Needy

Casey and I just spent a week and a half in India. I spent the first couple days of that sick, begging God for help, and reciting 1 John so I wouldn't go crazy  imagining that I would not get better (there's one good reason to memorize Scripture!).

I thought I was going to go "do something", but as it turns out, I don't think I've ever felt more needy and helpless as I did in a foreign country, with people I hardly knew, unable to eat, and feeling generally miserable. My friend Tim told me, as I questioned why I was even there, that God was growing my dependence on Him. Wow. Yes.

Humbled? Uh, yeah. Willingly? Um...right...Good thing God is bigger, right?

Sunday was our first night back with the family (East Rock, that is). Guess what Tim preached on? Humility. Yay...? I thought, "Really? Okay, God...I'll listen."

Monday was the first day of our first "normal-life-in-America" week, and to help me not go crazy at home by myself, Casey made me a to-do list. The second thing on the list? Read a few chapters in the book Humility. Humility again?? Now things are starting to get comical. Seems God won't let me off the hook with just hearing about humility...He means for me to actually grow...

Monday night was our first time back with our Life Together Group. We talked about...say it with me...HUMILITY! Only a crazy would not be getting the idea now. Seems we're in a season of learning humility. And boy does it hurt. Oh, that I would submit to this and learn joyfully. Y'all pray that I would.

Jesus Humbled Himself

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made Himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself
and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!
Therefore God has exalted Him to the highest place
and gave Him the Name that is above every name,
that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father."

God has no need. We know that. He didn't need to create us. He didn't need to win us back from slavery to sin. But He chose to. Mind blown.

How did God choose to win us back from slavery and rebellion and death? By sending His perfect Son Jesus to live as a man, completely obedient, even to a death that we deserved. Not just death, but a humiliating and undeserved criminal's death on a cross.

So, Jesus is God.

He willingly humbles Himself by coming to earth.

He not only humbles Himself by coming to a sin-wrecked earth, but He comes in the form of a man.

He not only comes in the form of a man, but as a dependent-on-His-mother-for-life baby!

He not only comes as a baby, but as a baby born into a family of humble means.

He not only comes as to earth as a man, but as a servant of a man. A servant.

He not only comes as a servant man, but while serving, He is completely obedient to the Father. Obedience implies someone is in authority over you. Who could be in authority over God? Yet Jesus submits His will to the Father. What??? Mind BLOWN!!!

He not only obeys, but He obeys to the point of death. Death. The wages of sin is death, but He didn't sin. Why would He die?

He not only obeys to the point of death, but to the point of a humiliating death on a cross. A cross is for criminals. He committed no crime.

Do you see this? Do you?? God, who has NO NEED, humbles Himself to become needy!
Disdained.
Tortured.
Misunderstood.
Unappreciated.
Criminalized.
Killed.

"Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place
and gave Him the Name that is above every name..."

So, when we listen to Philippians 2 and "in humility consider others" better than ourselves, we re-enact Jesus' life. In humility, God the Son considered others. He looked not only to His own interests, but to all of our interests. Each time we choose to humble ourselves, we put Jesus' life on display. It doesn't make sense that God would humble Himself. Especially for rebels. But it is good. So, so good. We must tell this story by living it out. Just like a husband lovingly lays down his life for his wife and so puts Christ and His Bride-Church on display. So, each of us in humility considers others better than ourselves and so puts Christ's incredible submission to and trust in the Father on display.

"Humbles yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up." James 4:10

"...For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Luke 18:14b

A Startlingly Accurate Depiction of My Life

"If I'd had a stellar week, I loved being in God's presence and was sure God was pretty stoked about having me there too.

But the opposite was true.

If I hadn't done a good job at being a real Christian, I felt pretty distant from God. If I'd fallen to some temptations, been a jerk to my wife, dodged some easy opportunities to share Christ, was stingy with my money, forgotten to recycle, kicked the dog, etc. ... well, on those weeks I felt like God  wanted nothing to do with me. When I came to church, I had no desire to lift my soul up to God. I was pretty sure  He didn't want to see me either. I could feel His displeasure - His lack of approval.

That's because I didn't really understand the gospel. Or, at least I had forgotten it."

-Quote from J.D. Greear's book Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary, Chapter 3 "The Gospel as Gift-Righteousness"

On Living In a Small Town

I just heard the helicopter fly overhead. That only means one thing. We live one street over from the hospital, and someone is being life-flighted to a bigger hospital in a nearby city. That's the only reason helicopters fly into this small town. I feel almost a responsibility to engage with the suffering that someone is experiencing right now. So I pray, "God, help them."

It's interesting -- living in a small town -- where you can't go much of anywhere without seeing someone you know. One of the things I have liked least about this place is the way people seem so preoccupied with everyone else's business. It drove me crazy at first. Now, I fear, I've started to fit in a little too much.

But, as much as I despise this small town lifestyle of gossip, and the culture that it encourages --- a culture where you always have to be on your toes; a culture where you know someone is always looking and listening and waiting for you to fall; a culture where we are so obsessed with other people's lives that we won't be honest about our own --- I'm also thankful.

I'm thankful to be known, at least, in part. I'm thankful to know other people. I'm thankful that when I walk in Walmart, I see the same people working the registers, and I see a handful of people I know from various places, shopping, and we stop and we speak to each other in the aisles. We don't have the luxury of shopping in a big city where you could choose from 3 different Walmarts, purposefully choosing the one farthest from home so you can avoid seeing someone you know! And I think that's a good thing.

In the past couple weeks (really, I can think of so many things in the past year), some really devastating things have happened here. And I have seen a whole community struggling and grieving and processing life. That doesn't happen in a big city. A tragedy in a big city is just one more to add to the list of the hundreds of tragedies that are happening all over the city every day. But here --- we're too connected. I mean, really, most of the town is related to each other in some way. So nothing happens without creating this huge ripple. And I'm glad. I'm glad we live in a place where you can't just pretend that life isn't hard! It is hard. And if you won't be honest about it, there's at least a dozen people waiting in line to be "honest" about it for you. And maybe that's good. Maybe, if we aren't willing to be real about the struggle, God just exposes it anyway.

I'm wondering...what if we started being real about our own lives? What if, instead of letting everyone else talk about our struggles for us, we opened up and shared how hard life is right now. What if we embraced this small-town life and followed the commands of Paul in Romans 12 to "rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep"? I believe God has given us, in some ways, a unique opportunity to have real, vibrant, God-honoring community. What if we thanked Him for that, and started using what's He's given us? I wonder what God could do with that. Probably, exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask or imagine...