Be Who You Is

I remember hearing Brennan Manning speak when I was in college, and one of the things he shared was advice that he received from a woman: “Be who you is, ‘cause if you ain’t who you is, then you is who you ain’t.” That’s good advice, but it’s harder to put into practice than we often admit. It’s not just teens who cave in to peer pressure. Nor is it just the world that is trying to fit us into its mold. The church can be just as tough some times.

Last year I started reading Hugh Halter’s book Sacrilege, but I couldn’t finish it. I still remember one illustration he used of a couple that started coming to his church. He said in essence, “They were sitting alone in the sanctuary waiting for ‘church’ to start, not realizing that church was what was happening in the hallway and fellowship hall.” While I agree that fellowship is important, so are worship, prayer, and teaching. However, I also have to point out that fellowship happens in different ways for different people. Not everyone enjoys crowded, noisy rooms. In fact, I’d say that true fellowship is minimal when you have to struggle just to hear one another. Smaller groups are more congenial in many ways.

There is a tendency within the church to pursue a one-size-fits-all approach to programming. Although it varies from church to church, many leaders think, “If this program works for 33% of the people, then all we need is to repeat this three more times.” So when we think about how to get more of the church members actively involved, the discussion goes one of two ways: either do more of the same, or slightly tweak what we’ve got to make it more appealing to a larger number of people.

There is often a lack of understanding of the huge diversity of people in the Body of Christ. I think some part of this is due to the negative attitude that many Christians have toward psychology, and thus they decline to accept the observations that psychologists and sociologists have accumulated about individuals and social interactions. Being an introvert and highly sensitive person, I’ve experienced firsthand how often events are planned for the most social people in the gathering. I’ve been made to feel not only like a minority, but like a “defective” person because I don’t enjoy the same things that others do.

When people come to Christ, they aren’t shoved into a cookie cutter to make them all look, sound, and act alike. Timothy had to be reminded not to let people look down on him because of his youth (1 Timothy 4:10). And when Saul was confronted by Christ and became Paul, he didn’t lose any of the fire or zeal that he’d had when persecuting Christians. When he said in 1 Corinthians 9:22 (ESV) “I have become all things to all people,” he didn’t mean that he abandoned his personality or his unique giftedness, but that he didn’t want anything to stand in the way of the Gospel. It seems like many churches take the opposite approach: if you’re like us you’re welcome, but if not, find somewhere else to go. (I think this is the point Halter was trying to make in his book, but he seemed to go about it by bashing all that the traditional church holds dear.)

There are certainly times when we all have to go out of our comfort zones, try new things, and perhaps find a new interest. (I wonder though whether the majority would be as anxious to try silence and solitude as they are to convince the introverts to be more social.) It’s easy to make excuses not to do things, but God sees through every excuse to the heart beneath.

I would suggest a few things that might help us all:

1) To the social butterflies and extraverts who make up the majority of our church membership and leadership, seek the opinions of the minorities among you. If a particular segment of the body is not involved in the planned activities, ask them why that is. Doing more of the same old thing is not going to suddenly change their minds.

2) To the quieter, less social people among us, remember that no one is going to read your mind and know what you’d like. Make your opinions known when you can. Just be aware that as a minority, sometimes you have to go along with the majority opinion even when you’d rather not.

3) To all of us, make the effort to establish and develop close relationships with individuals. Evangelism and discipleship generally happen one-on-one or in small groups, not in large groups or church socials.

We need the unique contributions of each member.

“God arranged the members in the Body, each one of them, as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the Body be?” (1 Corinthians 12:18-19).

© 2015 Dawn Rutan

Walking in the Light

In our prayer meeting Wednesday, we meditated on several Scriptures including Philippians 1:9-11: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

As I was thinking about these verses later, I was reminded particularly of the consequences of sin in positions of ministry leadership. The more public the ministry, the more we have to be aware that “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). And “we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us...” (2 Corinthians 5:20). What we do can have positive or negative consequences that reach far beyond our own houses or families.

Being pure and blameless is all too often a facade worn by Christians, and when the facade is broken, it tends to make national news. However, I believe our Christian witness needs to be more open and honest than it usually is. If everyone else appears to have it all together, that can be a discouragement to those of us who are regularly falling apart. The Apostle John wrote, “If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (1 John 1:6). I find it interesting how easily we can dismiss practicing truth when it comes to being honest with one another even within the church and small groups. We may not feel like we’re walking in darkness because we do acknowledge our sin and brokenness to ourselves and to God. But we never confess it to one another, and thereby we give false impressions and walk in darkness.

Scripturally, I’m not sure there is much basis for keeping things hidden, aside from Proverbs about not revealing someone else’s secrets. One day all secrets will be revealed. But I also know that it can be detrimental in certain circumstances to say anything that might be used against you for employment or legal reasons. It takes a great deal of wisdom and discernment to know what to say to whom. And going back to the Philippians verses, I believe we reflect God’s love as we learn to trust others with some of the broken pieces of our souls. I’ve been convicted about that myself just recently when I failed to pursue some wide open doors because I wasn’t prepared to speak the truth about my own story.

I know that I don’t want to feel pressured to keep up a “good Christian” performance so I can live up to someone’s expectations. That is guaranteed to result in failure eventually. We all need wisdom in how to practice walking in the light of truth, first with a few trusted individuals, and gradually enlarging the circle. There will always be people outside the circle, and there will always be some things that can’t be shared very widely because they involve other people. But I do want my love to abound more and more as with discernment I walk in the truth. Our weakness can only be used for God’s glory to the extent that we let it be seen.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

© 2015 by Dawn Rutan.

Worthy Prayers

For some time now I’ve been using the Scripture-Based Prayers to Pray for Your Pastor card that was put together by Terry Teykl. I’ve added to that a list of prayers mentioned in Paul’s letters. Paul’s prayers are packed full of theological details, and could take a year-long sermon series to unpack and work out. Two of these are:

• 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 (ESV) – “To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
• Colossians 1:9-10 – “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

What caught my attention this time around was the declaration that it is God who makes us worthy of His calling and enables us to walk in a worthy manner. In and of ourselves, we have no ability or innate good that would make us worthy of God’s holy purposes for our lives. He is the one who calls us to follow Him and gives us work to do, and He makes us worthy to do it. It’s mind-boggling if you think about it very long. The best analogy I can think of is an inventor taking a pile of scrap metal and creating an android out of it. But unless you work on the starship Enterprise or on Tatooine, you can’t have an intimate, growing relationship with an android. God created us for much more than that.

Not only does He make us worthy, He gives us fruitful work and enables us to do it in a manner that will bring Him glory. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking “This is my job and I’ll put in my hours every week to earn a paycheck, but it doesn’t ultimately matter.” God’s calling does have ultimate significance, whether it’s a calling to be a pastor, teacher, mother, construction worker, or bank clerk. There are ways and opportunities for everyone to glorify God and bear fruit for Him, though that may look different in each type of vocation.

If nothing else, these verses make me want to consider what “every resolve for good and every work of faith” should look like in my life and in the life of my church. That’s a type of strategic planning that is often overlooked. Just dealing with the weekly routine keeps us all pretty busy and distracts us from setting priorities and seeking God’s direction. I also know that just trying to pray consistently and coherently is a challenge before we even get to the point of figuring out how to pray more biblically and in line with God’s will.

It’s ironic that we are made worthy to enter the presence of the Creator of the universe, and yet most of us would say that we are not good at praying. Our church is in a season of learning about prayer and joining together in prayer. My hope is that this won’t just be another passing interest, but would change the way we pray, serve, fellowship, and worship together.

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27).

© 2015 by Dawn Rutan. 

Thinking About Thoughts

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14 ESV). I have to confess that this can be a challenging verse for me. Not so much the first part, because I generally keep my mouth shut, but the meditation of my heart can be problematic. I was reading a book recently that mentioned the loss of self-control that occurs in some Alzheimer’s patients, and they start saying whatever comes to mind. It was kind of a wake-up call since I could easily be in that same boat in the future. And if I want my words then to reflect a pure heart, I better work on cleaning up my thoughts now.

It’s a tricky area. Everyone has thoughts that pop up seemingly out of nowhere. We may not be able to stop that from happening, but we can certainly decide whether or not we are going to dwell on them. It’s easy to rationalize that thoughts don’t really matter because they aren’t hurting anyone. But Jesus said that lustful thoughts are as sinful as lustful acts, and angry thoughts are as sinful as murder (Matthew 5:21-30). Philippians 4:8 tells us the kind of things we should think about: true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy. But if you’re like me the first thought is: “There aren’t that many good things to think about in this world!” Then the second thought is: “I have to figure out what to do about this problem I’m facing.”

I think there are ways to mull over a problem prayerfully, seeking God’s wisdom, but I also know how quickly such thoughts can degenerate into a rehearsal of everything that has gone wrong and anxiety about what else could go wrong. It requires a vigilance and consciousness of the direction your mind is heading.

This past weekend at our regional women’s retreat, I was thinking about this as I revisited Psalm 139. I realized that although I may not physically “make my bed in Sheol” or “dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,” my mind can still take me places that are better left unvisited. But even there, God is with me and desires to lead me out. I rewrote Psalm 139 for myself from that perspective, though I can’t share it publicly because it is too personal.

Though I haven’t yet mastered “taking every thought captive” when my mind is wandering down the wrong paths, I do know that it requires ongoing prayer. The first part of the prayer is “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24). Another key piece is found in verse 17, “How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God!” I pray that God will make that true more and more frequently as time goes by. I want to be captivated by God’s thoughts and God’s Word, but sometimes I’m just not. Sometimes I want distraction and an escape from reality. I don’t want to have to work on self-control, and it would be nice if our brains came with a remote control that could delete channels from the menu. But that’s not how God made us. He made us to learn and grow one choice at a time. As Candy Hall mentioned at our retreat, He cares about each step we take and He celebrates each milestone of spiritual growth. I may not be where I want to be or where I think I should be, but I am moving in the right direction by His grace.

“The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath. Blessed is the man whom You discipline, O Lord, and whom You teach out of Your law” (Psalm 94:11-12).

Limping Together

I recently shared this quote on Facebook: “Our calling, however, is often shaped as much by our weaknesses as by our strengths. We tend to run with our strengths and avoid those people and tasks that expose our weaknesses. But the story of God is not a saga of human potential; it is the revelation of the kindness and passion of the Father who seeks and redeems sinners. Therefore, our strengths may help us with certain tasks and opportunities, but it is our frailty and sin that make known the glory of God’s story” (Dan Allender, Leading with a Limp, 149-150).

One of the points that Allender makes is that leaders tend to hide their weaknesses in order to project a certain image, but weaknesses have a way of coming out. Though he doesn’t say this directly, I’ve observed that times of organizational transition reveal the weaknesses of all those in leadership more so than their strengths. When the organization is operating normally, everyone plays to their strengths and keeps their weaknesses hidden behind the facade of competency. But when change comes, many people are forced out of their comfort zones. Pride and a sense of entitlement emerge. Fear of loss and distrust of management creep out of the woodwork. The mistakes that have been made become more obvious and get rehashed. Decisions that were previously put off reach crisis mode.

Allender writes: “What is most obvious to others are our most common ways of failing to love—the unique style that rises to the surface during times of shame, hurt, fear, or criticism” (174). As with the rest of life, it’s often easier to see and criticize the faults of others than to deal with our own (Matthew 7:3-5).

Two questions come to mind:

1) Are we going to own up to our weaknesses as leaders, churches, and organizations? The answer to that question assumes that we actually know and understand what those weaknesses are. The discovery process may be a painful one. The criticism that the church is full of hypocrites comes because we aren’t willing to live authentically in our weakness.

2) Once the time of transition passes, are we each going to go back behind the facade of strength or will we embrace our weaknesses as a path for God’s strength to be revealed? Trusting, loving relationships require ongoing honesty. Working together effectively as the Body of Christ depends on knowing one another’s strengths and weaknesses.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:26-27 (ESV): “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” The standard of the world is to focus on strengths, regardless of what God may want to do through our weaknesses. “God, however, loves to use our strengths to get us into situations where our weaknesses are exposed and used for his glory” (187). God doesn’t intend for us to live entirely in our own strength, because that doesn’t bring Him glory.

Our weakness is the playing field for His strength to be revealed.

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

© 2015 Dawn Rutan

To Do Or Not To Do

Modern life, particularly in America, is often perceived as a series of goals to achieve: go to school, graduate, get a job, get married, have a family, help them reach their goals, retire, relax, the end. It seems like we treat spiritual life the same way: get saved, be baptized, go to church, learn a bit, die and go to heaven, the end. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Jillian Willis says of the walk of faith, “It is a journey, not a destination. Do not feel you have to be perfect in it” (Sing Over Me: A Women’s Devotional through the Psalms).

This goal-oriented way of thinking presents a problem when our goals aren’t being met on our schedule or the schedule we think God has in mind. In school we’re told that if we put in the hard work and apply ourselves to learning we’ll receive rewards in the form of scholarships or better jobs, resulting in higher earnings and a more affluent lifestyle. So we try to apply the same logic to spiritual growth: “If I put time and effort into all the spiritual disciplines, I’ll be happier, more productive, and be blessed with many rewards.” While there is some truth to that, the elements of cause and effect are not that clear in Scripture. Both internal and external circumstances can interfere, such as unemployment, the sins of ourselves or others, health problems, and so on.

Willis brings it down to the daily level, “I feel the need to be ‘productive’ every day. In my mind productivity doesn’t include relationships, it includes checking off items on my ‘to do’ list.” I can identify with that. My office calendar has items to check off each day or week. If a day has many items listed, I feel pressured to make sure I get them all done before I go home. But if the day has nothing listed, I feel like I’m wasting time that could be better spent somehow. The worst days are the ones with many scheduled tasks that get interrupted by unscheduled tasks.

It is convicting to realize that Jesus never hurried to get something done, and He didn’t bypass relationships because He had something else to do. However, He knew His priorities and sometimes had to state them clearly: “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out” (Mark 1:38 ESV). “Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish My course… for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem” (Luke 13:32-33). Where our agendas include tasks, His agenda is people. If the agenda is to do a job, we need to know what, how, when, and where. But if the agenda is relationships, all we need to know is who.

Some days I just need the reminder that it’s not all about my lists. God may have someone or something that’s not on my schedule for today, or some life destination that isn’t on my map. He has a tendency to take His disciples through Samaria and through valleys we might otherwise choose to avoid. His agenda is to draw people close so that He can carry us through.

“You have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place” (Deuteronomy 1:31).

© 2015 Dawn Rutan

Once and Again

Last night I got to thinking about Joshua 24:15 (ESV), “Choose this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” We tend to fall into the trap of thinking that following God is a one-time decision rather than a daily choice. I’m not referring to the debate about whether a person can lose their salvation, but about the way we choose to live our lives day by day.

We can get sidetracked when we think of the spiritual disciplines as a one-time choice. We can choose whether to spend time in the Word and prayer, and we can choose our level of involvement with a local church. How many people think that reading the Bible occasionally or hearing a sermon once a week is all that’s really needed? I would question whether those people are actually following Christ if they only make that choice one day out of seven. Even if they do receive eternal salvation, they are missing out on the blessings of pursuing God every day.

Obedience is also a choice. Some days it is an hourly choice or even moment by moment. When temptation comes, we can choose to believe that God will provide endurance and escape one minute at a time (1 Corinthians 10:13). In a way, it is a relief to stop thinking “I have to endure for the rest of my life,” and to start thinking “I just have to make it through this minute… now this minute… now this one.”

As we’ve been learning about spiritual wisdom in recent sermons from 1 Corinthians 2, it is both convicting and enlightening to realize that seeking wisdom needs to be a constant choice as well. The news is full of celebrity pastors who neglected to choose wisely in one area or another, or they are relying on human wisdom more than God’s wisdom. Though they may not be caught in outright sin, they may be dogmatically clinging to a particular interpretation of Scripture that is not necessarily proven to be true. Every church and denomination feels at some level that they are right and others are wrong, but some are more proudly dogmatic than they should be.

Paul wrote, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). MacLaren’s Exposition of this verse says:

“That transformation is no sudden thing, though the revolution which underlies it may be instantaneous. The working out of the new motives, the working in of the new power, is no mere work of a moment. It is a lifelong task till the lump be leavened.”

Similarly in Philippians 2:12-13: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” The choice to turn to Christ for salvation may be a one-time event, but working it out in daily life is one choice after another.

God keeps on saying to us, “Choose this day whom you will serve, and this hour, and this moment, and this second. Keep choosing as often as it takes. Choose Me; choose life; choose health; choose obedience; choose holiness; choose wisdom.”