“I’m out here exposing all my private matters publicly,” raps Christian hip-hop artist Tedashii on the opening track of his album Below Paradise. And sometimes I feel like I’m a drama king. I say king, because as a male I’m not a queen. Recently, I’ve been guilty of the exact same thing that Tedashii speaks of: I’ve been confessing secret sins and struggles in very public arenas.
And I can almost convince myself that there’s nothing wrong with it. One complaint against Christians is that we act like everything’s great all the time. Plastered on smiles and holiness that turns those who aren’t happy or holy away. So, for me to say, “I’m struggling; I’m not happy; I’m not doing well in the holiness category,” is my way of showing a watching world that the reality is not a false front.
But then I talk to my dad on the phone, and he confronts me with Mark 10:42 where Jesus says, “Whoever causes the downfall of one of these little ones who believe in Me—it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” My dad tops it off by getting extremely personal in the application of that verse to my life, and I almost started crying on the phone. That was never my goal, but it’s what I was accomplishing with my blog posts and facebook statuses. Earlier the same day, my pastor had convinced me of the same thing.
And the day before, my best friend in Missouri was preaching and convinced me that I was in sin regarding my attitude towards my now ex-girlfriend (even though that term “ex” leaves a bad taste in my mouth). He wasn’t preaching on it, but I had preached on it a month and a half ago; 1 Peter 3:8-9 talks about how to practically relate to those in the church (and outside) who hurt you, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and it was the first thing I thought of the moment she broke up with me: “All of you should be like minded and sympathetic, should love believers, and be compassionate and humble, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this.” At some point, though, I’d lost track of it, and it led to belittling and accusing on facebook and this blog.
Then I started reading 1 John on Sunday the 17th. I’ve been reading in the NIV this year, and it helps convict me, since it translates “brothers” as “brothers and sisters.” So everytime (which is a lot of times) John says, “The one who says he is in the light but hates his brother is in the darkness until now,” I read, “hates his brother or sister,” and am convicted of bitterness, anger, and spite for a girl that never did anything to hurt me. The post that I have now removed was clear proof that it was me that was the problem in the relationship; I was the one doing the hurting. 1 John 4:20 says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother (or sister), he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother (or sister) whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
In God’s sovereignty, which has been running full steam ahead for the last year, I started reading Uprooting Anger by Robert Jones a few weeks ago. God used it along with everything else in this post to show me I was in error. He defines anger on page 15 as “our whole-personed active response of negative moral judgment against perceived evil.” He took the rug out from under my feet in chapter 2 by telling me (and any other reader) that our anger is most likely not righteous. He then convinced from chapter 3 to chapter 6 that it doesn’t matter if my anger is manifested in punching walls, cussing, or just clamming up and plotting imagined revenge, I need to repent of it and put it to death. (I usually fall into the category of the last two initially, until my simmering anger pot boils over.) Then he pointed out in his next two chapters that part of my problem is that I’m secretly angry at God (at least in a small part), and not so secretly angry at myself in a large part. Finally, he gave three reasons for dealing with my anger, “Dealing with anger God’s way will enhance your physical and spiritual health. . . . We must deal with it to love others and promote godly relationships. By doing so, we bring grace, healing, and hope to those around us. . . . Anger, as God-playing, is of the worst moral evil. To repent of anger is to acknowledge God’s rightful and sole place as King over your entire world” (157-164).
Throughout the book, Jones really enjoyed talking through the book of James. I was in James last week, and the same day I met with my pastor and talked to my dad, I was struck by 1:2, where James says, “Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials.” I wanted to throw my Bible, simply because I realized I had not even come close to doing that over the previous month. Paul is clear in Philippians 4:13 that it is possible, and the reason I opened this post with Tedashii’s lyrics are important. He has another song on the same album called, “Nothing I Can’t Do,” where he basically applies Philippians 4:13 to the situation he was facing. His situation was that of losing his infant son, and God gave him the strength to “go chasing You, trusting You, hope in You, forever,” which are the closing words of the album. The chorus to the closing song is the prescription to preventing anger at God in the midst of trials, and it was a very good reminder this past week: “You give and You take / Through it all I will chase / after Your heart, not Your hand / when my heart don’t understand.” I’m much too often guilty of chasing after God’s gifts (hand) instead of His self (heart). If there’s no other lesson He’s trying to teach me right now, it’s this: I need Him and nothing else.
So, please keep praying for me. But know that my goal is to make Jesus look good, not to push people away. It’s not about being real, so much as it’s about the reality of Jesus. Instead of posting about my drama, I’m going to post about being drawn to the King, and I hope that my posts will draw you closer to Him too.
As a song off my upcoming album states:
“Jesus, I love You; that’s what You see
Every single time You look at me
You see a broken wreck who knows he needs You
You see a messy life, but Your love is still true
And we’re working through stuff—You and me
And on the last day I know I’ll come out holy
But for now You see me—weak and small
But You loved me enough to give me Your all”
If you belong to Him, He loved you enough to give you His all. If you haven’t already, trust Him today. It won’t solve life’s problems, but it will give you a looking-glass to view it through.
Soli Deo Gloria
No comments:
Post a Comment