About five years ago I stood in an auditorium hall preparing for a part in a play. I was to play a mock-write up of one of those demons from the Screwtape Letters. As I prepared and practiced my lines the assistant drama coach came up to me and said something shocking…
“Jacob, lift your shoulders up. You are worthy of walking with your shoulders tall.”
I immediately burst into tears.
Well not really. I was too walled up to let my tears immediately burst out.
Instead those words slugged me in the gut like Mike Tyson with roid rage. I was hit. Deep.
Inside I was sobbing.
Embracing Accusations – Shane and Shane
(This song is so powerful, especially at the end)
Nobody had ever called me worthy.
My face got warm, reddening as my eyes burned and I did one of those slurpy gulp noises we make when we try to hang onto any shred of dignity possible during emotional facial purges.
It doesn’t work.
Then tears finally began to break free. Screaming, jumping, and clawing down my face towards the earth.
Why would something as silly as calling me worthy of not walking like I’m shattered cut me so deep?
I think in our culture this is hitting upon something widespread. Something bigger.
Why is it that some of the greatest artists feel they merely create bland amateur work? Why is it the kindest soul is afraid to be bold enough to show his love? Why is it that so many of us walk around with our heads down, our hearts sunken, and our collective gifts and abilities hidden?
Should we not expect it? Life is brutal. It is war. Bullets firing left and right at our very souls. The enemy seeks to not only destroy us but shatter our confidence. The wounds are too calculated. The words too cutting.
Think about all of our modern singing television shows where hundreds of people who love to sing stand in front of judges and are told frankly that they sound “Awful” or aren’t “Good enough.” And I’m not talking about the collective pampering of the soul here either, people can be good or bad at something. Yet we challenge authentic ability with cultural standards and values in something as subjective as music.
We demand more than good in our society, we demand perfection. People who really love something, little girls who spin, twirl, and sing… are told that they are awful. That they are born unable to perform well. Stinging wounds from school yard bullies and lethargic fathers have peppered our generation with deep-seated self-loathing.
Through years of trauma and abuse the enemy convinces us that our very strengths are weakness. Eventually the bard stops singing. The artist stops painting. The joyful stop living. We begin to believe our hearts to be an awful thing. A totally corrupted piece of rubbish. A trash heap of badness that Oscar the Grouch would not dare to nest in.
Worse yet this AWFUL doctrine of anything aesthetic or enjoyable being driven by sin or pride had woven its way into my life. I felt if admitted I was good at anything it was pride so I had to beat myself up about the natural gifts and talents God had given me. Conversations speckled with religious talk would often shut me down.
“Do you like acting?”
“Yeah, I’m actually pretty good at it.”
“Only God is good bro, stop being prideful.”
I make a pretty decent stage Jew…
I began to see any form of “Self-love” as prideful arrogance. Words like “Love your neighbor as yourself.” always rung hollow in my ears because I could not for the life of me fathom why I should love anyone the way I love myself. Yet for some reason I never caught onto the contradiction.
We associate our sinful nature with a general deserved punishment on this earth. Moments of injustice towards us from broken people are seen not as evil but as moments of justice deserved towards another dirty filthy human being. Never are we told God is angry at this hurt. He is indignant. That it not only breaks His heart but He sees it as wrong.
I began to see wounds inflicted upon me as deserved. It never occurred to me God was angry at what people did to me. That the injustice I had experienced was seen as unjust in His eyes too. That He sat there watching the dark moments in my life knowing it hurt me, wanting me desperately to know His love.
No apathy, No “You deserve this Jake.” Rather even in the heart of my own injustice He still saw the wounds inflicted on me as dead wrong.
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” – Jesus
I was so decimated by the accumulated accusations of Satan that by the time someone told me I had any worth or value at all I wept.
I just wept.
The very notion that I was not dirt in the eyes of another human being could move me to tears. That I had any value or worth was mind-blowing and shocking to me.
The sad part is… I know I’m not alone.
I know some us are walking around with our heads down, tail between our legs, captive to the war this world has waged for our souls.
What makes this so upsetting to me is that it is NOT how God sees us. It is a lie that has been fed to us through life again and again.
Some of us need a healthy dose of sonship or daughter-ship for that matter. I honestly didn’t live out my place as a child of God until way after that sad moment in the theater.
This last year I was struck by an incredibly deep wound by the people closest to me when I needed most of all someone to come alongside me and be a faithful rock.
The lies I was told through this wound were unbelievable. Just absolutely destructive.
“God is fiercely committed to you, to the restoration and release of your masculine [Or Feminine] heart. But a wound that goes unacknowledged and unwept is a wound that cannot heal. A wound you’ve embraced is a wound that cannot heal. A wound you think you deserved is a wound that cannot heal.” -Eldredge, John
We begin to believe these lies. We begin to think “I deserved all the hurt and lies that happened.”
It was then that I began to study the heart, depravity, how does God see us? I began to look for answers because I couldn’t fathom how I could feel so terrible about my very existence and yet worship such a loving, powerful, wonderful God.
I honestly came away shocked. I started to see that in the bible we are made in the image of God. The very picture of who God is resides in everyone of the people on earth. Yet still those who have accepted Him have become sons and daughters. Sons and daughters!
Holy -ship! Batman.
Sonship gets me excited.
Sonship… Daughtership…
(This is a good song to close your eyes and listen too)
We have in us the very same spirit of God. That same God who created the whole universe, stars, the sky, omelets, cats, everything. A God who stoops down to see the universe because He is so beyond it that He has to humble Himself just to see the very galaxy we reside in.
This is the very same God who created us. Then when we became believers He adopted us and put the very same spirit into us.
I always knew those funky scriptures that talked about our birth. Psalm 139 talks about us being formed and woven in the womb by God. Him intimately knowing our heart, organs, soul, fingers. It states that we are no mere accident. We are not lacking. That God crafted us and called us good.
Not only does God see the inherent value of us, He sees the redeemed value. When we look at ourselves with nasty hateful eyes, we are not being faithful to believe what God has said about us. That He loves us. We are saying “God, your wrong, I should be condemned.”
It’s time we stopped as a church putting ourselves through our own purgatory. That has been paid for.
He more than loves us. God likes us!
Corinthians says that we are now a new creation in Christ. We have good hearts. Good hearts!
Think about that? Do you believe your heart to be good? Is it true? Even possible… that through Christ your very heart is good? I wept when I read that. The thought that God would take this wicked sinner. This wretched being and then choose to cover me in love. Wash me clean. Then create in me a new man.
So often we live out that old man. The problem is God the father no longer sees us as that old man!
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
We did not receive a spirit of slavery. We received one of freedom.
We received a love from God that says “You know that beautiful voice you are afraid to sing with? I created that, I LOVE IT!”
We received a love from God that says “You know how you have always felt like your body was flawed? That’s not true! It is such a wonderful creation of mine! It is unique, precious, a glorious!”
We received a love from God that says “I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, My child.”
A love that grabs us tight, holds us close, whispers into our ears that we are a creation of God. That you are lovely, wonderful, beyond just another human. You are a child of God.
He doesn’t have to sift through dirt and filth to see our good because He through the redemptive blood of Christ no longer sees our dirt and filth as us!
Don’t miss this. If there is one thing that we all need to know and hear today in this culture. It is that…
God doesn’t just love us. He LIKES us.
He adores the way we worship Him. He has a good sense of humor. He invented humor. He loves us so much that it is incomprehensible. Yet He also likes us.
Why is that important?
Because truth be told a lot of people walk around feeling as if they are the mere dirty cigarette butts that will make it into heaven someday. They believe God is looking down with a furrowed brow saying “Ok ok, I promised you can get in, but that’s it.”
They believe that God is angry, vengeful, sad, or worse then anything disappointed with our very existence. We feel as if our worth is nothing more then a side affect of a loving God who seeks His own glory.
Yet, Yahweh see us so different from that. He is eagerly awaiting with joy the moments we crawl up into His lap and pray. He wrote this massive and beautiful love letter for us that is a wonderful story of unconditional love. He is awaiting the day we will all walk together in the light of the son and laugh and spin. He adores you. He adores me. That is sonship. That is daughtership.
We are not mere peasants. We are children of God. Children of the King. Next year as we bring the kingdom to the hurt and dying. The lost and the lonely. The tired and the weary… we are bearers of light, joy, peace and hope. We walk with a Holy inheritance and princes and princesses of a God that has built the whole universe. What a difference it makes when we can walk with that power and authority! When we know God not only loves us but is seeking this deep relationship because He sincerely enjoys us! That our whole life is a moment of blessing after blessing, even if it is in the form of a trial. That we are basked in the love and the glory of the very God of the universe! That is what it means to be His child. What a difference it makes that we are not merely walking to see people come to know an old Jewish hippy.
By no means. We are walking the earth seeking people to be adopted into the greatest family ever conceived. The very family of God.
So when you look in the mirror today, you should not see flaws, nor scars, nor darkness. You should see the master strokes of a painter far beyond description. When you walk today, you should not feel the heavy burden of this world and our aching muscles, but the glory of a God good enough to create such incredible creations as human beings. That we can laugh and jump and show wonder.
It is so wonderful to be His son. To be His daughter. Truth is it’s a journey and I am just now beginning to walk in sonship. To feel the great power of being loved and honored by God. To feel as if I am more than dirt. I have just began to start experiencing all of this. I encourage anyone else who has experienced these same feelings or wants to really know Christ more to start this journey
If you want to know some books or resources that really impacted me and got me started on this journey, shoot me a message.
In the words of Lecrae…
I can’t offer you nothin, but your care and kindness keep comin
And your love is so unconditional, I get butterflies in my stomach
I got the old me in the rearview, gotta new me, gotta clear view
I was so dead, I couldn’t hear you
Too deep in sin to come near you
But you drew me in, and cleaned me up
And take me home and beamed me up
Before you do, just let me tell the truth
And let these folks know that I done seeing your love
And it’s everlastin, infinite
It goes on and on, you can’t measure it
Can’t quench your love, they can’t separate us from the love of God
It’s no estimate
My face look the same, my frame done rearranged
But I changed, I promise I aint the same
Your love is so deep, you suffered and took pain
And died on the cross to gimme a new name
Aint nothin like I seen before
I gotta beam to glow
Was low, down, and dirty but you cleaned me Lord
You looked after me, you keep rockin me
Imma tell the world and aint nobody stoppin me
deadtorise 