East Wind

"Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live!" ~Leonard Ravenhill

I've been battling discouragement the past few weeks.  It has been a good experience.  I think doubts and questions are healthy, and I have been aware of God working even in my discouragement.  One question that has been on my heart is why I am called to full time ministry.  One way Jesus answered this question is through a sermon I listened to on Sunday afternoon: "Turning Back to the Mouth of Freedom."  Unfortunately Church of the Open Door only lists it's five most recent sermons, and this one was delivered on June 6, so I can't link to it for you.  Allow me to explain some of what the pastor discussed and how it has impacted me.

The story Steve Weins was speaking on comes from Exodus 14.  We join the Israelites in the wilderness, having just fled slavery in Egypt.  Their Southern journey has taken a Northward turn, due to the Red Sea in their path, but God tells them "Go back and camp at Pi-hahiroth between Migdol and the Red Sea."  Now I know you are saying, "Pi-hihawhat?" but if you look at a map you will see that He said, "Go back to that peninsula and camp between the mountains and the water on every side."  aka "Trapped." 

I know my mom, who has a cat-like affection for water, is really identifying with the Israelites who turned to Moses and said, "Are you CRAZY???  We gonna die out here." 

Directions have symbolic meaning in Hebrew culture, and the North symbolizes Deception.  Fear and slavery have driven them into the land of deception, and it is here that God tells them to turn back, to go to the mouth of the water and wait for Him.

Steve calls this the Mouth of Freedom. 

He says it is a sign of being on the edge of freedom that you think you are about to die.  The Egyptians didn't want to kill them.  They wanted to take them captive, take them back to Egypt as free labor to build more pyramids.  The Israelites felt like they were going to die.  They wanted to go back to Egypt.  They wished they had never left.

I identify with the Israelites wanting to go back, feeling trapped between the known and the unknown, and fearing the unknown enough to wish I had never left.  A friend said to me recently that she thinks when we get to Heaven, we will be amazed by the amount of fear we each experienced here on Earth...each and every one of us driven by fear right into the arms of deception.  But God calls us to turn back, like the people of Israel, surrounded on every side, and wait for Him.   

What comes next for the Israelites is one of the most famous scenes of the Old Testament.  Moses raises his staff and a wind from the East, symbolizing New Beginnings, blows across the water all night until two walls of water line a path of dry land to the other side of the sea.  At God's command, Moses lowers his staff and the water returns to it's normal course, burying their captors in watery graves. 

Over a thousand years later a man stands in a river shouting, "Turn back!  The Kingdom of God is at hand."  John baptises people in the River Jordan as they repent, which literally means to turn back, from slavery to sin, fear, and deception.  But John's baptism is only half the story.  John is preparing the way for Jesus, who brings with Him the east wind of New Beginnings.  Jesus is baptised by John, then spends three years proclaiming a new way to live.  Through His death and resurrection, He makes that new way available to us who are joined in his death and therefore joined in His resurrection.  The Holy Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead lives in us.  This is the transformation which is called salvation. 

Baptism is an outward sign of this salvation, a way of saying, "I die to my sins, I live by the resurrection power of Jesus."  Or as Steve put it, "Baptism is a place to stand and say that I am a part of a community of people that is called to...stand at the mouth of freedom for the terrified ones who don't know what to do. To stand at that mouth of freedom and say there is a way through." 

Oh.

Yeah.

That is why I do what I do. 

I stand at the mouth of freedom for the terrified ones and say there is a way through. 

Because evil doesn't get the last word, and the resurrection power of Jesus is at work, right now, making a way for so many people who are trapped by slavery, fear, and deception.    Because there are all kinds of slaves in the world today...slaves to human trafficking, slaves to terror, slaves to selfishness, addiction, and sin, slaves to memories and a history they cannot escape.  Because we are, so many of us, driven by fear. Because there is something in this world that is stronger than fear:

Love.

I think it is fair, also, to say that I am camped at my own Pi-hahiroth (Mouth of Freedom).  I am battling discouragement, but I haven't given in.  I feel an East Wind coming over the water.  Here's to New Beginnings...

Right lane...it's the new fast lane...

This last weekend I visited some friends in Los Angeles.  On the way down, I finally figured out LA driving.  Traffick started 100 miles outside the city, 130 miles north of my destination.  I was already late leaving, and when the fast lane, where I had been driving, turned into a parking lot with the rest of the traffic, I decided to think strategically rather than get frustrated.

What I saw was that two lanes over to my right was moving faster...consistently moving faster...than the "fast lane."  I remember what a friend told me months ago, "Just remember, Angelites drift left."  I waited for a gap and moved one lane over.  I got stuck behind a slow moving truck.  One clever car snuck up and passed us on the right.  Now, in Missouri where I got my liscense, passing on the right is illegal, as is driving in the left lane.  But in an instant I saw it as a strategic possibility, not just rude and illegal, and suddenly everything made sense.  While the Angelites inched their way forward in the left lane, I wove in and out of the right hand lanes, making my way to Huntington Beach through 130 miles of stop and stop traffic, almost in the same time it would have taken me without traffic (if there is such a thing in LA).

Very early in life I developed the world view that there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything.  Cleaning, cooking, sewing, school work, ballet, art, music...the trick was to find the right way and do it, otherwise you would be wrong.  Of course as I grew I began to see that there were many ways to approach the same problem, but because it was a world view, rooted in my earliest childhood, I couldn't really shake it.  Somehow language and spirituality escaped the black and white thinking, but I have still been susceptible to the influence of others who believe there is a right way...or a better way...to keep house, to relate to one another, to worship God.  That kind of thinking will break you.  So as I scanned a quarter mile of five lanes of frozen traffic, something in my brain shifted.  Some people use their signals, some don't, but I stopped being mad that that guy cut me off without even signaling and started looking for signs other than the red blinking light that someone was going to come into my lane.  I figured it out.  I still use my signal, but I learned to pass on the right, change lanes when I could, and scrap most of the "rules of right driving" (not to be confused with traffic laws...these are things that were NOT in the manual that were part of the "right way" to manage traffic), and drive in a completely different (and changing) culture.

The Prodigal God

Many weeks ago I was considering the story of the prodigal son.  I identified more with the older brother, and I didn't really want to be the older brother.  That is because I thought "prodigal" meant "rude, rebellious, selfish, wasteful, and mean".  Turns out that's not what it means.  It means... 

prod·i·gal

[prod-i-guhl] 

–adjective

1.     wastefully or recklessly extravagant: prodigal expenditure.
2.     giving or yielding profusely; lavish (usually fol. by of  orwith ): 
              prodigal of smiles; prodigal with money.

3.     lavishly abundant; profuse: nature's prodigal resources.

This changes everything.

Now, there is a noun definition that probably came from the story of the son in  Luke 15...and Jesus never uses the word prodigal.  He didn't open by saying, "Let me tell you the story of the Prodigal Son." The story is not about the son at all.  It is about the Father.  I am not saying anything new.  I stole my post title from Greg Boyd's sermon of the same name, and he stole it from someone else.  (Now before you start thinking I'm an open theist, it's a good message.  Just take the message for what it's worth.)  It is the story of a man who has two sons.  The younger asks for his inheritance early and squanders it on the high life, then ends up feeding pigs for a living.  The older remains.  One day as the younger son is quite literally starving, he decides to come home.  The father sees him, hikes up his garment and comes running to his son.  It's a good story.  Greg Boyd tells it better (follow the link above).  Jesus tells it better still.

The thing that stood out to me today was Mr. Boyd's description of the Father's household.  In verse 17, the son remembers his father's hired servants...not the household servants, but day hires--homeless fellows who waited around until someone hired them for the day.  The household servants would go into town, find these folks waiting, then hire a few to do the menial tasks in exchange for wages.  Culturally they would provide their own food, be paid in cash at the end of the day, and then be sent on to make the best of what they could.  So the idea that they had food enough seems to imply that the Father provided food for them.  To provide food was to provide a form of acceptance, to say, "You belong here.  You are welcome."  This would have been scandalous, according to Mr. Boyd.

I got to thinking about the younger son and why he left the farm for the city.  I thought about how embarrassing his father's generosity might have been to him.  I thought about the kindness that ignores status and how boring that is for someone who longs for a shiny, fast-paced life-style, for recognition and esteem.  I don't want the same things as the younger son in this story.  That's why I don't identify with him.  People always talk about the cultural implications of working with pigs, and how that would have been detestable to him.  I don't understand that, and I don't detest the same things my culture detests, so I have a really hard time wrapping my brain around the significance of the pigs.  But what I see is a man who became the thing he hated most.  I am imagining that he hated farming, hated the hired hands--the day workers, and hated that his father treated them with regard.  So I wonder what he must have been thinking as he stood there, smelling like a sewer, with the Father lavishing kisses on him...

"No...you're not...supposed...to love...me...you're...supposed...to despise...me..."  I wonder if he was embarrassed for his father's public display of affection and yet broken by his need for the father's love.  I wonder if he was embarrassed by his own need, and then in turn embarrassed by his arrogant judgement of all the hired hands, all those years.

His speech...his famous interrupted speech.  He was all ready to say, "I have sinned against you and against God.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  Treat me as one of your hired servants," when the Father interrupts him and throws the most lavish party ever, dresses him in his own robes, puts the signant ring on his finger.  This is where I identify with the younger son.  The God of the Universe seems to be hopelessly, extravagantly in love with me.  I stand here, wanting to studder, "But I don't...derserve..." as He interrupts with joy and love.  The paradox of God's love is that, no matter how "underserving" we are of His love, the love itself makes us worthy. 

Blessings and peace,
Beth

brief update

It seems like it's been too long again since my last update.  I'd like to get back in the habit of updating during my weekly office hours, but it seems like there is so much that I am doing when I come into the office.  For instance, today I primed a wall which I will be painting on Friday. 

Things are going well with the Outreach department.  We are studying a different sphere of society each week according to the Seven Spheres/Mountains in the teachings of Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright.  These spheres are present in every society, in one form or another.  The Seven Spheres are:

• Government and Finance
• Family and Health Care
• Education
• Arts, Entertainment, and Sports
• Media and Communications
• Science and Technology
• Church 

For the purposes of study, we split up Government and Finance into two different weeks: government last week and finance/business this week.  Our desire in this time is to get a Biblical understanding of each of these spheres as well as a deeper understanding of how each sphere looks in American culture.  One aspect of the sphere of business is Business as Mission, which I have been researching this week. 

Tomorrow afternoon I will be leading this Bible study/discussion/prayer time.  Friday we are holding a bake sale at Walmart to raise funds for the base overhead costs.  But right now I need to dust the office...because we are, each of us on this base, servant leaders.  :-)

Blessings on your week!