Forward
I find myself writing this in the midst of tragedy. When you’re processing the loss of a loved one it’s hard to think. Your brain is enveloped in shock and the memories that do come through usually produce an emotional response akin to a 3-year-old being denied cookies for breakfast (my experience at least). Mourning in real life isn’t like the mourning they show in movies and TV shows: in those mediums they have maybe 3 hours to convey a whole lot of data (pardon me, drama), so mourning usually comes quick, hard and fast (like everything else in entertainment). Fact is that real life doesn’t work like that. You find that time seems to stretch out almost to the point of being unbearable and you just wait. You wait to cry. You wait to reflect. You wait because you cannot make it happen. The more you push and try to be proactive in “getting the mourning ‘over with’” the longer time seems to get and the slower things seem to go in all aspects of your life. Times of genuine introspection and reflection are slow and hard to come by, but they are like finding small chunks of gold in a seemingly depleted mine. They are precious and keep you going through the darkness.
Fear is ever present with you in the mine. The fear that you’ll never get better. The fear that you’ll have to trudge through it alone. The fear that your father will be forgotten. The fear that it doesn’t matter to other people. That fear tries to convince you that the mine is depleted. That it’s really a tomb. The gold proves otherwise, but you have to fight and grasp and endure to lay hold of it and keep it. You have to believe you’ll get out of the mine with the gold.
“…for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me….” –Donne, Meditation XVII
This work is about a chunk of gold I have found in the mine. It is not about the mine itself. I send it up the shaft to encourage you about the nature of the mine: there’s treasure to be found down here for those who would seek it in their grief. I dedicate this to my father whose death God used to bring other believers around me as a loving embrace. I write this because I was inspired by that.
Intro
During my days in college ministry, I was introduced to a small pamphlet called My Heart: Christ’s Home, written by Robert B. Munger. In it, the author describes his heart in terms of it being a house and his conversion to Christianity as him welcoming Christ to live in that house with him. Christ enters the home and “…came into the darkness of my heart and turned on the light. He built a fire in the hearth and banished the chill. He started music where there had been silence. He filled the emptiness with His own loving, wonderful fellowship.” This quote describes the author’s heart reorienting itself to serve Christ’s purposes- to be alive! The majority of the story shows how Christ does this as He moves from room to room of the house, cleaning and fixing things as He goes along. As He does this He shows the author the proper use of each room and how to use the equipment he finds in each. They grow in a deeper relationship with one another as they work together in the home- the author is sanctified as he gives more control of the house over to Christ and learns from Him and spends time with Him. He eventually gives complete control of the house over to Christ proclaiming Him to be the true owner and the one Who could actually run the house as it should.
This story has been a great point of application in my own walk with Jesus. I’m a nuts and bolts kinda guy and the way this story breaks down the varied ways in which Jesus can be introduced to different parts of your life has been of great use since I am naturally inclined to be subdivided in the way I live my life and it can be easy to leave Him out of whole sections I naturally assumed weren’t His territory. This book has been an invaluable resource and guide. Recently I noticed one thing missing from this story: other people. The story focuses on the author and Jesus. It harkens to the saying “I’m just walking with Jesus. Just Him and me.” This probably wasn’t the intent of the book, whose purpose it was to assist the reader in their personal walk with God, but I’ve found that if you’re a perfectionist like myself, you can be deceived into thinking that you have everything right as long as you can check off everything on the checklist, or that you can actually be ready to face anything alone if you spend enough time prepping for it. If it’s all about your own walk with God then there’s no room for relationship with the people of God since they can be an encumbrance to your plans. How could they speak into your life if you met all the requirements for following Christ? How could they help you if you’re already prepared to face anything? Isn’t community with other believers only necessary up to the point where you don’t need them to goad you into doing what is obviously right? Isn’t it just a nice thing after a certain point, but not the needed thing?
About a couple months after my father’s death, I sat down with Dave Wirgau at a coffee shop to process my thoughts and feelings concerning and surrounding that event. I’ve known Dave for nearly a decade now. We first met when he was the campus rep for the Navigators collegiate ministry at FSU’s campus. Over the years I’ve known him as a teacher, a Bible study leader, a travel companion, a landlord, a co-laborer and a friend. I’ve been to his house numerous times for parties and dinners and have watched his kids grow up (heck I even served as a babysitter once or twice for the younger ones). As I sat there processing with him the thought occurred to me, “How did this happen? How is it that I would come to trust this man enough to open up to him and to allow him to speak wisdom into my life? Why are his words so effective in healing me?”. As I thought about this, I began to reflect about the friendships and relationships that I have that are meaningful to me. I began to realize that there are many people whose ear I could trust with my sorrow and who lips would speak wisdom that I would take to heart- whose words God uses to override thoughts and feelings that fight against the truth I know. The only answer that I could come up with is that God gave me these relationships so that I could grow in ways I didn’t think possible or even know that I could/needed to grow in. And I wouldn’t be able to do it without the support of other people. And they cannot do it without me. God gives us each other because we cannot do it alone.
This essay is an attempt to understand how this works. To help me I have expanded upon the ideas laid down by Munger in My Heart: Christ’s Home. Instead of a house though I see my heart as a country. A wide, expansive country. Before Christ, the land is oppressed. The sky is dark with ash and smoke. The fields are covered in weeds and trenches . The trees are withered. The buildings are collapsed. It is devoid of life and purpose. This is existence alone. When Christ comes in He declares war on the forces of oppression that lay the heart low. A battle ensues for the heart of the man. My heart has become Christ’s battlefield.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins;
they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.” -Isaiah 61:1-4
Strongholds
I was a kid when I accepted Christ into my heart. I was a relatively normal child with loving parents who were figuring out how they were going to live their life. My mom had accepted Christ when I was a baby. When I become a Christian my dad was still an agnostic more or less. Not too long after I accepted Christ, however, my dad came to know the Lord as well (like the different terms I’m using to say “became a Christian”? I’ll try to limit my Christian lingo to just these phrases). Anyway, I say all this to establish that when I was a child everyone in our household was a “Baby Christian” (term used to denote someone who has not been a Christian too long and has yet to undergo serious testing of their faith and who is still learning to apply rudimentary Biblical principles to their life). We were very involved in serving a church in the Miami-area for quite a few years, but I do not recall much discipleship (being poured into). What I observed was my parents doing the best they could. We had friends within the church, but I do not recall them being friendships that led to accountability or further sanctification.
But then again perhaps I’m wrong (I was a little kid after all and didn’t know everything about my parents’ lives and relationships). I do recall however, the “lone ranger” approach my dad lived his life, which seemed to emphasize doing what was right and not being willing to have anybody speak into your life (and it would be absolute death to ask for help). Mom was very much more receptive to being in community with the people she served alongside with and in sharing her life with others. When the church we attended started falling apart it seemed dad’s aloofness from it was the safer and smarter route. When my parent’s marriage fell apart, it seemed the only way to survive such a trauma was to withdraw and build walls. In my mind my dad’s logic with regards to relationships and people and institutions was flawless: separate yourself, disregard other’s opinions, don’t grow close with people and work hard enough to be above reproach. My mind is kind of scattered on how all of this developed and took shape, but I do remember my adolescence being defined by the imprisoning of all my emotions (except for anger and despair). Grand and mighty fortresses were built within my life to repress my humanity. The great resources of my mind and vitality were ravaged and plundered to build up walls that would serve to both keep people out and to maintain a calm composure on the outside to ensure others to keep moving on (and to make sure they mind their own business). I lived in solitary confinement in the open world. In this state of being my thoughts became twisted and cruel as year after year new strongholds would appear to combat the attacks of other strongholds, and old strongholds would become taller and more elaborate. Thoughts would counter other thoughts: sin was both justified and condemned in my mind, the guilt perpetually weighing heavier, but the reality of it being buried deeper and deeper inside as if it were a treasure to be hidden and guarded. I knew the Gospel, but it had no power to me because I would not trust it: how can you trust promises when you believe no one can be trusted? To me God was a bureaucrat who was impossible to reach or please. He was distant. He begrudgingly sacrificed His Son for me. I knew Who Jesus was, but I did not know Him. All in all I looked at my life and saw it as a life not worth anything. Why would God sacrifice Himself for something like that? I felt like I was saved, not because of grace or God’s love for me, but because I had slipped in through a loophole in the system. I was to be the one unwanted person in Heaven. For years my mind cultivated this thought, “God’s grace is not for me. You do not belong in it.”. I slipped into and out of various patterns of sin and in general became a non-entity in the lives of others (except where my parents made me volunteer or socialize in one capacity or another). I was lost-knocked about to and fro by the wind and waves of various doctrines and thoughts as the Apostle Paul describes in Ephesians chapter 4.
The war waged within me, but looking back now I must acknowledge that these strongholds were not fighting each other, but they were unified against me to take control of my heart. I waited for life to be over- surely that’s when the war would be finished.
“Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” -Romans 7:13-25
This is a short synapse of the development of “strongholds” within my life. In short, defenses and battlements were made on the part of competing sins and desires. Furthermore, additional defenses were built up to counter the strongholds previously mentioned. Sin competed against sin, ideology against ideology. Guilt and shame competed for the same resources as sin to build up and justify their existence. Looking back I see that my heart had lost all identity outside of this internal struggle of the competing strongholds. In the fray I never realized that they never attacked one another, but had deceived me into supplying them with the resources and property needed to enslave my heart to their will. For years I legitimated and funded their own war against me because I knew no better and there was no one to speak against them.
“I turned and saw an oddly-shaped phantom approaching. Or rather two phantoms: a great tall Ghost, horribly thin and shaky, who seemed to be leading on a chain another Ghost no bigger than an organ-grinder’s monkey. The taller Ghost wore a soft black hat, and he reminded me of something that my memory could not quite recover.… like a seedy actor of the old school…. and then… I noticed that the little Ghost was not being led by the big one. It was the dwarfish figure that held the chain in its hand and the theatrical figure that wore the collar round its neck….He was watching the Tragedian out of the corner of his eyes. Then he gave a jerk to the chain: and it was the Tragedian, not he, who answered…. The Dwarf was now so small that I could not distinguish him from the chain to which he was clinging…. the Tragedian… gathered up the chain which had now for some time been swinging uselessly at his side, and somehow disposed of it. I am not quite sure, but I think he swallowed it.”
–C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Maneuvers
Earlier I pointed out that I am a bit of a perfectionist. I have always been obsessed with making the right decision (it is a recent discovery of mine that sometimes there are multiple right decisions to make and there can be no way to distil the decision to just one perfect choice: you just have to act and see what happens. This has driven me crazy… but I digress). My senior year of high school was a piece of cake with regards to decision making with the exception being about where I should go to college. I was accepted into three schools in Florida: Florida State University in Tallahassee, the University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida International University in Miami. Both my parents graduated from FSU, so I always had an affinity for the Seminoles. I hated UF due to my Seminole upbringing, but that university did have a really good academic reputation. FIU would allow me to live at home and skip the stress related to moving far away from home. I wracked my brain trying to distill which choice would be the best and found that the decision would have to be made subjectively: the choice of which university to go to wasn’t necessarily obvious (I was going to get a fine education at whichever institution I went to) and, to my chagrin, I just had to make a decision based on how I felt (a horrifying concept to someone who tried to cage his emotions).
I delay emotional decisions for as long as possible. They make no sense: subjective reasoning has no discernable equation or metric. How can you possibly make the best decision when you don’t know what the outcome will be? When the best estimate for success is, “Just do your best and see what happens.”? What if I failed? I find now that subjective decisions are the ones that can mature you the most: what you decide to do and how you follow through shape who you are as a person more than objective decision making which can pretty much be relegated to automated processes that might require dedication and discipline to set up, but minimal effort to maintain once it is formed into a habit. The uncertainty about making a subjective decision isn’t meant to be sadistic, it’s meant to be character-building.
“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” –Proverbs 16:9
In the end I went with my first love. FSU offered me more scholarships and grants than the other two universities (like…way more). It also helped that they contacted me frequently (even going so far as sending me a congratulatory letter and certificate when I graduated from high school) and had the country’s oldest criminology program (which I was interested in pursuing). I know my 18-year-old self made that decision based on data somewhat related to the reputation of the university and my future career goals, but mostly I was influenced by other factors: namely, I wouldn’t be in debt and I wouldn’t have to work during the school year. Given those two factors I calculated that I had the greater probability of graduating and not winding up broke and living on the streets (yes…those were my actual thoughts). Looking back now on that decision I made 10 years ago I can see that the Lord gave me just the right incentives to make a decision I would not otherwise have made: FSU was the furthest college away from home that I was accepted to, and Tallahassee is one of the most difficult cities to leave (airline prices are outrageous, there is no train, busses are awful and it takes 8 hours to get back to Miami by car). Never would I have made this decision under normal circumstances, but this was college. This was my future career. I was drawn by something greater than the forces that would keep me in Miami. God needed to get me away from home. Away from the bitterness and drama of my parent’s divorce. Away from the constant reminders of disappointment. Away from my isolation. Away from where my strongholds were so firmly established.
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.” –Hosea 2:14-15
Siege
I went from living in a sprawling urban center to a small town. From a small house in a middle-class suburban neighborhood to a huge dorm that felt like an overcrowded tenement. FSU itself was under major reconstruction at the time and the roads were dusty and many of the old buildings were being renovated. Anything not being renovated was either a classroom building or a dorm. I was not impressed. I also didn’t have a car so I couldn’t really escape either (and the area immediately surrounding FSU isn’t the greatest place to wander around). I hated Tallahassee.
Oddly enough though, Tallahassee didn’t hate me. Everyone I encountered was friendly enough (from dorm mates to professors) and I excelled in my studies. But I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to give the people there a chance. And I couldn’t escape. On more than one occasion my parents would ask me to transfer to FIU if I hated FSU so much. But from Tallahassee I realized how much I hated my situation in Miami. I felt uncomfortable no matter what the context. My world had shifted and it left me reeling. My sole purpose came to be to just finish college as quickly and as strongly as possible, but even that goal I realized didn’t have much value to it. What then? I already decided that I was going to be miserable no matter what profession I wound up with because I felt as if it wouldn’t amount to anything. What’s the point? What meaning did I have besides to live in perpetual discomfort? In perpetual meaninglessness?
“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” –Matthew 7:26-27
I was determined to graduate from FSU. Despite the fact that I hated it and I didn’t have any real hope in any future endeavors outside of college, I felt like it was something I had to do. Like a trial by fire. I felt like I had to prove myself. I stayed with the faintest of hopes that my time there wouldn’t prove to be disappointing as I feared.
I found definition in my strongholds. I became a man divided against himself (if I weren’t already). My personality cracked as I presented a calm, cool exterior to my parents and acquaintances and the world in general while I wrestled with various sins and the consequential guilt alone. You can’t live like that for too long without it changing you. I remember wrestling with suicidal ideations and lust and depression and just this deep seething hatred for everything. Above all that though I remember feeling desperate.
Despite what I told my parents my mom knew that I wasn’t doing too well. She asked around to see if she or anybody she knew knew of anyone who was also attending FSU who maybe would be able to get me plugged into a church or a campus ministry. And that’s how I met a friend of a family friend named Amaris. Amaris was the same year as me and attended a campus ministry called the Navigators. Various times my freshman year she would try to get into contact with me, but I would dodge her (not wanting to ruin my private misery with people I guess). Eventually she was successful in establishing contact with me (she offered to help me get my stuff back home for the summer after freshman year…) and over time we developed a friendship. About midway through my sophomore year she finally convinced me to attend a Nav Night. Not having really participated in any sort of youth group while growing up and not having been to church in quite a while, the experience of this sort of gathering was sort of new to me (very new). I found the level of friendship and closeness the Navs had with one another to be uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure what the whole point of their gathering was and I wasn’t sure why this older man (Dave Wirgau-mentioned earlier) was hanging around these college kids. My “cult meter” screamed within me.
Amaris would check in on me from time to time to encourage me to keep going. Eventually I found some guys I found to be interesting and we became friends. I found out for myself that this ministry was not a cult and I started going without the need to be urged. Dave turned out to be a masterful teacher of the Bible and I looked forward to hearing him speak. Although in all this I went more as a spectator than as one who felt like one of the crew.
The Navs emphasized studying the Bible, even going so far as discussing it with others and memorizing it. I saw this as being overkill when I first started attending, but eventually I gave in (give it the ole college try as it were) and started small (very small) devotions (Navs call them “quiet times”) before going to sleep at night (what better time to be quiet, right?). In these early stages of rebuilding/rediscovering/refreshing/etc. my faith I would grab the Bible, flip to a random page, look down, and read a few verses. Looking back now I must acknowledge that this wasn’t the greatest of plans, but as it is written, “…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11). One night my sophomore year in Gilchrist Hall I was getting ready to go to sleep when I remembered to have my devotion. Per my usual habit at the time, I grabbed my King James Bible and randomly flipped to the following passage,
“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved. But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.” –Psalm 13
King David’s lament and plead to God was chillingly familiar to my own view and secret plea, though I had never verbalized it to Him (or anyone for that matter) for fear of reprisal. I found it odd that David’s seemingly bitter cry to God ended in a hopeful resonance: he says he will sing to God because He has dealt generously to David. Wasn’t this the same God that David said was ignoring him? Or did that view of God come about simply because he was keeping his introspection to himself and not sharing it with God? In either case I felt a spark of hope I hadn’t felt in years- that I could find favor in God’s eyes. Since this revelation came about as a result of my involvement with the Navs, I pursued a deeper connection with them in the hopes of being led closer to Him: I served during their Thursday night meetings and even participated in Bible studies and joined student leadership in my junior year. As I did this I invested more and more time in searching the Scriptures and being more overwhelmed by Him. As these months passed by I felt strongholds being torn down and peace in places where there had been unrest. I was slowly realizing a new sense of purpose as I was slowly being freed.
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!
I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” –Psalm 119:9-11
Entrenchment
One does not just undo years of psychological and spiritual conditioning in the course of a few months, however. Even with the vigor of my pursuit and the resources I had access to to increase my knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures, I still fought against thoughts that told me I was unacceptable to both God and those around me. These strongholds tried to build up strongholds that had been torn down, suggesting that they offered comfort and protection against this “reality”.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” -2 Corinthians 10:3-5
I couldn’t do this alone. I couldn’t give and give and give and not be poured into. But one of the loftiest and well-established strongholds in my heart is the sense that you must be independent. That to have others close to you is a sign of weakness. That you are a waste if you have to be helped by others. This combined with another thought that I was unwelcome in both the Kingdom and among the people of God formed a rather tough bastion of defense to exposing and yielding my heart to God. I worked hard to know the Scriptures better and to serve more and more, but there was always that feeling of unwelcome.
Community is a mysterious thing. How they are formed and shaped is truly incredible. And the interpersonal relationships within them are amazing. Is it the need to be around those that can help you that builds up a community or the fondness a group of people share for one another? Is it a common goal? A common class? A standard? The Navs were made up of a variety of people from backgrounds originating in diverse landscapes and familial environments. What bonded us together? No two Navs were quite the same. There was great fun and laughter within friend structures, but there was also great accountability and maturation and sharpening of purpose. This was more than just a social club. It was also more than just a professional society. This was true fellowship driven by love and care for the other person. Within the community of the Navs I had grown fond of quite a few of the members (members?…that’s not the proper word, but it’ll have to do) and had grown to respect and look up to quite a few of them…but I didn’t really trust any to be close to me. I really didn’t believe they were really all that interested, “We’re just letting Zack hang out with us cause it’s the nice thing to do.”- that was my mentality. So while there were victories within my heart through the strategic placement of the Word of God, there were no troopers to sweep the area and continue the march forward. I see now that a lack of closeness to others will leave your life in a rut. Areas of your heart will become “no man’s lands” and you wind up losing the war for lack of pushing forward and risk being overrun again by old habits because no fortifications were put up to defend the once oppressed land…and no defenders are around to guard it. It’s all or nothing in this war.
God turned it around about halfway through my junior year with the man who would become my best friend, Chris: the pain in the butt freshman who would not be deterred from being my friend no matter what I did to him. His entrance into my life I see as that of a paratrooper dropped into hostile territory: conventional methods of sending troops into my heart had failed due to resistance at the borders, so God decided to drop a specialized soldier from out of the sky (that’s where I felt like he came from, anyway). For some reason Chris immediately liked me. He always tried to grab food with me in one capacity or another. Tried to sit next to me in leadership meetings. Tried to sit next to me at Nav nights. Tried to hang out based on mutual interests. Tried to be my friend.
Well it didn’t work out all that great to begin with. I told Chris that “maybe” sometime I’d eat with him. I’d give him a shot in the arm whenever he sat next to me. I insulted him. I avoided him because I thought it was weird that he would want to be “buddy buddy” with me. But he was undeterred. He dug a trench and rode it out, lobbing “friend grenades” at “isolation brigades” whenever he saw an opportunity (pretty ridiculous imagery, eh?). In time Chris became a welcome sight to me. By the end of my junior year we were inseparable. In time I came to trust him. The algebra on how a friendship grows into one of mutual trust and aid is a mystery to me, so I won’t bother trying to unravel it. It even seems that way in the Bible: two people are introduced and “HEY!” a close bond is formed (see David and Jonathan, Jesus and John, Jesus and Peter, Paul and any of the people he wrote to). Shared experience just tends to breed close friendships, I guess (or can certainly CONTRIBUTE to or be a CATALYST for close friendships…no guarantees, since it can also create enemies). I’m guessing this is just something God works out. He knew that we needed each other for one another.
“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” –Proverbs 18:24
As it happened Chris and I complemented one another very well: our differences were strengths the other was lacking in. Over the years we not only spent time hanging out together, but we built up a trust that allowed each other to speak into one another’s lives. He entrenched himself so deep into my heart that his voice resonated louder to me than the voice of well-established strongholds. Chris spoke with Truth and conviction. He counseled me through doubt and worry and physical malady and heartbreak. Conversely I was there for him in his times of doubt and struggle and sickness and weakness. We spoke on one another’s behalf at our respective senior nights. I was one of the first people he told about his plan to propose to his girlfriend. I stood by him when he got married (by the way, his wife, Elaine, is pretty cool too). He was one of the first people to know about my dad’s death.
Besides the friendship itself, one of the important effects of Chris’ entrenchment in my heart was that it opened up a path for others to entrench there as well. Many new relationships were forged that were as close as Chris and I’s initial friendship, only different. That’s the wonderful thing about friendships: each one can speak to you in different ways, depending on the need and the personalities and shared/varied struggles. Each one spoke against different lies in my heart and each one encouraged me in different ways in various seasons and struggles and triumphs. In the desolation of my heart they made a stand for the truth so that my heart would be yielded over to its Creator that life may be rampant there as it was meant to be. And as they entrenched in my heart, so I entrenched in theirs and returned the favor.
“Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together.” – 2 Corinthians 7:2-3
The Castle
The unfortunate nature of friendships is that people tend to be transitory. One season you see them every day, and the next they move. A soldier is only commissioned to serve in any given area for a limited period of time before he is sent elsewhere or retired. Friendships are much the same way, especially the ones made while young. Career ambitions, co-workers, marriage, children, parents…these create new arenas for our friends to fight in, arenas that many times do not involve us. Such is life. Such is war. A friend may remain entrenched in your heart while away, but the absence of his physical presence echoes loudly in the place of his voice, as a platoon led by an experienced soldier misses his expertise, calmness and support when he is transferred elsewhere or is sent back home and they are hard-pressed without him. He cannot defend where he was once stationed (and visa versa). In the wake of this it seems as though strongholds can retake territory lost to them in the battle. In fact, they can if there is not one dominate, permanent force in the heart that repels them and encourages continuous siege against them. A castle commissioned by a lord. A castle for the Lord. The church.
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” –Matthew 16:18
After college I had to ally myself to the local church again. I stayed in Tallahassee and most of the friends I made while in college scattered with the wind (indeed the few that are left are being blown away little by little). In my undergrad I allowed the Navigators to be the castle that would fight against the enemy. Something I realized after I graduated is that college ministries are meant to serve a specific audience: college students (surprised?). Soon enough I found myself serving, but unable to be poured into because of the nature of growing up: after you graduate college and get a job (after at least 8 months of unemployment), your life looks significantly different than that of your typical college student (it should anyway). The temptation to withdraw came again as friends left and Navs became an area to serve in and less of a place to be fed and ministered. There were some exceptions to this, but my heart yearned for deeper relationships with believers that could speak into my life- believers not only in my age and season, but believers in seasons just ahead of my own and in seasons way ahead of my own. I needed a flood of well-seasoned soldiers to stand with me and march through me and complete the work my friends started. I needed to move on to a well-established fortification that would never be knocked down. That would be there my whole life and beyond it.
My distrust of the local church was a long-established one. I watched my old church back in Miami fall apart when I was a kid and grew up to believe that that was the typical thing to occur in any organization. My past distrust of people also led me to believe that those on the top of the organizational structure positioned themselves in such a way so as to keep the congregation in a state of subservience to the pastor and anyone else who might benefit from their tithes. I also believed that the leadership would jump ship once the congregation was milked for all they were worth. My years spent with the friends God gave me through the Navigators, however, opened my heart up to the possibility of giving my heart over to the church: it seems as though God taught me in my undergrad that He can work great things in the lives of people through other broken people. It dawned on me that that is the church: just a bunch of broken people being sanctified in varied and interlocking ways. Their gathering together God blesses with His protection against any foe. With regard to my distrust of pastors, being in leadership myself while I attended the Navs, I came to realize that no matter what position you are elevated to you are still a sinner and all you can do is your best in the role God has given to you. I had to learn to just submit to that: God places a sinner, not a perfect man, to feed and protect his flock (and this I came to realize is a mysterious and beautiful thing). Whether he does a good job or not is not my concern: my concern is my own faithfulness to Christ and His church in whatever capacity I serve. And indeed if my entrenchment within the church can help to protect it than all the better. Over the course of the past few years I am happy to say that I have joined a local church here in Tallahassee that I can both serve and be served in, now and always.
In the country that is my heart there is a clearing where strongholds once stood. What stands there is now a castle. Though the country is still at war, the castle is faithful to supply the resources needed to fight off the enemy and to entrench more soldiers deeper and deeper into unclaimed territories of my heart. Moreover, where the castle stands, where it has laid its claim, there is life even if it be in the midst of pain and sorrow. My heart was, is, and is becoming Christ’s country.
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” –Ephesians 2:19-22
The Shaft
Earlier I wrote of wandering around a mineshaft in search of an exit. Experiencing grief associated with the sudden and unexpected loss of someone close is a very lonesome experience and it often feels like you trudge through the shadow of the event alone. But I know my voice is heard by those who await me at the mine’s exit. I know my gold is treasured by those who lift the bucket out of the shaft. I may have fallen beneath the confines of the church in that no one else is quite going through what I am, but what I have fallen into still remains under the watchful eye of the Lord of the castle. The tunnels I explore down here belong to the structure he erected. Grief is an ancient thing and without it the church would not have been built. It is foundational to our faith, but it is not the end of it. The Lord has sent me down here for a purpose, some task that needs doing in the deep dark. I know you all wait for me. I know I am not truly alone, just separated. I know eyes peer down the shaft awaiting when I will return and what I will bring up with me.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” –Isaiah 43:19a
Greater Expectations 