Living from a different place

I love challenges. The bigger the challenge, the more I love it. There just seems to be something about tackling and unknotting things that is deeply satisfying. It scratches my itch. In tackling a problem I can be tenacious. I will not give up until I have won the day, and have won it on my own. Yes. I did say I like to win it on my own. My friends and family will testify that when I get into the problem solving zone that I zone out everyone else. I become a three-year-old trapped in an adult’s body. I can and I will do it ALL BY MYSELF! I know. Not very pretty.

Most of the time my preschool approach to tackling issues works pretty well. I have learned to be resourceful and at times scrappy. But. . .there have been a few times—OK, a whole lot of times, more than I can count—that it hasn’t worked all that great. More times than I would like to admit here, I have found myself wrestling with something that is bigger, more resourceful, a something that just doesn’t fight fair. In the end I have found myself on the losing side. At this point I continue in my preschool approach by screaming out for help. When help arrives, usually in the form of my wife or friends, I always am reminded that I don’t have to do things on my own. I can actually ask for help.

What is interesting, maybe tragically so, is that I find that the challenges I like tackling on my own the most are challenges that have to do with my role as the Church. I am learning that I need to ask for help when putting together furniture, fixing things that have broken around the house, painting, and decorating, and. . .Alright! I need help with just about everything most guys can fix around the home, but I am coming to grips with it. I am learning to ask for help. What I don’t ask for help with well at all is in being the Church. Somewhere along the way I picked up the idea that I was supposed to do it ALL BY MYSELF!

I don’t know where I got this idea. I actually think it has been implicit in my whole experience with being the Church. I am the one that is supposed to share my faith. I am the one who is supposed to change. I am the one who has to confront injustice. I am the one that has to make a difference in the world. I am the one that is supposed to grow a church. I am the one. . .

The trouble with being that “one” is that ten times out of ten I find that I am not enough. I again find myself wrestling something that is bigger, more resourceful, a something that just doesn’t fight fair. In the end I again find myself on the losing side. I won’t even call out for help because I am supposed to be the one. As I travel along the faith journey I am discovering that I am not that one nor was I ever intended to be that one. My job is not to be the Church and do its work ALL BY MYSELF! To be the Church and to do its work puts me on a plane that is far above my pay grade. The wonderful thing is that this is OK because help is available. Help is available from God, but not as I might imagine. Help, divine help is available as I take up the life of God. I am discovering that as I take up the life of God, his power and strength flow through me so that I am able to engage in the work of God. I am able to be the Church. Maybe one day I will find that I am the one, but that day will be when I am no longer the one who stands, the day in which all of God is standing in me, that day when I am fully the Church!

A fellow traveler,

Blake

What’s my next step?

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of handing off faith in your family.

Ask for help: In making us the Church, God invites us into his work, a work that can only be done by his strength and power. Learning to rely on a strength that is not our own is not natural to us. We can learn to rely on God by training ourselves to rely on him and others in smaller matters. This week, consider modeling reliance by asking your children to help you in tasks around the home. You might also consider pausing as a family and asking God for the strength to do things you might normally do on your own such as driving, visiting with friends, or worshiping together on a Sunday. As we learn to rely on God in the smaller matters the ability to rely in the larger matters will follow.

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of deepening your own faith.

Ask God to teach you to be the Church: During this series we encourage you to wear a silicon wrist band with the phrase, “I am Church.” Use this band as a reminder of your identity and allow it to serve as a prayer prompt. Every time you see it, consider turning your mind to God and asking him to teach you how to be the Church.