Not Yet

I’m not much for parenting articles.  I’m never going to be the girl on the beach scanning magazine articles with titles like "Getting your Child to Listen in 5 Easy Steps"– mostly because I know that if I sit down for two seconds Daniel will be diving head first alone into the waves while Joshua eats sand and Abigail tries to make her way back to the house.  And that’s not really an exaggeration.  But I’m also kind of an old school, all they need to do is play outside, do what’s best for mama kind of mom.  In full disclosure, I let Joshua eat the sand.

Somehow last month, though, I came across an article in a local magazine I enjoy about a teacher who was employing a strategy with her young students she called “not yet.”  When they told her they couldn’t do something or became frustrated with a task, she was quick to remind them that it wasn’t that they couldn’t do it.  Instead, it was that they couldn’t do it yet.  That concept has stuck with me this month, and I think there is something more to it for me than just a new parenting technique.

Last week, Andy found out that he has a job with the new bank that is being formed from the BB&T and Suntrust merger but that the new job will be in Charlotte.  I think my last blog made it clear how hard that news was for me to hear.  In my mind, I thought we were going to be able to stay – if not forever, at least for a little while.  Instead, we were told we have to be in Charlotte by January.

There are a million things that make leaving Clemmons hard for me.  I could list them but the bottom line is that this place feels more like home than any other place I’ve ever lived.  In only 5 years, we have been blessed with the type of community some people never find.  The years we have lived here have definitely been the happiest, most purposeful years of my life.  God has grown us individually and as a couple in beautiful, remarkable ways, and I have seen his hand powerfully beginning with promises he made to us about this place before we even moved here.  Heartbroken doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings about listing a house I love in a community I adore to move back to the city we came from.

But today, in my quiet time, I felt the Lord whispering hope to my “Lord, I just can’ts.”  Lord, I just can’t leave my friends.  Lord, I can’t leave my house.  Lord, I can’t leave my small group, my church, our gym, our school/preschool, ect.  I felt him reminding me, “You can’t do it yet.”  The first verse anyone sent me when this news broke last week was from our pastor’s wife and dear friend, Beth.  The scripture says, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name and you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:1-2). 

It would be so much more enjoyable for me if the Lord would take all the challenges away and make a way for us to stay.  But that isn’t what he’s promised in this situation.  And that wasn’t what he promised in Isaiah.  The waters and rivers and fires would still be there, and the people would still have to walk through every single one of them.  He didn’t promise that he would take them away, but he did promise that he would go with them and that those big, scary, realistically dangerous things would have no effect on the people.  They would be protected.

Andy and another close friend have both reminded me more than once to take this journey one day at a time.  My friend Marianne put it, “Make only the decisions that need to be made today, praying for clarity and trusting God with the decisions for tomorrow.”  The Lord has promised to go with me and yes, there are some things I can’t do right now, but he also isn’t asking me to do them today, and he is promising, “You can’t do them yet… but when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

When Faith is Hard to Find

Bebo Norman has a song and one of the lyrics says, “When your faith is hard to find, borrow mine.”  I’m in a place this week where my faith is hard to find.  Things I have been praying about haven’t worked out the way I thought the Lord told me they would.  And that’s hard because I love the Lord.  I don’t remember not loving the Lord.  Honestly.  Some of my earliest childhood memories are of feeling the sweet presence of the Holy Spirit.  I can truthfully say that the Lord Jesus has always been my closest friend.  I love to hear him speak and over the years, I’ve heard so many words from the Lord that have always given direction to my life.  This is the first time I can remember being so far off base in my interpretation of what the Lord said, and though it is still possible I will still see his hand in a mighty and unexpected way, it doesn’t seem probable.

So that line from the Bebo Norman song is resonating… When your faith is hard to find, borrow mine.  I’ve heard people say that they love God but not the church.  I know Christians who don’t go to church for one reason or another.  People who don’t build around themselves a community of believers.  People who think their relationship with the Lord is private and solo.  I’m going to be bold and say that’s no way to live.

I’m going to be honest that this week has shaken me, and my faith IS hard to find.  But I’m borrowing on the faith of so many women the Lord has put in my life over the years, and I’m borrowing on my husband’s faith.  And it’s a sweet, sweet picture of what the church should be – what the church is in its best form.

Matthew 18:20 says “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” I know this is true.  I have reached out in desperation to my tried and true college friends – my sisters.  I have sent texts and called them in tears, unable to speak for long periods of silence.  I have reached out to close friends in Winston, who have responded with calls and texts of assurance.   One Bible Study member and dear friend left the bag pictured above on my porch while I was napping with my kids.  She did that within hours of receiving a group text and told me in our phone call later that "Cake makes everything better."  She was right. I have texted and emailed friends from Charlotte, ladies I knew for only two short years when I was newly married.  Women who have sent back long emails and even called me to encourage me with practical advice and lists of “to dos.”  I am beyond blessed to have so many beautiful, precious friends that span so many years in my corner.  I have heard God speak in every single one of their voices when I am unable to hear his voice on my own.  They have given words of encouragement from their own lives, from their marriages, from their knowledge of me.  Some have known me long enough to remind me of who I am in the Lord – of where I have been and the ways I have seen God move.  They have leant their faith, and in the midst of all these interactions, I know the Spirit is moving. 

Emily and Marianne, two of my friends from my college years, have both shared advice from Marianne’s sweet father, a godly man who passed away last year.  In his words: “Don’t listen to your feelings, listen to the truth.”  The truth is that God is good, God is fair, He is for me not against me.  He is for our family.  He has plans to use Andy and me in ways that glorify him, which is the greatest joy and privilege we can imagine.  All of that is true no matter what my feelings are saying, and praise the Lord for the community he has placed around me and my family who can speak this truth when Satan’s lies are creeping in.

You can’t do faith alone.  You just can’t.  It is when two or more are gathered in the name of the Lord that you can be sure he is there.  It is when people gather together that the truth is more clear and easier to grasp.  And today, in the midst of my struggle, I can praise God for the community he has given.

Missing the Truth for the Beliefs

This is my view this morning and though I’m a lapsed blogger, I felt like this was a good day to post.  Currently it is 6:38am and my house is also silent, which almost never happens, so I have to take advantage, right? 

This week, I’ve spent some time thinking about the Christian writers and speakers who have shaped my faith.  One day maybe I’ll post about the books that God has used to change my heart in addition to the Bible, but yesterday I saw a shocking Twitter post from one of the big time writers of my generation, and I can’t get it out of my mind.

Joshua Harris is the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Can I get a nostalgic grin from any other millennials out there??  The 1997 read was transformative for so many Christian youth in my teen years.  Now, admittedly, I never read it – I did read bits and pieces of it and found him way too conservative for even the goody-two-shoes teen I was, but it’s like the True Love Waits curriculum and promise rings for me – I can’t help but smile when I think of it and all the youth group conversations that came out of that season of life and those texts.

So yesterday, when I saw an article highlighting a Twitter post about how he has renounced his faith, I was sad and so surprised.  What surprised me most was his line, “By all measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.”  He wrote several reasons why and highlighted how he felt his views of many different issues have been wrong and how he felt the need to repent of that and walk away from Jesus as a result of his shifting views on people and practices.  I don’t want to get into my thoughts on his views – the issues he mentions and my views on them are FAR too nuanced to do justice in a blog post.  However, I couldn’t get past the line “by all measurements that I have for defining a Christian.”

I wish Joshua and I were friends because I would call him and ask, “What are your measurements??”  He is a pastor of a church and a Christian author.  I would assume that he knows the ONLY measurement for defining a Christian is someone who has put complete faith in Jesus Christ for their salvation.  For me, that means first acknowledging that we are sinful people (hello, I think we all know that, right?  Who has not done something they regret?  Hurt someone’s feelings, said something they shouldn’t, lost their temper, been jealous….??).  Next, it would mean understanding that because God is holy, he can not be in the presence of sin – he can’t accept something that is not as holy as himself.  But he is also entirely loving, so he provided his own son to pay the penalty for our sin so that when we accept Christ’s gift of salvation, we take on Jesus’ righteousness.  It means that now, when God looks at us, he only sees Jesus.  If we have accepted Jesus’ gift of grace on the cross, we look exactly like Jesus himself.  Colossians 1:22 puts it, “Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body.  As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.”

From the Twitter post, it sounds like Joshua is defining being a Christian by all kinds of practices and beliefs that are publicized in mainstream media and possibly even from pulpits and in small group settings.  I wanted to post today and say, “Don’t miss the forest for the trees!”  Yes, Christians talk a lot about beliefs – some biblical and some not (sorry about that one!).  But the ONLY measurement for defining oneself a Christian is faith in Jesus Christ. I had a conversation with a girl one time and she said that she was a Christian because those beliefs lined up closest to what she personally thought – after exploring several religions, it seemed to most fit.  That makes absolutely no sense.  

Christianity is not about practices – it is only about Jesus.  

It is true that being in a relationship with Jesus Christ and better knowing the words God has given us in the Bible will likely change us – just as being in a marriage or being a parent or being a best friend will change us.  But any change in behavior or beliefs after coming to faith do not make us a Christian any more than the changes we make after marriage make us married.

To anyone who has defined Christianity by what they see on the news or see in picket carrying protesters or have even experienced by Christians themselves, I would ask that they shift their mindset.  Becoming a Christian is ONLY about knowing Jesus.  That is absolutely 100% it.  And after you know Jesus, you will be changed as you grow in understanding of him and as you read God’s word, but don’t assume that your changes will look like your Christian friend’s changes, and don’t assume they are RIGHT in their changes.  Personally, I know that as I’ve grown in my faith, God has shifted my heart and changed my view about several issues, and I also know that he will continue to do that. 

To Christians who call themselves that because of their practices or a myriad of beliefs that they think define Christianity, I’d ask them to make the same mindset shift.  If you believe yourself to be a Christian because you try your best to be kind and loving, because you desire to be like Jesus and want to serve others, because you like his teachings as represented in the New Testament, because all the things your pastor says about how to live jive with you, you’ve got the wrong view of Christianity. Readjust and rethink because a great tragedy would be to live the words of Matthew 7:22-23 one day: “²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”