A place to pause and reflect
Travelling Lightly: What you need to ditch for 2022 (Part 2)
It has taken me some time to land this second part of examining what I believe we need to get rid of this year. It has been difficult because I am still somewhat unresolved around it myself. It is an issue that seems to permeate every aspect of life and is quite possibly a major root to many problems in our world. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be something we can just “turn off”. Indeed, it is a powerful protection mechanism we use at every level. And given that it’s outworking ultimately leads to death, perhaps the midst of Lent is a very appropriate time to discuss it.
Judgement.
We are all familiar with Jesus’ words about this, even if we know little else He said:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged”
(Matt 7:1).
It has become very much a catch cry of this generation. Words such as, “Ooo, judgy”, or “don’t be so judgemental” get thrown around for the simple “sin” of giving my view about something or someone’s actions.
But we need judgement and its close relative, discernment every day.
Just think. You take that food out of the fridge and sniff it cautiously, making a judgement on whether it is still good to eat. Or those socks or other items of clothing on your teenager’s floor – are they really dirty, or just clean laundry that never made it to the wardrobe? Again, the sniff test…or maybe not! We make judgements about what we will wear or do according to the weather. When I am crossing the road, I make a judgement whether I can get across before that car comes. We make judgements moment by moment about whether or not a fight for something we value is worth the effort, along with our judgement of the level of hope we have of winning. You get the idea. Our judgements can mean the difference between life and death…And they can also make and break relationships.
In trying to determine where the line between what is acceptable and what is not in the realm of judgement, a few points have come across my path in the last while.
The first is that the gift of discernment (the ability to see clearly what is going on in a situation) is not there to bring judgement onto people, but to give accuracy in how to pray. Hmmm…when was the last time that prayer was my first response to a sticky situation? And did I stop long enough to listen to God’s answer to me??
The second is that when we cast judgement in a situation, we actually start to take responsibility for the outcome of that situation. That is, we are basically making a declaration that we know what is wrong, therefore we know what is right, leading to us supposedly having the wisdom and ability to fix what we see as wrong. I found this thought very impacting. I mean, who wants to take that sort of responsibility for everyone else? It is hard enough doing it for myself!!
This leads me back to two other aspects that are closely related.
Returning to my last blog, identity is central to this. Knowing who I am and what my role is (and isn’t!) will impact greatly on what I take responsibility for.
The other aspect is the continuing focus on the knowledge of good and evil. Judgement sits smack bang in the middle of this. Whether we acknowledge it (or like it!), for better or worse, we continually make judgements about what is right or wrong, what is good or evil. In every culture in the world, down to every relationship, we have beliefs and understandings around this. The big issue is, what is the alternative? (Shameless plug - if you want to delve a bit deeper into this, check out my new book, “Untruth: Exploring truth in a post-truth world”.)
It reminds me of the scene in the book (and movie), “The Shack” (William P. Young), where Mack is talking with Wisdom. In answer to his question of what he is doing there, she answers: “You’re here for judgement…today, you are the judge.” As they explore the ultimate consequences of judgement – judging who should go to hell, she asks Mack to judge his own children. On his response of “take me instead”, he is told that he has judged well; that he has judged his children worthy of love.
For me, this is really the landing point of what to do with judgement.
Moving into this year, I have had a growing conviction that we should at least severely curtail our propensity to sit in judgement of others and particularly situations where we have little firsthand knowledge of the circumstances. As we do, we lay down the burden of responsibility as well. The reality is, Jesus has already taken responsibility for every person’s sin and brokenness on the cross. We cannot do more. We cannot fix others better than that, either. As we step away from that responsibility, we find space for the freedom to step into the responsibility we have been given: to love my neighbour as myself.
And coming back to Mack, and what Jesus, again, has already done, we are to judge each person, every single one on this planet, as worthy of love. As we reach out in unconditional love to those around us, even when, or perhaps especially when they do wrong by us, we free ourselves from the terrible responsibility of not only fixing them, but also of deciding when they have been punished enough. When we realise the limitations of our accountability to each other, and allow, or understand more completely, that God is the only One who judges perfectly, we are set free to get on with the business of working with Him to grow us to maturity, just as He will with others.
Tying this all together with our identity, I am reminded again of several scriptures I believe have a great impact on our understanding of our faith. In I John 4:19, we are told that we love because God first loved us. For sometime now, I have connected this with Revelations 2:4, regarding the loss of our first love – that we are cautioned against forgetting that any capacity we have to love others, even God, must come from our capacity to first receive His love for us. It is from our experience of being loved by God that we can, in turn, love others. This is very much tied in with 1 Corinthians 13, where we are told that, without love as the motivating force, anything we do for others or for God is worthless.
As we continue into this year ahead, my prayer is that, as the people of God, we would find our true identity in Him, even as we are filled to overflowing with His amazing, abundant love for us, which in turn, enables us to truly judge others just as worthy of love and love them accordingly.
Further thoughts, questions, or disagreements with anything here? Feel free to drop a line in the comments.
Travelling Lightly: What you need to ditch for 2022 (Part 1)
One of the biggest weights most of us carry is that of our identity. And I believe one of the most transformative actions we can engage in for ourselves and the world around us is to let it go. And I also believe that it is more important than ever to do this.
But what does it mean to let go of our identity?
So many of our interactions with the world and each other clog up our identity. What others around us reflect back to us, our experiences through life and even our theology all greatly impact our sense of who we are. “Shoulds”, “should haves”, “could haves” and “would haves”, as well as a host of other regrets, incriminations and put downs that the enemy loves to use to keep us trapped, take over our being until we feel depleted, unworthy and empty.
How then, does letting go of my identity fill me up?
This is an ongoing journey with a number of layers.
In the first instance, it may be about letting go of the identities we have picked up from others, or even our beliefs about what it means to be a Christian or, indeed, any other label we have placed on ourselves. Mother, sister, brother, teacher, accountant, the brainy one, the dumb one, the good one, the bad one. Even those things we feel good about can become a hindrance. Just another standard we have to keep up to. And sometimes we have played roles for so long, and invested so much into them that we no longer really know who we are.
Another aspect is our preparedness to be vulnerable.
This has been a theme for some time now. The idea of being unveiled or removing the masks we hide behind has cropped up more times than I can remember. I recently came across an album called “Road to DeMaskUs”. It immediately caught my attention as it linked in with so many discussions over the last year or so that seem to constantly land on this same point around identity.
Thinking about the connotations of the road to Damascus, about Paul’s journey which began in earnest there, it was indeed a time of “de-masking” for him. The change was extraordinary, and even led to a name change. In Philippians 3:8, after sharing his worldly credentials, he actually says that they are all dung, refuse, sewerage compared to gaining Jesus. Paul was prepared to get rid of everything rather than it hindering his relationship with the Messiah.
This is something I have been pondering for some time: what it looks like to completely abandon all that our culture considers rights and freedom; what it looks like to completely lay down my life – my identities, including my ego – to the point where I have and am nothing, so that He, living in me, is all.
Many of our identity ideas connect to our will. What we will, desire, want is our way of asserting our identity as an individual. However, I am sensing more and more that so much of this can actually come between us and God. It is an add on.
In the wonderful passage of John 15, where Jesus describes how we are to abide in Him as branches joined in to Him - and if branches, then we must identify with or even as Him, with His life force growing and developing in us, His DNA becomes ours. As He continues, discussing our relationship with each other, He talks of “laying down our lives” for each other.
Doing a quick word search into the original language, the word translated “life” could also refer to “soul”, meaning our heart, our passions, our will and desires. Sounds like our identity to me. In our individualistic society, that’s a pretty tall order! How many of us are willing to put others ahead of us to that degree?
And yet, in our relationship with Jesus, we know this is what He requires. How successful we are is a whole other discussion.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life [IDENTITY] will lose it, but whoever loses his life [IDENTITY] for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul [IDENTITY]? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul [IDENTITY]?”
(Matt 16:24-26, ESV).
Am I prepared to become nothing, no one, in order to increase in oneness with Jesus? Just as John the Baptiser said, “It is necessary for him to increase and for me to decrease” (John 3:30 TPT). The only way I can become one with Jesus is for me to decrease. He certainly won’t! And yet, we are told that this is the place in which we truly find abundant life and freedom.
In my own journey, the rubber has really been hitting the road with this in the last couple of years. It is in those places of rejection, lack of acknowledgement, hurt, disappointment, those places where it feels as though I am nothing, worthless - this is the place where I have a huge choice in front of me. Will I try to get vindication, validation from others? Will I come out fighting for my honour and reputation? Do I try to show everyone that you are the bad person, that I am the victim? Or can I lay myself down, allow myself to be crucified as it were? Do I trust all these things to God, even trust that He is in the middle of it all and has a purpose for it - my becoming more like Jesus?
No, it is not easy. Yes, it can be excruciatingly lonely. And no, many will not get it. After all, He did say “but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt 7:14 CJB). Why do I keep thinking, or hoping, it will somehow be different for me?
May 2022 be the year each of us lays down our identities, our egos and our wills to His for the sake of the Kingdom, each other and our world. Imagine the difference it would make. But it starts with me and it starts with you!
Ditch that old wineskin, NOW!
Our beautiful white star magnolia is in full bloom at the moment. As I was enjoying watching it burst into blossom, I noticed one of the flowers was having something of a malfunction. Instead of opening from the middle as usual, the furry bud cover had remained stuck, trapping the petal tips inside (as in the photo). Because my attention was drawn so strongly to this, I asked God what He wanted to tell me about it.
“The old wineskin is about to fall and the pure Bride will be released in spotless glory!”
These were the words that immediately popped into my mind. I know it is mixing metaphors, but my sense was that it is time for the constraints of the past to go, it is time for us - the people of God, both as individuals and corporately - to be fully released into all the potential within us.
Watching this bud over the course of a week, although the petals kept pushing out from the bottom, the furry cap stayed stuck fast. And then, one day I went out and the whole flower was gone! Looking around, I found it on the ground, still stuck in the cap. I was quite dismayed, wondering what it meant, as I was so looking forward to the “bursting forth” and the “breaking free”. I asked the Lord about it again and His response hit me hard.
It was a warning.
If you don’t let go of the old wineskin, not only will you fail to reach your potential, fail to bloom, but you will no longer even be attached to the tree. You will be separated.
Since this, I have been asking the Lord what the old wineskin represents. What am I still holding on to? What to I need to let go of?
As I continued to ponder on the old wineskin, and what it signifies, suddenly I saw a connection with some aspects of identity we have been sitting with over the last few months.
My husband has been a journey through this and we are digging deep into how we walk it. He felt the Lord telling him that he (and we all) need to lay down – even resign from – every identity that we have save one. Every identity except our identity as a child of God. We need to lay every other identity down at the feet of Jesus: parent, spouse, boss, worker, teacher, pastor, sister, brother, friend, whatever roles we play in life in our relationships with others and what we do; whether we are “the funny one”, “the grumpy one”, “the helpless one”, “the wealthy one”, “the accident prone one”, “the perfectionist”, “the spiritual one” or whatever other label we have attached to ourselves, we must let go of all of them. We need to strip ourselves bare of every identity we own or hold on to, everything about us. It is from this place we learn to stand on who we are in Jesus alone*.
To explain further, it reminds me of a season I went through some years back where God asked me to stop doing pretty much everything I was involved in. It was a year of learning to simply be – to find my identity, my value in being in Him rather than in what I did.
It is a tough place.
We live in a society where pretty much the first question we ask a new acquaintance is “What do you do?”. So much of our perceived value (in the eyes of the world particularly) comes from what we do, what we produce – our work(s), what we have to offer. Early on in my journey as a parent, when people asked me what I did, I had to catch myself as I would reply, “I’m just a mum”. Even though I chose to focus on parenting, it reflected back to me that I didn’t really value that role either. I believed what the world told me about it.
The truth is, most of us look to others around us for our validation, to reflect back to us that we are worth something, that what we do has value. It is why our fragile egos flip from feeling great when we get positive reinforcement to feeling despair, hopelessness or worthlessness when the feedback is not so flattering or even absent. This has become much more obvious in this era of social media, where everything we put out into the cyber world is measured through this lens.
However, if we have confidence about our identity in Christ, if we firmly plant our feet on Him as our Rock, everything we do, every role and “identity” that we take up becomes an offering to Him, and is for the building of His Kingdom. It ceases to be about getting our own needs for affirmation and validation met, but is rather an outworking of our assurance in who we are in Him. The mess of our deceitful hearts looking to their own agenda is replaced with a pure heart, pure motives, simply to serve God. And oh, there is such freedom in this place. Our master ceases to be public opinion and becomes the One who loves us unconditionally – not because of what we can do for Him, but because we belong to Him, we are His creation.
At the end of the podcast, there is an opportunity to spend some time with Jesus reflecting on those aspects of our identity that are not grounded in Him. You can do this on your own as well. Ask Him what aspects of your identity you need to lay down at His feet, to give up to Him. He may give them back to you, or may transform them into a new way of being. You can also ask Him what He wants to tell you about your identity in Him – what He loves about you, what He has placed in you – and ask Him what He wants to do through these. He may also ask you to wait until you have walked a while without any identity but as His child.
*If you are having difficulty with understanding what it means to be a child of God, a really helpful book is “Who I am in Christ”, by Neil T Anderson, or you can just look up images with the same information and there are many showing the key verses from Scripture.