​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!

Be careful what you pray for.

I can’t remember who first said that to me. Be careful what you pray for or you might get it was what was said. I dismissed that as rhetorical nonsense.

I remember another little pithy saying that always bothered me. It was usually when things were going badly. You’d make some comment about things being bad and it would be said that your tough times “builds character.”

I’ve probably dismissed that as rhetorical nonsense also.

However, I’m discovering that there is a shadow of truth in these two sayings. So I’d like to talk about that for a bit.

Several years ago I can remember praying to God that He would make me more like Jesus. I prayed, “Jesus, I want to be like you. Help me to be more like You.” Now before you get all sanctimonious on me and make some dumb statement about being arrogant or what not, let’s not forget that the Bible states pretty clearly that this very thing is one of things that sanctification is supposed to accomplish; being made more like Jesus. So there’s nothing wrong with asking God to make us more like Himself. We were, after all, created in His image.

In fact, I distinctly remember saying to Him in my prayer that I wanted Him to do “whatever it takes” to be made more like Him.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. But I had no idea what all was involved in this process of being made more like Jesus.

Now before I proceed, please don’t hear me saying that I’m like Jesus. I am not. But I am in Christ and I am being sanctified by the Spirit to be more and more like Him every day and one day, when He returns, those of us who are in Him will be glorified and perfected. He has promised us this in His Word and so He will accomplish it.

What I want to talk about is not me but rather the process.
I’ve recently been reading some of the Puritans. If you’ve never read the Puritans, I highly recommend them. Now, let me be clear. I don’t agree with everything all of them say but overall, they’re quite good and helpful.
Recently I’ve been reading John Flavel’s work ‘Keeping The Heart’ and it is wrecking me with reminders of God’s mercy in both good times and bad times. For me, the part that has helped the most right now has been Flavel’s discucssion on the bad times.

A quote that will illustrate my point:
“It would much support your heart under adversity, to consider that God by such humbling providences may be accomplishing that for which you have long prayed and waited.”

Read that again.
Now let’s go back to where I prayed to be more like Jesus. Yeah, you see what I’m talking about? All this last year, as things disintegrated in our efforts to plant a church and I struggled with so much and raged at God and wondered aloud what God was doing and questioned His goodness etc etc…

And today I read this that maybe what God has been doing all along in all this mess was answering the prayer to be more like Jesus. He has emptied me of all that I found meaningful and of worth; He has forced me to humble myself by taking jobs to feed my family that I didn’t want; He has forced me to my knees in prayer and surrender in a way that I needed yet wasn’t doing; He drove me to His Word to seek comfort; He wrapped me in His arms of love and care to ease the pain of questioning.

What mercy He has shown to me. I believe it was C.S. Lewis that called this “a severe mercy.” In His mercy, God has been answering the very thing I prayed for but not how I wanted it to be done.

Perhaps this is you as well. Maybe you have asked God for something. Maybe the answer hasn’t come in the way you want. Maybe God, in His mercy, is giving you the very thing that you’ve asked for but in His own way.
Know that God is a good Father and gives good gifts to His children. His mercy, His severe mercy may be the very thing you need.

Another thing I read in Flavel’s work that has so impacted me is this:
“It may support your heart, to consider that in these troubles God is performing that work in which your soul would rejoice – if you did see the design of it.”

Here’s what that means: God sees the whole picture. You don’t. Neither do I. That’s why He’s God and you’re not. Nor am I.

It does my heart good to know that I don’t see the whole picture. Cause if what I see is the whole picture, I want my money back! Don’t get me wrong, I see some very good things that God is doing even now. But what I don’t see is the end, when we shall see Him as He is and we will finally be with Him and like Him.

If you are a follower of Jesus, know that He is not silent. He is speaking and moving in your life, perhaps in ways you do not see and most certainly in ways you would probably rather Him not. And He sees the whole picture.

Take comfort in that, brothers and sisters.
​
If you are not a follower of Jesus, I want you to know that He loves you. He wants you to be with Him, in Him and like Him. He doesn’t want you to be without Him because He is the greatest gift you could ever have. Trust in Him.
 
Soli Deo Gloria!