A word of caution: Don’t ask God to mature into the fullness of the person that He intends for you to be unless you are convinced in yourself of your sincerity. Chances are that if you’re bold enough (or dumb, or drunk, or high enough) to ask Him to do such that in that moment you think you can handle it. However, I wasn’t drunk or high in any substance- or chemical-induced way when I asked God to grow me up, but I was flying my Jesus kite way up high in the third heaven of God’s cosmos.
Anyone who has had very many God-talks with me has heard of my two-plus year honeymoon with God. It wasn’t that all my circumstances were great – not at all. My parents went from middle-aged to ancient and between the two of them developed innumerous unheard of and ridiculous diagnoses. My brother all but died, and I had just in adulthood started liking that guy! I was on a transatlantic cruise and could not get to him for a week - agony. I’ve had to watch my sister-in-law go through more trials than any one white woman I know and my precious nieces and nephew struggle to make sense of the senseless. I’ve had to watch my brother literally be trapped inside of his own body, though I thank God and good doctors for his progress. The business I started with my two best friends went from zero to ninety to out of business (we didn’t go under so much as we just didn’t care to keep it alive, but it was not the success story of our times to be sure). I experienced the “one who got away” and was humiliated, embarrassed, and felt certain that God had placed a “do not date” sign on my forehead visible to everyone but me. Yes, all of this crap (and more where that came from) was going on. However, I was sustained by my relationship with God. None of it mattered because I was experiencing the manifestation of God and His promises in my life. I was as happy as if I had good sense, as my older Ozarks relatives say.
Then, it was as if Elvis had left the building. I had been living day to day walking with Christ and living in the Spirit and learning what it meant to be a child of God. In his loving nature and in knowing what was best for me and in answering that bold prayerful request of Him maturing me, He allowed His presence to be hidden for me. I say for, not from, because he did not hide Himself away from me. He hid Himself for me to find. Being a good Democrat with a career in social work and counseling, I am so familiar with hand-outs that it’s not even funny. But as the politicians say, those clever devils, we don’t need a hand-out, but a hand up. This is what God has been doing in me. He took the training wheels off and said, Go ride and I’ll watch.
Like any normal child, I hesitated until He encouraged to the point that I believed momentarily in my ability. I accepted the challenge and when I did He stepped aside to watch. I rode for a minute all proud of myself – look Dad, no Hands – and then I wobbled and steadied and hit pesky speed bumps and did everything in my power to correct this ride and ultimately failed. I fell off and got scratched up and pissed off. I pouted, whined, asked God nicely to fix this. Didn’t work. I changed my approach. I pouted, whined, and demanded (in Jesus’ Name – LOL) that He fix this. Didn’t work. I became cold, indifferent, calloused, hurt and developed one hell of a grudge. Yes, I have had a grudge against God. Yes, I hear and see in my own words before me how utterly ridiculous and fruitless this is and sounds, but it is exactly what happened.
You might ask, So how’s that working out for you? Fair question. I believe in spiritual seasons and I’ve just been in the Winter of my soul. Spring is coming, the ice is melting and hope is in sight. A wise man told me, So God placed you in the desert and you’ve fought Him because you missed Autumn, but until being in the desert is your choice you cannot escape it. God has made it clear to me that I was in a desert, a dry spell. This sucks so horribly because I had just been in a prolonged harvest time and was as happy as Mother Teresa on Resurrection Day only to get hurled into the Lion’s Den blind-folded, wearing a Lady Gaga carnivore outfit without my pocket KJV. I was so mad at God for (my perception) Him abandoning me.
A telltale sign of me not being in a good spiritual place is my usage of the F-bomb. In a good place, it goes from rare to occasional and then either a slip or a good-natured joke or I allow myself to drop one in a quote in my beloved story-telling (that way I get to blame the actual offense of the dreaded word on the one I’m quoting while I simply repeat it in the name of humor), but when I’m in a bad place it’s effing this and effing that all over the place like Heather Hill in a room full of obese women with shape-up Sketchers and baggy shirts being naysayers to her manic inspirational talks. I let the proverbial hammer down and (F-)bombs away. And it feels good, real good. Out of the mouth, the heart speaks. I won’t rattle on about cursing and cussing and tell you what to say or not, if you can read this you can figure it out. A middle school I work at just de-criminalized that word and suddenly 6th graders aren’t as apt to say it. And critics say our schools aren’t working! Silly Republicans, your tax dollars are too being well spent.
My bad, excuse the foray into politics and my foul mouth, but allow me to present it as evidence that I have been in a low-down, dirty-rotten funk. Now, in my head, I knew from the start that holding a grudge against God was probably not the best or wisest use of my time. But, my heart was hurt and wounded and what’s a child to do? So, Spirit-filled, love-the-Lord me made a big long mental list of all the things that had not gone my way. The list grew and grew and I could no longer control it. It controlled me. I could not keep up with all the ways in which I felt God had let me down. Before long I felt pretty justified with my list and crossed my arms and let God know that if He cared to make it right with me, I would re-join Him on our journey together.
Oh, that God! He is absolutely relentless. . . and persistent. . . and patient. One of the first words that I ever got from God that was not canned or given to me by someone else was a repeated, “I wasn’t mad at you. I wasn’t mad at you.” Apparently, pre Spirit-filled me, the religious check-list me, had believed that God was and had been mad at me because I could not check off all of the things on my to-do list. I screwed up most of the Thou Shalt Not’s and made a mockery of a good number of the 10. I was as busy trying to please Him as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest and could not keep up with His demands. What a Task-Master a religious god is. It was a religious spirt, though, not God, and when I became filled with His Spirit all of that nonsense melted away.
I grew and grew in God thanks to His incredible patience, mercy, grace, understanding and most of all His love. I grew in Him to a point where I was able to have enough child-like faith in the heat of moment to say, Yes, God, I want more of You. I want to go to the next level, the next season with You. Yes, even if that means the training wheels come off. I’m ready, Jesus, to stop looking at your hands to see what you may give me and am ready to look into your face and see my destiny. This was my prayer and thinking at the end of my spiritual Autumn. My prayer in agreement with God led me into my own desert and winter. I blamed Him and felt justified in doing so, but He loved me enough to let me fail – to fail forward. To fail my way back to Him, but the true Child of God never fails as our Father will re-give that test and grade on the curve until we get it! That religious spirit of me wanting to produce good works and to perform for Him sneaked back in, but the eternal loving God of the Universe has more or less said I could not care less what you can do in your own power, I would just like to hang out with you. You’re my kid, we’re friends, I love you. He wants that kind of intimacy. We want to earn it; He wants to give it!
Do you remember when Jesus got baptized? I always struggle with this sinless man getting baptized and Old Baptist John must have been like, Have you completely lost your mind, I’m not worthy to wash your donkey or shine your sandals much less baptize you! Well, it turns out Jesus knew what he was up to. He had all this stuff in the Old Testament to fulfill, something about in his role as priest – High Priest – he had to be baptized to appease whoever wrote Deuteronomy, I suppose. The Old Testament prophets had written kindles full of this stuff predicting this event and Jesus played it out perfectly like He had known the whole time or something. Another reason that Jesus was baptized (remember that at this point he had shed his deity and was totally real people like me and you) was to receive the fullness of the Spirit.
"And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form, as a dove upon him(Jesus, the Son); and a voice (God the Father) came from heaven: Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." Luke 3:22. Now, if that’s not a lesson in the Trinity, I don’t know what is. Parentheses mine.
Just after Jesus was baptized and received the fullness of the Spirit, God told him that he loved him and that He was real proud of him. Next thing you know, Jesus was in the wilderness where he was not all buddy-buddy with God, but rather he was having to depend on what God had taught him previously (he still knew his word and remembered God’s promises) and was learning to live by the Spirit. And in that desert time, here comes Satan taunting and tempting him. Here’s Jesus as a very real man, having had nothing to eat for a long time, and probably little to drink and not a whole lot of sleep or comfort and he had to face the Devil. Satan is an old slickster, he was literally offering Jesus the world. This was make or break time. He didn’t get to watch GodTube or his favorite televangelist and get a fresh word, he wasn’t devouring the latest Christian pop-psychology self-help books, he wasn’t doing double back-flips in a store-front charismatic church getting his praise on in the safe confines of a church building. He was alone and in the desert and faced with pure evil. Having been Spirit-filled in a way-cool manner, he now had to learn to live and walk and depend on the Spirit.
The same is true for us as Believers. My interpretation of God’s word is that when Jesus walked as a man on this earth, he was no more equipped than we are to face sin, Satan, and adversity. The Holy Spirit was his Source. Jesus defeated Satan via the Spirit in Him and we are to do the same. When Jesus went back to be with the Father, He more or less said, Hey, Y’all, no sweat, I know you’ll miss me, but I’m a send this Other Dude who is Way Cool and He’ll be like your own Counselor, Guide, and Way-Maker. Scripture says that even with all the cool stuff Jesus did, we should do even greater things (John 14: 12 – 14). This is way too bold and cool and awesome for the very weak collective church to accept so in its brilliance (read scaredy pants) the church has dumbed this way down to the point that we explain it away and I believe miss God’s point. It sounds too good to be true, too radical to accept. So centuries of theologians with the help of Satan have watered this down and explained it away to the point where we read the word of God and dismiss it in its entirety. I challenge my friends and readers to seek what Jesus meant when he said we’d do greater things. I tried watered-down, religious Jesus and he was a drag, but when I started believing what he actually said as opposed to the old white beards’ interpretation of his words for me, I got changed within.
Remember this, despite what Christian self-help, which all too often is pop-psychology with a sprinkle of Jesus and a dash of Holy Spirit, tells you. . .it is not all about name it and claim it. His is not a health and wealth get rich quick Gospel (though, I do think he wants our health and finances blessed). You don’t always get your victory right now in this moment. Sometimes, often I think, it’s a process, a journey, a season. Dry spells suck, but this is when real, lasting growth occurs. Desert and wilderness experiences are part of our walk with God. There is much purpose and great power in these times. Remember to embrace it when you can – it’s your desert experience, own it! - and accept grace when you can’ because it’s okay to be weak. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you if you have accepted it. Jesus experienced the desert place and Satan was a real jerk, but the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus to his Victory.
The world, and especially our American culture, will lead us to believe that we are to be rugged individualists. If you try and strive and work hard enough, you will be rewarded is the message. In the natural, there is some truth to this. There are plenty of stories of people in ours and every culture working hard and getting rewarded. This is by no means unique to America or Christianity. However, God values our weakness because in it He makes us strong. A desert place is hell to pass through, but when you leave it you will have been broken down to the point that you can grow stronger than before to learn new lessons, new truths, and enjoy new experiences that but for that desert you could not have experienced. Don’t long for where you’ve been, you can never go back there. Lean forward, fail if you have to. We have been promised the same Helper that led Jesus out of his wilderness experience. We are called to do greater things than he. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you!
