I’ve been dealing with some things recently. Maybe you’ve had this happen to you. Here’s what “this” is:
I’ve been dealing with a lot of frustration and discontent over the last several months. Really over the last year. Recently I’ve begun to ask God to show me what was going on in my heart and why I was dealing with all this stuff. You gotta be careful what you ask God for in prayer. When you ask Him to reveal to you what’s going on in your heart, that may very well be the most painful thing you could ever ask for. When I asked God to show me what was going on in my heart. He was gracious enough in His love to do that. And it has not been pretty. My heart is a dark chasm of idolatry and self. Actually, let me put it this way. I have made self my idol. It has taken on many forms but at the bottom of this deep darkness is self. My very identity has been taken over by self rather than Christ. And then, of course, I also asked God to take away from me the things that were keeping me from a closer walk with Him. Can I just tell you that you better be sure about that prayer before you pray it?! I think too often we pay lip service to being pruned and made into His image. Truth is, pruning usually hurts. I’ll elaborate. Let’s start with fitness. Anyone who knows my life and me over the last 8-9 years knows I’ve been all up in the fitness world. I drank the CrossFit Kool-Aid in 2009 and never looked back. I competed in 2010-2011 and even reached the pinnacle of Regionals in 2011. 2012-2015 I owned an affiliate and did some local competitions. I now work for Iron Tribe Fitness in Birmingham, AL. A huge part of my identity has been tied up in being the fittest guy in the room for quite awhile. Now, in fairness, I’m not the fittest guy in the room in some rooms but in others I am. Heck, my wife and I met at a CrossFit gym in Noblesville, Indiana. Intensity is my middle name. Get the picture? Over the last several months, things have changed. I was recently diagnosed with ulcers and told, not to stop working out, but to take it a bit easier in life in general. During this time, I have seen a dramatic drop in strength (for me at least) and then 2 weeks ago, I injured my shoulder again. My doctor said to me this week, “Listen, I think at some point you have to accept the fact that you are getting older and there are some things that maybe you need to think about. Like risk and reward kind of thinking. Sure, you can keep pushing the levels but at what cost?” I had to take a step back mentally and ask myself some hard questions. I don’t have to stop working out but I need to be a little smarter about the volume at which I train. I mean, let’s be real, I’m not a competitive athlete anymore. And that’s when it hit me. If I’m not training and performing at that level, who am I? I had a real struggle of identity for a minute…actually for a few days. Let me bring it a little closer. I left my law enforcement career to follow what my wife and I truly believed was the call of God to go into vocational ministry. We sacrificed a lot to go to seminary. Then we became real super Christians and went into church planting, following what we believed and our elders confirmed was a legitimate call on our lives. And things fell apart. Went down in flames. And we were left holding the pieces and burnt ashes of dreams that got torn down and burnt up. And it hurt a lot. But we moved on. Or so I thought. We prayed for God’s provision and He provided the job I now have. We are close to my family for the first time in many years and part of a really good church here. Things are seemingly beginning to settle down for us. So why am I still struggling with these issues of self worth and identity? This last Sunday our pastor preached on the High Priestly prayer from John 17 (we’re in a series in John). The pastor talked about how we are in Christ and about our identity. I don’t remember the exact words the pastor used but he said something along the lines of identity and being in Christ and our identity being found in Him alone and man, the Spirit pricked me. It was like He said, “Your identity is found in everything around me but not me.” That hurt. Then yesterday I was having a conversation with a pastor friend of mine in Indy and he talked about how gracious God has been to me in this time; by giving me a job that has provided for my family financially, by allowing us to live closer to my parents in the their retirement, by blessing us with yet another healthy child…and I was pricked again by the Spirit. It was like He said, “See, I have been gracious to you. Am I not enough?” Then I read an article yesterday by Jared Wilson in which he talked about leaving ministry and the idolatry that being in ministry had been for him. Jared made the statement that along the lines of ‘if God takes something away from you and it causes an identity crisis, it’s an idol.’ And it hit me like a truck. My idol was me and my desires. Sure, they were good desires. It is a good and Christ honoring thing to plant churches and preach the Word and share the gospel with others. Unless it becomes an idol. At the heart of our deepest desire, if we’re not careful, we find idolatry. If our deepest desire isn’t Christ and who He is, then our desire is not for him but for ourselves. I had taken a very good desire to serve Christ and His Church and, in my flesh, twisted it into my own identity. Who was I without being a pastor and church planter? Who was I if I wasn’t doing what I believed God called me to? But then the Spirit comes, reminding me that my very identity is Christ. My existence is now Christ and Him crucified. I find myself comforted by the fact that many of the heroes of the Bible were idolatrous in some way. Yet God used them. Why? Why would God use idolatrous and sinful people? Because they’re not the point. I’m not the point. You’re not the point. The goal is not to be the savior but to model the Saviour. Christ is the point. God used all those idolatrous and sinful people and He still uses sinful and idolatrous people like me because Christ is the point. He gets the glory. And how does He work for His glory and my good? By conforming me to His image (see Romans 8:29). And what is His image, what are we to be like? “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” – Philippians 2:6 Humility. Emptying ourselves. Taking on the form of a servant. Becoming obedient. If Jesus’ identity is found in who the Father says He is, how much more is my identity found in who the Father says I am. He calls me son. That is enough. Soli Deo Gloria!
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Once upon a time, I felt like I was invincible. I mean, I got hurt a lot doing what I was doing for a living (I was a police officer) but I never really felt like death or pain or anything like that could touch me. Despite the pain and death and violence I saw, sometimes on a daily basis, it just never seemed to affect me. The risks I took seemed perfectly normal to me.
I also found out during that time in my life what work ethic meant. I mean, I kinda knew because I came from a long line of workaholics. The whole male side of the Garrison family was really hard workers (for the most part). So I grew up knowing what hard work was and knowing that hard work paid off in the end…well, believing that anyway. Isn’t this the American way? Work hard. Then when you’re tired and worn out, work harder. After all, the harder we work, the more we earn and therefore the more we matter. Right? Let me give you a rundown of the last five years of my life. In the last five years, my wife and I have moved to North Carolina for seminary (with no jobs and no place to live), started our own business, went to seminary full time, had two kids, moved to three different states, planted a church (see below). We’ve been busy. Over the last two years, work has ramped up to a whole new level for me. From May 2015 to June 2016, we were church planting in Indianapolis. Well, we were trying to anyway. I discovered a whole new level of work while church planting. I found out that there is some work that our enemy, Satan, hates with all his wicked heart and he will do everything within his power to stop us from doing. Church planting is one of those things. The gospel of Jesus going out, people hearing that gospel, repenting and believing is something that Satan will not stand by and watch happen. But, we were working hard. I was working a ton; meeting people, sharing with them about Jesus and His good news, trying to fund raise and form partnerships with local pastors and others. I was working a lot. It was hard. When it was over, I crashed. Like physically crashed to a level I had never experienced. I was so sick and spent that my wife literally asked me, “Are you dying?” I felt like I was. I felt like I did, at least a part of me. Then, the company I currently worked for called me and offered me a job. We needed groceries so I took it. So we moved…again. When I took over management of the job I now have, the situation was kind of a mess. I ended up having to fire one employee, suggest another one find another job elsewhere and generally cleaning up a mess left behind by the former manager. I was working a lot. Like 60 plus hours a week a lot. I was tired, angry, frustrated. So was my wife. We had a newborn and a three year old and it was crushing her to basically care for the kids on her own while I worked like a man possessed. It would seem that I had learned nothing from the past. Then 2 weeks ago happened. I had a bit of a medical scare. I won’t go into gory details but we’ll just say there was blood emitting from places blood isn’t supposed to emit from. Off to see the doctor I went. ‘We need to do a colonoscopy’ they said. I thought everything…cancer, death, my wife a widow, my kids orphans…it was not good. The results came back. Ulcers. My doctor said, “There is no medical reason for you to have ulcers so it must be something else.” I know what it is. Stress. I’ve spent the last 21 years of my life in a pressure cooker. First it was law enforcement, then small business ownership, then parenthood, then church planting, then move and new pressure packed job…I was stuck on the merry-go-round of effort and success. My wife and I talked about some things and my boss and I talked and I’m grateful that he’s understanding and gracious. I need to work less and play more. I think it’s the same with the gospel. See, we too often fall into the temptation to work for our own salvation. Now, we good reformed types will never say that. But I think we’re really doing that in actuality. I think we try hard, hoping that we will somehow earn God’s love and favor. The truth is you can’t. You earn nothing when it comes to the gospel. It’s all given to you. You and I literally bring absolutely nothing to the table when it comes to relationship with God. He has done, is doing and will do it all. Now please don’t think I’m espousing some type of antinomianism (see previous post ‘Walk This Way’). What I’m saying is this: If you are my brother and sister in Christ, do yourself a favor. Just rest. Be free in the love of God for you. If you are in Christ, there is nothing you can do to make Him love you more or less. After all, you are clothed in the very righteousness of Christ. You are, in the eyes of God, the same as Christ. Think about that for a minute. Let it soak into your soul. This is amazing grace! Not only has Jesus laid down His life for you but, by your faith in Him, you have been clothed in His righteousness. Put that in your work pipe and smoke it. Stop trying so hard. He’s not gonna love you more or less. You’re gonna give yourself an ulcer. Just rest, bask in the righteousness of Christ that is yours. Then, from that overflow of love and grace, get up and work with joy! Soli Deo Gloria! |
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