Digging Through the Grime

Jason and I are in the middle of moving into our new home.  As we do this we are also participating in “A Journey Home” with our family at Crossroads.  I am sharing a little bit about how the physical and the spiritual are matching up in life right now as we do both.  I hope we will all grow in the midst of this journey home.  You can read the whole of this journey series here.

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One thing Jason and I noticed as we began to prepare for the move to our new home was how dirty it was.  It is not unusual to clean before you move into a new home. I have done that several times.  However, this was certainly the least clean place we have planned to live.  I am not sure how the family who lived here before us made themselves step into the grime and mold and mildew that would have touched their body in the shower.  I don’t think I could do it.

Yet, I wonder.  Is it easier to just live in our grime?

This week, in our journey home, we were invited to explore some things as it related to our fathers and how we grew up.  We were asked to think about three or four descriptions of our fathers or the parent who raised us.  Then we were to think about how these characteristics affected us.  From here, we followed a trail from the way we responded in the midst of our parental relationship to how it might influence our relationship with authority figures and our view of God. 

It was really helpful to consider this.

As I sat in my seat during the Saturday night service writing in my guide, I was surprised by what I learned and remembered about myself.

It was as I was thinking about my dad leaving my mom and our family when I was a junior in high school that I remembered how I felt.  I remembered the night he told us he was leaving and how I was disappointed in his failure to do the right thing.  I considered the bitterness that I experienced during college and how it was prayer that took the sting away to leave me just sad for what had been lost. 

As I pushed through these memories I uncovered one more, the way it felt when he was gone. 

I didn’t feel safe anymore. 

I was unaware that I had felt safe until the safety was gone.  I imagine it was a lack of physical safety as my mom would go to work at the hospital for her night shift, despite my siblings being in the home.  I think it was probably a lack of emotional safety too.  If family wasn’t safe, what was?

As I considered how this affects my relationship with authority figures and God it seems to me that it left me with trust issues, which I already struggled with due to some bad experiences with friends in the past.  It left me wanting to take control in some situations and feeling helpless in others.  I think this pretty well describes some aspects of my relationship with God.  I find it difficult to surrender and let go of control.

I do not mean to suggest that all of my trust issues stem from this one event, important as it was in my life.  We all have trust issues. 

They stem from the enemy of God planting seeds of doubt in each of our lives, just as he did with Adam and Eve: “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” 

For us he might be asking any number of questions: "Are you sure you can trust God with your cares?", "Are you sure God isn't going to be angry when you tell him about the mistake you made?", "Are you sure that God will love you even though you failed?" or "Are you sure that God will not leave you stranded?"

As a result of the fall we are all spiritual orphans, looking for home.

In our small group this week, we were challenged to dig through that which has affected the way we relate to God to discover what is true about him.

I am considering how “God isn’t leaving.”

I am reading Psalm 9:10 over and over again trying to hide its truth in my heart.

“Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.”

As I do this, I am digging through the layers of grime in my own life coming from experiences and beliefs that I hold about God.  I am scrubbing through that which is false to claim what is true.

It is kind of like the hours I spent scrubbing the shower.  I rubbed through greens and browns and pinks to find the white solid surface underneath.  It took time to get through the grime, but a comfortable home, I want to live in, lay on the other side. 

This is true of seeking the truth about God.  His true character is worth discovering.  In Him, I find my real home.  I do not have to be an orphan.  I can claim my identity as adopted child.

“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.  Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out “Abba, Father.”  So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”  Galatians 4:4-7

I’m seeking truth and running for home.

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Grace and peace be ours in abundance as we consider how we relate to God and some of the ways we might have been affected by our experiences and past beliefs.  As we surrender these to the truth that God reveals to us in His word, may we find we come running home to him embracing sonship.

Jessica :)

 

P.S.  Thank you to my mother-in-law, Linda Holmes, for letting me use the photo she snapped while I was scrubbing down the tub in the bathroom :)

Longing for Home

On Sunday, we opened the front door of our new home for the first time.  We had been there on a number of occasions as we were in the process of deciding to purchase the house.  Yet, as we eased the key into the lock and turned the latch, this time it was as home owners rather than guests.

As we walked through the increasingly familiar floor plan, the dog hair and dust and grime glared at us from where it sat.  It was the first time we had seen our home without any furniture in it.  In it, we saw the possibilities of what could be.  It was also a moment of realizing the work that would need to be done to make it home. 

Home is waiting on the other side of grime.  Home is waiting.  It is ready to be made.  It is ready to be settled into.  We are longing for home.  We are on the journey.

It is rather appropriate. 

As we begin the yearly “journey” with our family at Crossroads.  We are all taking “A Journey Home.”

When we stepped into our house, it was after exploring the idea of baggage.  We are all spiritual orphans who believe certain things about ourselves, others and God.  Many of these traits leave us hiding.  We hide behind anger or try to justify or explain away mistakes we make.  We see the world with eyes of scarcity and negativity rather than a lens of God’s goodness.  We measure our contentment based on how successful we are, often comparing ourselves to others.  We operate out of fear.  And we often feel lonely, because we have a hard time sharing who we really are with others, afraid of how they will feel about us.

Our pastor talked about these common places of the human experience.  He said that common struggles are indicators of a spiritual reality.  We long for belonging.  We want a place where we can be who we really are.  We are looking for home.

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”  John 1:12-13 TNIV

There is a home that we have been made for, it belongs to God.  There is a family in which we will all find we belong.  We have a Daddy that is waiting for us.  We may need to pause to consider what it is we hold in our hands.  What baggage are we carrying?  We may find that we need to let go of some of it, discarding it, so that we might embrace who we have been created to be.

So, as Jason and I journey home, I will be sharing with you some of the things we’re learning along the way as the physical and the spiritual meet up for us in the midst of this journey.  We hope that you will find yourself making the journey with us toward home.

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Grace and peace be ours in abundance as we bravely consider the things we deeply believe about ourselves.  As we consider this, may we encounter what it is that God believes about us, what He calls us toward.  May we trust in His judgment as truer than our own.  May we take steps toward calling Him Daddy.  May we be courageous enough to journey home.

Jessica :)

P.S.  The photo was obtained off one of the realtor sites awhile back.  It was in the public domain.

Embracing Sonship

On Thursdays, I have been sharing a little bit about what I have been learning as I read through 1 John.

We have just finished reading a section of 1 John where John writes a lot about “remaining” or “continuing” in Christ.  It is the same word in the Greek, menō.  This abiding is central to a relationship with the Father and the Son, as well as the body of Christ.  Those who do not “remain” are adversaries of Christ.

The next section in 1 John explores the idea of identity.  John identifies that some are children of God and others are children of the devil.  Key to identifying either has to do with conduct and relationship to sin.

John writes:

“If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.  See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!  The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.  But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”  1 John 2:29-3:3 TNIV

As I have spent time reading this passage, the idea that stands out to me most is the idea of being a child of God.  It is central to these four verses and it is also central to the points that John will make over the next seven verses as well.

John begins, “If you know that [Jesus] is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.”

There is actually a lot going on the Greek here. 

There are two different words for know—oida and ginōskō.  We have seen ginōskō before, here.   There are two other words worth noticing—righteousness (dikaios) and “what is right” (dikaiosyne).

Essentially, what John is saying is that “If you “see or fully know” (oida) that Jesus “lives in a state of perfect agreement between His nature and His actions (like God), the standard of all men” (dikaios) then “you have come to know or understand”(ginōskō) that everyone “who has believed on Christ and has been brought into right relationship with God, becoming in Christ all that God requires a man to be” (dikaiosyne) has been born of Christ” (VINE’S Expository Dictionary).

Take a moment to read that again.

The righteousness of Christ is that of the character of God.  When we come to know this, we have come to know that all who have believed in him and are becoming, in Christ, all that God requires a man to be.  These people have been born of him.

When we come to the rest of this passage with a better understanding of this first verse, we can begin grasp the beauty of the picture that John is painting. 

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!”

The word for children here is teknon in the Greek.  It is used of a child “in both the natural and figurative senses. […]  It gives prominence to the fact of birth” (VINE’S Expository Dictionary).

Do you see the beauty in this verse? 

John has just talked about birth in Christ.   Those who are born in Christ are given the title children of God.  We are lavished with the love of the Father, as his children.

There is a deeper level to which it is difficult for us to understand what it is to be a child of God associated by way of the firstborn son, Christ.  The cultural context of Israel at this time is very different from our own today.  We are used to children being bestowed with equal rights and responsibilities in a family.  Israel was a patriarchal and patrilineal society.  It functioned differently from the way ours does today. 

To be patriarchal "has to do with the centrality of the oldest living male member [the patriarch] of the family to the structure of the larger society.  […] An individual would identify their place within society through the lens of their patriarch’s household first, then their clan or lineage, then their tribe and finally the nation” (Epic of Eden, 25-26).  The family unity in Israel, called the bet ab or the “father’s household” would have included “the patriarch, his wife(s), his unwed children and his married sons with their wives and children” (Epic of Eden, 26).  In the midst of the bet ab, the patriarch “bore both the legal and economic responsibility for the household.”   (Epic of Eden, 27). 

To be patrilineal "has to do with the tracing of the ancestral descent through the male line" (Epic of Eden, 28).  It meant “the firstborn male child would replace his father in the role of patriarch upon his father’s death.  Hence, the firstborn took precedence over his brothers during his father’s lifetime, and upon his father’s death he received a double-portion of the family estate. […]  Much more was expected of him than his siblings.  As the firstborn came to maturity, he slowly evolved to his father’s peer, until upon the patriarch’s death he was prepared to assume the weighty responsibility of directing and maintaining the bet ab. Obviously, the firstborn would need adequate resources to insure the survival of the family; hence, the double-portion.  All firstborns are special to their parents, but because of his pivotal role in Israelite society, the firstborn in Israel was precious” (Epic of Eden, 29).

The firstborn son understands his responsibilities and is ready to take them up.

Consider Paul’s words in Galatians 3:26-28:

“For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.  There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female.  For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

We are God’s children.   We have put on Christ.  When God looks at us, he sees Christ, the firstborn son.  We are firstborn sons, in Christ (for those of us who are women, figuratively speaking).  We are heirs in Christ.

For me, as I read this, these ideas from Epic of Eden about the cultural context and remembering the idea of adoption and sonship from going through Story Formed Life come to mind. 

When we are talked about as children of God, there is a beautiful picture that is larger than the words that John is using in this passage alone.  It ties into the story God has been telling over the course of history.

John continues talking about the children of God: “Dear friends, now we are children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known.  But we know that when Christ appears we will be like him for we will see him as he is.”

What will be we do not know yet.  But we “have a fullness of knowledge” or oida that when Christ comes, we will be like him.  That is what we know.

When I first read this, I was able to grasp that we would be like Christ.  It made sense to me, because this is what our discipleship journey is about, being submitted to Christ and responding to him—becoming like Christ.  Yet, as I have been thinking about the idea of being a child of God, it makes even more sense to me.

Families resemble one another. 

If we are children, we are family.  We will be like our family.  We will be like Christ.

Yet, there is a sense where it seems that we have to realize and embrace our role in the family.

Just as the firstborn son knows his responsibilities in the family and embraces them, so we, who are clothed in the firstborn son, need to know and embrace our responsibilities in the family.

John writes, “All who have this hope purify themselves, just as he is pure.”

Jesus is pure.  The word in Greek is hagnos.  It means “pure from defilement, not contaminated.”  It is from the same root as the word “holy” (VINE’S Expository Dictionary). 

We who have hope, that we will be like him, purify ourselves.  The word here is hagnizō.  It means “to purify, cleanse from defilement” (VINE’S Expository Dictionary).

This is not done in isolation, but participation with the Spirit.  Paul writes, “Therefore, […] as you have always obeyed […] continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13). 

This is abiding. 

This is what family does—communicating and relating, listening and responding.

Let’s embrace our role as children of God and relate to the Father the way Jesus showed us—recognizing our responsibility and walking in it.

“The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son does also.”  John 5:19

 

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Grace and peace be ours in abundance as we embrace our role as children of God.  May we abide that we might learn from Christ the ways of our Father.  May we give thanks for the gift of life in Christ.  May we look forward in hope to that day where our identity as children is fully realized at Christ’s coming.

Jessica :)