Bending or Upright?

We've known each other for over two years but had met in person for the first time just the day before. In the course of our visit, we'd spent time in worship before God, talked through a lot of things and found no disappointments in our expectations of the other. The joy I was feeling was intense. What does one do with exuberant happiness that bubbles over and refuses to be confined? I wanted to focus it all on my friend. After all, if it hadn't been for her, I'd be back home in the pit of despair dug during the preceding weeks and made seemingly impossibly deep two days earlier.

I perceived her as the reason I was so happy and was ready to let her consume all my thoughts when suddenly a thought came to me--a thought I'm sure was from the Holy Spirit. "Stop bending towards her. Your joy doesn't come from her, it comes from God!" I realized that, rather than spilling my joy out in inappropriate affection, longings or other behaviours, I must direct my joy back to God, the source of my joy. This was an opportunity to worship God. Amazingly, it was very easy to switch directions; like flipping a light switch. As I directed my joy towards God, I found the joy increasing. I could hardly contain it.

That evening as I opened my Bible, the next chapter in my reading plan was Psalm 43. The first three verses seemed so out of sync to where I was, I had trouble focusing. I stopped to journal what God had shown me earlier in the day, writing "God is the source of my joy". When I returned to the psalm, I was struck by verse 4 which, in the NLT, reads, "...God--the source of all my joy." My jaw dropped. I couldn't believe my eyes; not because I was surprised the Bible said this but because of the timing. It was confirmation of what I had learned and discovered. No one is the cause of my joy. God is.

That got me to thinking. If no one is the cause of my joy, then is anyone the cause of my emotional pain and hurt? If I shouldn't bend towards the perceived source of my joy, should I bend towards the perceived source of my pain? If I shouldn't let joy be an excuse to consume someone with my thoughts, should I allow pain to be such a reason? Should I not stand upright towards God in both joy and pain and use both as a reason to focus on Him? Now that I've experienced how to stand upright in the joy, maybe I can transfer that to doing the same when I'm tempted to take offense at something someone says or does. I may still feel the offense and pain, just as I continued to feel the joy, but I want to use it as an opportunity to be overwhelmed with God, rather than with the offender and the offense.

Church in a cocktail lounge

I love my church. It is different from every other church I know. Up until now it has been a house church. We're still a house church but we're undergoing change with the direction of new leadership. Our pastors have a vision for a particular part of the city that has seemed resistant to efforts of other churches to plant themselves in that community. We're hoping to succeed where others have not.

This particular neighbourhood is the "happening" place for those disillusioned with the status quo and want to show that disillusionment with style--often very bizarre style. It's where drag queens sup beer beside dreadlocks and spiked hair rubs shoulders with conservative seniors. Squeegie kids jockey for position at street corners and the homeless look for a quiet place to park their shopping cart for a few zzzz's. The streets are lined with trendy cafés, pubs and dining establishments, along with shops that sell art deco, the fine work of local silversmiths and nomadic furniture. The sidewalks bustle with foot traffic beside a major vehicular artery that delivers commuters to the city centre in the morning and spits them back home again at the end of the day. It's an interesting place.

We're looking for a place in this community to call home--a building in which we can hold services and perhaps, as time progresses, provide a drop-in that can provide a cup of coffee and a listening ear. Tonight, however, we met in an up-scale cocktail lounge. Twenty-seven of us gathered to worship and praise God and, despite the customers lined at the bar at the other end of the room, we sang with joy and fervour. Over the meals we had ordered from waitresses who surely must have wondered what we were doing, we listened to the pastor's sermon and then to other leaders share their vision for our church.

The pastor pointed out the two buildings across the street from us--the firehall which, according to a recent newspaper report, entertained strippers in the night and, beside it, the hotel through which, supposedly, most of the city's drugs pass. These are the people to whom we've been called. One of the leaders quoted John Wimber as saying, "The meat is on the street." How do we, who live in broader places with respectable neighbours, become part of a community that has values so disparate from our own? How do we put ourselves on these streets in effective ways? How do we become light in unwelcoming darkness? I'm sure we'll be exploring these questions in the weeks to come.

Weary of holding it in

I started this blog and website because I wanted to share what God has been doing in my life. I wanted to share the journey I'm on--a journey that is far from over. I wanted to show you the good and the bad, the victories and the failures so that you may see that God meets with real people with real problems and issues and that, despite how we mess up, he never gives up on us.

I've been silent for the past several weeks because, once again, I messed up. My mess resulted in me needing to remove a number of blog entries and in me being so discouraged I wasn't sure if I could write again. I questioned the whole reason for being here and my ability to fulfill that purpose. Can I do it? Do I know how?

And yet, if I don't speak out, if I don't testify to what I see and experience God doing, if I don't show the reality of what it's like to be completely devoted to God and yet pulled by that which dishonours God and through it all continue to pursue this God from whose love we cannot be separated, if I don't show that Paul's reality of doing what he didn't want to do and not doing what he wanted to do continues in God's people today, if I keep silent in the midst of God's work, then what? Would the very stones cry out their testimony of God's goodness?

Tonight at church someone read Jeremiah 20:9. In The Message, Jeremiah complains in preceding verses that God pushed him into the job he had of speaking out and he had obeyed. Now he's a public joke and all he gets in return are insults and contempt. While my message has not been the same as Jeremiah's--neither in content nor import--I can identify in a small way with how he felt. "But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,' his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." (NIV, emphasis mine)

And so my silence has ended. I will continue to show God's mercy, grace, forgiveness, patience and love in my life. I won't always do it perfectly. There will be those who see how I could do it differently. I know I have much to learn. But God doesn't limit himself to using only perfect vessels. He uses the imperfect. I know he wants to use me.