Intimacy- Luke 7:37

I resisted this blog for several days after knowing what I would write about. Who wants to talk about intimacy in a public forum?

Yet Here I am to take a walk among the idols of my life with Jesus. I don’t want to be here, but I made the brave and dangerous choice to enter into His calling. Faith done right will feel like a juxtaposition. Ambivilance is inevitable in the mental arena of the daily disciple.

Once upon a time I knelt at the feet of my idol and anointed perfume with complete humility and trust. I let my hair down and embraced my identity as the Luke 7:37 woman of the Bible.

I was vulnerable, I was honest, I was courageous. But I knelt in a posture of submission at the feet of a human being who I had wrongfully put in place of Christ. I had made an idol. I sought intimacy with an image-bearer instead of the Creator Himself.

I was bravely misled by my own choice to sin- I wanted to make people my refuge and my redemption. I wanted to craft human friendships into vessels of salvation. I entered into relationships with a desperation for healing and wholeness that caused me to offer up my soul on the wrong altar.

Who is the Luke 7:37 woman? Read with me here-

Luke 7:37-50 (NLT)

³⁷ When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. ³⁸ Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.

³⁹ When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”

⁴⁰ Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”

“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.

⁴¹ Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver^[a]to one and 50 pieces to the other. ⁴² But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”

⁴³ Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”

“That’s right,” Jesus said. ⁴⁴ Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. ⁴⁵ You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. ⁴⁶ You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.

⁴⁷ “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” ⁴⁸ Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

⁴⁹ The men at the table said among themselves, “Who is this man, that he goes around forgiving sins?”

⁵⁰ And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Who walks away from their most vulnerable moment with a sense of deep inner peace? Well if the idol you knelt before was less than the complete perfection of Jesus, you probably walked away with regrets.

If the idol you knelt before was Jesus Christ, then you walk away not only at peace, but made strong in the very midst of your weak human fragility. You walk away whole and humble at the same time, ready for true intimacy with others.

The Luke 7:37 woman of the gospels was given true peace as a result of her true intimacy with the only One who deserved her devotion- she brought her whole sinful self and was therefore granted the right to love and be loved despite the many idols of her abuse.

Intimacy with human beings is complicated and complex, full of potential pitfalls. It is directly tied to idolatry because of sin. This is because we are all made in the image of God, walking around in a broken system, and so we are all potential gods and goddesses of idolatry in our own right. We tempt one another with our great display of false perfection whenever we pretend that sin does not impair our judgement for relational intimacy.

As I read Deuteronomy this week, I see this human struggle with idolatry going on among God’s people from the beginning of the exodus from Egypt.

Deuteronomy 4:15-31  (NLT)

A Warning against Idolatry

¹⁵ “But be very careful! You did not see the Lord’s form on the day he spoke to you from the heart of the fire at Mount Sinai. ¹⁶ So do not corrupt yourselves by making an idol in any form—whether of a man or a woman, ¹⁷ an animal on the ground, a bird in the sky, ¹⁸ a small animal that scurries along the ground, or a fish in the deepest sea. ¹⁹ And when you look up into the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars—all the forces of heaven—don’t be seduced into worshiping them. The Lord your God gave them to all the peoples of the earth. ²⁰ Remember that the Lord rescued you from the iron-smelting furnace of Egypt in order to make you his very own people and his special possession, which is what you are today.

It is not your sin to be abused- to be helplessly mistreated by broken human beings. No, it is not your sin to be hurt. It is not your sin to become a victim of another’s neglect or cruelty. That is someone else's sin, not yours.

BUT it is your sin to allow this to distort our view of God. It is sin to allow humans to determine our worth in Jesus. It is a sin to project painful human failings onto the perfect God who loves you. The sins pushed upon us are not our fault- the pain which we allow to taint our trust in God, that is the piece of the suffering that you are responsible for. How have idols shaped your world view?

The idol of hate, vengance, fear, betrayal, unforgiveness, bitterness? Products of human brokenness. Not products of God's love. To cross these two is blasphemy. Of this I daily repent.

For this I must look back and take account for all the ways my idolatry of human opinion and praise marred my intimacy with Jesus.

To mistrust God is a sin, because His love for you is perfect. How have you allowed your idolatry of another human person become the downfall of your relationship to Christ? If you fully trust God, can that abusive relationship truly damages your core values?

How was my Luke 7:37 moment an act of sin? Because I allowed the failure of a human friend to cause me to pull back away from the love of Jesus in fear.

Who hurt me? People. Who did I hide from? God.

Oh, I also hid from people, too. Don’t get me wrong. But the bitterness, the denial, the rejection of forgiveness, these were all a mistrusting of God’s redemptive plan for my life. By rebelling against reconciliation, I was revealing how much I truly mistrusted God’s ability to produce something new in the aftermath of human failure, both mine and theirs. By choosing anger and sometimes hate, I was choosing to take away the false idolatry of other humans into my own hands.

Since other people could not be my god, then I would be my own god and take shame and rage into my own hands. If I could not be intimate in relationship with people, I would not be intimate in relationship with anybody- this does include God, whether the victim of relational suffering realizes it or not.

How we treat image-bearers is how we treat the one who actually is the Image of Christ. Intimacy with people is only meant to be a reflection of our intimacy with Him, not a replacement.

A voice interrupts here and says, am I still talking about this after so long? Yes, because working out sanctification is a lifelong process that involves honesty, patience and the guidance of the Spirit. And today, He guides me here to talk about intimacy.

Idolatry of other human beings is what gives sin access to our hearts. Trusting human persons for the very real needs that only God should be trusted with- that is where intimacy gets damaged.

Are we in fact bent but not broken, or are we whole and healed in Jesus? I am currently wrestling with this myself. It seems to be a both/and situation, a duality and a very Jewish way of thinking.

In my counseling sessions I am currently going through Dr. Dan Allender’s companion workbook called The Wounded Heart. This week, we are working on shame. I wanted to share a piece of it with my readers here-

Answer these questions with me, and see if we have some humanity in common, you and I:

Q: Look back at the embarrassing moments and shameful truths you’ve been writing about. Which of them involves letting people determine your value and desirability? Which of them involves letting God determine those things?

A: Every incident of shame in my life involves trusting in people to take the place of God and expecting humans to validate my worth. I have rarely trusted God to define who I am. Even now, right now in this moment. This is why I am so often anxious.

Q: What signs do you see in your life that you have tried (and maybe succeeded) to deaden your longing for deep, satisfying involvement with others?

A: I let relationships fade away when I am hurt or let down. I use neglect or avoidance to create a safe distance between myself and others in order to avoid intimacy.

Q: What pain do you avoid by not longing for love?

A: When I keep a safe distance from intimacy, then I avoid the pain of being hurt again, I avoid making another mistake, and I avoid falling short of other’s expectations of me. When I hide, I can’t be wounded.

Q: Do you identify with the fear of abandonment? If so, what do you do because of that fear?

A: Yes, based on past experiences I certainly fear relational abandonment. I anticipate it and try to stay ahead of it at all times. I avoid intimacy because the distance keeps me feeling safe.

Q: As you look back over your answers, think about who you are trusting. To what or whom have you given the power to determine your desirability and worth?

A: People. Always people. I have place myself at the feet of human idols, ones who cannot provide the intimacy I need to be fulfilled, healed and whole. I have looked to people to be my God, and when they let me down I retreat into emotional isolation. People are my idols, and so I fear and avoid depth of relationship because intimacy is a threat when it is based on the broken human definition of love.

My friends, this is a tiny window into the thoughts I have been wrestling with this past week. God is doing a work in me, revealing the roots of my idolatry and communicating to my heart where true intimacy with Him could take me. Here has been my response to Him:

“Dear Father- I am tired of doing relationships my way, but I have no idea how to change. I sit here in the weeds of my mistakes and wait to be rescued. All my self-help efforts have failed. I realize that on my own, in my own stubborn pride to “do it myself”, all my attempts have amounted to a state of helpless and useless fear of intimacy. You are the healer of my body and the lover of my soul. I want to experience Your overwhelming presence every day, even when there is pain and sorrow. I know that my brain needs to be washed and reprogrammed so that I can experience true intimacy first with You, so that I can experience it secondly with others. Help me to differentiate between intimacy and efficiency- teach me to understand love from a healthy foundation of trusting first in You. In Jesus name, AMEN.”

Yes, idolatry is the opposite of intimacy. This is why God makes is very clear in His Word- no idols. Okay, God, we agree. No idols.

But we have idols. They are people. They are everywhere.

God warns us, not because He is jealous (although He is jealous for our faithful love) but because we are weak.

We are all weak. We are all bent by the weight of mishandled intimacy. We are all human. We are all burdening one another with the weight of idolatry.

When I knelt at the feet of another human being, I place the weight of my salvation upon the back of a fellow struggler. To idolatrize the thoughts, opinions and assumptions of someone other than God is to sin against the Creator and all humanity.

Our idolatry is breaking us down. Our lack of healthy intimacy is ripping relationships apart. We need Jesus at the center, here and now.

Certainly, I am not the only Luke 7:37 woman in this world- there are more than a few of us out there. Only most don’t say so, because it isn’t safe to do so.

Thankfully, God anticipates our tendency for making idols out of each other, and so He leaves this promise that comes in the aftermath of our sins:

²⁸ There, in a foreign land, you will worship idols made from wood and stone—gods that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. ²⁹ But from there you will search again for the Lord your God. And if you search for him with all your heart and soul, you will find him.

³⁰ “In the distant future, when you are suffering all these things, you will finally return to the Lord your God and listen to what he tells you. ³¹ For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon you or destroy you or forget the solemn covenant he made with your ancestors.

Some of us want deep relationships but don’t want to do the daily work of building intimacy to get there. Some of us prefer to just hotwire intimacy or surrender to the breakdown of relationship and simply ride it out while it lasts. I have done both. Both are sin. Both require substantial emotional healing.

It is time to exchange idolatry for intimacy. Stop idolizing people and start knowing them- but do not attempt this until you place your worship in a safe place: upon the feet of Jesus.

We must intentionally work on intimacy with God every day. Our souls cannot be allowed to sleep. We must become emotionally invested in knowing Christ each day.

Are you brave like the Luke 7:37 woman of the Scriptures? Can you present your WHOLE self to Jesus, worshiping at His feet?

So begin to reserve the depths of your heart for Him, because He adores you deeply. Desire intimacy with Him so that you can experience it with others. Love the soul in another person in a way that reflects Jesus instead of replacing Him.

Even though our sins are many, the love of Jesus in us is even more. Intimacy with Him will always save us, and then we can continue to move forward in peace, together.

Victory is ours, brothers and sisters.

With Love,

Rebecca

~*~

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The Shame Train- Genesis 3

I have joined a cohort called the Freedom Academy- I am enthusiastic as I look forward to the many hours I will spend absorbing the wisdom that Freedom Center OC has to offer. This class will begin in the Fall and run through December, so it is my hope that what I learn in this small cohort will pair quite nicely with my studies at school. It is my hope to use such tools to counsel other victims of what I choose here to call shame abuse.

In order to get a head start and lead the way of learning and knowing (as a Type One on the Enneagram will do) I determined to dive into any book they might suggest as a resource for personal growth and preparation.

To begin this summer season of “waiting” (as I am waiting on my official acceptance into Talbot Seminary, God willing, and then I will wait for school to actually start in the Fall), I picked up the book called The Wounded Heart by Dr. Dan B. Allender and I headed out on the journey with naive expectancy.

The impact of this read was unexpectedly powerful and I found myself stumbling along the tracks of unfamiliar territory. I had to jump back and allow the shame train to pass by before I could reorient myself and gather my wits to continue on.

On page 62 is where I first met the idea that shame is like pain- it indicates a problem which is not the suffering itself, but a deep wound which needs healing. Dr. Allender writes these words in summary of Genesis 3: 12 which roused my anger upon reception:

“Imagine telling the Lord God, ‘Don’t blame me. It’s not my fault; You made [insert name your enemy here]. If You had not created [him or her], then I would not be in this mess. It’s ultimately a failure of Your creation. You, God, and that [person] You made are the cause of [my] fall.”

Allender goes on to suggest that the enemy for all of us is not that person or people who have wronged and hurt us, but the enemy is sin and shame itself.

How dare it be suggested that the things of which I am a legitimate victim are actually a revelation of my own independent broken separation from God?! Excuse me? I am the victim in my story, not the sinner!

Anger! Shame!

Be still, oh my soul, and listen.

What is shame abuse? It is when we allow shame to dictate our present separation from God and therefore ensure our future status as a victim of such disparity. 

So I came here today to hash out why this page of the book elicited such anger from within me. I want to grapple with it until I see my God standing victorious in very center of the aftermath of all my emotions.

Here is how I will step back and reflect-

As I stood with my children beside a roaring train last week, it was with both delight and terror that we felt the air rushing by as the heavy metal clanked and the track bowed and hissed with the weight and heat of their rushing burden.

God spoke to me through my son as we stood waiting for some simple Saturday evening fun, to see a couple trains pass by us there at the Fullerton Train Station. We all noticed one particular homeless man because he stole our leftovers from where we had set them just two feet away. I told him to go ahead and do take it, and he continued to do so with a slurred sentence of thanks. We watched him hobble away on unsteady legs.

This homeless man we encountered while standing at the train station caused me to reflect on my own season of waiting. I am waiting for emotional healing and I am waiting for new direction.

I am waiting to understand who I am and what it is I am doing. I am waiting to settle into something definite. I am waiting until I can trust God with more.

And I think now of how the many feelings which rise up during this season in my life can become deadly to the soul when I don’t know how to approach them. This waiting can become a platform for transportation or numbing, depending upon my approach.

My initial thought upon seeing this drunken homeless man stealing his dinner was to simply judge- “he made very foolish choices and so he has ruined himself. His approach to life was bad.”

But the eyes of an innocent child do not see in black and white, which is why we are to come to our Father like little children in shades of gray.

“Mommy, why does that man do drugs?” This was my nine year old son.

What is this man’s story, really? Is his so different from my own? We both know shame, that worldwide epidemic of human brokenness and separation from God. We both long for our next spiritual meal while avoiding the dangers of incoming emotion.

“Well, his feelings are very sad because he has a hard life, and he doesn’t want to feel the hurt anymore. So he does drugs to turn off his feelings. He wants to hide from his sadness.” This was the best I could do for a quick answer to a loaded question.

“Is this because of sins, mommy?”

“Yes, son. This is because of sins. And it makes God very sad when we hide from our feelings, because then He cannot help us.”

Oh, but shame is an exception, if I am honest. I allow shame to enter in because it seems well-deserved and righteous. Shame points fingers and brings momentary retribution to the wounded soul.

After all, I’m a victim, so I have a right to feel shame or any other hurt emotion if I choose to!

…but to hide in shame is to become separated from the only One who can heal. This is the sin of shame which hurts nobody but ourselves.

“The capacity to feel shame does not lead to change or a return to the Creator. It leads to the opposite attempt to hide behind a bush. The natural response of an autonomous (independent and self-reliant) heart is to hide behind fig leaves or any convenient bush.” –Dr. Allender

Don’t we all live in this space on some level within? Who hasn’t felt shame and wanted to run and hide from God and perhaps also the whole entire world? Those who cannot recall experiencing such a time are the most numb of all.

To be human is to feel ashamed. To be human is to be divine. So we must bravely enter the presence of God with both parts of our selves in order to be fully known and fully loved. As Allender eloquently writes,

"Man is an amalgamation of dignity and depravity, 

a glorious ruin."

When shame has had its way with us, we are left numb and our soul goes to sleep because it has been cut off from the lifesource of our true identity and divinity.

The aftermath of shame is a dizzying combination of intense downward pressure and helpless weakness.

We are all victims of shame abuse.

So each of us must know that Christ is there beside us offering a hand and asking that wonderful question with a loud voice and inquiring eyes as He checks his pocket-watch in earnest,

“Well, ya comin’?”

What is important is not where He is going, it’s deciding to get on. 

Board the shame train? 

Yes, because otherwise we will be stuck at the station for the rest of our lives, numbing ourselves to the pain with a bottle in a brown paper sack.

We can numb out our entire existence with cycles of living that make us “happy” because they are familiar, or we can choose to board one of those scary trains of powerful emotion and trust that He will help us navigate the journey.

In working through The Wounded Heart this week, I see an error in some of my reasoning about the past- I always believed that shame was its own entity, a thing to be felt helplessly or turned into a launching pad for either retaliation or personal victory.

I did not know it could be an indicator that I am in fact hiding from the One I thought I was actively pursuing.

I owe most of my story to shame- without it, I would never have had the momentum to step out and keep writing. Because what does not kill us makes us stronger- right??

…yet what does not kill us can also cause us to hide deeper from the truth, pushing it away and covering our wounds with numbing techniques that are familiar and well-worn, like a drunken homeless man beside dangerous tracks of busy human productivity.

So now I go into my week with a new thought- the feeling of shame is not a signal that someone committed a wrong, it is a sign that we are hiding from God. Let not these two be confused, as much as the enemy would like us to believe that shame begins and ends with offense and must be either drowned in or ignored.

In Genesis is the first story of shame, and it tells so much about the human condition-

Genesis 3:9-12 (NLT)

⁹ Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

¹⁰ He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

¹¹ “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”

¹² The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

Here in the place of shame is where God’s presence is most tangible to the sinner- the air is thick with it.

Imagine yourself hiding from God behind a bush every time that you feel shame- actually, that is what you are in fact doing. This is what I have done countless times, too many to count. I have said many MANY times: ‘Don’t blame me. It’s not my fault; You made [this enemy of mine]. If You had not created [him or her], then I would not be in this mess. It’s ultimately a failure of Your creation. You, God, and that [person] You made are the cause of [my] fall.”

Sometimes, this very enemy is even my own self. For example, the school play which I forgot to attend because I wrote down the wrong date, so that no loved one was in the audience to cheer for him when my son was on stage.

Here comes the shame train. A classic case of shame abuse in my soul.

I hide from You, God, because I don't want You to see that I am broken and imperfect. I am ashamed only because I am separated from You, and I am separated from You only because I have chosen to hide.

Ah, shame, how I loathe you. This relationship must end, and so I board you cautiously and see where you take me from here, listening carefully to the words of the Conductor so I know exactly when to get off.

I am going to leave this platform of unbroken cycles of brokenness, and the tracks will lead me to a place where I can present my whole entire wounded self before God in open humility.

Emotions can become a freight train of power and momentum when we do not have proper perspective. And perhaps a runaway train might be a better description of what shame can feel like within the soul, as well as the damage that shame can do to the human spirit when it is either ignored or indulged.

Shame is death, which is why it was the original gateway in Genesis 3 for brokenness to enter our once-perfect world. So when we see the first signal which tells us that the freight train of shame is headed our way, the first instinct is to hide. As shame begets fear of what God might do if He saw who we really are, it arouses our impulse to barricade ourselves from the onslaught of emotion which appears from a distance to be a massive threat of unknown proportions.

“It’s coming, it’s coming! Look, Mama! There it is!”

We remember this loud train which careens down the tracks, as it has passed by many times before, and we know the routine because we are creatures of broken habits and fallen instincts. We live here at the station, never getting on to travel these tracks of big emotion because we are too busy numbing ourselves to how we truly feel.

We are the homeless vagabonds who wander around the train station begging for handouts and keeping a safe distance from the tracks. We don’t want to risk exposure to any potential futher injury, and we would never dream of getting on the train should it pull up to a groaning, slowing stop beside us. Not even the invitation of a friendly conductor could sway our determination to remain benched, small and ashamed. For perpetual brokenness is easy to live with when it is very familiar.

No, we continue to sit on the station bench, passively observing freight trains coming and going, keeping a safe margin between ourselves and the familiar locomotives which could either kill us or deliver us from this place where we are stuck. We opt instead for the bottle that sits in a paper sack beside us, the one that contains victimization, offense, accusation and a long list of wrongs done to us and through us.

We emotional vagabonds don’t ask for much, other than handouts that will keep us alive in order to continue the numbing process. There is a tiny part of us that knows we are waiting for something, but we have forgotten what that might be. Shame keeps us hidden from others, from ourselves, and most importantly, from God.

Most of us don’t even realize the effects of shame in our lives because we have lived so long with it that we have become accustomed and accepted it as quite normal. And to interrupt the homogeneous state of a life lived in shame is to upset the normalcy of the comfortably familiar.

Who wants a God that invites us to take up a cross and learn to die well? Only those who are ready to stop hiding and present their whole shameful self to the ministrations of the King.

And we will go to great lengths to maintain the homogeneous state of shame in which we dwell. And sometimes the reality of our pain takes momentous effort to cover up. Continues Dr. Allender: “Shame is a dreaded, deep-seated, long-held terror come true: what we have fear has actually come about. We’ve been found out.”

“Look, look, mommy! Here it comes!”

Shame steals our next meal while we are gazing into the distance, anticipating the next onslaught of emotion headed our way.

And this shame does not always have to be a giant monstrosity of power and speed, although it often is that. It can also be an inviting passenger train which whistles pleasantly and slows down to accommodate our weary burdens which we carry.

“Well, ya comin’?”

Remember, friends, as we learn this together: shame is not actually a sign that you or someone else has done something wrong. Shame is a sign that you are hiding from God.

The first time this was suggested to me I became angry. It boiled up and I sat with it for quite some time, quietly observing what this anger could mean.

I found that at the root of every offense, both mine and others, is a simple choice: hide from God or stand brokenly before Him.

I think the fires of refinement are hottest for those who do not understand what shame really means, which is why my heart has burned within me for so very long.

And so I come before my God today, peeking out from behind my hiding place, and I say this to Him:

“There is something You want me to understand, and I am closer than ever to perceiving it. There is something here about shame and enemies. Just as in Genesis, my shame is a sign that I am hiding from You. My shame points directly back to the only real enemies of my past- not the people that have hurt me, not the people I have hurt, but sin itself and the way it separates me from You. Shame is a force of power which has found access to me through the former intimate relationships with people to whom I was submissive and vulnerable- sin used them to gain easy access to my wounded soul. When I feel shame in thinking about that, it is not actually because of what has been done to me or what I have done in the past, but my shame is a sign that I am hiding from You. If I stood in Your presence, there would be no shame because it falls away in the light of Your grace. Teach me, Jesus, as you did with the Apostle Paul for the three years following his conversion.”

We need to put down the bottle that keeps us numb, board that train of runaway emotions and ride it to the next stop, where Jesus will meet us with a new identity in Him which no amount of human error can ever take from us.

Get up off that worn out bench beside the tracks where you watched the shame train come around again and again- board it with Him and leave your numbing agents behind.

Look, a train is pulling in even now, you can feel it shaking the ground beneath your feet…

Well, friend, are you coming?

 All Aboard!

Rebecca

~*~

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Authentic Pain Vs The Counterfeit Self- Genesis 32

I made the critical error of asking God to reveal the depth of His love for me. Never do this if you want to maintain control over your perceived identity.

Love is always war- it rages against your misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its knees.

But He is prepared for us to hate Him in certain arenas on the long journey to loving Him. He knows that His hope poses a threat to the captive mind.

I am here to talk about how

sometimes holding onto God hurts,

but why we should do it anyways.

Why fight for a blessing that involves pain? Why trust in something that requires our submission to weakness?

Who in the world wants to be blessed in such a violent way, where the awakening hurts?

This week I am limping along with my brother Jacob through Genesis 32. We are searching for healing. And we need help to claim our authentic names.

I have begun to lift up this prayer:

God, help me to understand how much You love me.

And after I asked for this blessing, not much later I started limping.

Why? He is touching the place deep inside that is curled tight and hard, attached firmly to a false sense of complete control. He shows me how much He loves me by touching the strained places. He points right at the weakness and then something snaps- the sudden severing of self from sufficiency.

 

This is the inopportune ripping away of denial and suppression.

Also, I might be limping because I literally pulled a tendon in my hip this week. That, too, might explain it.

The timing of my very real injury in conjunction with my writing is funny, but it also really hurts, so I will smile but I will not laugh.

And I don’t want to sit here and heal, I want to get up and do all. the. things. that need to be done. I want to control my environment, make things perfect, and execute my self-worth through production. I am what I do- am I not? Contentment is buried far beneath the laundry list of success. My counterfeit self finds validation in production and performance - this is the essence of control.

Human validation has become

the fly in the ointment

of all our hopes and dreams.

God, we have an agenda already. Can’t you just bless us quickly while we run?

This is the kind of limp where you think, “Yeah I am broken, but not THAT broken. Not me. I can still limp and keep up with the same pace as always. I can heal on the go.”

We rage against rest. We pull back from healing. Hope is an offensive four letter word.

My brother Jacob and I are learning that no person on this earth could ever fix what has been broken- human validation will always fall short. If you need it to succeed, you are destined to fail.

Accepting our limp requires sitting still in the presence of God, admitting weakness, asking for help, navigating emotions, and surrendering our agenda. This is best learned the hard way.

But because we are stubborn and resist change, we will put up a good fight first. He will have to drag us kicking and screaming out of the hard place we are determined to serve.

The truth is, only God knows the true identity of our most authentic self- we might think we know, but we really don’t.  

Not until we start to wrestle

in the dark of night with our trust issues

does the real pain begin.

God, reveal to us the depth of Your love.

Last week I followed Jacob through major relational conflict- he stole his brother’s birthright and inheritance and then ran for his life. He grabbed his blessing, flashed the peace sign and skipped town for good. He left his community behind.

Time passed- twenty years, to be exact, and then he gets the call that everyone dreads: it’s time to have that hard conversation- it’s time to face the past, there is no getting around it this time. Things are going to get heated and complicated.

So we straighten our spine, lift our head and enter the arena.

We are prepared to fight our brother. We are not prepared for what happens next.

Angels gather around to watch the fight.

32 ^[a]As Jacob started on his way again, angels of God came to meet him. ² When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is God’s camp!”

Right away we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who cheer for our victory. We must never forget this. It renews our hope to know that we are all supported by angelic forces. This revelation will serve to prepare us for the dark and lonely place, where the only companionship we will have is our fearful thoughts and angel guides.

But there is still a great deal of doubt and fear. Oh so much anxiety.

So we compose all the reasons that justify and explain our position, trying to make up for a lifetime of offense with a persuasive abundance of carefully crafted words:

³ Then Jacob sent messengers ahead to his brother, Esau, who was living in the region of Seir in the land of Edom. ⁴ He told them, “Give this message to my master Esau: ‘Humble greetings from your servant Jacob. Until now I have been living with Uncle Laban, ⁵ and now I own cattle, donkeys, flocks of sheep and goats, and many servants, both men and women. I have sent these messengers to inform my lord of my coming, hoping that you will be friendly to me.’”

Fear is looming on the horizon- fear of the unknown, the dark possibility of a fresh wave of accusation and offense. Even after so much time has passed, anxiety is still firmly attached to memory. The past is haunted with grief and regret. It threatens to overwhelm us now.

⁶ After delivering the message, the messengers returned to Jacob and reported, “We met your brother, Esau, and he is already on his way to meet you—with an army of 400 men!” ⁷ Jacob was terrified at the news.

Persuasive writing cannot save us here. The fear is that all the strife has accomplished nothing at all, and an abundance of reckoning is about to be unleashed upon our finest hopes and dreams.

What exactly are we fighting for here? The question looms.

We realize that this epic battle is going to require a massive surrender of volition, and we will need to hold on tight to Him through the pain. Anxiety is billowing; the kind that rolls in slowly during the night and completely shrouds the future in mystery.

¹¹ O Lord, please rescue me from the hand of my brother, Esau. I am afraid that he is coming to attack me, along with my wives and children. 

We grapple with all the things that we want to understand, so that we can secure our victory, guaranteed.

 “I am afraid”

We are afraid of facing our authentic identity. We shield the places within us that are wounded and weak, preparing for the worst.

¹² But you promised me, ‘I will surely treat you kindly, and I will multiply your descendants until they become as numerous as the sands along the seashore—too many to count.’”

We remind God he owes us, because of what we have lost. “You promised me, God!” We rage at the sky. We shake our fist.

But I have learned the hard way to remember this when I demand deliverance:

The ones I feel opposed to

are not really my enemies at all-

they are just wounded prisoners of war.

The One I will wrestle with is much bigger and more powerful, and He is on His way.

Keep this in mind the next time you find yourself pushing hard against the limits of human brokenness:

Jacob thought, “I will try to appease him by sending gifts ahead of me. When I see him in person, perhaps he will be friendly to me.” ²¹ So the gifts were sent on ahead, while Jacob himself spent that night in the camp.

We instinctually know we will have to face this fight alone, away from all the distractions, so we can wrestle unhindered with our doubts about our true identity.

We must meet our opponent in the midst of solitude and silence, where we stand alone in the lonely place, separate from everything we had planned.

²² During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his eleven sons and crossed the Jabbok River with them.²³ After taking them to the other side, he sent over all his possessions.

It is the dark of night and we stand alone, completely exposed. We cannot control this reckoning. The creation of our hands has now come to recreate us.

And then our Opponent enters the ring. And it’s not the enemy we expected.

We stand before our Maker.

He loves us too much to allow us into the arena with anyone less than Himself. And this is not what we had planned.

²⁴ This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. 

Jesus.

What are You doing here? I came to fight my enemy. Where is the brother who hates me?

Jesus??

I brought all my best defenses- anger, wrath, vengeance, defense, excuse, a persuasive abundance of written words.

None of that will help me now.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

We have forgotten that

Love is war.

He has come to rage against my pride. Because it is the heights of arrogance that reveal the depths of depravity.

And I stand before God and I resist His name for me with all I have. I don’t want to be rescued from myself, I want to be vindicated from my hurts.

I refuse to be loved.

But His plans are imminent and divine, and they loom even larger than my regret.

²⁵ When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. 

He points right at the anger and obsession, and with a single touch the realization rocks our world, because He is dead right.

Oh my God, it’s true.

I am my own greatest enemy.

Those wounded prisoners of war who I was prepared to rage against, they do not belong in this arena. All the forces of my defensive anger are deflated by a single touch.

We are abruptly undone, pulled away without warning from our assumptions about ourselves and our world.

Jacob and I thought we knew our authentic self, until reality came and wrenched our self-perception completely out of alignment.

 “Don’t fix my identity it if it isn’t broken” has always been the subliminal mantra of certainty. But counterfeit confidence is the enemy of blessing.

There are wounds in our mind that we want Him to stay the hell away from. But to be healed, this obsession and pride must be broken.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

Oh, but not like this.

Jesus!

God, the reckoning hurts like hell. There is a painful breaking of human arrogance in the divine revelation of God’s love.

He asks us to let go of the weapons

we think we need for victory.

He is going to reveal the depth of His love by commanding our brave trust in His insensible intervention. And this is madness. But what exactly are we fighting for?

²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!”

The morning comes to light the dark inside of us.

This is the triumph of the Son.

The dawn of our realization is approaching. We are beginning to rouse from our offended slumber, and when numb things awaken they always flood with pain before they fully come to life.

If He asks you to let go of something in the dark of night, something you were positively certain  you needed to win the fight, do you trust Him to still bless you when you awaken with the sun?

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

When we ask for blessing, what we are really asking for is to be authentically loved. Jacob won’t release his grip on the physical nature of God, because he isn’t convinced of the Spiritual presence.

We still don’t trust that He will guide us if we let go. We were so certain of a particular type of victory- we had the outcome determined on our own terms, before He interrupted.

How can we win the battle against offense

if we fight against the people who offended us?

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

The breaking of connection between our identity and our grief will mean loosening our attachment to the regret of the past. The place within you that you withhold from Him, that is the place of pain that needs to be touched. And it will hurt like hell, because your authentic self is wounded.

He sees this and steps into the arena to save us from ourselves.

This is what it feels like to fight for a breakthrough- before facing your future you must be broken and blessed in the weak place.

It is time for a renaming of who we are, a declaration of our true identity.

What you call yourself is many names: hurt, broken, wounded, ruined, desperate, angry, offended, wronged, afraid. These are not the names He calls you. Can you cast down these crowns of pride and claim the humble title of beloved?

God will ask us who we are now that our weapons of defense have been broken and our false identity has been found out.

²⁷ “What is your name?” the man asked.

Now our Opponent has pulled out the ultimate weapon, one which ends the match in a single blow: a mirror. A question.

Who are we becoming in this fight?

We stare ourselves in the reflection and realize that our persuasive abundance of defenses have always been destined to become our undoing. We are our own greatest enemy.

Jesus did not enter this arena to replace our offender, He entered the arena to replace our pride.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

The fight we expected is not the one we are in. To spar with your counterfeit self is to wrestle with the demons of your past, present and future, all at once. So Jesus stepped in to take their place.

What is our true name, anyhow? What are we becoming in this fight?

We don’t know anymore.

He replied, “Jacob.”

As we stare into this mirror, standing here in the arena with our Creator, breathing heavy and wiping sweat from our brow, straining and striving against the healing, our reflection begins to look like that of a total stranger.

What is my authentic self?

Why do we need to go to counselors and life-coaches and therapists and pastors and friends and churches to understand the workings of our own inner mind? Why do we need to write angry blogs, make broken resignations, and pour out a persuasive abundance of painful words?

It has come to blows because I am too scared to admit- I don’t understand His love for me. Not at all. 

I have underestimated everything.

We want to choose our own identity- but our present dreams are too small to give us the dignity we deserve as eternal spiritual beings. Now that we are broken, here in the arena with our wounded pride, He wants us to receive our authentic name.

It’s time to surrender to His blessing. It’s time for a new identity.

²⁸ “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel,^[c] because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”

We did not realize we were walking into this fight to discover who we truly are in Him.  We did not know we would receive a new destiny. We did not ask for this blessing, but here it is.

Savor this breakthrough moment- it is the beginning of a transformation that will continue on for all eternity.

But don’t get too hasty- our character is not developed here, only our curiosity. We realize we were wrong about God all along, just as wrong as we were about ourselves. There is much training to be done for the fight still to come.

For with the rising of the Son we will face those who we intended to spar with on this night, and we will be asked to address them by their own blessed names.

The battle will never be the same after this.

God, who are You, to know me better than I know myself?  Who are You to wrench away my precious pride?

²⁹ “Please tell me your name,” Jacob said.

This unexpected opponent, He is going to exit the arena for now, but our questions have only just begun.

We are afraid for Him to go, now that we are leaning on Him for support from this pain.

Do we trust Him to bless us in this way, through a breaking and renaming of our entire being? If so, don’t let go when strained things inside begin to break. Don’t’ fight against hope when it hurts. Keep surrendering.

Love wrenches away our masks when it sheds light in the dark places. When we hold onto God in the fight, we give Him permission to authenticate our brokenness.

And this redemption will feel like wrath,

because of our counterfeit perspective.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

He points at the hard place and it breaks suddenly away. This will leave a scar- and a limp.

And then His presence recedes so that we can rest. He will be hidden in plain sight all around us while we slowly heal.

He will not overwhelm us with too much authenticity at one time. He blesses our doubts and honors our needs. He knows when to walk away from the fight. We cannot self-regulate our passion.

More is to come, but He does not want us to strive any more today. It is time to rest from the struggle.

It is time to begin to heal.

He will answer the hard questions another time.

“Why do you want to know my name?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.

Did Jacob let go, or did God? Was it mutual?

The blessing came in the instant between the wounding and the healing, that timeless pause between defeat and victory, that eternal moment between letting go and falling.

And when He releases us, we feel like time stands still. It’s just the dark and the quiet and the empty hard place.

But we have an awareness now- this pain is a signature, a promise, full of authenticity.

We have seen a glimpse of our divine identity- we hold onto that blessing while we limp away.

Jacob and I, we search our enlightened thoughts for a Name to put to the new desire that is rising in our heart.

The pain of blessing radiates into our entire future. Now we have the power to give the fight inside of us a new trajectory.

³⁰ Jacob named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.” 

We thought we would not survive the surrender.

But we tasted holy victory, the kind that comes after waving a white flag in the wind. And now we have seen God, struggled with Him, glimpsed the futility of our counterfeit person and been strangely blessed.

And I believe that one day when we are least expecting it, long after we have surrendered in gratitude and relinquished all control, the authenticity of our deep healing will reveal itself in an instant.

We will discover we have the power to limp with compassion towards those prisoners of war who we had once planned to rage against.

This fight was not what we had planned, but it was greater than we could have imagined. This is the emergence of the authentic self.

³¹ The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel,^[d] and he was limping because of the injury to his hip.

Yes, the knowing leaves a scar. But now we don’t have to blame broken humanity for our suffering- rather, we can attach Divine blessing to it.

What once stood as a symbol of defeat

is now a war medal of victory.

He gives his beloved a limp that will be seen around the world, with a story that will go down into history as the glorious revelation of an eternal inheritance.

Dear readers, He has wrestled with me this week, and I have resisted Him. I have the limp to prove it. I can accept my weakness or curse it, but it’s a part of my story.

This is my story.

When God touched the strained and stubborn place, it sent off a chain reaction that has the potential to bless the entire world, one renaming at a time.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

Never ask for Divine blessing if you want to maintain control over your perceived identity. Love is always war- it rages against your misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its knees.

What is my fully authentic self?

I don’t exactly know yet.

I have no idea what I’m doing. None.

But one thing I do know for certain- He blesses my questions. He prepares me for healing. And He renames my entire being.

He gives my passion

a new trajectory.

I have come here today to talk about how sometimes holding onto God hurts, and why we should do it anyways. The greatest blessings involve pain. This means we must trust in Someone that blesses our submission to weakness.

But who in the world wants to be blessed in such a crazy-backwards way, where the awakening hurts?

Once I am done writing this, I will limp forward from the hard place with mysterious hope in my heart.

The kind of hope that hurts inside as a reminder of where the healing has begun.

And I will come forth into my authentic self, one limping step at a time.

And there, at the foot of the cross where His wounds bless my soul, I will kneel and receive the bread and the cup alongside my fellow prisoners of war.

We will worship the One who has met us in the arena and brought us to our knees in victory.

And one fight at a time we will rise together above our wounds and we will inherit our true identities in the blessed Presence of our Creator.

Our victory is certain, because all are blessed when Love is war.

This is the proud moment 

when our brave surrender 

becomes the catalyst 

for our victory.

Yes, I am talking about you.

Dear tiny tribe of readers.

May all beings be peaceful and happy, even when it hurts. Amen and amen.

~*~

With deepest gratitude

for my tiny tribe of readers-

Rebecca

To read Pearls and Presence, click here.

To read my story, click here.