The Price of Obedience

God has graciously given me a pop quiz, reminding me that what I know is of little value if I do not apply it.

I have learned so much over the years about the Bible, God, and how he interacts in this world, but there is this disconnect that happens in my life. I forget that these truths are not just some type of great spiritual abstraction. I forget that if they are to have any value they have to be lived out here and now, in this world, in this place, and before witnesses.

But even more importantly, I forget that these truths can only be witnessed if they are lived.

And who is going to live them if those of us who declare them are not willing to submit their lives to that cause?

We live in a world that has tried hijack our faith and bastardize the promises of our God. We are told that all good things come to those who serve him, those follow the rules, and have enough faith. Blessings and abundance will spring forth, we will never know suffering, pain will never touch us, respect and honor is ours for the taking.

You have heard it. I know you have. God has given you a desire and dream, and he wants nothing more than for you to have the desires he has placed in your heart. You deserve it, you are a child of the king, you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, and your life will be fountain of joy!

But you do know what? The world doesn’t need to see more happy people being happy. Really. We already know that the people with the great houses, fabulous cars, and dream jobs are happy. Everyone gets this formula, it is sold to us in every TV ad and magazine article out there. Follow your passion, chase your dream, get enough money, have the perfect family, and make the right friends and your life will be nothing short of fulfilling and blissful.

But what about everyone else? What about those of us with the crap jobs, dysfunctional families, living pay check to pay check, and just struggling to keep breathing under the pressures of this world? What about those of us doing everything right and our lives are imploding? What about us? Is there no joy for us? No hope? No blessings spilling from the heavens despite our best efforts? What about our broken hearts that were shattered because we dared to dream, dared to hope, and dared to love? Only to broken against the reality that we live in fallen world filled with others just as broken as we have ever been? Does God not love us? Is this the price of obedience?

Yes! A thousand times, yes!

Pain is the price of obedience. For you cannot love a broken world without being broken. You cannot have dreams shattered if you never dare to dream. You cannot hurt for the pains of another if you do not open your heart to their wounds and, in turn, to be wounded. You cannot find fulfillment if you do not first empty yourself, and you cannot be disappointed if you do not dare to hope.

And all of this will happen if you step out and seek the Father’s heart for your life. You will dream big dreams, you know great hopes, and you will love with a depth that defies human understanding. And the world will seek to destroy you for daring such great things. It will take the ones you love from you, it will shred your most precious dream, and it will shatter your hopes. And God will let it, with no apologies, he will let the world do a tap dance on the graves of all that you buried along the way.

This is the test. Can you still seek him while the fanfare plays? While your enemies rejoice over you demise? When you can’t see him past the jubilant crowds? Can you trust him when you know it wasn’t just a hope or dream that died, but a part of your heart?

It will be long, cold three days and nights. And you will grieve as you have never grieved before. But can you keep coming back? Can you return to that place where that precious part of you died? Search for evidence that all you have endured wasn’t in vain? Or will you give up? Declare that God is just as dead as the dream you mourn? Or will you come with spices and nard, honoring the fact that you were once given something so precious, refusing to be bitter at its loss?

But, Emily, someone is protesting now, God gave me these hopes and dreams! I deserve to have them! He tells me so! I have it written in his Word. 

And yes, you are so right, but where does it say that any of this comes without a cost?

Show me one Abraham who didn’t put a child on the alter, a David who wasn’t chased out of his homeland, an Elijah who didn’t dine on roadkill, a Jeremiah who wasn’t thrown in a pit, a Hosea who wasn’t married to a whore, a Mary who wasn’t accused of being a slut, a Paul who was not stoned and left for dead, or Christ who did not die on a cross. If you can, I will show you someone whose testimony of God’s grace and mercy is meaningless. I will show you someone who never knew what it was to walk in true faith, to rely fully on the provision and protection of God’s love. I will show you someone who will might pay beautiful lip service to my God but never dared to follow him into the wilds. I will show you someone’s who faith was not purified and tempered in the furnace of life.

Above all, I will show you someone who never knew the beauty and glory of resurrection, and this is the good news we are to bring to the world – our God is greater than any death we may ever experience. And what better way to declare this message than to live it? To place our lives in his hands, fully aware of what it will cost, and yet still declaring the truth of his love. A love that is not defeated in lives of chaos and disappointment, but a love the will shine forth in the resurrection and vindication of his children! This is the message of hope the world needs, and it can only be witnessed if we are willing to live it.

Blue Sky Views From The Bottom Of The Well

I have often wondered what did Joseph think when he sat at the bottom of that well, the one his brothers threw him into after he told them his dream. The dream where they would one day bow down before him. What other black thoughts must have followed when he wasted away in the Egyptian prison?

I wonder because I know what it is to think that God has spoken to me, revealed some special thing that was about to happen in my life. The promise of a new tomorrow where for once all things will be as I had hoped that they could be,but always there seems to be dark time where the promise is lost in the reality of miserable moments. Moments where my ability to affect change is swept away from me, where the power is given to another and I must continue to live despite the pain of watching my hopes fade before I ever touched them.

I wonder if Joseph could see the sky in that pit. Did he see the brilliant blue as assurance that God still watched over him or did he feel mockery at its distance? Those years when he was forgotten in a prison did he resent the woman who wrongly accused him or the God who allowed him to be placed there? Were there moments of anger, pain, and confusion? Or was he blissfully faithful that there would be a day when he saw his dream manifest? Did he reason away hope?

Did he think that perhaps he had merely been the victim of misplaced hope? Did he think God a liar? Did he believe that his pride and arrogance caused this catastrophe? Were there days when he regretted placing credence in the images that filled his sleep? Did he weep over the death of dream? Or did he stoically accept his fate, believing that all would be well in the end?

I wish I knew. Maybe if we heard the fights, the inner battles he waged with himself, there would be a clue for those of us who wait for God to move on our behalf. Some instruction of how to handle those times when we sit in a pit listening to our brothers squabble as to whether to kill us or not.

I don't know why dreams often have to die before they can be realized. Sometimes I think it is so that we never mistake this thing that God wants to give us is something we conjured up. Maybe it is so that others will see it truly is God who brought it into being and not the work of human hands.

There is some comfort in that thought, but my faith isn't always that big. If it was, would I mourn the dream? And yet even as I type that last line, I hear the words, "Jesus wept". He wept at the news that his friend had died.

It is a baffling thought really. Jesus wept. I mean, wrap your head around the whole scenario for a moment. God incarnate the one who breathed life into the original man, the God who spoke the universe into existence, the God who knows all things - weeps over the death of a friend, the death of his dream.

And we are God's dream. Each of us is a reflection and product of his desire. His dream of relationship, his dream of passion and revelation. We are his dream.

As Jesus moved towards the grave of a man who was his friend, as you and I hope to one day know him, he saw his dream die. With one amazingly distinct difference, he knew that with a few simple words his friend would walk at his side once more.

His tears never made sense to me, but tonight I think I get it.

As we strive to attain a level of communion with God that allows us to walk in faith, even in the most extreme situations, we are not to be callous to the death of a dream. Grieving over the loss of something we hold dear is not a sign of weakness or even a sign of a lack of faith. It is being human. Indeed, if I may be so bold - it is being God like.

God never asked us to be without emotion. He never demanded that we deny pain. He only asked that we seek him, become conformed to his image as presented through the humanity of Jesus.

There is some debate on how much Jesus realized about his deity while he lived on earth. Some claim that he knew he was God from the moment he was born, others say it was not until he sat in the temple questioning the rabbis. Still others point to his baptism as the moment of revelation. And even if a time can be determined there is still the question of how much did Jesus know? How much of his God consciousness was he able to access in his human form?

I tend to believe it was limited in many ways. That he knew what he needed to know for the moment. To me it makes his time here more - well, human. It makes his knowledge of our experience more intimate, and his tears at Lazarus death less hypocritical. It makes his grief real, and not merely a display. And I have to ask, what did he think as he made his way to the grave of his dream?

At what point, did he know that his words held the power to call a rotting body from the ground? At what point, did Joseph realize it was his God inspired words that pulled him from his captivity? Will I know that moment in my life? Will you know yours?

I really don't know, but I do know that in the mean time it is okay to weep. It is okay to mourn. I am not relinquishing my faith by acknowledging my grief, and should this be a dream that finds resurrection - it will be beyond what I had ever dreamt it could be.