, what do you want from me?
I was befriending people and telling them about Jesus. I was volunteering in a couple of drug-lorded favelas, meeting the kind of people I didn’t know existed. I was offered a position as a missionary at a kids’ outreach and health program. I was considering breaking up with my long term boyfriend in the States, sending him vague letters to test how he might feel about me staying in Brazil.

One day after classes, I stood in line in the basement of the life sciences building waiting my turn to check my email in the computer lab. I was antsy as always to get news from home–anything that wouldn’t make me feel hungry and homesick. My mom had written me a note. Pearl, it said, I hope you’re having a great week. Just wanted to let you know–someone gave me $200 today to deposit in your bank account.

I powered off the computer and walked out of the lab. It was unexpected, and I was stunned. 

Pragmatically, I knew God could do it. Through the testimony of others, I’d seen Him show up in a thousand ways. But until I’d actually given my last pennies away and sat at the door, waiting, I don’t think I had any idea what He could offer me. I could gaze out on the waves from my safe perch on the boat and believe He made the water and could walk on it. I could never get my toes wet and still believe there was a Jesus that loved sinners, a God who looked down from Heaven at His tiny creation. I just didn’t know He loved them in a way that surpassed the way human beings can understand: food, water, clothes, shelter. I didn’t know he loved it when I asked him questions and heaped my cares on Him. I didn’t believe He mothered his little ones, patiently answered their questions, wrapped His arms around them and fed them from the spoon on his table. Nor could I comprehend His peace, patience, hope and joy while I was waiting on the little things. 

When I was finally, totally desperate, God proved himself dependable. In fact, He waited for me to become desperate before He wrought miracles. How else would I know? Could it have been anyone but Him who came to my rescue? I was a Gideon, tentatively setting out my wool at night to see if He might get it wet. I was the lady in the crowd, quietly sneaking in and out of people to try and touch the hem of His garment. I had no business putting myself into a position to gamble… I was just banking on the promise that He is a good father and that he generously rewards those who seek Him. Until I was empty I didn’t understand His gifts were perfect, wholly beyond my scope of what I thought I needed. The money I needed for food had become secondary to the revelation I was having: Jesus is all I ever really want.


This is an insane privilege to acknowledge. His provision, His crazy love keeps proving itself true in my life again and again. Me–a person who has no title, valuable training, personal history, resumé, or talent–no business even pretending I have control over my life–I have access to God the Father. He hears me, he knows me, and He has let me know He is enough. He doesn’t do contracts and deals, but He listens to and loves His children. He answers their prayers in tangible ways and then some.


I cannot elbow my way into His presence. I can’t draw up a blueprint and ask Him to stamp His approval on my plans. It doesn’t work that way because He is a Father. It’s like my little girl who begs to not go to bed at night. I still make her lie down by herself, because she needs to learn to sleep on her own. God knows what is best for me, but I have to agree with Him, have to offer up my will to His, in order to receive His best. 

I’ve realized this is how He works: He waits for me to continually make room for Him to surprise me with his goodness. I must choose to keep things wide open to make room for His big moves.

This doesn’t mean it isn’t a calculated risk. Neither is it a “let’s add things up and see how much this is gonna empty my savings–that which I could technically recoup.” No, if we use this math, we will never take the leap. It’s actually a bigger risk than we could safely bet on. It’s cliff diving, potential harm, maybe death. It is putting my whole life on the line. 

Jesus said, “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”

How much do I trust God to make up the deficit? Do I have faith he can help me break even? Will he redeem the things I can’t fix? Do I believe if I give to him–my kids, money, lifestyle–he can make up the difference–filling my lap up, pressed down and overflowing (Luke 6:38)? 

This is what Rio taught me: God loves a dare–he loves it when we gamble and bet our entire lives on him. My poverty, my hunger. It’s the weakness in us that exposes His strength, His power to love us in deeper ways we’d never otherwise understand.
I’ve done many other things that were, in a sense, a slaughtering of dreams. I’ve abandoned my college degree, the one that labeled me as a senior “most likely to succeed”. We’ve moved away from family and friends. We decided I’d stay home with the kids and he could follow the career path. We’ve given up our time, resources, and income to walk away from prettier pursuits.
How else could we approach the Savior and say, “we’ve left everything to follow you” (Mark 10:28)?

How can he promise an increasing return if we haven’t invested what is precious to us?

How can we “count it all as loss” (Phil. 3:8) when we hold so tightly to our temporary treasures?

You worried about your kids? Work? Relationships? Money? Church? School? Your ideas about how the future ought to look? Put it in the hands of the One who gives the best returns, the One who has already laid a firm foundation.

What does the first, small step look like? It could be a few pennies in the offering plate, a few paces in the opposite direction of success and security.

It’s a bit of a dare. 
Test me and try me, He says.

Drinking milk

I sit in Chik-fil-a, trying to coax my skinny three year old into eating the nuggets and waffle fries. She frowns in the direction of the play area, sullen at the deal I’ve struck. Two nuggets and two fries and then you can play. I honestly don’t know why my kids won’t eat. It’s not that I don’t try.

While we sit and pout, I hear two men sit down in the booth behind us. It doesn’t take me long to overhear their conversation. The first man mm-hmms as the second lays bare his wants and needs. He has just recently left a church and now he is listing his likes and dislikes of the new church he’s attending. On and on he talks, the first man continually mm-hmming. M-hm. M-hm. The m-hmer is obviously a minister of the new church. Perhaps the outreach guy or the discipleship pastor. They must have secured their first meeting at Chik-fil-a to sort out their potential relationship. Finally the second man finishes his rant, his voice trailing off and upward, posing a question to the minister. “So, what can your church offer someone like me?”

I put my little girl’s uneaten nuggets and fries in their greasy box, wrap it in a napkin, and stand up. I shouldn’t be eavesdropping, and I’ve lost my enthusiasm to force feed the preschooler.

“Okay, baby, let’s go play,” I said, and we walk away, the negotiations fading behind our back.

Everyday I walk to school to pick my children up at 2:30. Without fail, three boys come running down the stairs to the field where I wait. They are not my kids. In fact, I only know them by their first names. They are latchkey kids headed home to an empty house, an afternoon of video games and whatever snacks they can find in the cupboard. But before they run home, they first run to me to say hello. I love it. While I’m waiting for my own kids, I ask these boys how their school day was, what they’re up to, what they had for lunch. I ask if they have a pair of boots at home, since there is snow on the ground. They order the excitable puppy on my leash to sit and stay, and then give her pats and tell her she’s a good girl.

Eventually my own boys run down to meet me and we form one big group. We amble through the park, breaking off one by one to go to our own homes. 
Because nothing else is pressing, I’ve made it my business to be just a mom, one who asks questions and calls them by name. I mother the temporarily motherless for a few minutes after school. I remind them to not dawdle on their way to Boys and Girls Club, to tie their shoelaces so they won’t trip. It’s a standard fare sort of bossing. And, as if by magic, more kids keep joining our group. One snowy afternoon, I showed up with a carrot in my pocket in case the kids wanted to build a snowman. You’d have thought I’d brought a bucket of candy.

I once read somewhere that a parent’s job is to study their children. I think this is valuable advice since Jesus said we must become like children if we want to be a part of his kingdom. Little kids, I’ve found, have a few things in common. They love the attention, protection, and safety of responsible grown ups. They are honest, shameless, and uninhibited. They’re curious and ask questions. They expect honest answers. They freely express emotion–joy, sadness, anger.

They’re actually much easier to be around than adults. With kids, you can tell them no followed by “because I said so.” You can hold up their emotions to the light and say, “I know you’re sad right now–maybe you’re just hungry.” 

You can sit on the couch, open a storybook, and they will naturally come sit around you, eager to see the pictures on the pages.

Before they grow up too much, kids are simple and profound. Now this is good, and it paints a picture of how our relationship is to be with the Father, purely dependent, eagerly expressing our needs, wants, opinions. As new believers, we are to be nourished by milk. It’s a picture of our infancy, our reliance on our caregiver as we begin to cut our baby teeth. This idea of milk is referenced three times in the New Testament. 

Peter wrote to believers,
…Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation…
1 Peter 2:2

Paul said to the Corinthian church:
I could not speak to you as spiritual men but as men of flesh, babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. 
1 Corinthians 3:1-3

We all begin growing with milk, but it’s obvious we are also to mature into adults that can be given solid food to chew on.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

Hebrews 5:12-14

This is what I was pondering as I followed my three year old to the play place in Chik-fil-a. By this time you ought to be teachers, the writer of Hebrews said, but you’re still drinking milk because you are spiritual babies.

 How did the wonder and excitement leave this man in the booth behind us? Why was he satisfied with milk–just wanting a bigger bottle? When did relationship and pursuit of the Savior become a negotiation of what church can offer? Our generation has coined the word adulting and spewed hate over it, as if grownups ought not carry any responsibilities. I wonder if the man at Chik-fil-a was a kid once that had to walk himself home after school. Did he ever have to feed himself or finish his homework on his own? Had he forgotten about it? Was he reverting back to babyhood, still a little fleshy bundle worried about his own desires? All I heard from his mouth was discontent; he threw a Chik-fil-a pity party. He was looking for someone new to serve his needs. He’d either forgotten he was a grownup or he’d grown accustomed to the baby bottle.

As a mom, I’m uniquely aware of how much kids long to be in the presence of their parents. They love being loved. They don’t cry and fuss when they are well-fed, well-rested, and enjoying the attention of their big person.

That’s exactly how God wants us to approach Him. He wants us to be like the kids that come running down the steps after school, just looking forward to seeing Him waiting on the field. Interaction and relationship with someone who cares. Anticipation in his Word and for the future. What surprise does He have waiting for us? 

I don’t know about the guys at Chik-fil-a, but I don’t want to ever be there, eating my chicken sandwich and negotiating favors. Love is bigger, and love is better. It decides what is best, not what is just okay. It forces a skinny three year old to eat her chicken nuggets to put meat on her bones. Love grows babies into grownups. It speaks truth instead of massaging wounds. It picks up kids at school, risking exposure and conversation and fifth grade weirdness. It doesn’t ask, what can the world offer me? Love is affection for the Father–we love because He first loved us. 

He waits on the field and we run into his open arms.

Wax Apples

Lately, church culture has me wound up. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who sees the hypocrisy–but then again, most people I know who have left the church have brought it up.

As a kid, our family slid in and out of churches. Some were old fashioned, with a basement fellowship hall with kind but stern ladies, styrafoam cups of red koolaid and oatmeal cookies before Sunday school. At other times, we attended the local college ministry or met in the living room of a nursing home, rolling the residents’ wheelchair down the cold, stale halls to join us. We were non-committal–a reflection on my dad’s “question everything” philosophy. He was sincere in faith to the fault of his supposedly legalistic upbringing, seasoning every conversation with a distinct flavor of superiority. I didn’t know any different, and it was a fool’s endeavor to ask questions, even though I was always considering the whys. He taught me, wordlessly, to appoint myself judge in the courts of human affairs. As long as I kept my robe clean and remained unaffected by other people’s problems, I was on the straight and narrow path.

Although I hated walking into a new start-up church that was meeting in the old highschool gym, where our voices echoed and we sang awkwardly, huge fans drowning out our words, I knew we belonged. We were odd, and nothing was odder than walking into the school day six out of seven days of the week, setting up folding chairs, passing the communion tray in the same space where I regularly ate school lunch and pretended to be invisible.

It was a disjointed experience–turn on the Jesus on Sundays, then walk back into school on Monday and keep my thoughts to myself.

The very first time I visited a modern church–by this, picture a large, open auditorium, sound system, soft chairs, professional worship team–I was fifteen years old. I was touring with a summer music group (do not be in awe–there was never an audition, as the organizers were absolutely not judicious in acquiring singers) and it felt glorious. How ingenious to have stage lighting! How indulgent to use a sparkling restroom stocked with freebees and scented lotion!  To sit on leather couches in the youth group’s very own game room and eat plates of spaghetti before taking the stage to “bless” the congregation with our choreographed musical!

I knew my dad hated this sort of thing, but I loved the idea of merging my teenage desire for meaningful relationships to fit in with the looming presence of God (and His ever burning disapproval of the world–the judge in me stood in solidarity with this notion).

The only thing that seemed to sit uneasy on my soul was the homogeneity of the church. All the cars in the parking lot were shiny and new. All the people were upper-class, well-dressed. The youth minister was cool, funny, and confident. The youth group itself was a handsome bunch of blemish-free, carefree teenagers with keys jangling in their pockets. They had the money and time and their parents’ blessing to seduce one another at Taco Bell after Wednesday night church meetings.

They didn’t look any different than the people on the outside of the church who didn’t need a god to satisfy their urge for morality. The impression was foreign to me, but it was incredibly attractive. I wanted a piece of it.

It was my introduction to the world of American Christian culture; heavy on consumerism, low on guilt. I got the feeling deep inside of me that the values didn’t measure up, but I was too enamored to care.

It has taken me awhile to sort it all out. I guess I’ve grown up. I came to the realization that my stick-in-the-mud dad was more right in his “question everything” philosophy than the “all is grace” hashtag that excuses every stray ignoble action. Maybe by God’s grace I was able to sniff out the fake.

Pretty much all of us good Christians like to secretly put restrictions on God. We like to sing things like I surrender all to you and Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. But our hearts tag on sneaky little clauses, like if I can still make 200k or if we can still live in the neighborhood with highly rated schools and nice landscaping. We pray for all sorts of things and hope our Heavenly genie in a bottle will grant our wishes. We might even have good intentions when we begin, but our flesh is a tricky thing. It’s like a three year old–it wants what it wants, and it doesn’t like to be told no. 

The thing is, we don’t see these clauses for the chains they are. We also like to sing the song, who can stop the Lord almighty? If we’re being honest, pretty much all of us are trying to stop the Lord Almighty, put Him on a leash. We want to protect our pension plan, preserve our vacation days, not get sick. We don’t want a rogue god doing just whatever He wants to do, playing us like pawns.

The disparity between following Jesus and maintaining security is a massive sinkhole. I think most American Christians are happy to dial back their faith in favor of the approval of the world. We’ve talked ourselves into this idea that responsibility and respectability are the crown jewels of the kingdom. Even the atheist, who says there is no God, will pat you on the back for counting your dimes and living such a careful life.

This is exactly the problem. No wonder we are confused.

The people we surround ourselves with tend to impact Who we choose to be our master. And as long as we seek to fit into the current mold of culture, as long as we keep our dusty Bible on the shelf, as long as we live exactly like the people around us we can avoid looking Jesus in the face. We are all very well the rich man–I speak of the American Christian. We arrogantly want our big churches, our almost-sincere words and pictures plastered on the internet to justify us. We don’t want to forfeit our comfortable complacency in the meantime. 

This should rattle us no matter what side we fall on, that God isn’t joking. Our friendship with the world (and everything in the church that carries the same aroma) isn’t an Amish-friendship bread type relationship, but a pimping out of our souls.

Who was the Lord talking about when He referenced Isaiah–

“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me:
They worship me in vain;
Their teachings are merely human rules.” 
(Matthew 15:8-9)

Does my need for independence, self-care, comfort–you name it–trump my life-as-a-living-sacrifice worship?

Privilege is the advantage of being able to look away and remain unaffected. Entitlement is the shoes it wears, the art of escaping reality. I hate to be the one to say it, but we are mostly all living, breathing, entitled brats.What troubles me most is our flagrant inconsistencies within the church. We want little more than a casual experience yet our expectations are extremely high. We require theater seats, flawless music, pats on the back. We’ll get riled up over the color of the walls or disrupted flow of service. We don’t readily admit it, but we are becoming (have become!) lovers of selves, not lovers of God. Do we realize we ourselves will be judged by the holy, righteous, God of love–even when our pencils want to erase the part about Him being holy and righteous? Has our scepticism so muddied our convictions? Has our pride so leveled our rationale? Are we just plain ignorant?

J. Vernon McGee articulates this, speaking of the attitude of today’s American Christian culture:
“‘Let’s do as little as we can, have as much fun as we can’…If you’re going to follow the middle of the road, remember to have plenty of money. And actually, I think, today the rich have moved to the middle of the road. That’s the ground that they want to take. They want to be liberal and they want to be conservative. It’s the middle of the road.”
(Thru the Bible Podcast, Ecclesiastes 10:11-11:10)

This is what is filling our churches, and God hates it because it mocks Him.

Christians, take note! We must not use entitlement as a security blanket. The church was not made for social ladders. 

It blindly treads right into the dangerous tepid waters of the church in Laodicea. They were warned:

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm–neither hot or cold–I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Revelation 3:15-18

If that doesn’t scream American church, I don’t know what does. Ours is a culture that values cheap grace because we don’t want to compromise on comfort. We don’t practice denial or abstinence in practically any form because we’ve convinced ourselves to “come as we are.” Indeed, Jesus will take us with all our warts and mistakes. We just go ahead and figure it will be alright if we go on hating one another, gorging ourselves, doing exactly what we want.

Let’s not forget that when we come to Him, we are submitting our old selves to crucifixion. He is not playing a petty where-do-you-see-yourself-in-five-years life coach. Jesus wasn’t joking when he promised his disciples “whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

He urged his would-be followers to first count the cost of pursuing discipleship so that they might not be worthless, lipstick-on-a-pig, salt-lacking-saltiness jokers. (Luke 14:25-34) He’d rather us be ice cold–not even interested–than lukewarm pretenders.

What a difficult truth to process! What a soul-wrenching reality! Perhaps we don’t want war because we love peace, but because we don’t want our comfort to be threatened. 

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it an unscalable wall.
Proverbs 18:11

I have met more life insurance agents and investment advisors in church than anywhere else. I find this so funny, but isn’t it telling? We have so departed from God’s promises that we welcome hedging the risk of trusting our Creator. We buy newer things with warranties, we save up for retirement–as if this life was our main goal. As if the parables Jesus told about talents and wages and were about financial peace and not Heaven.

Should we never give up comfort? Will we wrestle this beast to the grave?

How many of us pretend to care about recycling and conservation and global warming yet will only live in a brand new or remodeled-to-Gaines’-perfection house? We step on our own toes with the best of intentions because we are incredibly short-sighted. We will never look as far as Heaven when we think we can DIY it here on earth. 

God’s wisdom confounds us because it isn’t in our frail nature to step out in faith. Rather we like to take a peek at what everyone else is doing and stick with the majority. We understand things only by our five senses–we don’t have any other guarantees–and so, to preserve our mortal selves, we almost always decide that the most secure place is with the masses. We sure don’t want to rock the boat too much. But even this is a departure from God’s Word:

Put off your old self, which is corrupted by deceitful desires…Put on the new self, created to be like God in righteousness and holiness…speak truthfully to one another.
Ephesians 4:22-25

You see, we must speak up and call one another out on our faithlessness. Otherwise we are just pretenders, wrapping ourselves up in so many false securities that our lives don’t seem attractive to unbelievers. And believe me, we were made to be attractive. Not in a youthful, aesthetic way, but in a magnetic way. The Bible says we will either be an aroma that is life to those being saved or fatal to those living in the dark. Magnetism. We draw or repel people with salt and light, the unashamed proclamation that God made us for more. 

I’ve always wondered about John (the baptist) preaching repentance. What, exactly, was the purpose in this? It’s occurred to me that in “preparing the way for the Lord” he was breaking fallow ground so that the seeds Jesus was to plant would land on tilled, fertile soil. Weedy, overgrown hearts wouldn’t readily receive the Word himself, wouldn’t even recognize a Savior if he was standing in front of them. John garnered a following early on simply by preaching repentance. He was firing up the rototiller, preparing the way, and there were people in the vicinity ready for a fresh start. They didn’t know how, they didn’t know Who, but they knew their lives needed to be uprooted. The heart of stone sitting in their chest was too heavy to keep dragging around. Before they knew of a replacement, they realized they must have the dead rock uprooted.

 Aren’t we living this very moment on some hard ground? I wonder if these days we haven’t let our soil become overgrown with zealous thistles and dandelions. It radiates out from the lusts of our sinful nature, and I’m not talking about the obvious offenders. I’m thinking of the American church where the lobby looks like a gratuitous Starbucks and the man or woman on stage could be giving a TED talk. Something is terribly wrong if we are trying to look more like Hillsong than Jesus. Jesus, who touched lepers and liars. Jesus, who gathered twelve misfits and called them his friends. Jesus, who died alone on a cross.

Have we lost this spiritual instinct that life cannot be whole when we always get our way? That life cannot be ruled and regulated into happiness? Do we open the Word with the expectation of being sifted, dividing our bone from marrow, a regular tilling of the flesh? If we don’t, we are in for a rude surprise. More likely, though, we’ve stopped opening the Book altogether.

I am the Vine, you are the branches–remain in me, He said, and we grabbed a pair of garden shears and began sawing ourselves free. No wonder our Spirit fruit–love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control–stopped growing. We try and duplicate it with our fancy church talk, our insincere “seeker-friendly” welcome and false piety, but it doesn’t add up. It is a lot like biting into wax apples. Hungry people prefer the real kind.

Hungry people want to know the man-God, Jesus, the bread of life. They want to devour the Story, to eat the Word–something to fill up their starving, empty soul. This is all that we, as Christians, have been tasked to do. “Go into the world and give them the good news,” Jesus said before he departed.

We must give the world something better to chew on.

the price of pride

There’s a story about a maniacal leader who was once in power of the entire known world. He was braggadocious and outrageous and completely bi-polar. He was feared and hated, but too powerful to stop. 
Pause the story–this sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

But this is actually ancient history, way back when Babylon ruled the world. The king’s name was Nebuchadnezzar, and he regularly put lives at risk while exalting himself as a god. So that he might not be forgotten, he stamped his name on some 15 million clay bricks that made up his kingdom. It took an immigrant named Daniel (a slave to Nebuchadnezzar) to boldly approach the king before history was altered. Daniel didn’t suggest he see a psychiatrist–rather he begged the king to humble himself before God:
“Be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue.”

Do you know how the story ends? Did the king, like Kanye, renounce his sins?
One year later, he was out walking on the roof of the palace, admiring the sights and boasting about his accomplishments to everyone who could hear, when a voice boomed from heaven. It said, 
“This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals: you will eat grass like the ox. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes.”

The story says that “immediately what had been said was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of the bird.”

Now who wouldn’t cheer for this–God humbling and humiliating the arrogant leader of the known world! About the only thing we like better than rooting for the underdog is watching Goliath fall. To me, the fascinating thing about this story isn’t the fact that Nebuchadnezzar went mad and wandered off to live like an animal in the wilderness. It isn’t the modern day equivalent, if you think I’m comparing the king to some current world leader. What intrigues me is how similar we are to that old king, admiring our own accomplishments. We shamelessly promote our own image and agenda. We’re addicted to the spotlight–the very American notion that anyone can become a ruler if they have the gumption. A dream and some hustle can buy a kingdom of internet followers. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”–yet we erect million dollar buildings, stamp our names on the bricks, and play church inside.

What worries me is how close we are to hearing a booming voice from heaven after we’ve had so many warnings. The last thing we want is a Daniel, some scrappy nobody, suggesting we renounce our selfish, proud ways to turn back to God.

I think it’s easy to look around and assume this is the affliction of a younger crowd. When we poke fun at millennials and the attitude of obsessive me-first thinking (self-promotion, self-care, becoming an influencer, etc.), we must understand how this came into fruition. We didn’t just happen to birth a generation of self-absorbed people. I don’t pretend I can pinpoint exactly when it all started, but I think we can trace our steps back to a moment when we entered darkness because we walked away from the light.
J. Vernon McGee called it spiritual apostasy, and said it is always closely followed by moral awfulness. No wonder we are losing the grip on reality.

We quite easily forget who put us in our privileged state. We walk on our palace roofs and pat ourselves on the back. We become god to ourselves, so when unwelcome voices start talking in our head, when we are tempted with the sweet aroma of pride and flesh, we can’t say no. How, then, can we teach our children ‘no’?

We have normalized and diagnosed such things as high-functioning anxiety and clinical depression. This is not to say chemical imbalance isn’t a real issue–our bodies and minds are intertwined and must be treated holistically–but the wholeness of man is also reliant on making sound choices. In court, a person charged for murder might be acquitted on the basis of insanity. I think, therefore I am…unless I’m not thinking clearly–in which case you can’t blame me because rules don’t apply. It’s the attitude that responsibility is negotiable. In our current society we have determined it is perfectly acceptable to be a person with a mental illness, yet we will kick and scream if anyone attaches stigma to our condition. Instead of asking God to break our chains and renew our minds, we hold tight to our labels to excuse our behavior. But can’t we see that pride and prosperity itself can lead to discontent, then paranoia and depression? We can choose self-advancement and suffer the consequences of the proud.

Nebuchadnezzar, with his power and prosperity at stake, didn’t want to be exposed. Pride led him to the brink of insanity and plunged him right into the pit. If we think all mental illness happens through none of our own doing, we are wrong. Like the king we have eliminated our boundaries and made ourselves vulnerable. We have become haughty, and it is costing us our souls.

Very clearly in his Word, God establishes boundaries. He tells us who He is (defining His boundaries) and He tells us who we are (defining ours):

You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed. Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands. Psalm 119:4-6

Among other things, we are to guard our hearts, capture every thought and make it obedient, consider the needs of others. We aren’t to make promises we can’t fulfill or think of ourselves too highly. We are to love God, who is perfect, and love people, who aren’t.

Any confusion generally stems from our unfamiliarity with scripture. Unfortunately, the further we drift from his Word, the further we get away from His established mile posts that mark our path. We don’t realize how modern psychology is seducing us, asking us to forfeit boundaries and replace them with blame. We ought not be alarmed–after all, this is exactly the way the enemy works. It looks okay, easy to swallow and non-offensive. Humanism tells us we can reason out our hurts–we were damaged as children, it’s someone else’s fault. We make our own destiny; self-promotion is just good marketing. But it’s a dangerous tweaking of truth, a fork in the path that sets us in the wrong direction. It goes back to the garden with the serpent and Eve. “Did God really say….?” the evil one whispered, and Eve began to doubt God’s goodness.

Recently I’ve been convicted about my own tendencies to lean into modern psychology rather than God’s word. The enneagram trend, crazy popular in Christian circles, is a personality-typing tool used to “better understand” ourselves and other people. But it doesn’t offer hope for the slovenly to get up off the couch. It doesn’t reduce one’s obsessive tendencies. It doesn’t empower a worrier to release their burden. The writer of Ecclesiastes, the wisest man in the world, claimed that every worldly pursuit is meaningless. The enneagram might help us discover our hidden motivation to do or not do, act or not act–but it, on its own, cannot lead us in the way everlasting. 

When he walked this earth, Jesus noted that the people were like sheep without a shepherd. His compassion for the masses of hurting, sick, demon-possessed, struggling people was apparent as he ministered. On the other hand, he scolded the religiously proud, those who like to justify themselves by their traditions and false piety. In front of everyone, he established the absolute equalizer–that all are utterly depraved apart from God. And then, in Love’s perfect example, He died, sinless on the cross, so we might know the Father. There wasn’t an ounce of pretentious talk or humanistic rationale in Him. Only love that looked down and had compassion.

After seven years in the wilderness living naked and animal-like, Nebuchadnezzar’s sanity was restored. The book of Daniel says the king praised God,

“His dominion is an eternal dominion;
His kingdom endures from generation to generation.
All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven
And the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”

Believe it or not, Nebuchadnezzar was welcomed back to his throne. It is written,
“At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. My advisers and nobles sought me out, and I was restored to my throne and became even greater than before. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.”
Daniel 4

Nebuchadnezzar, a brutal, self-worshipping, arrogant ruler was ultimately given back everything he had lost! His pride led to madness, which God used to change him. Can you believe it–this maniac was loved and used by God! Even through his mental illness, God had a purpose for him.

Isn’t that just like Him, to work miracles with the maniacal, to deliver the depressed?

When I look back on my lowest, I really can’t get over how God restored my life to me. How He drew me back into His Word, seeking me out and filling my empty heart with hope.

In my distress I called to the Lord;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
My cry came before him, into his ears…

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
He drew me out of deep waters
He brought me out into a spacious place;
He rescued me because he delighted in me.
Psalm 18:6,16,19

I have written on my own struggle with depression here and here. I recommend Boundaries, an excellent book by Cloud and Townsend, if you struggle internally with setting up boundaries regarding depression, obsessive thinking and relationships (and actually every aspect of taking control of your life).

Halloween, the Unseen

Years ago, I walked into a Halloween party at school, excited to see my little kindergartner dressed up for the first school holiday with his buddies. It was far tamer than my own memories. I recall Halloween parades and greasy makeup smeared all over our faces, buckets of candy and sticky fingers on the bus ride home. Back then, we called it Halloween and not Fall Celebration. We sang spooky songs like Have You Seen the Ghost of John and told stories like the one about the girl with a ribbon tied around her neck. There were masks and props, carnivals and cake walks, construction paper ghosts hanging from the hallway ceilings.

Times have changed. So have safety measures. I’m not resentful, especially in the public school arena. It’s nice to avoid the creepies. (And fake blood.) Kids probably don’t need cupcakes and rice crispy treats two hours before they go trick or treating…even if the “healthy schools” initiative seems a tad overkill. You can bet most of the veggie tray–the carrot witch fingers from pinterest some poor mother tried to turn into novelty–will end up in the trash.

On this particular day In the kindergarten room we parents milled about, admiring animal and super hero costumes and coaxing our own kids to eat healthy mini “pumpkins”–peeled clementines with a celery stem poking out of the top. We laughed and made polite small talk, ourselves dressed in our cozy fall flannels, putzing around our little ones.

This is when she walked in the room. I knew who she was, even apart from her garish witch costume and green makeup. She was Evan’s mom, and she bagged groceries at the store. A couple months before I met her as she was loading my meat, eggs, milk into the cart. Her front teeth were gone, either knocked or rotted out, and she curled her lip to cover the hole. “You ready for school?” she’d asked my five year old, and he’d dipped his head, nodding a shy yes. “My son is going be in kindergarten, too,” she told him. She mentioned the name of the elementary school and it was the same as ours. “Maybe they’ll be in the same class!” I offered.
“Yeah…I hope Evan ends up going to that school. Right now we’re staying at the women’s shelter, but I’m trying to get out of it. There just aren’t many low-income options in this town.”

My cart full of kids hinted it was time to go. I promised her I’d keep my eye out and see what I could find available. As it turned out, she beat me to it, finding a room to rent on her own. I prayed that we might not lose contact. As fate had it, our kids were in the same class.

And here she was, decked out as a witch, purple hair topped with a pointy black hat, wart and all.
I could tell she was making the room parents uncomfortable. They huddled a little tighter around their kids, making louder the lighthearted conversation to pry the wondering eyes of small children off the witch in the room. “Oh, I looove your purple pumpkin and orange cat, Joshua!”
Detecting the awkward interference, I walked over to her and welcomed her. “You made it! I’m so glad! We’re just having treats and playing games,” I said, walking her toward the snack table. “Clementines and celery, can you believe it? Everyone is either allergic to the good stuff or it’s been banned.”

It occurred to me that she was equally surprised to walk in a room where none of the parents looked like anything but parents. Where was their Halloween spirit? With false bravado and all the help of a costume and makeup she’d procured, she smiled her toothless smile and whispered to me, “I thought everyone was supposed to dress up.” I waved it off and handed her an orange, pretending it didn’t matter a bit.
“Where’s Evan? Is he the one dressed up as Darth Vader?” I said. She beamed and pointed at the little guy. Immediately he saw her are ran to her, hugging her legs.

Guilt rushed through my veins. I felt my cheeks turn red, ashamed for unconsciously judging Evan and his mom’s neediness. This was a great divide, and I was in limbo. Do I rest on the side of a scary-looking witch or with the well-mannered and well-dressed? Does my desire to fit in create friction when it comes to accepting and integrating people on the fringes? 

In a heartbeat, I saw a mama who cared more about what her boy thought than what everyone else around was murmuring. I saw a boy who watched his mama show up for his first school party. I saw the mom I wanted to be, the lowest common denominator, no pretense, a soft place to land.

I saw a hint of something unseen. I’ve been chasing after it ever since, searching for the unknown. The place where I could take my shoes off more often because it was holy ground. One glimpse of it was far more beautiful than anything I saw in the cool, unaffected parents at school. They could have a thousand things: nice clothes, a reliable car, a manageable number of evenly-spaced kids, a flexible work schedule, hobbies–a lot, from outward appearances. They had the advantage of being able to drop in, nonchalant, to the kindergarten Halloween party. But there was some kind of secret sauce in Evan’s mom’s struggle. She held her kids far more precious, because she knew the fragility of life. There wasn’t an ounce of arrogance in her appearance because life had never afforded her the opportunity. Everyone else’s standards could be damned; she’d dress up as a witch and surprise Evan.

I’ve learned a lot from people who don’t have their lives together. People who don’t fake it till they make it. I used to be scornful of this very type, probably because from childhood I desperately wanted to have it together. I thought satisfaction came from upping the ante and anticipating success around every corner. But how many corners does a person have to turn before it is enough? How many ways can I get everything right–my way–but still be ultimately wrong? How could I ever look someone level in the eye when I’m not willing to compromise on my high standards? Entitled living and patronizing words–it’s a ruse–and it’s not kind. It for sure doesn’t fool the underprivileged.
If you are a person who has it all together and hangs out with other people who have it all together, don’t you sense this? That you are missing out on valuable–priceless, even–by avoiding a world of misfits? That perhaps you are your own joy-stealer? Maybe we must first drop the illusion we have something superior planned for our lives.

What about Halloween, public school, poverty–you name it–are we so afraid of? Doesn’t God hide treasures in the unassuming fields and wait for us to find them and dig up the pearls?

I have become curious about the things unseen. We live in a physical world, so it’s easy to spend our lives pursuing what we can perceive, that which appeals to our senses. But if we only go after what our eyes can see and our fingers can touch, we’ll only ever understand one side. We will never understand what is unseen, which is equally (or maybe even more) important as what is seen. There is a whole other side to life when the coin is flipped. But none of the unseen things will ever be brought to light if we don’t go out and start digging in the dirt.

One by one He took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Until I was empty-handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.

And I walked earth’s highways, grieving
In my rags and poverty
Till I heard His voice inviting,
“Lift your empty hands to Me!“

So I held my hands toward heaven,
And He filled them with a store
Of His own transcendent riches,
Till they could contain no more.

And at last I comprehended
with my stupid mind and dull,
That God COULD not pour His riches
Into hands already full!

 -Treasures, Martha Snell Nicholson

Beth Moore and the know-betters

One time Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. He asked the man to stretch his withered hand out and Jesus restored it, one-hundred percent, in front of a crowd of people. Instead of glorifying God, a bunch of disgusted Pharisees (who I’ll call the know-betters) called Jesus a prig for violating the keeping of the Sabbath.

“What’s more important?” Jesus asked, “to heal or to destroy?” The Bible says He looked at the Pharisees with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. Then, bam, he healed the guy. In an instant his hand was restored.

This enraged the know-betters. Who did Jesus think he was?

There are so many know-betters today. You might recognize them. They like to tag on all sorts of scholarly and unnecessary labels, many of which confound the every-person. Calvinist, post-millennialist, dispensationalist, southern Baptist, reformed–words I have yet to find anywhere in my Bible.

When Jesus walked this earth he garnered followers. He also gained a following of haters who wanted to trap him every chance they got. Funny, the haters were too blind to see Jesus had come for them, to save them–He was on their team!
They were folks who loved labels. Their Jewish fringe was trendy, their yarmulkes and beards were on point. Their prayers were loud and long-winded. They loved rules and regulations. They hated Jesus because they thought he was a threat to their power, their tradition, their faith, their paycheck. What if he stole their followers?These know-betters had boiled their religion down to a tidy prescription of placebo pills, handing it out like doctors to sin-stricken patients. How dare Jesus inform the Jewish people they had God’s laws written on their heart? How dare he imply that even the Gentiles could know God?

Jesus taught in the temple every day, right where the know-betters liked to hang out. This really irked them. The book of Luke says

…the chief priests, scribes, and leaders of the people were intent on killing Him. Yet they could not find a way to do so, because all the people hung on His words.
Luke 19:47-48

The people were hanging onto his words while the haters looked for any little way to trap him and kill him.
This sounds like a tight spot to be in. 

A couple days ago at a conference, a well-respected preacher named John MacArthur said something unkind about Beth Moore, a women’s Bible teacher. It probably should have never been prompted–a few know-betters on stage were playing a game and for no good reason decided to poke fun at Beth Moore. At the crux of their joke was the argument that women ought not be preachers. Moore, of course, hadn’t been asked to play their pithy word game.

It reminds me of a woman in the Bible named Deborah. Before Israel had kings or a kingdom, 1,200 years before Christ, they lived in the promised land with enemies all around them. To maintain a sort of order, God determined judges for his people. Deborah was a judge in Israel. Yes–a woman. Yes–3,000 years ago, long before male preachers were ordained (another fancy non-Bible word) in the Christian church.

Deborah was a judge in Israel because Israel was full of cowards. It seems like God couldn’t find a man suited for the role, and so wise Deborah was given the reins. People came to her from all over to have her hear their disputes. Folks needed her wisdom, they sought her out to help them understand. She led them to victory against their enemies.

Today there are people who want to know God. They want to approach Jesus for healing, but there are often too many know-betters standing in their way, blocking the temple. They are the churchified, the holier than thou, the Bible thumpers who smack sinners on the head with their rules and big words. Jesus seekers want the bread of life, they hunger and thirst for righteousness, but know-betters set up standards that prohibit the starving from being filled. Know-betters don’t want to, as J.Vernon McGee says, “put the cookies on the bottom shelf.”

I’ll admit, I’m not a Beth Moore fangirl, per say. Maybe it’s because I’m jealous of her hair and makeup, but I’ve only ever attempted one Beth Moore Bible study. A friend once gave me a set of DVDs and a workbook after she’d finished teaching the study to a women’s prison group.

Did you catch that? Women in prison. People hungering and thirsting for the Word. People on the fringes, folks we have been called to minister to…Beth Moore’s Bible studies have made it into prison and set captives free. I’d say Jesus wouldn’t tell her to “go home.”
Moore has made knowing God available to the masses. She has passed on her detailed study of the Scripture to thousands of thirsty souls. She has broken it into edible pieces without waxing philosophical. Moore, like Deborah the judge, has become a sort of mother to the people. She has not, to my knowledge, assumed a man’s rightful position in church.

I am not denying that in the Bible God has laid down some rules to protect the Church on the inside. Beth Moore hasn’t denied this, either, as far as I know. There’s a reason behind His direction to men to step up as leaders.There is sovereignty in wisdom to appoint elders of a local church. In New Testament times, asking women to behave modestly (keeping silent and covered) was a way to eliminate confusion among the recently converted in the young Church (the culture at the time was cultish and sex-driven). As Christians, we need to examine these verses closely, but they are meant as clarifications on how to maintain order. They don’t encompass the message what Christ sent us to do: Go and make disciples, he said. Teach them, he said.

I wonder, these days, where the line is drawn. Online, a woman might have a Twitter account, post youtube videos, write books…but if she suddenly stands up in church, she loses all respect? Will we ever stop nitpicking, fault-finding–when our whole lives have been redeemed to reconcile people to their Creator? What is more important, Jesus asked–to heal or to destroy? With two words–go home–John MacArthur drew his sword.

This isn’t a call to add or delete scripture nor to bend it to our advantage. Rather, it is a wake-up call to see the forest in spite of the trees. For the know-betters, the Pharisees of today–those who lead–may they not forget there once was a Deborah in Israel. Jesus, the Savior, healed on the Sabbath. Beth Moore preached the Word, and men might have listened, might have learned.

…the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles which they had seen.
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”
And He answered and said, “I tell you, if these become silent, even the stones will cry out!”
Luke 19:37, 39-40