In
recent weeks I find many of the things that I have thought about and
looked at in the past seem to be changing rapidly as “new” ways
of looking and thinking come across my path. Sometimes it means
looking at something with hindsight and seeing it through new a new
mindset.
Recently
we watched the movie The Nun’s Story with Audry Hepburn. It was
not the first time I watched it and at least I knew that much! Other
aspects of the movie were seen fresh through the lens of my current
thinking. In the movie, the young girl who worked as a lab
technician/RN for her father, who was a well known doctor, decides
to go into the convent. She’s a very independent thinker who has
been a successful nurse and lab technician and longs to serve on the
“foreign field” where people so desperately need medical help.
Throughout the story she is determined to do what is asked of her at
the convent and in other places, to make the sacrifices of obedience
to routine and ritual that are expected of her. As she goes out to
do nursing in a Catholic compound in the field where there are many
casualties of WWII that are now accumulating, she finds that being
interrupted treating a sick patient by the “bell” that says it is
time for Mass is very frustrating. Similarly many other “rules”
don’t allow her to really care about the people in her life but put
her in some kind of artificial status which she understands might be
fitting for those in the convent but not for those working out in the
public in the midst of human need. Over and over she works to
“conform” and ultimately finds that she is always “making
mistakes” according to the catholic “rules.” The harder she
works to conform to those standards the more she realizes she can’t
and that it inhibits her from truly loving and caring for people.
Eventually she decides she just can’t live up to the standards and
expectations of being a nun and leaves the order...end of story.
My
heart ached throughout the movie, seeing such a travesty of the truth
of Jesus Christ portrayed in a “christian religious setting.”
There was no “rest” in Christ. There was no “identity” in
Christ to be received. It was conform and perform to be acceptable
and if you didn’t you went to confession and did penance. And the
end...hopelessness and alienation.
This
story isn’t so much different from the story of a Hindu man who
was well motivated to excel and was a high caste person in India who
would become Brahman. No matter how hard he tried, he could find no
solution to the ongoing problem of “not being able to be perfect.”
The Hindu teaching only encouraged him to work harder but offered no
solution to his “sin problem” any more than the Nun’s Story
offered any solution (salvation) from her inability to not make
mistakes and not be perfect.
The
Hindu man heard some Untouchables one day singing about Salvation
from sin, and it stirred his heart as he had no way to get rid of his
sins. His Hindu gods offered no salvation from sin and failures.
Just more punishment. Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses and all other
psuedochristian practices offer no more hope than the Hindu man had
or the nun.
Yet,
how often do we who call ourselves Christian also fail to realize
and I do that I can’t do anything with my sin nature.. But there
is something He did with it when The Lord Jesus died once for all for
all sin and all sinners. And the exciting thing this: it is a reality
whether we receive it or believe it. Jesus paid the price for our
fallen human nature and through his resurrection, released the Holy
Spirit to put His Spirit in us, restoring us to the status we had in
Christ, in God before the fall of man often referred to as the
foundation of the world. It is there in all that such a relationship
offers just waiting for me to “see” and be a part. What good
news!!!
In
a conversation just this morning, a friend and I were discussing the
way many of us thought about these things in the past. Lord, here I
am, please use me!! And we do want Him to use us to share the
gospel. But my friend and I realized together that this is not God’s
plan. God is the ultimate authority. He is in control of everything!
What He has invited us into when we received His Holy Spirit to
indwell my human spirit is to have a relationship with him...not “be
used by him!” He uses ALL THINGS because he is GOD.
I
was a little hard headed and self-driven thinking being used of God
was the ultimate, Some of this has radically changed during this last
election cycle as never before I have come to see the error of that
thinking seeing how my God is in charge of ALL! He is the authority
over ALL. NOTHING happens outside His plan and purpose or else he
isn’t God Almighty. When we were invited to be “in Christ” and
“Christ in me” I was as the scripture speaks of it, now in a
position to “co-labor” with Christ. It isn’t about being
used...it’s about being a part of what HE IS doing. That is part
of the reason we have been invited to be in relationship with Him.
To participate by His Spirit in the works which Christ is doing here
on the earth. Those works were laid out before the foundation of the
earth for us to walk in.
Oh
how this changes the mind set. First of all it means I can’t just
say, Here I am Lord, use me. Because he was already using me to
accomplish whatever He was purposing. Whether I was a co-laborer
with him or not is another matter. He wants me to participate in
what He is doing...not Him “using me” because I bear His
name..........which He of course is doing whether I bear his name or
not! But unless I am in relationship with him and know at least by
faith what He is doing, am I not out doing “my own thing” to
please the Almighty God. Don’t I miss all the “benefits” as
King David once wrote...all the benefits of being a child of the King
who is at work..peace, joy, power, courage? Co-laboring means that as
I am in relationship with the Lord, open to his voice, a student of
his word and in conversation with Him, I find out what He is doing
and in obedience walk in those footsteps.
Throughout
the recent election season I sought to rest in the Lord and sought,
as I still do, to come to some measure of understanding of what He is
doing and desiring to accomplish and what my part is. In increasing
measure, I find my part is to rejoice and be thankful and offer up
the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for all He is and all He is
doing whether I actually see it clearly or not. Secondly when He does
show me what his heart is caring about to participate in what He is
doing by speaking forth His word that he’s quickened into the
situation, sometime in person, sometimes in what I could call prayer,
but from heaven into earth. If I am seated with Him in heavenly
places I will be his hands and tools to carry out the love that he
is showing and has shown throughout eternity.
For
most of my adult life my walk with God was more about “doing what
I thought was right” than listening to Him to see what He was doing
and being identified “in Him.” Loving people was usually
stratified on a scale of “how to love best” rather than seeking
the Father’s heart and seeing what He is doing and realizing He
aligned me with Him and that I can speak that alignment into the
circumstances of my life knowing what He has already done and
accomplished at the cross and in the resurrection. What a relief it
is...what rest!
At
the end of the Nun’s story I could only think of how the Israelites
failed to enter into the Rest that He had planned for them since they
sought conformity to the law rather than seeing the law as the means
by which we are convicted of our total need for His grace...the
impartation of his power in us and through us.
The
Hindu convert came into the knowledge of the Kingdom of God seeing
that there was no ability in mankind to be saved from his own
nature’s inability to be perfect and no way to cleanse himself of
his “sins and trespasses.” We easily say, There is Salvation in
none other” but we fail to realize that statement is only true
“in Christ.” My freedom comes as I am found “in Christ and
Christ functions in and through me.” And this free to all who
would receive such a gift, bought and paid for by the blood of the
Lamb.
Kingdom
of God.........I used to throw that term around as if I knew what it
meant!! Until we really have some grasp of the King and our
relationship to the King which comes as Christ is in me, we won’t
know what it means to have a Father that is the King of Kings...or a
Saviour that has already conquered death, hell, and the grave and
that I am invited to participate in the fulfillment of the plan of
God of the ages, NOW.
How
could I live for some many years and not know these things? Because
my eyes weren’t open and I was so busy trying to be a Christian and
do what we Christians are supposed to do, I missed who I was and who
He is in me.
In
recent days I’ve been freed to consider some things from the past
in light of the present “mindset” regarding the Kingdom of God.
And as a result, I have gotten a fuller awareness of His grace and
mercy in days past. For many years I lived in a state of trauma
first with a husband who was a peeping tom and then a husband who was
an alcoholic. Reading recently that it takes two years for the human
brain to “reorganize” after a period of trauma, I can look back
and easily say, I did really crazy things during those years and also
in the ensuring couple of years realizing I was thinking with a
brain still not functioning healthily from trauma. I have been
healed and I can’t attribute disorganized thinking today to
previous trauma in my life. But what it has afforded me, is the
ability to understand those in my world who are in the midst of
trauma and who aren’t thinking straight. And what I can see is
that God isn’t focused on their screw ups. He doesn’t hold them
to the standard of “right thinking.” Instead just as he was with
me, he is walking with and working in those caught up in the web of
trauma and as I co-labor with him I can see now how he is dealing
with them, just like he did in my “crazy” days.
I
used to say through various traumatic episodes that I “came
through” but that it wasn’t by my faith. And as never before
today as I watch dear friends going through traumatic things., it is
clear that it is the Body that is upholding them as they continue to
make poor decisions, sometimes worsening their trauma. But HE is
still in control. When our friends aren’t thinking good enough to
allow us to even be of any “assistance” to them, I can now see
how my Father is patient with them,, covering them, working on their
behalf even when they are half crazy!! And my testimony is often the
only hope of them ever getting a glimpse, if indeed the Lord allows
them to hear. For in my testimony of God’s faithfulness in my crazy
times and telling of some of my goofed up thinking come the
assurance that HIS hand still working in me because of who He is..
Our testimony or our “story” often allows us the power to touch
another life without bumping into their crazy thinking because we
aren’t talking about them, but about God’s faithfulness to me
and everyone else that doesn’t change.
In
closing......when I read a majority of “political” posts by
Christians in this day, I see very few who are speaking forth the
Life that is in them. Anyone can pick out what is wrong. Anyone can
look at me and pick out something wrong and I can do that with others
also. But it takes being conformed to the heart of the Father and
having my mind being renewed in its spirit to the mind of Christ to
be able to speak forth that God IS in the middle of any set of
circumstances. And learning of Him to have wisdom and understanding
takes time before Him and with Him as we live in Him.
And
they overcame by the word of their testimony, the blood of the lamb
and they loved not their lives unto death.
What
testimony do we have when we post on face book or write in blogs or
share when we visit over a cup of coffee? Anything we share though
it be from “another source” or news article...is some kind of a
testimony...what will it be?
Meri
Ford
