why i'm so glad i told people earlier this time

In my first pregnancy, I had no idea what to expect.  At that time, I was in Christian ministry in a small town and was one of the most high profile people in the community.  Privacy was not readily available anyway and so this very personal experience of my first pregnancy was a secret I guarded and held close to the chest.  I waited until the end of the first trimester to tell most people.  I didn't know how my body would respond to pregnancy and was not ready to be public about something so personal.  I also closely guarded my ultimate birth plan to have a home birth, wanting to guard against negativity (since I knew I tend toward anxiety anyway).

In retrospect, I probably was right to hold those secrets close to the chest, but even so I am so glad and grateful to not be so controlling of the experience this time.  Heck, not only am I telling pretty much everyone I know, I'm also blogging about the ups and downs of this pregnancy.  I didn't wait until the end of the first trimester to tell, but only until 8 weeks in.

I have discovered that one of the most key times when a pregnant woman needs support is in her first trimester.  This is the most difficult part of pregnancy, complete with mono-like tiredness and debilitating nausea.  Hormones are high and tearfulness is common.  And yet, we so closely guard what we are going through from others.  It has been such a relief to open up and tell my friends and my church about what is going on.  No, I don't dump on everyone, but my closest friends and family know that I'm going through a pretty tough time right now.  We all know that "this too shall pass," but I also know that I need prayer, encouragement and offers of help right now.  I need to take a walk with a friend and pour out the good, the bad and the ugly.  I need to be able to write about what I am going through and process it in a way that carries me through.  I need my Bible study to be praying for me.  I need people with whom I can cry, even though I am not normally a crier.

Will all of this be worth it when the baby comes?  Of course it will!  Am I glad to be having this baby?  Of course I am (though the gladness is more intellectual right now)!  I feel for all of my friends who have struggled with infertility and pregnancy loss and mean no disrespect to their experiences.  Clearly, a child is a blessing from God.  But it also takes travail to bring a child into the world.  It takes suffering.  I feel tender, overwhelmed and in need of Christian community right now.

And so, Jesus shows me how He carries me when I cannot carry myself (which all of the time, but even more clear right now).  Jesus gives me grace when my house looks like a tornado hit it.  Jesus shows me love through my husband who is picking up so much of the slack at home.  Jesus is in a friend's listening ear.  He is the offer of help watching my daughter.  He is even in my absolute need to rest and be, instead of do.  I am not alone.  And this too shall pass.

a reflection for holy week: a Savior for betrayers

The long-awaited day had arrived.  Since Jesus had begun His ministry, whisperings about Him had been heard all through the land of Israel.  There were people who guessed He might be the Messiah, the coming Deliverer who was prophesied about in the Old Testament.  So when He got on a colt and rode into the city of Jerusalem the week of the Passover celebration, when the town was bustling with celebration and out of town visitors were everywhere, it seemed like perfect timing.  Everyone around, a big crowd of people, were caught up in the excitement.  They spread their cloaks and palms beneath Him…treating Him with honor, like a King.

The long oppression of the Romans…was it finally over?  Everyone in Jerusalem saw the Messiah, the promised Deliverer, to be a military hero…they thought that Jesus would clobber the Romans and set them free from their oppression.  So they wave palm branches, which were political and nationalistic symbols, like waving an American flag would be today…and they cry out, “Hosanna!” which means, “Please save us!”…but they are blind to their need for spiritual deliverance.  All they want is their homeland back again.  All they want is a Jesus on their own terms.

Jesus for His part is deliberately fulfilling an Old Testament promise about the Messiah in order to push the envelope with the Jewish leaders, so they would push things toward the crucifixion.  He knew that the Jewish religious leaders would see His actions as directly related to Old Testament prophecy, the prophecy that we read this morning in Zechariah 9, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 

That’s why Jesus deliberately sent His disciples out to find a colt.  He wanted to exactly fulfill Old Testament prophecy in order to get the religious leaders’ attention.  He knew that they would do anything to preserve the little bit of power they had by cooperating with the Romans.  He knew they would see Him as a challenge to their power, and He knew that they would try to kill him, that He would be crucified and rise again.  Acts 2:23 says, “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (NIV).  In other words, God knew exactly what was going to happen…Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen…the Holy Spirit knew exactly what was going to happen when Jesus rode into Jerusalem in fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture.  Jesus was going to get Himself killed…at the hands of the religious people.

And so we are pulled in and implicated in the crucifixion.  It wasn’t the secular Romans, the world, that was out to get Jesus…it was the religious people.  The Romans were just the means of execution.  So when you think about it, that means it was us.  All too often, just like the people of Israel, we think that the problem is all the people who are outside, those worldly people who don’t value old-time values and old-time religion…all the while, we miss the fact that the real problem is us. And that truth hurts.

What is it that we do wrong?  We have a tendency to try to make Jesus do and be what we want Him to do and be.  We try to make Jesus into the God we want Him to be, instead of the God that He is.  We want a leader who does everything for us without requiring anything of us. 

We do this in several ways.  First of all, when we—like the crowd in Jerusalem that welcomed Jesus with palms—confuse our nation with God’s Kingdom.  The people of Israel just wanted their nation back again.  This is not so very unlike those in the Church who spend all their time and energy trying to make the United States into a Christian nation, as if God’s Kingdom could be found in an earthly government. 

Obviously, God cares about the government and can use it to do good in the world, and we ought to do all we can to see that that happens.  But…there has snuck into the Church an angry, fists-in-the-air, defensive attitude towards the world…as if non-believers out there are trying to steal "our" country from us. 

What if, instead of expecting the world to act like the Church, we acted like the Church should?  What if we taught and served and loved in such a way that people sat up, took note, and began to ask us (as Peter suggests), “What is the reason for the hope that is within you?”  Yes, we are just like the people in Jerusalem when we demand that Jesus give us political power and a Christian nation instead of realizing that the Church often functions best as a loving minority, serving and reaching out to a broken world.  That’s how the Early Church worked!

We also act like the people in Jerusalem when we praise God at Church but deny Him by our actions the rest of the week.  I think most of us would have to admit to this.  It is super easy to come to church and sing songs of praise and act religious but when we return to our homes and work places, all too often we treat our family and co-workers badly.  We act selfishly.  We break each of the Ten Commandments.  We do not spend the time in the Bible and in prayer that we should.  We don’t care for the needy as we should.  We don’t forgive.  We don’t share our faith in a loving way with those around us.  We are quick with the Hosannas but slow to follow through.

The people of Jerusalem were all excited to praise Jesus when it was convenient for them…when they thought He would be a military leader who would set them free from Rome.  But when He didn’t move fast  enough for them, when He began to lead in a more spiritual manner and didn’t take out the Romans, they quickly became a part of the fickle crowd shouting, “Crucify Him!”

I see myself in that fickle crowd too. For example, there was a time in my life when I was going to school and even though I had always gone to church every Sunday before that time, I found myself getting up on Sunday mornings and saying, “I’m too tired to go to church.”  And so all too frequently, I wouldn’t go.  I see my own times of faithlessness, my own following Jesus just when it is convenient for me, my own confusing the Kingdom of God with my country…and the many other ways that I try to make Jesus the leader I want Him to be, instead of the God that He is.  I try to make Him bow to my desires instead of bowing to His will. 

The bottom line is, we are all implicated.  There is no escape for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We turn away from Jesus.  We are not faithful.  We are His betrayers.  We are the ones who will shout in a few days’ time, “Crucify Him!”  We are the ones who drive the nails into His hands and feet.

But here’s the good news: when we face our naked selves and see the depth of our sin, when we see how far we have wandered from God, our creative and surprising God takes even our failure and sin and turns it around and uses it as a tool in His hand to save and redeem us.  Again, Acts 2:23-24 says, “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.  But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (NIV).

God knew what we would do. God knew we were going to kill Jesus.  So He took that very thing, that most evil of things that we did, and turned it around.  Jesus humbly emptied Himself, as Philippians told us, took on our sin and the punishment for it, and then rose again, showing that He had conquered sin, death, and the devil. 

Christ came for you.  He rode into Jerusalem for you, even though He knew you were only offering convenient words of praise, even though He knew you would desert Him when the going got tough, even though He knew you would turn away, even though He knew that you would kill Him and not just with any old death but with an excruciatingly painful death. 

But He still rode into Jerusalem for you.  He did it because His love is an insanely powerful kind of love.  It’s a love that embraces the unlovely.  It’s a love that pulls in the unfaithful.  It’s a love that chases down the rebellious.  Romans 5:6-8 says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

He died for you before you were a believer, when you were at your ugliest and worst.  And He still loves you when you wander from Him.  He will keep chasing you down.  He will keep pursuing you.  He will never give up on you.  Because you, you who are His betrayer (and I who am His betrayer), are precious to Him.  And He came to set you free from sin, death and the power of the devil.  To make you His own.  To bring you out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light.  To adopt you as His child.  And this giving of Christ for you and for me, though we do not deserve it, is the very Gospel, the very good news.  Amen.

Enter to Win: Healing Your Church Hurt by Stephen Mansfield

If you read my review of Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People by Stephen Mansfield, you know that I think it is a book that every Christian who has been hurt by another brother or sister in Christ should read.

Tyndale has provided me an opportunity to give one of you a free copy of this book.  To enter the contest, just answer the following question in the comments below by Wednesday, February 15 (MST).  If you win, I will post your name here on the blog on Thursday and get in touch with you.  One entry per person, but multiple members of a family may enter.

Here's the question for you to answer: What is one lesson that you learned in your experience of church hurts or church conflicts?

Book Review Friday: Healing Your Church Hurt by Stephen Mansfield

When I signed up to be a book review blogger last month, one of the books I was most excited to read was this week's featured title: Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People by Stephen Mansfield.  (The first version of this book was titled ReChurch.)  I was excited to read this book because, frankly, I needed it.  I still need it.  The last year of our time as pastors in North Dakota was fraught with conflict that exhausted me and wore me down.  I came to Montana wanting to be very slow about getting involved in church.  I would support Christopher is his role as pastor and be a positive presence at church, but I felt just very, very tired of the pain that churches cause.  I was bleeding inside and I was pretty angry.

God has slowly been bringing me back from that battle-weary state.  He has been so very good to me this year, surrounding me with trustworthy friends with whom I can be real and deepen my faith.  He has blessed me with an incredible Bible study where I get to be a participant instead of the leader.  There is still healing left to do, but I have begun to feel the cynicism and anger recede and a softness of spirit develop in me.

Healing Your Church Hurt is a book to help people whose hearts have been broken by the Church.  Stephen Mansfield writes from the perspective of a man who has been deeply hurt by the Church.  He writes of his experience: "For nearly a decade, I had been the pastor of a growing and influential church.  It had been a glorious experience and I had loved the life that we shared and the history that we made as this nearly four thousand-member congregation pursued the things of God.  But then, for reasons that don't need airing here, it all came to an end amidst conflict and uproar.  Oh, it was a classic--complete with a conspiring church board and gossip packaged as 'sharing' in prayer meetings and accusations flying fast and loose.  Demons danced and angels wept, and I should say quickly that I sinned too."

Sound familiar?  I know that it did to me.  Mansfield goes on to write that he was becoming broken and bitter, cynical and angry.  He went over the whole horrible story over and over again in his mind, even after he had left the congregation where the wounding occurred.  He began to develop hatred for those who had attacked and hurt him.  He describes his soul as a "toxic bog" at this point.

Mansfield says that at this point in his descent, God sent him a group of "bold and unapologetic" pastors who took him to task, strongly confronted him, and forced him to face what he needed to so that he could find healing.  They were his coaches, helping him to not only heal but begin to live out a hopeful future.  But it was hard, strenuous emotional and spiritual work.  Since that time, Mansfield found that God was constantly bringing him into contact with people who had been wounded by the Church.  He began to realize that inherent in these encounters was a call.  This book was written to help fulfill that call.  Mansfield now writes to every Christian who is in the position he was in.  He writes as if he is now one of the bold, confronting pastors, challenging us as readers to be all God calls us to be.

Throughout the course of the book, I appreciated Mansfield's direct voice.  He doesn't tiptoe around the truth but states it baldly and strongly.  He does so with compassion and love, but he speaks the truth that sets us free.

One of the chapters that I most appreciated in the book was "The Sea Breeze of the Centuries," in which Mansfield tells the story of several prominent Christians in church history who suffered terrible pain at the hands of other Christians.  I don't know why I had never thought of this before, but it never occurred to me that some of the worst pain the heroes of the faith endured was at the hands of other Christians.  Mansfield tells of how George Whitefield had rotten eggs and pieces of dead cats thrown at him when he preached, of how he had drummers try to drown out his preaching, of how he once had someone try to urinate on him while he preached.  (As someone who once had a prominent congregation member stand up after a sermon I gave and publicly reprimand me for it, I began to feel, reading this, that perhaps I had not had it so bad after all!)  Even worse, Whitfield was attacked on theological grounds by his good friend, John Wesley, in a very public way.  This wound was perhaps the worst of all.  But Mansfield shows how Whitfield worked his way through the pain and found healing.  He also tells the stories of St. Patrick, Jonathan Edwards and Bono, and ways that they also encountered wounding at the hands of the Church.  But of how they did not stay in that broken place, but went on to healing.  These stories were powerful to me and I will likely return to them again and again.

In the remainder of the book, Mansfield continues to speak truth in a direct way to those of us who have been wounded by the Church.  He reminds us that we should expect that other sinners are indeed capable of evil, though they are believers; we ought not be sentimental about the people of the Church, but should face the facts as they are.  This truth resonated with the Lutheran teaching that believers are fully saint and fully sinner.  This does not mean that we cannot grow in character, but it does mean that we will always be flawed and broken and sinful until God takes us home to heaven.  And so, we should not be shocked when a Christian wounds us for he or she is still a person in process, a broken person, just like us.

In "The Throne Room of Your Mind," Mansfield provides a powerful image for what to do with the sins committed against us.  This single image is worth the price of the book and much more besides; I think it has changed my life.  This chapter helped me so much because I have always felt in attempting to forgive someone that I simply don't know what to do with the very real presence of their sin.  And so I rehash it again and again.  Now, I have a place to put it.

This is a deeply wise, challenging book that every Christian who has been hurt by other Christians should read.  It is chock-full of truths that can change your life and transform you from a broken person to whole person.  It is also immensely readable.  Highly recommended.

5 out of 5 stars

To learn more about this book, visit the Tyndale website here.  In addition, you can read a free excerpt by going here.  To learn more about Stephen Mansfield, you can visit his personal website as well.  Finally, watch this blog for your chance to enter your name in a drawing for a copy of this powerful book.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.  I was not required to write a positive review.  The opinions I have expressed are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”