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.

"But They Are All Dead!" - Laments of Deferred Hope

“But they are all dead!” I wailed as yet another friend pointed me to Hebrews 11 in an attempt to encourage me during a season of great frustration of singleness.

“Of course, they are all dead they lived during Bible times.” She said looking rather befuddled.

“No, I mean they all died before anything God promised them happened – even Moses died right before he got to step foot in the Promise Land.” I whined. “You know what that’s like? That’s like sitting in the parking lot while your friends spend the day in Disney World. Way to go, God, what an awesome way to treat your chosen hero. Guess that’s as good as it gets when you are serving God.”

It was at this point my friend decided to abandon any attempts at consoling and backed away slowly. She later confessed that she was pretty certain that it was going to lightening the next time I opened my mouth, and she didn’t have any intentions of being anywhere near the strike zone. (I hear that quite frequently believe it or not.)

Now for those of you who have lived a beautifully blessed life, I am sure that my laments sound a little melodramatic and bordering on blasphemous, but follow me on this one. You really need to understand, maybe not for yourself, but at some point in your life you are going to have a friend who feels this way. And if you have ever felt like this towards God, we have group meetings at my house on the second Tuesday of the fifth week next month.

Nothing hurts more than waiting on a dream. Solomon even said so, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but the fulfillment of a desire is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12). I prefer Stephen King’s paraphrase from the Shawshank Redemption, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man (or woman) insane.”

The only thing worse than hope is hope that is rooted in a God given desire. Whether it is the dream of marriage, a thriving ministry, publishing that next book, or having a home to call your own, all of it hurts when it seems like it is happening for everyone but you. And it isn’t just the not having that kills you, it is the way you begin to feel like everyone else is looking at you, that subtle shift in how they treat you, and the unspoken accusation of why aren’t you good enough to receive God’s blessings.

So you work the steps. You go over your life with a fine tooth comb and you begin looking for some sin that would explain why God is withholding his love. You pray, you fast, you confess even the most minor infractions, and you cry in frustrated pain and in anger. You volunteer more at church, you start tithing 11% instead of 10, and you begin wondering if you should sponsor a child in Africa to show just how good you really are. And every morning you wake up expecting a miracle, you decree God’s provision and blessing over your life while you brush teeth, and all you have to show for it are toothpaste splatters on the mirror.

That is when the bitterness creeps in. It starts out as disillusionment and frustration, but you know deep down in your heart that anger is starting to take over. Oh, you fight it down, push it away, and do your best to deny that you are capable of such an unholy emotion, but you are beginning to feel like ticking time bomb. Soon all your prayers are boiled down to one word, “Why?”

“Why, God, why me?”

Now this is the part where I am supposed to offer you some holy answer and sacred words of wisdom. They will magically appear on your screen after you close your eyes, chant the Lord’s Prayer, and commit to sending me ten bucks.

Didn’t work? Yeah, I will have to work on that. Really, what did you expect?

The truth is I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows why some prayers get answered and others don’t. I can’t understand why God has allowed so many charlatans to achieve levels of great success and experience such blessing and leaves the rest of us out in the cold. I don’t know why he healed your friend who uses drugs and let my dad die, or why didn’t give my ex a holy zap and save our marriage when I prayed for that while warded off his blows. None it makes sense to me, and if I told you I did I would be lying.

But here is what I do know: God is sovereign, and that means he gets to call all the shots, even the ones I don’t understand. God loves me and he loves you, even when we don’t deserve it. Love will do what is best for us, even when it means disappointment and hurt. Hurt and disappointment does not mean our story is over. It just might mean that we have to be willing to let him write a new one, one we never imagined being the story of our lives.

No one in Hebrews 11 saw the fulfillment of the promise that God gave to them. They all died long before it happened, but they had enough faith to believe that in pursuing the promise they were exactly where God called them to be. They pressed onward even when it all seemed pointless, believing that God was faithful, and even though they didn’t see it happen their kids, their grandkids, and everyone who came after did.

You see, they changed the world by chasing the dreams God had given them and doing so transcended their finite existence. They ceased to be individuals and became a part of the fabric of history. Each of them is remembered not for what they received, but for what they gave – to you, to me, and to everyone who dares to receive the promise of salvation to this day.

And isn’t that what we were called to? To give it all away, including our lives, so that the world might witness his glory and not our own? Sometimes the only thing we have to lay on that altar is our hopes the ones he gave to us. Maybe he will provide a ram caught in the thorns of life, or maybe he will resurrect in a new and unexpected way. I don’t know, but I do know that he is the God of redemption and that includes disappointed hopes and dreams.