Therefore Go

But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”  Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth?  Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind?  Is it not I, the Lord?  Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” (Exodus 4.10-12, ESV)

Intelligent rhetoric and dialogue were high priorities to the Egyptians, whose feats of engineering and complex written language still baffle the modern world.  To Moses -- a man who may have had a legitimate speech impediment, or who may have simply doubted his own ability to communicate -- the task God was assigning him seemed better suited for a more gifted speaker.  Which is why he literally asked God to send someone else, even after receiving three miraculous signs that God promised would verify Moses' testimony to Pharaoh.

The mistake Moses made is a mistake that many of us who find ourselves in leadership or teaching positions (especially ministry-related leadership and teaching) can also tend to make.  That mistake is thinking that I am responsible to make a difference.  In other words, presuming that it rests on me to change people's views, and that if they aren't impressed with me, then I'm failing to do something right.  And when I fall into this kind of thinking, it's easy to allow the monumental task of communicating the Word effectively to eclipse the One who gave me the task in the first place.

This is something I personally wrestle with.  Like Moses, I doubt my speaking ability.  That may be surprising since I'm a writer, but that's exactly it -- I'm far more comfortable with and confident in the written word than I am with my speaking ability.  I cringe at all my own "um's" and "uh's" and harshly critique my word choice after the fact.

What Moses failed (and I often fail) to understand is that -- as God's mouthpieces -- our responsibility  as Christians is not to make a difference, to get followers, or to impress anyone.  If we see those things as the objectives or the signs of success, then we are thinking far too highly of both our own abilities and the role God intended us to play.

As servants, ministers of God's Word, leaders in churches, or messengers of Christ to a lost world, our priority must be to communicate God's Word without getting in the way of the message itself.  When I'm more concerned about impressing the ones I'm teaching, I make the priority my image and not the teaching itself.  When I measure my success by others' estimation of my abilities (or my own estimation of my abilities), then my purpose is skewed and I'll miss any real success my ministry might otherwise have.

"Well, yes, but if I'm doing a good job won't they be affected?"

"Shouldn't my students see me as a leader and have a sense that they can come to me with questions because I have answers?"

This is some of my own sinful reasoning.  Making the focus me, my ability (or inability), and missing the real priority.

I won't beat around the bush.  God's message is the real priority.  I must magnify Him through the communication of His Word, not myself.  THIS is my responsibility, and it means I can let go of my own insecurities and simply walk in faithful obedience.

Is it wrong to want to be wise, so that students can feel comfortable coming to me with their questions?  If that's my goal, then yes -- yes, it is wrong.  It is sin, because I am setting myself up as the guru on the mountaintop who can filter God's Word to those on spiritual journeys, selling truth at the cost of respect -- instead of seeing myself as a servant who has simply been blessed by God with an opportunity to teach and to guide, and making my goal to help them discover the truths of God's Word for themselves as they grow in their faith.  May I never be accused of preaching the gospel out of selfish ambition (Phil 1.15, 17)!  Let me be a guide on someone else's journey with Christ and nothing more -- someone whose only job is to share insight from the Scriptures so that others can get closer in their relationships with Jesus!

It is not my responsibility to make a difference or to impress people.  My responsibility is to understand that God is the one who designed my mouth and gave me my purpose, and that He is the One who is going to make my work effective.  No amount of training, preparation, or study can help me accomplish anything but my erect my own monument -- that is, if I'm trusting in that and not God's provision as my foundation for effective ministry.

My responsibility is to "therefore go" -- "therefore," because God is in control and because He is both the source and proponent of truth; "go," because He has called me out of darkness and into marvelous light to be part of His chosen priesthood representing Him to the nations (1 Pet 2.9).

My responsibility is to trust that God is with my mouth and that He will teach me what to speak (Ex 4.12).

Altogether, this means I am not seeking to be impressive, but to impress gospel truth upon my students.  If I trust that God is truly the creator of my mouth and that He can put the words on my lips -- words sourced from deep study of His Word and the burning purpose of teaching the Word, stirred up by the Spirit acting within my heart -- then (and only then!) can I be an effective minister, teacher, leader.  A faithful Christian.

Are we all called to ministry, to teach God's Word as our vocation?  No.  But we are all called to be disciples and disciple-makers, to communicate the truth of sin, redemption, and resurrection to the world.  I can't shirk that responsibility just because I'm not comfortable talking with people, just because I don't think I have the right words, just because I don't know how to answer all their questions.  If the message of Jesus Christ has truly, radically changed my heart, I can't ignore that calling.

And that's why it's so immensely freeing to remember that it's not my job to change people's hearts.  "Heart change" is not in my job description.  That's above my pay grade!  The role of the Holy Spirit is to bring truth to bear on the heart and mind (John 16.13).  My role is to responsibly, faithfully, and earnestly teach the Word so that the Spirit can effectively work the change.  My role is to be responsible, faithful, and earnest in my task so that those whom I lead and instruct can see not my ministry or my eloquence, but the ministry of the Spirit vitally at work in me and in them.  Through humility, I must direct focus away from myself and onto the God who is truth and Who makes truth known to us (1 John 5.20).

John the Baptist said it best, after all: "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3.30).

Lord, use my mouth.  All this for Your glory, not for mine.

Stress Management

I was thinking this morning, as I pondered all the tasks in my Reminders app, that 90% of stress is self-induced.

We tend to think of stress as something that springs up unconsciously as a result of the external pressures of life, work, relationships, and financial crises.  Blame-shifters to the core, it's far easier for us to cry victim in these circumstances than it is to honestly evaluate our own hearts in the matter.

Hi, my name is Justin and I'm a recovering people-pleaser.  That means that I can easily allow myself to become stressed out if I think someone (or many someones, since I'm a youth director!) is displeased with something I said or did.  It also means that mundane tasks can incite stress -- stress that seems like it's simply attached to the vast amount of things I have to do, but that really originates within -- attached to a swollen concern of others' perception of me.

Why am I stressed about this task?  Because it's time-sensitive?  Maybe a little.  But the real source of stress is that if I fail to get it done on time (problematic), people will judge my time-management skills (more problematic) and think less of me as a leader (most problematic).  That's like a 10% /  20% / 70% ratio.  And I'm willing to bet that if we evaluated all of the things we claim bring us stress, we'd find that the breakdown isn't much different -- regardless of the specific circumstances.

Here's what I'm learning.  First, I am a glutton for affirmation -- just like the rest of the human race.  Why are other people's opinions of me such a big deal?  They shouldn't be.  Furthermore, my heart is so deceptively prideful that, even though I tell myself I don't care what other people think, I still compulsively check my appearance in the mirror, choose some clothes over others, trim my beard and my nose hairs, and get angry with myself when I don't say things the way I intended.  You, like me, care far more deeply about what other people think of us than we even realize.

Second, the bulk of my stress is almost always the result of my response to a situation, not the situation itself.  It's 10% fear of failure and 90% fear of having my character judged.  Which means that the problem itself is not the problem: I'm the problem.  And if I'm the problem, then I must also have the solution.

I think that's why Paul makes it sound so easy to quash that sense of being overwhelmed in his letter to the Philippians, in which he admonishes the believers not to be anxious for any reason (Phil 4.6).  He makes the peace of God that passes all understanding sound so attainable, like you can just turn off the anxiety with a switch.

Can it really be that easy?

For Christians, it should be.

With our salvation -- that is, our permanent rescue from divine judgment of our sinful condition -- Christians have the ability to surrender such things as stress, anger, and frustration as the sins that they are to a Messiah whose blood frees us from all unrighteousness.  As a follower of Christ, when I am feeling stressed out, I'm also being presented with a choice: succumb to my old ways of operating, or walk in the newness of life that has transformed the very core of who I am.

Most often, we choose stress.  Seriously, we do.  We choose it.  It's far easier to sink into that panicky, "how-in-the-world-am-I-going-to-get-this-done" mode of thinking than it is to surrender moment-by-moment to the power that God provides, because we are control freaks who desperately want to micro-manage our own lives.  Were we to honestly address our own exalted views of our desires and our own self-importance, and exalt instead the One Who is truly in control, however, we might begin to access the divine power of peace that passes all understanding.

This is one of those things that I'm tempted to say is easier said than done, but I'm coming to believe more and more that stress is yet another one of those mole hills we've turned into mountains because we'd rather feel sorry for ourselves than do the hard, daily work of crucifying our flesh.  If we did, we might overcome our stress instead of being overcome by it.

Because I sense the objection coming, the answer is yes -- there are folks who have chemical imbalances that cause them to feel all manner of depression, fear, anxiety, etc no matter what they do.  Unquestionably.  But because our society as a whole would rather claim to be a victim of biology than acknowledge physiological/psychological issues as the result of our own spiritual weaknesses, we instead prefer to be diagnosed and get out of jail free.  Some people do need medication, yes.  Some people's stress is a factor of their biology, and I believe God gives grace in those instances.  However, the stress the rest of us we experience is 90% internal choice -- that is, us choosing to view our problems as bigger than our ability to handle them, and choosing to focus on others' perceptions of us rather than the problem itself.

A view of reality that elevates me and my problems over God and His power is a sinful perspective on life -- it is a form of idolatry that is incredibly difficult to subvert.  But as followers of Jesus Christ, we are told repeatedly that it is our responsibility to walk in the power of the Spirit (in which Christ Himself walked -- Gal 5.16), that we must adopt the holiness of God the Father Himself (1 Pet 1.16), and that we have the ability to battle against the desires of the flesh (1 Cor 10.13).  Stress is the symptom of one of those desires of the flesh -- the desire to have control over not only our circumstances, but also over the people around us.

By acknowledging that we have no true control over anything (except our own actions), we remove one tentacle of stress from our brains.  

By acknowledging Christ as Lord, as the One Who is not only our Friend but also our Redeemer and Rescuer who modeled the path of servanthood so that we too could give up our lives for others... we lessen the power of our own self-exalting thought processes.

By choosing to focus on who Christ says I am rather than what other people think of me, and by choosing to express only gratitude for the magnitude of love, grace, and mercy that God has lavished upon me, I drown my stress in a healthy dose of the peace that passes all understanding.

Stress is 90% internal quandary.  If I can surrender my doubts and insecurities and unreasonably high self-expectations, all through the power that Christ supplies, then that 10% (what I call the "legitimate" stress in my own day-to-day life) will be all the more manageable.  I believe we're called to thrive as believers, not merely survive.  With stress constantly dragging us down, we are only capable of the latter.

Reviews, Pt. 10

Part 1 -- Part 2 -- Part 3 -- Part 4 -- Part 5 -- Part 6 -- Part 7 -- Part 8 -- Part 9
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Next on the playlist!

Here are the album reviews I've written since the middle of April.  As usual, clicking on the album covers will take you to the band's music where you can listen to and/or download the album in full.  The hyperlinks will take you to my reviews.

~*~

Knifeworld - Bottled Out of Eden (UK)
[PROG Mind / Tollbooth]

A challenging piece of multilayered writing, Bottled Out of Eden contains all the dynamic intensity and unpredictability that has carved such a unique niche in the progressive rock arena for Knifeworld’s music.

Starchitect - Results (Ukraine)

Results is a rough entry in the nebulous catalogue of modern post-metal.

Monster Killed By Laser - Hunched & Twined (UK)

Hunched & Twined: really cool, superfluous, psychedelic prog presented in four-minute increments or less.

The Rube Goldberg Machine - Fragile Times (UK)

RGM’s work is subtle, nuanced creativity, taking cues from the likes of Steven Wilson while still maintaining a strong individualistic approach to songwriting.

Big Big Train - Folklore (UK)
[PROG Mind / Tollbooth]

Folklore has energy, melody, nuance, and character, and it’s certainly a candidate for best album of 2016.

Jon Anderson & Roine Stolt - The Invention of Knowledge (UK, Sweden)
[PROG Mind / Tollbooth]

The Invention of Knowledge is a mature distillation of its writers’ individual, remarkable craftsmanship.