Reframe {The Sanctification Gap} - 1 Kings 15

I come into prayer with something pressing on my spirit- I need to reframe my expectations of leadership and ministry. I need to meet with Him about the way I idolize perfection and buy into the scarcity mindset of grace. It’s time to meet with Jesus and confess I need His help- it’s time open some windows and come out of hiding.

I am writing this on a Tuesday. I have called a meeting to order. The invitees are as follows: my emotions, my thoughts, my behaviors, my King, His Spirit, and my God. We meet around a table in the sanctification gap of my soul, that place between who I was and who I am becoming. 

Why are we here today?

To discuss what is really bothering me on a core level.

What is on the table? Forgiveness? Offense? Wounds?

The frame around that story is worn thin. No, today we are here to discuss freedom.

Freedom from what?

Freedom to live honestly in the sanctification gap. Freedom to receive blessing in my imperfection. To learn how to do ministry in a frame of grace.

I want the freedom to make mistakes in ministry and still be blessed by God in all He has called me to do in service of Him. I want to receive His blessing on my ministry even as I fail repeatedly in the process of learning how to manage His provision well. Working with people means a lot of unknowns, a lot of variables, and a lot of potential failure. Should I stop trying to learn how to serve others because I will make mistakes and could hurt someone? No- I should keep pressing forward. Should those who mishandled my story be called to another vocation because of the mistakes they made with me? No- they should keep pressing forward. Why, then, does a piece of my heart withhold grace? By refusing to give it, I am unable to receive it, and therein lies my problem today. I cannot move forward into church ministry without first looking back and reframing my story.

Look with me now, through this window. The underlying message of the past few weeks has been windows- what a strange theme. On vacation I found myself snapping pictures of windows without knowing why. This week in a training at the Freedom Academy I was given a black and white four-paned window that was printed on a handout. We were instructed to do some self-reflection that involved writing aspects of our negative self-perceptions and painful experiences into the four empty boxes of the window. I filled them in easily- generally I have quick access to some of the deep beliefs and deep desires in my soul, so this type of exercise poses no problem for me. One pane of that window asked:

“What is something negative that someone said to you and it stuck with you?”

I quickly wrote my answer, one which came easily and with vigor, hurtful words which had been spoken to me in a church ministry setting where I walked away with soul-wounds that would propel me straight into therapy. My answer to that question on the fourth square of my window diagram was based on words said to me in a church setting, by a church leader who was just trying to do ministry in the name of Jesus. Did that person mean well? Certainly! Did those words hurt me? More than I want to admit. But at this point in my life, if I don’t reframe this part of my story, I cannot give or receive grace for what is yet to come.

Here is why: I am taking small steps to enter into church ministry for myself now. I am in seminary, I am taking a life-coaching class through the Freedom Academy, I am the ambassador for the pastoral care team at Saddleback Yorba Linda. All of this means I am working out my sanctification each and every day, I am working with people and I am practicing self-awareness and learning new tools for leadership and ministry. I don’t think of myself as a leader, but it slowly dawns on me that this is what I am trying to become, despite myself. Which brings this revelation on a Tuesday morning: I now need to receive the grace that I still need to give. I need to reframe my past and so that I can shed some light on my place in the sanctification gap.

So in my journal today I call this Tuesday meeting to my first order of business: we are gathered here because a part of me is tempted to give up quietly and without a witness. That part of myself which believes that I must be perfect has determined that the task ahead of me is impossible. My core belief today is that I cannot ask for grace to learn through making mistakes- I must get everything right immediately, without being told twice and without hurting anyone. This is a problem because when I try to counsel people in real life at church or inside the classroom I have a massive fear of failure. I am ashamed of my learning curve when I am working with people. This is a core part of my belief system which needs transforming work in the Spirit, who is with me always. I have a scarcity mindset of grace.

Secondly, I have a critical voice inside that will not allow me to fail others in the ways that those in my past have failed me. I am deathly afraid to become a hypocrite, to see any commonality in myself with those who hurt me. I have declared to myself and to God that I will be different than them- it’s a desperate polarization seeded in the fear of becoming the very thing which I hold out as other, different and wrong. “I won’t be like them” is a judgement statement that keeps my deeper insecurities at bay. In the depths of my heart I pray with pride the thanks that I am not like them- I will do ministry so differently, so much better. So I am deeply concerned about doing ministry perfectly in order to remain above the shortcomings of others. I have drawn lines and boundaries about what is acceptable and what is not, and so I am quickly becoming hyper-vigilant to avoid repeating the wrongs that were done against me.

The frame of “I am different, I was right, they were wrong” keeps this window darkly shut and lets no light in to shine upon the ways I need the same grace as those I criticize. This standard of perfection is crushing me- it makes me fearful to take another step in learning to serve the church because I am afraid I might look down to see that really I am walking in the shoes of those I ran from. How can we reframe the past to shine light on new ways of thinking?

Those around the table with me lean into my journal and each has something to say. As we go around the room I hear the input from many sides- my emotions, my thoughts, and my behaviors weigh in first. Then I turn to the Trinity for an alternative- what are my other options here?

The Spirit holds up a frame of grace-

“In Christ there is permission to be blessed in imperfection.”

In the light of the window I look down at 1 Kings 15:14 and read-

¹⁴ Although the pagan shrines were not removed, Asa’s heart remained completely faithful to the Lord throughout his life.

This leader didn’t finish the job- he left pagan shrines among God’s chosen people. But the Word says that his heart remained steadfast to the Lord. Wait a minute, so you can have an imperfect ministry and yet your heart can be right before God? You can have definite shortcomings in your execution of service and leadership and yet be blessed by your faithfulness to Jesus? Yes, they do and yes, they are. Look around you! Can I frame this fact of life with grace?

The Spirit holds the frame higher, letting in more light- “I bless ministry and church leaders for the state of their heart, not for what they produce.”

I read more support for this in 1 Kings 15:4-

⁴ But for David’s sake, the Lord his God allowed his descendants to continue ruling, shining like a lamp, and he gave Abijam a son to rule after him in Jerusalem.

I sit back and look out this new window pane as I consider what it could mean. My inner voices have a lot to say. This verse comes after a long line of mistakes where leader after leader fails to be faithful to the God of Israel. But for the sake of the greater narrative, for Jesus sake, God continued to keep this leadership in power because it still brought glory to His name, despite the obvious shortcomings of those He permitted to rule. What frame does this put around my story and the relationships in my past?

The Spirit weighs in on my thoughts- God appoints ministry leaders for reasons bigger than themselves. In this way I have also appointed you.

And in a profound way, I reconcile my past to my future by walking in the shoes of those who needed my grace then as much as I myself will now need it. Case in point- On Sundays I have started to stand in the prayer area after service to offer words of hope and encouragement to those in the community who need it. Anyone is welcome to come to me for words of hope, help, or comfort. I take this seriously. I want to honor the feelings and stories of those who come to share a piece of their journey with me.

I have had very little experience so far- several practice sessions at the Freedom Academy and opportunities to articulate my limited listening and counseling skills in the cohort portion of my seminary class. But on Sunday when I stand next to the “prayer” sign after church with my lanyard and my team t-shirt on, this is the real thing. The stories are real life, the tears are unrehearsed and I am the one to whom these people are bringing their prayers. I find myself in the messy work of partnering with people in their painful stories, and so I am perfectly poised to make the same mistakes that were once made with me. How to handle the fragile needs of a human community of Jesus people? Such a hard question, one that needs a frame of grace.

I have noticed myself walking away from these Sunday mornings with negative self-talk. There is a fear inside that perhaps I might actually make the same mistakes as those from whom “I am different”. What if I say something that could be misunderstood, perhaps even hurtful? What if someday someone looks at me the same way I looked at those in the past who mishandled my story? So I judge myself harshly for not saying everything right. I condemn myself for my imperfect performance. I have no grace for myself. When it comes to learning to do counseling, coaching and public prayer for the church community, I find I get discouraged easily. These are people with real hurts, and who am I to speak words of leadership over them? I treat myself exactly as I treat those who let me down in the past- no grace, a frame of self-righteous judgement, critical and demonstrative. There is no room to learn, I must already know- know how to be different from those who failed before me!

And here is the deep lie I hold for myself (and others) as a result- your imperfection cannot be blessed or provided for, it must first be corrected and made right. But this is not Biblical. And here I confer with my companions around the table as the sun shines in through the window on this early Tuesday morning: I expected my church leaders to handle my story without making any mistakes. I could not put a frame of grace around the way those leaders fumbled with my needs. Yet here I am fumbling to do the very same role, uncertain and rather unqualified. 

Why am I unable to frame my mistakes with grace? Because I have not extended that same grace to frame those who came before me. To allow myself to learn the hard way about how to serve people in ministry means reframing the past. Grace is an equal-opportunist, and it is a frame that compliments every window, including those we would rather keep shut because they reveal deep beliefs which need Divine alternatives.

What is this deep belief that I cannot be like the people who hurt me in ministry? This determination to be different than them? Perhaps this is a form of pride and a roadblock to the work the Spirit wants to do within me now. What if I frame their mishandling of me with grace so that I can give myself grace, too? And so my companions and I agree as we confer around the table- it is time to reframe what happened in my story so that I can see my past through a window filled with light. Only then can I put off the burden of perfection that I carry with me into every act of service in my own attempt at church ministry. I cannot move forward until I first acknowledge that this reframing needs to take place when I look behind me at what came before this moment. Yes, framing the deeds of others with a lens of grace will set me free to receive it for myself.

When you begin to live life in the sanctification gap, that place between who we were and who we are becoming, the windows to our past tend to get reframed without our realizing. So the next time we look back, the story looks a bit different- not because we are forgetting, but because we are seeing in a different light. No longer through a glass darkly, but clear as the Son. What if I allowed God to bless me in my mistakes? What if I rejoiced that He blesses those who have made mistakes with me? Church ministry is much bigger than the people who feebly try to execute it. When the state of our heart becomes more important than the limitations of our hands, then we have reframed the “I am different” mindset in such a way that looking at the stories of others becomes more like looking into a mirror at oneself. Our job now is to raise a banner of love over that frame and allow the Light to shine upon us all, for God blesses His children in the midst of their mistakes, not in spite of them. Reframe the past with grace and He will reframe the present with love.

Why are we meeting here on this Tuesday morning?

To discuss what is really bothering me on a core level.

To revisit the story of your past?

The frame around that story is worn thin. No, today we are here to discuss freedom.

Freedom from what?

Freedom to live honestly in the sanctification gap. Freedom to receive blessing in my imperfection. To learn how to do ministry within a frame of grace.

Welcome, child. You are safe here. You are welcomed. You are loved.

Amen and amen.

Rebecca

~*~

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Take Communion With Me- John 13

How to be loved? We don’t know. So Jesus paints a masterpiece upon our dirty feet.

This is where pain turns to memory, so we can tell a different story.

I am under the discipline of intimacy with my Father, and this is what He has shown me about my transformation this week-

I am a Judas, just coming in from the dark of night. My feet have been made dirty by the steps of betrayal.

You, reader, are also a Judas in need of grace. Your story is different but the larger narrative is the same- we are in the same community of sinners made hungry from the ache of rejection.

We all hunger for that piece of bread which openly identifies the betrayal of our very feet.

So before the effects of the day set in, come now before Him, kneeling at His feet and bowing low, hair undone, breathing a breath prayer three times with hands pressed together at heart center.

This week I had two sermons bombard me with the realization that my spiritual transformation is not going exactly as I had imagined.

On Monday I listened in to a sermon from The Garden Church, a talk by Dave Lomas titled “Lean Back”. It was about John chapter 13.

Several days later I tuned into a recording from VOX Community, a sermon by Jack West called “Betrayal and Forgiveness”. It was also about John chapter 13.

Coincidence? No. This is how I hear from God- the only way for Him to get through my stubborn pride is to repeatedly tell me the same thing in a variety of different ways. Eventually He gets through- eventually.

So John 13 seems to be of import in my walk with Jesus this week. What is He trying to teach me here? This is the account of Jesus washing all of the disciple’s feet, just moments before the betrayal of one of those disciples, Judas.

This is coming right after I wrote about Luke 7:37 in a blog about intimacy and the washing of Jesus' feet by a woman of ill-repute.

Ok, Jesus. Let’s journey here together, then-

John 13  (NLT)

Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet

13 Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end.^[a] 2 It was time for supper, and the devil had already prompted Judas,^[b] son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. ³ Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. ⁴ So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, ⁵ and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.

His masterpiece is being painted upon our feet 

with water made dirty by our own sinful betrayal.

We see Jesus kneeling at the feet of his betrayer, moments before those very same feet would walk out on Him and cooperate with the plan for His suffering.

Have feet ever walked out on you, reader? What if Jesus asked you to kneel down and wash them without the resolution of conflict?

This is the struggle of the human heart. To put forth your actual, physical sin before Jesus and have Him cleanse it with grace. To come hungry for love, because betrayal has made us empty.

This humility intermingles with the offering of love and we are repulsed and compelled. We lean back and look down, to watch the beloved head bend over our sins with ministrations of grace.

Have you ever washed the feet of your betrayer? It will haunt your soul for a lifetime and call you to reckon with your innermost being.

If you have the audacity to wash the feet of your enemy, rest assured that God is pursing your heart with a tenacity that defies the gravity of shame.

So Jesus calls us all to repentance-

¹² After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? ¹³ You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. ¹⁴ And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. ¹⁵ I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. ¹⁶ I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message. ¹⁷ Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

Can we do this? Are we, His followers, capable of extending forgiveness so generously, lavishing it upon those who would walk out on our offering of love?

Why are we stil carrying around this awful baggage of betrayal? When are we going to set it down and rest, allowing our King to minister to the very feet which carried us away from His mercy and love?

Oh, but did you know, you are Judas, too? Yes, because betrayal makes us hungry for truth. And if we are hungry, we are the one to whom Jesus hands the bread dipped for sinners-

²¹ Now Jesus was deeply troubled,^[f] and he exclaimed, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me!”

Betrayal. Yes, this is a loaded word. For each person it means something different, but to all of us it means the same- a burden of pain.

Who is the betrayer in need of forgiveness? It is I, the hungry sinner who consumes the bread at the table of Christ.

Will you take communion with me?

²⁶ Jesus responded, “It is the one to whom I give the bread I dip in the bowl.” And when he had dipped it, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him. Then Jesus told him, “Hurry and do what you’re going to do.” ²⁸ None of the others at the table knew what Jesus meant. ²⁹ Since Judas was their treasurer, some thought Jesus was telling him to go and pay for the food or to give some money to the poor.³⁰ So Judas left at once, going out into the night.

You can either dine with Jesus at His table of forgiveness, or you can go out into the night. 

The night: a place of shame and regret. A place where your will is not opposed, and you are left to your own devices. This is where the dark things are, a place without love or tenderness. A place where nobody ever washes a brother’s dirty feet. A place of judgement and the rendering of punishment.

The night is the place where you realize you are a hungry sinner, made empty by your betrayal of Christ's ministrations of love, longing for a morsel even if that very morsel publically declares your incrediable need for forgiveness.

God, You call us to love. To really love.

To love ourself despite being wrong. To love our betrayer despite the betrayal.

In the sermon at VOX, Jack West made a statement which fell as profound up my sinners ears: "We must enter into a larger gravitational experience than the one in which we were harmed. Unforgiveness ends in the collapse of the smaller story upon it's author. All stories that are not expansive and don't have forgiveness at their center will eventually collapes on their author."

Jesus, You are calling us into a larger story as you wash the sins from our betraying feet.

This is impossibly hard.

We cannot do it without You.

But because You have already washed our feet before we betrayed you, we now have the power to forgive the feet of those who will never apologize for the ways they have betrayed us.

So we can gather at the communion table in the safe haven of neutrality-

⁴ So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. ³⁵ Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

We are all hungry sinners in need of the bread. The one to whom Christ gives the morsel to dip and consume, that is the one who will betray Him.

That sinner is me.

That sinner is you.

For we have hurt one another, and in doing so we have betrayed His command to love.

Will you take communion with me?

How to be loved by the One who loves us? We don’t know. So Jesus paints a masterpiece upon our dirty feet.

This is where pain turns to memory, so we can tell a different story.

So before the effects of the day set in, come now before Him, kneeling at His feet and bowing low, hair undone, breathing a breath prayer three times with hands pressed together at heart center.

Meet me at the table, friends, for here we can re-imagine that which we call the story of betrayal. Perhaps you can help me retell my journey from a higher point of grace.

Come hungry to this table, because when you accept a morsel of bread from the One who names and claims our pain, then your betrayal of His love becomes the channel for His grace.

I am a Judas, just coming in from the dark of night. My feet have been made dirty again by the steps of betrayal.

You, too, are a Judas in need of grace. Your story is different but the larger narrative is the same- we are in the same community of sinners made hungry from the ache of betrayal.

Take communion with me, won’t you?

It’s the starting place for forgiveness, it is the birth place of freedom. If nothing else, we can dine side by side and watch Jesus wash our feet. From there, God knows what can be accomplished in us.

Take communion with me. For there are no betrayers when the table has been set by the gentle cleansing hands of our King. Instead, there is a community of consumers who are being transformed into redemptive works of grace.

"Father, you see my heart, and You know how I have walked into the dark of night away from Your cleansing love. I come again to the communion table to empty my soul, spirit and mind of everything that does not worship You. Does regret or guilt sing Your praise? No. Does longing for things long past bring about change? Never. Can holding onto betrayal lift You higher in my thoughts? No. Jesus, my King, arrest my soul, tame my spirit, transform my mind and meet me at my dirty feet. As the dark of night melts into the light of day, let all things within me be surrendered and made new. I want to walk away from the communion table transformed into a child of dignity and humility. I declare my need for the morsel of bread which You hold out as the others look on, for I am the one upon whom Your forgiveness must fall first. Meet me this week, Jesus. Go with me to the communion table on Sunday. Honor my feeble attempts to reconcile. Bless my desire for unity and healing. Wash my feet again. Thank you, Father. Amen."

I will meet you around the communion table, my friends. 
See you Sunday.

Rebecca

~*~

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