So when You step in, it becomes apparent that it was You. Because nobody else could have thought of a judge in his seventies with a short fuse and 30 years of experience who would turn down a motion and yet still hand over a win.

I feel vulnerable, a little embarrassed, a little wild. I was looking for You, but an easy win would have seemed coincidental. So You did it up funny, left some suspense, and put Yourself out there to change the entire situation – not just the issue at hand.

I’m still holding my breath, blinking, trying to figure out just what happened, if it happened because I prayed or because You care, or because life is just that way sometimes.

I don’t get You, but it’s kinda fun not getting You. It makes me blush – like a girl with a crush – realizing that You have surprises up Your sleeve, that You’re waiting for me to be open enough to accept You as You are, crazy paradoxical You who are Love and Consuming Fire.

I’m feeling a little shy today, a little giddy, and WAY out of my league. Thank You for that. A girl needs a bit of excitement in her life…

He’s at work today, and there’s a hearing. He said he felt sick about it, sick with fear, worry, shame, that sense of failure and the weight of the world being so heavy on his shoulders. At least I think that’s why he feels sick.

I feel so powerless today, surrounded by messes and things I can’t change or do anything about. I am frustrated with hard, hard hearts and trying to hold onto a little optimism, but the truth is, this life is really messed up, and the people in it, because without You all we have is our own sense of right and wrong to propel us on. Humility and bearing with one another and loving – that only happens in You.

But You held Pharaoh’s heart, and You hold the judge’s heart too. I don’t want to trust You with that when I can do nothing about it and all the decisions keep coming down against the right, when details that get dropped need to be redeemed and the most sympathetic story isn’t the whole story at all.

You said “Go” this year, and You are leading me out and everywhere and, apparently back into You with these things that scare me and make us feel helpless. “Go,” You keep saying, almost like a dare. “Trust Me. Pray. Watch Me work.”

But what if You don’t do what I ask? What if I end up feeling jerked around because I made myself that vulnerable? It’s not like we haven’t been through this before. Sometimes things that just HAVE to happen don’t happen, and praying doesn’t make one bit of difference.

I’m asking You why – You know that. But I can’t just sit here and do nothing, so here I am, laying it out, asking You to step in, figuring that disappointment is on its way, and deciding not to hang my belief in You on the response, one way or the other.

Just, he could use a break today, God. He and his boss need this, and others who need You to come through for them on a very human level. I’m torn up inside over it, over the whole mess and other messes that I can’t be You and fix.

I guess what I’m asking is if You can please just be God today, please care for his heart and this case – geez. I can’t phrase it because I feel like a dumb human with just my perspective, but I guess that is kinda what I am, and I’m really, really wanting the judge to side with my husband’s argument. I’m really wanting You to weigh in on our side because of the gross injustice that is being done to someone who wanted to help others, because it’s so far out of my control I feel sick inside thinking of it all.

So there it is, and I can’t be spiritual enough to even caveat this prayer and be okay with You not answering how I want. Except if You don’t answer how I want, then I’m still stuck because I can’t not believe in You and in spite of the fact that I want proof of You acting on our dust, I want You to be You more than I want a perfect life.

I’m talking to You about it, and that’s something. It’s me not holding out and waiting all cautious, and me saying, “Okay, I’m not You, and I’m pretty much not anything, so I need somebody who is God to step in with a better plan and some peace, please.”

You know how I want to promise You that I’ll pray and praise and pay You back for being You and helping out, but of course, we both know I can’t do that and You’re not much into trading anyway. It’s days and situations like this that I’m left wondering about You doing anything, when that next moment, day, week, year, decade hangs in the balance and I can’t care for the future. You say tomorrow has enough worry for itself, but You were here. You know how HARD it is for us to believe that. You know how HARD today can be, because we die every day and it’s not all Easter Sunday for us here.

It’s the pain that keeps me homesick for You, the awkward helpless praying about the dust-stuff that isn’t ever guaranteed and shouldn’t ever be taken for granted. I’ve seen You work before, and I know You listen to me, to my heart, and You’ve said to cast all my cares on You, so this is it today. I’m throwing all this weight at You and asking You to take care of earth-things I can’t handle.

You said “go,” so here. Your turn. You know what You’re doing. I’m going to believe that today, regardless of what I want.

Yesterday, I put a comment on my Facebook wall noting that if someone uses the word “blessing,” I automatically tune them out. I was smiling as I left the comment, but I was aware that my annoyance with the cliché runs deep, and I thought I might perhaps flesh out my thoughts here.

I grew up Christian. For as long as I can remember, everyone around me talked “God-talk.” They used words like “blessing,” “standards,” “principles,” and “Gospel” until I knew them inside out and backward and exactly which nuance of which sermon they referred to. But after a year in Bible college with “God” on the lips and the brain and the tests and the obligation – and rarely in the LIVES of the people who surrounded me – I entered the “teenage years” of my faith. It was time for me to discover Him for myself, to see if He would be my own, if what I’d grown up being taught to believe was really worth believing.

From the time I was a little kid, my dad told me not to use words whose meanings I didn’t know, and as annoyed as I was with him at the time, it is a rule that has stood me in good stead.

As I dug deep into Scripture and discovered the truth behind the clichés I knew inside-out and backward, I also discovered a lot about Christian languaging that had nothing at all to do with God, Christ, or the truth of the Gospel that people had boiled down to a “sinner’s prayer” and a life that could only be reformed by taking certain steps. There were words and phrases and spiritual ideas I had used and believed that weren’t even CONCEPTUALLY found in Scripture.

The standardized vocabulary I grew up with had made faith into little more than religion – and completely rerouted my focus from the righteousness of Christ to my own performance.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a lot of people who mean well, whose hearts are in the right place, and who truly do know God who use God-talk every day and mean it from the depths of their souls with the Truth alive in them. But there are others who drop those words idly – to sound spiritual, to maintain their “testimony,” to paste God onto their own ideas of right and wrong. These are the people who don’t know what grace is – and who need it so very desperately.

But for myself, I made a commitment not to let God-talk fall idly from my lips, or from my fingers. I firmly, deeply believe that my life is my testimony. Jesus Christ dying for me, a sinner – He is my testimony. The only thing that makes me any different from Jane Non-Christian is the fact that I believe He is all I need.

Christianity isn’t a cloak I put on after I put in my “sinner’s prayer” ticket into eternity. It’s not a set of standards and principles, or a brand new language. It’s not going to church or going to the mission field. Christianity – or eternal life – is “knowing God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.”

The more we come know God in Christ, the more we are transformed as He renews our minds – but I think Christians are scared to believe that He will actually do the work He says He will do in us. We want to “make God smile,” show ourselves approved unto Him, so we lay our very person-hood aside for a standardized ideal that has very little to do with God and everything to do with what other Christians think of us and our walk with Him.

We can mean well all day long, but the fact remains that God still wants our hearts, not merely our duty – and He’s willing to suspend duty (see Jesus’ response about breaking the Sabbath) to get to the root of our deepest need. Whether we acknowledge it now or when we meet Him face to face, we’ve got NOTHING to offer Him. Period. This is why He meets us where we are.

I think Christians – and Church people – invest more in worldly thinking and conversation than most non-Christians. It scares me to death that I think this. Because I know exactly what I would have thought of me thinking that ten years ago. And I know that I have a LOT of healing still to do from wounds I received from other Christians who attempted to make me conform to their standardized words and doctrine.

I’m not mad at God anymore because I’ve learned it wasn’t him. I’m not even mad at the Christians who hurt me anymore. I have good relationships with many Christians who DO use “God-talk” and mean it with all their hearts, knowing Him true and real.

But I still can’t willingly participate in or subject myself to it. These harmless, spiritual words are deeply offensive to me because I have so often seen them misused and abused and used as a front for pride, condemnation, and a super-spirituality that has nothing at all to do with God.

I am slowly learning to give grace and bear with others, but I shy away from God-talk because there is nothing in this world that will cause me to judge someone more quickly than overused Christian clichés. I’m willing to say that it is not them; it is my own sin I’m fleeing by keeping boundaries in this area, and I’m laying full claim to God-grace for all parties involved, recognizing that only He knows the hearts and He died – and lives – for all of us.

Even words of grace must be seasoned with salt, but there is too much salt that has no savor. Tell me what you really mean – not just what you’re supposed to say. There is more of Him in the truth than in the same words everybody is allowed to say. If you’re talking Him in you, I’m wide-open to your heart.

WARNING: Thorough rant and uncomfortably-directed God stuff ahead…

I ran across an article yesterday that purported to give a young woman advice about marrying a man who had a porn addiction.

The well-meaning author took a sagely-spiritual, egotistical approach and told her that she needed to be sure she married a man who was “deeply aware of his sin and his potential for it.” THAT I liked. What I didn’t like was the fact that the author compared this man to a werewolf, chaining himself in a basement and warning all that he loved that he would turn into a werewolf if he were released.

I ASK YOU?!?!?!?!!!!

He spent the bulk of his article talking about how the man needs to be aware of his temptation to the sin and to be capable of strongly subverting himself when the temptation came up. I pretty nearly threw up. I am not even kidding.

There are way too many men – way too many CHRISTIANS – who are still living in complete and total bondage, trying to be like that werewolf, subverting themselves for good and missing God entirely.

We take one passage from Jeremiah about our hearts being sick, wicked, whatever-word-is-used in your translation, and we IGNORE THE REST OF THE PASSAGE WHEN GOD PROMISES HEALING. We know that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” but we ignore the rest of Paul’s explanation of how Christ FILLED THAT HUGE GAP AND RECONCILED US TO GOD.

There is absolutely no way around this. It is “the narrow way” of which Jesus spoke, something so stunningly simple and NON-spiritual that my downsie sister-in-law can understand it. My children can understand it.

Every single one of us is a WHO. We are not a WHAT. And God meets us “who’s” right where we are, whether we are collecting taxes, catching fish, or sneaking onto a rooftop at night to ask Him about Himself.

The plot is simple: Being His is not about WHAT WE DO. It is about WHO WE ARE. But Satan has this trick that makes me want to scream, because he uses it on a regular basis with people I care deeply about. He says to the Christian, “You are a sinner. Never forget that. Never, EVER forget that. You will always be tempted. You will always struggle with this sin. And you will never win.”

And the Christian thinks, “I am a sinner. I must never forget that. I can never, EVER forget that. I will always be tempted. I will always struggle with this sin. And I will never win unless I struggle against it with Christ’s help.”

That is ALL WELL AND GOOD TO SAY.

BUT.

Seriously? You really want to subject yourself to that kind of bondage, just to be good and fix the problem? You really think that is freedom in Christ? I have to tell you something. You’re off your NUT. You’re flat-out suicidal. YOU WANT TO BE THE WEREWOLF.

I have news for you. Being a Christian is not like being an American. In Christ, our freedom is already won. There is no legislature, no court system, nothing but His righteousness. PERIOD.

Paul instructed the Romans to “reconcile yourself dead to sin and alive to God.”

CHRISTIANS HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS CONCEPT. Because we would much rather DO than BE. Because we still think like the world thinks, that we know the difference between right and wrong – and we know it better than anybody else.

I’m sorry? Did you just say you buy into the temptation Satan handed Adam and Eve? To be like God, knowing good and evil?

Let me build a construct for you here, one that I shouldn’t have to build because Paul already laid this out in Romans.

We are born under Adam. Who bought into Satan’s temptation to understand right and wrong. Who traded in relationship with God to be like Him. WE BECAME SIN. THIS IS OUR IDENTITY OUTSIDE OF CHRIST.

But when we are born again by faith into Christ, WE BECOME THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN HIM. WE ARE NO LONGER BOUND TO SIN. (Good night, all these caps are making me sound like a revival preacher!!!)

Christians, Church, Body of Christ – we have GOT to stop making sin our identity. We MUST make Christ’s righteousness our identity. THIS IS WHAT GRACE IS FOR.

My salvation and sanctification is NOT ABOUT DOING THE RIGHT THING. It is about HAVING MY MIND RENEWED from the old Adam-speak that goes, “I just want to do the right thing!”

Do I still sin in Christ? HECK YES. But I AM NOT SIN any longer. I am free to stop justifying it, stop trying to quit it, stop hiding behind the flipping fig leaves. I AM ALREADY JUSTIFIED BEFORE GOD IN CHRIST JESUS. My real identity is the righteousness of Christ, and my sin can be left at the foot of the cross. Every single time.

There is no spiritual hierarchy in Christ. I had a pastor once who used to preach that “the ground is level at the foot of the cross.” My fit with my kids is every bit as bad as the porn addiction that guy is fighting. But I will not accede to Satan’s lie that I am “my fit with my kids.” That “I am wrong.” Sorry dude. You lose.

Jesus Christ died once for all, took the weight of the sin of every one of us on His shoulders and took it into the grave with Him, giving us back our lives the way God meant us to live them. I am CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST and yet I LIVE. His life is my life.

Accept it. Grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ – not in spiritual superiority and works-based sin-focused requirements that keep you chained in the basement trying with all your futile human might not to disappoint God and hurt others.

BE a PERSON. Not a werewolf. BE beloved, not ashamed. BE the righteousness of Christ, not the sin. BE FREE. Or don’t. He’s already done the work. Get over yourself. Live from who He says you are.

Freedom isn’t an understood. Gospel isn’t fire insurance or church attendance. It’s LIFE. Anybody who tells you any different isn’t right. And they really may not be His.

His love is a deep, deep ocean, and I know this, but I sometimes pretend I don’t because I prefer the shore, because the view is better from here. but really, I’m not moving because I prefer the warm sand between my toes and I never really learned how to swim.

with love, you have to take the risk. you’ll never know everything about a person, never know them through and through because you can’t see that far into their hearts. eternity leaves a lot of room for wonder, and begs trust that goes beyond logic and evidence. so faith itself is the evidence, and faith itself is a gift, given to those least likely to have earned it by their management skills and all of the doing that makes for safety.

so here it is, the choice to leave the shore and see if He is so deep as He says he is, and perhaps He’ll be my lifeboat, or perhaps He’ll teach me to swim, as if there are lessons for learning things like that once you are in the middle of the sea with nothing but sun and water and salt and wind and love to sustain you.

He-who-is-Love is the adventure; being loved IS the ocean, and who wants to stand on the shore watching the waves come in when you could be drowning in it all? And when your one word is “Go,” what is stopping you, anyway?

She sings in color, the alluring Light,
over snow-covered mountains, the water, the plains,
and all the while, Springtime, she dances

through woodlands, under ice,
to the lilt of light’s sweetest refrains.
She sings in color, the alluring Light,

painting music like Renoir on scaffolds of gray,
timbre-toned melodies and warm-tinted rains,
and all the while, Springtime, she dances.

It’s really a romance, the dance and the song.
“We’ll wine and we’ll dine, drinking golden champagnes!”
she sings in color, the alluring Light.

She teases the dancer to spin her red love
to make zephyr harmony over winter’s remains.
She sings in color, the alluring Light,
and all the while, Springtime, she dances.

I’m waiting for Joy again.
She has been invited
for tea – and crumpets -
if she’d like to

visit my warm house
this morning. The sun
has already arrived, but
Joy is late; perhaps

the cold night was too
much for her. Tears
do not make tea; she
said she would come,

but her R.S.V.P.
was for the wrong day
so here I wait, considering
how very rude

such a pretty thing as Joy
can be, never arriving
on time, always bursting in
when I least expect her.

© Kelly Sauer (November 2, 2011)