the noonday devil

I am struck by this sledgehammer of words that careened off the page in the direction of my heart:

“The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior.”
—Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, 135

Thank you, Father; I rather needed that.

So much so I find myself praying Manning’s closing chapter prayer aloud (and might again a time or two before it’s over):

Lord Jesus, we are silly sheep who have dared to stand before You and try to bribe You with our preposterous portfolios. Suddenly we have come to our senses. We are sorry and ask You to forgive us. Give us the grace to admit we are ragamuffins, to embrace our brokenness, to celebrate Your mercy when we are at our weakest, to rely on Your mercy no matter what we may do. Dear Jesus, gift us to stop grandstanding and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in our lives fade away, to accept our limitations, to cling to the gospel of grace, and to delight in Your love. Amen.
—Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, p144

Amen, indeed.

It’s easy to point fingers at the collective church and say, “The problem with the American Church today is…” and leave ourselves entirely non-mea-culpa. We would do well to remember a Chesterton take on the subject:

When the The Times of London posed this question to several prominent authors: “What’s wrong with the world today?” well-known author and philosopher G.K. Chesterton is said to have responded with a one-sentence essay:

_Dear Sir,
__I am.
_Yours sincerely, G.K. Chesterton

The noonday devil tempts us to pretend we are an Instagram version of ourselves. And be okay with it.

I’ve learned much at the feet of David Pawson, now with the Lord. At one point in his ministry, rumors had been spread about the Bible teacher and speaking engagements were summarily cancelled.

Pawson was up in arms over the whole ordeal and complained vigorously to his wife. She told him to go the the Lord. He did. The Holy Spirit’s say in the matter was: “David, the worst they can say about you is not as bad as the truth.” He laughed. But the point was taken, with God adding, “I know the worst, but I still love you and will use you.”

That truth stuck with Pawson the remainder of his years. He even titled his autobiography, “Not As Bad As The Truth.”

As I once heard said, if our bosom sins were written on our forehead for all to see, most of us would be inclined to wear broad-brimmed hats everywhere we go.

Mr. Moody of Chicago once heralded,

“What we want is to be real. Let us not appear to be more than we are. Don’t let us put on any cant, any assumed humility, but let us be real; that is the delight of God. God wants us to be real men and women, and if we profess to be what we are not, God knows all about us. God hates sham.”
—Dwight Lyman Moody

Did you catch that? “…but let us be real; that is the delight of God.” It would seem the Father is waiting for us to shed the act and embrace the truth. For our own good.

In this selfie culture fascinated with filters, it might just be a sign of maturity to put ourselves out there completely unadorned by the deceptive magic of sham and confess to our ‘followers,’ “This is me. I am dark but lovely. I’m out here tending to vineyards but I’ve been neglecting my own.”

Why must we either surreptitiously rumor ourselves as the hero of our stories or manipulate public acclaim by using the tool of fake humility? Neither is the truth. Somewhere in the middle is true and honest. “Jesus is the hero of my story and I am his humble servant.” And mean it.

Back to Manning. One of the things I love about him is how he completely got over trying to impress (or as close to it as anyone I know). There is such a down-to-earth honesty in his oeuvre, as if he had been there, done that, and was so sick and tired of the whole nasty business of mask-wearing.

Are we prepared to live in community (and before the world) with this premium grade honesty?

Rich Villodas rightly observed, “Evangelical Christianity is often characterized by a deep desire to have ‘Christianity’ pervade our culture but not have Christ permeate our being.”

It may seem an odd thing, but I believe the world would sit up and take notice of this brand of being the church when we the saved are more known as image-bearers of Christ and to an infinitely less degree, image-protectors of self.

It’s high time we exorcised some demons. You know the kind: those “all-dressed-up-in-church-clothes“ demons who offer us phony piety at a discount price. I’m beginning to think they’re among the ones who come out only by prayer and fasting.

Just so you know, whatever you think of me, I can assure you it’s not as bad (or nearly as good?) as the truth. But this I know: God loves me in spite of it and it does me no good to pretend. How many would be spared a devastating fall from grace if they had preemptively confessed their sin to another?

Anyway, that’s what’s on my mind today.

Selah, beloved. (And you are.)

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God is in the groaning

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:15-5:4

Fellow pilgrim, follower of Christ, brother and sister in the faith, we are not built for this world. We are made for the next.

Paul invites us to GROAN over our situation. He puts us in a chapel with a soft organ playing “Abide With Me” and “I Come To The Garden Alone” in the background.

Candles flicker in the stifling air.

Grim-faced pallbearers line the front pew and fellow mourners flank us on every side.

He sets us in front of an open casket; we look inside and see…ourselves.

This life has taken its toll on us and we see the effect of it in our corpses. We mourn. Lament. Groan.

Reality hits us:

We are not made for this world.

C.S. Lewis wrote in ‘Mere Christianity’,

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

Paul tells us the most natural thing for us to do is GROAN.

We’re not alone, either. Romans informs us even creation feels deep pangs of anxiety and later in the same chapter, that the Holy Spirit himself groans wordless prayers in his intercessions for us.

“Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done,
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
No not one; no not one”

It might surprise us to turn around inside that funeral chapel and see who the mourners are. Trees and mountains, seas and forests, flowers and soil, stars and planets. Each weeping alongside the broken-hearted saints who long for release from the pain of this earth.

Nightbirde

A young 30-something singer/songwriter known to her fans as “Nightbirde” experienced career-ending cancer in her lungs, spine, and liver. The pain of her battle with cancer is found in these words she penned last March, nearly a year ago:

“After the doctor told me I was dying, and after the man I married said he didn’t love me anymore, I chased a miracle in California and sixteen weeks later, I got it. The cancer was gone. But when my brain caught up with it all, something broke. I later found out that all the tragedy at once had caused a physical head trauma, and my brain was sending false signals of excruciating pain and panic.

I spent three months propped against the wall. On nights that I could not sleep, I laid in the tub like an insect, staring at my reflection in the shower knob. I vomited until I was hollow. I rolled up under my robe on the tile. The bathroom floor became my place to hide, where I could scream and be ugly; where I could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep, even with my head on the toilet.”

Then she courageously added,

“Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me. Even on days when I’m not so sick, sometimes I go lay on the mat in the afternoon light to listen for Him. I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t really explain it, but God is in there—even now. I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. If you can’t see him, look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.”

Nightbirde died last month.

Did you hear her groaning? This precious girl, blessed with singing talent and promised a future? Her candle snuffed out. Her song tragically morphed into her obituary.

Nightbirde groaned, but found in her groaning on the bathroom floor that God was there.

God groans when we hurt

Nightbirde included this paragraph in her brief ‘memoir’:

Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair. Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened. But count me also among the friends of God. For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow, squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: “I’m sad too.”
—Nightbirde, ‘God is on the Bathroom Floor, March 9, 2021

Our Lord promised us in Isaiah 63:9 “when we suffer, He suffers.”

Mary and Martha groaned because their brother was gone. Jesus visited them in their sorrow… and what did he do?

He GROANED.

Before “Jesus wept,” he groaned. “He was deeply moved” (ESV) is, quite literally, “He was angered in spirit and troubled himself.” The word describes a warhorse snorting and stomping its hoof, itching to charge into the fray and face the enemy.

Sometimes our suffering, or seeing another suffer, makes us just plain mad.

Jesus knew that anger.

Our Savior doesn’t just “feel your pain.” He also hates it. He hates what it does to you. Yes he knows the long game, that every eye will be dried one day and there will be no more pain, but he also meets us in our moment with mercy and justice on the bathroom floor.

God is on your side in the groaning

The Lord is with you when your spouse leaves you for another; he’s with you in the doctor’s office when she tells you the bad news, the worst news. The Father’s with you at the bottom of a cliff. He’s with you when you’ve cried yourself to sleep over your prodigal child; and he is with you when your bleeding heart is inside a casket as it’s being lowered into the ground.

I’m spending my mornings reading from the book of Jeremiah.

Just this week I was reading where he felt “deceived” by God. He had just preached a sermon that got him slapped and put in chains and in a very raw and earnest moment he accused God of “deceiving him.”

This word is used throughout the prophecies of Jeremiah. The major “flaw in the system” in Judah was deception and lies and Jeremiah calls it out again and again.

Now, however, he applies it to God.

How could you, God?
Why?
This is unbecoming of you! How dare you! I am your prophet and you are treating me this way?

He threatens to retire. To quit. To just walk away.

But four verses later, he has a change of heart. God meets him in his anguish and gives him a vision. Jeremiah saw in the Spirit that God was with him…and not just as a friend!

Jeremiah saw God as a WARRIOR standing over him, protecting him, shielding him.

A eulogy of no regrets

Paul, the officiant, delivers a pitch-perfect eulogy. In our fog of beleaguered sorrow, he waxes pastoral as he answers each of our complaints with gospel hope.

“Yes, you’re wasting away…but that’s just your ‘tent’; the real you is glorious!”
“I know these troubles are all you can see; to you they seem impenetrably mountainous. I assure you, God’s love for you is an eternal mountain range and these trials are but dust in the wind.”
“Beloved child, you can see no end to your groaning, but your Father is wise, loving, and good; BUT YOUR FATHER SEES…AND HE KNOWS; he keeps his eye on the clock and his hand on the thermostat.”

We groan, but don’t give up.

Why?

Because we know a secret.

Paul stacks hyperboles, showing how small our worst trials and troubles are here on earth (as well as our happiest moments) compared to what is being prepared for us in glory.

The day after tomorrow Sandy and I will be venturing out west with friends to see the Grand Canyon. I’ve never seen it. I cannot tell you how excited I am.

Even so,

Pastor Paul tells me I can put that glorious event on one scale — standing on the precipice of the Grand Canyon — then pile on the other side of the scale, higher than the heavens, the Day of my uncovering as I stand in the presence of Jesus.

Now, that’s something for which I really, really, really can’t wait.

I only have one message. I’ve shared it forty years in life, word — and groaning — all across the country. It’s my soulsong, my life verse, my core theology, and my eulogy:

God is God,
God is good,
God is good at being God.

And (don’t forget this),

God is good at being God in all our groaning.

Selah, beloved.

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bornagainniversary

Today I’m 48 years old.

In the Lord.

It all started on a Sunday in our family room, kneeling in front of the couch. Dad was on his knees beside me. A half-eaten Sunday dinner was cooling on the dining room table…

january 20, 1974

The family, just home from morning worship, was sitting down for a meal of roast and potatoes, and I was all tied up in knots.

About an hour and a half earlier I had a kung fu grip on the back of the pew in front of me and my knuckles were stretched white. I was sitting with my mother a third of the way back on the outside left, facing the platform. Forrest Hills Baptist Church was more packed than normal.

We had a guest speaker that morning, Monroe Parker. I don’t remember too much about the sermon, only that he used scary illustrations about people who died without Jesus. On hospital beds, in car wrecks, every sort of life-shortened tragedy.

It was revival week with the evangelist, so the altar was mostly filled with weepy folk. As the choir started through another verse of Softly and Tenderly, I leaned out into the aisle, still gripping the pew. I chanced a quick look at my mom, who nodded and smiled knowingly, and that was all the motivation I needed to join a trickle of souls to the front.

Ann Plant was an altar worker known well by our family. She met me, saw how miserable I was, and hastily led me to an open spot on the platform steps.

It was already assumed I was saved (I was a really good kid) so she led me in a “rededication of life” prayer. She smiled and hugged me and I went back to my row where mom waited. I forced a smile because I still felt heavy inside. Where was that lightness of step and brightness of spirit I expected?

On the drive home from church, I remember sitting in the backseat between my two sisters. I was very quiet. Positioned with my feet on the hump, I leaned forward and stole glances of my sad self in the rearview mirror. I could see dad‘s eyes occasionally sliding over to meet mine.

Finally, he furrowed his brow and asked if I was okay. I didn’t look okay. It was all so very discomfiting.

For a thirteen year old kid, a trip to a church altar and a vulnerable prayer with an adult should at least earn you some level of peace. Not me. I didn’t feel fixed.

praying with dad

Sunday dinner was not in the least bit enjoyable for a boy who liked to eat. I pushed vegetables around the plate with my fork, worrying over stuff like being killed in a car wreck and lost for eternity. Pretty out-there stuff for a thirteen year old.

Midway through the meal dad and I exchanged looks. He saw the misery on my face. I felt lost and told him so. He looked at mom and she said lunch could wait. Rising from his place at the head of the table, dad set down his napkin and pushed away.

“Let’s go into the family room, buddy” he said kindly. “I think I know what you need.”

I followed dad to our sofa and took my place beside him on my knees. There, father and son side by side, settled the matter of my soul once and for all. I started to cry. It felt for all the weight of the world that what we were doing was right. I exhaled all my pent-up breath and answered my dad, phrase by phrase, in the sinner’s prayer.

Two minutes later, we were done. Dad hugged me and told me I was saved and that I shouldn’t doubt it ever again. And honestly, by the good grace of God, I never have.

There’ve been some touch-and-go moments in my life, but, forty-eight years later (and counting!), the testimony holds because Jesus holds me.

This is my story, and this is my song:

a salvation hymn

I love GOD because he listened to me,
listened as I begged for mercy.
He listened so intently
as I laid out my case before him. Death stared me in the face,
hell was hard on my heels.
Up against it, I didn’t know which way to turn;
then I called out to GOD for help:
“Please, GOD!” I cried out.
“Save my life!”
GOD is gracious—it is he who makes things right,
our most compassionate God.
GOD takes the side of the helpless;
when I was at the end of my rope, he saved me.
Psalm 116:1-6, The Message

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