Doulos

A bondslave… this whole concept of a bondslave is definitely one that I’ve really loved. A slave with the chance to walk away from a life of slavery… yet who chooses to continue in slavery because of love for his master. I think it’s always, in a way, been a rather glamorous (for lack of a better word) picture to me… you know, like something out of a movie. The story of a slave, who chooses to stay with his beloved master when offered this chance for freedom. And of course, his life is wonderful because his master is worth serving. The ‘freedom’ offered wouldn’t really have been freedom. It would have been slavery to another life. Instead, there is freedom in serving his dear master. Sigh… And although I do still agree with all of this to a degree, the past few months have been rather transforming my idea of this concept.

Basically, I do not know how to explain to you all what I have faced these past few months. It doesn’t make sense, even to me, so to try to make anyone else understand… well, that’s beyond me. I don’t know if it has been sp’rtual attack, culture shock, just some stage I had to face, something completely different, or a combination of all of the above. But I have not been the person I used to know… and I haven’t liked who I have been. I do not exaggerate when I say I have been a disaster. Granted, I tried to hold it together on the outside, so most people don’t really know. But inside, I have been fighting quite the battle. To make a long, terrible story short, last month I really considered, for the first time in my life, walking away from Gd. I can’t even believe now that I’m typing these words, and I most assuredly could not believe then that I was thinking those thoughts, but it happened. It’s not that I questioned anything I believe. I believe in HIM just as much as ever, but I sure did lose hope in myself. I started to question if I could really keep living for Him. A life surrendered to Him is not easy, and I’ve been feeling that. So for the first, most terrifying time ever, I contemplated leaving it all… and as dramatic as you may think it sounds, it was terrifying. How could I ever think about walking away from Gd, the only One I’m here for, my Everything, the One who gave it all for me, who loves me more than anyone else? I couldn’t understand myself, and I couldn’t snap out of ‘it’… whatever ‘it’ was. But during this time, the whole concept of the bondslave frequented my thoughts. As romanticized as I had always made it out to be, the fact is… being a slave is hard, no matter who one’s master is. Chosen or not, a life of slavery is not easy. So would I choose to continue serving my Master, who does deserve my everything? Or would I walk away from it all?

I really did ponder that question. And I cannot say that I will never ponder it again. But in the midst of all of this, I realized that—although a life of slavery is difficult, yes—I will always be a slave. The question is… who or what will I be a slave to? Just as in my initial picture of a slave—that this slave’s ‘freedom’ wouldn’t really have been freedom, but simply slavery to another life—that is true in my life. ‘Freedom’ from slavery to Chr’st is slavery to the world and to a life without Gd that I don’t want to know…  No matter what I face as I try to live surrendered to Him, I want no other life. He is the only reason I live. Serving Him is the life I choose, no matter how it feels at times. And that’s the thing… I don’t have to ‘feel’ a certain way to be f’ithful to Him. I’ve been so discouraged, struggling in my walk with Him, questioning everything… but I can still just keep going. I’ve continued talking to Him when I didn’t understand. I’ve continued reading His precious words when I didn’t feel like it. I have felt like a terrible failure, but my Master loves me all the same, and He walks each step of this with me.

Another thing that really hit me during this time was sparked by something my dear friend, Carmen wrote on her website: www.hiccupz.com. She talks about a butterfly she saw while sitting outside one day:

I watched it for a while as it fluttered about, showing off its colorful new wardrobe. Sometimes it would barely move its wings as it gracefully glided through the air while other times it would flap frantically to stay above ground. It went up and down, side to side, and in loops here and there, but no matter what it did, it was full of grace and beauty. Though sometimes its flight was easy and other times its flight was harder, the truth that outweighed everything else was that it was flying! This creature had been given a new life. It was no longer crawling along the ground in the dirt and mud, moving slowly and low in its abilities. No, now it had the capability to fly above that old life and experience things that it never could before. Though the butterfly had its struggles, they were overshadowed by the gift of being a beautiful butterfly, a gift that even at its lowest point triumphed over the caterpillar’s highest points.

One day as I was wrestling through these things, considering walking away from it all, and thinking about this picture of the butterfly, I thought… it is ridiculous really. A butterfly, even if it wanted to, couldn’t turn back into a caterpillar. And why would it want to? Just as Carmen said, even at its lowest points, the flight of the butterfly—the new life it has been given—is more beautiful than the caterpillar’s life of crawling through the mud ever could be. So why? Why would I want to go back to that, even if flying is hard sometimes?

Live like a butterfly

Live like you’ve found new life

The wind may blow, the tears may flow

But the old you is dead

This caterpillar’s been transformed into a butterfly instead.

Each stage on this journey, with all of its new thoughts, hasn’t brought me back to the place where I have felt the ‘young love’ feeling of being in love with J’sus and being so passionate and excited in everything I do. In fact, it has all been such a gradual journey that I’m never quite sure where I am or how I’m doing. But tonight, as I pulled out my guitar for the first time in a while, I just felt peace. I realized that it’s okay that I don’t feel like that. I won’t always feel like that. But for the first time since feeling so terribly close to the edge, I actually said the words, “it’s going to be okay,” and really meant and believed them. I know I am still wrestling, and that—as peaceful as I feel right now—this battle is still raging. But I also know, at least for now while my mind is clear, that there is no other life for me to go back to. I will never be a caterpillar again. I choose to be a bondslave to the most amazing Master there is. I want to be His bondslave. I don’t want to walk away from it all. He is mine, and I am His. And as oxymoronic as it may sound…

…a life of slavery to Him is the only real freedom there is.            

So grateful for what He did to offer me this freedom…

                And when I think that Gd, His Son not sparing

                Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in

                That on the cr’ss, my burden gladly bearing

                He bled and died, to take away my sin

                Then sings my soul, my S’vior Gd, to Thee

                How great Thou art, how great Thou art

                Then sings my soul, my S’vior Gd, to Thee

                How great Thou art, how great Thou art

Promise

"My flesh and my heart [are failing] but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." --Psalm 73:26

A Breath or Two - Jimmy Needham

Wilting...

Ok, so maybe--disregarding my previous post--I am capable of just giving up. Someone jokingly said to me earlier tonight, "your childhood is wilting," referring to a flower that smelled like my childhood. But to be quite honest, that's rather how I feel...

Sulking in Silence?

One of the scariest things I've ever experienced is to really, seriously think about walking away from everything I've ever believed in... choosing to leave it all behind, not because I don't believe it anymore... but because I don't feel like I can keep going. But in the midst of these thoughts, this quote from Prayer, by Philip Yancey, hit me today:  

A woman, age forty-one, wrote first about her conversion as a Jewish believer in Jesus, and then of a daunting trial, breast cancer that had spread to lungs and liver. Sometimes she would pull away from God completely, but then "after sulking in silence for a period of days or weeks, I would come back to God slowly and reluctantly, a pout still on my face, but recognizing that I didn't know how to live apart from God."

I don't feel like I could ever really walk away from God, because like this woman, I don't even know how to live apart from Him. He is my life, the only reason I live. He is my everything. But the past few days have been scary--the thought that leaving it all has even become an option. I don't understand this season in my life... the past 7 months, I feel like I have experienced more intense, consistent, and ongoing spiritual attack than any other time in my life. God has seemed so strangely quiet. I feel like there is a wall up between us. At every other time in my life--since finding genuine relationship with Him--I could at least cry out to Him, share my heart with Him, regardless of what i was facing. But now, I don't even feel like I can genuinely do that. I feel so disconnected, like my words don't even reach Him. I don't know *why*... but these other words from Yancey's book offered some new perspective:

Often God rules by overruling.

One scene in particular shows the built-in limitations of prayer. "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat," Jesus informed Peter, pointedly using his old name. "But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail." With characteristic bluster Peter insisted he would follow Jesus to prison and to death, and it was then Jesus revealed the ugly truth that actually Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed that same day. I cannot help wondering why Jesus didn't flat-out deny Satan's request to test Simon: "No, he's off limits. You can't touch him!" Or why didn't Jesus miraculously embolden Peter so that he could withstand the sifting? Instead he chose the more subtle tack of praying that Peter's faith not fail.

Of course, Peter's faith did fail, three times. Does this request belong in the list of Jesus' unanswered prayers? Or does it, rather, hint at the underlying pattern of how God operates on earth? The scene with Peter has fascinating parallels with the account of Judas. There too, a trusted disciple failed a test of faith, with consequences that seemed catastrophic. Luke, staggered by such treachery, reports simply, "Then Satan entered Judas." How else to explain such a deed?

Judas and Peter both got caught up in a drama of spiritual warfare that they could neither recognize nor fathom. Satan directly pursued both disciples, yet each bore a measure of personal responsibility, for Satan conquers no one without cooperation. Both men miserably failed their test of faith, betraying a master they had followed for three years. Nonetheless, even after their failure both faced the possibility of redemption. One realized his error and hung himself. The other realized his error, repented, and became a pillar of the church. Is it possible that Jesus' prayer for Peter kept him from becoming another Judas?

...Jesus' prayer for Peter shows the same pattern in sharp relief. Satan partially got his way with Peter, sifting him like wheat. But in answer to Jesus' prayer, the sifting rid Peter of his least attractive qualities: blustery self-confidence, a chip on his shoulder, a propensity to violence. The Gospels show Peter urging Jesus to avoid the cross, cowering in the darkness the night of Jesus' trial, and denying with an oath that he knows him. In the book of 1 Peter a transformed apostle uses words like humble and submit, and welcomes suffering as a badge of honor.

God has not leashed the forces of evil, not yet anyway, but has provided resources beyond our awareness, including the personal concern of the Son, to counter and even transform evil. We know that prayer matters because after leaving earth Jesus made it one of his primary tasks: "Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them." As Jesus once prayed for Peter, now he prays for us... In fact, the New Testament's only glimpse of what Jesus is doing right now depicts him at the right hand of God "interceding for us." In three years of active ministry, Jesus changed the moral landscape of the planet. For nearly two thousand years since, he has been using another tactic: prayer.

When I betray the love and grace God has shown me, I fall back on the promise that Jesus prays for me--as he did for Peter--not that I would never face testing, nor even fail, but that in the end I will allow God to use the testing and failure to mold me into someone more useful to the kingdom, someone more like Jesus.

I can't see God's picture of the past 7 months... or of the months to come. But I *want* to trust Him that He is and will continue using these times--including my epic failures--to mold me into someone more useful to His kingdom. 

My last scrambled thoughts relate to the concept of a bondslave. The past year or two, I have come to love that picture... the picture of a slave who chooses to remain in his master's service, because he loves him and doesn't want to leave him. That's what we are in Christ. We are bondslaves--choosing this life of living and sacrificing for Him because we love Him. But the past few days, this picture has become more real in my life... and with this newfound reality, it has lost some of the glamor surrounding simple discussion of the 'concept.'

I mean, when you really think about it, the initial picture is so beautiful because nobody *wants* to be a slave. So it is incredible that somebody would choose to remain a slave when given the option to leave. A bondslave chooses a life of servitude out of love for his master, not out of desire for an easy life or any other warm, fuzzy feelings. So the very fact that I call myself a bondslave of Christ, in reality, should tell me that my life is going to be tough. Continually making that choice to serve Him, even with the option of leaving, is one that I will make out of love for Him in the knowledge of who He is. As the question of walking away from it all has entered my mind, I have only begun to realize the depths of what the life of a bondslave is. One final quote from Yancey's book seemed to connect some of this in my mind:

Jesus knew, too, the cost of divine restraint, the deeply personal cost of letting the world have its way with him. He understood that redemption comes from passing through the pain, not avoiding it: "for the joy set before him [he] endured the cross." Somehow redeemed suffering is better than no suffering at all, Easter better than skipping Good Friday altogether, Although Jesus knew the redemptive pattern in advance--he had revealed it to his disciples--how remote it must have seemed to him in the garden and on the via dolorosa. How remote it seems to all of us in the midst of our trials.

It's hard to see anything in the midst of life these past 7 months. Every time I feel like I'm starting to stand back up from one of the enemy's attacks, I get knocked down even further than before. I am tired, I am discouraged, I feel like giving up. And yet somehow I don't think I can. So all I know to do is to keep taking it one step at a time... and to keep believing all of these truths I just shared, even though I can't feel them... and to remember that Jesus Christ is interceding for me... "not that I would never face testing, nor even fail, but that in the end I will allow God to use the testing and failure to mold me into someone more useful to the kingdom, someone more like Jesus."