There's No 12-Step Program for Trust.

My mother has been bugging me to write on this thing since Christmas.

Oops.

So hello there!  (Hi Mom - I'm writing again!)

It seems that I only write when I have something pressing on my mind, a deep theological issue that needs to be addressed.  And I think that maybe if I struggle with it, other people are struggling with it too.  Today's issue: Trust.

Turns out, I have trust issues.

It's not that I don't trust other people (although that can sometimes happen).  I don't trust God.  Like ever.

That's kind of a problem.

Here's how I figured this out.  I obsess about my future ALL the time.  Seriously.  All the time.  I don't think I know how to live in the present.  I love making plans, I love figuring my life out.  When I think about the future, I also think about the future relationship that I want to have with my spouse.  And, as mentioned previously (in another post), relationships are my idol.  Or to clarify, the desire for a relationship is my idol.  In church, our pastor talked about having a false positive.  A false positive is something that seems good that you think will make your life better and fix all your problems.

My false positive - same as my idol.  Relationships.  I think that being in one is going to fix my problems.  So why do I have this as my false positive?

I don't trust that God is ever going to give me a relationship, because it's been so long since I've been in one.  I'm going on 6 years without a relationship (it hurts my heart a little to write that).  I've been desperately lonely for 6 years, and God hasn't done anything to change it.  A relationship would solve all my problems.  I wouldn't be lonely anymore.  I wouldn't have to worry about the future so much.

I don't trust God, because I don't believe that he is enough for me.  I feel like he's holding back from me, withholding what I want.  I don't think that he will give me the desires of my heart, because he hasn't in the past.

But here's the thing: if I trust God, if I TRULY trust him, he will either give me the desires of my heart, or change those desires so that I won't even feel the lack of the original desire. (Thank you, Sarah, for those wonderful words of wisdom.)

Unfortunately, there's no 12-step program to trusting God.  I know.  I looked.  Additionally, trusting God doesn't happen overnight.  I tried that too.  You can't just pray, "God, let me trust you, Amen."  It's a process.  A gradual one that is probably going to be painful.

So for those of you reading this who are struggling with this as well, my advice is as follows (and please note, I'm not an authority on the issue):

 While there is no 12-step program to trusting God, there are a few things you can do.

1.  Figure out why God is trustworthy.  Here's two reasons (and there are many more!):

        a.  He's our creator.  He knows us inside and out.  Just check out Psalm 139.

        b.  He loves us.  He loves us enough to die for us.  He loves us enough that even though we're sinners, the lowest of the low, he still died for us to save us from an eternity without him.

2.  Figure out what you need to let go of to trust him.  For me, it's letting go of the desire for relationships.  Let me give you a Biblical example: Abraham.  God told Abraham that he was going to have a son in his old age, and through that son he would have as many descendants as the stars in the sky.  So God gives Abraham a son, Isaac.  Abraham loves Isaac so much.  He thought he and Sarah would never have kids, so for God to give him a son in his old age is just so completely wonderful and he cannot imagine ever giving up his child.  Until God asks him to.  God says to Abraham, take Isaac up to this place that I'm going to show you, and sacrifice him to me.  At this point, Abraham's probably freaking out.  And although Genesis never tells us exactly what's going on in Abraham's head, he's probably thinking, "Wait, God.  You said you were going to bless me through this child.  And now you're asking me to kill him?  You're taking away what you promised you would give me?"  But Abraham had to trust God.  He had to trust that even if he killed his own son, God wouldn't back out on his promise.  He didn't know how God was going to do it, he just trusted that God would do it.  So Abraham does it.  He takes his son, puts him on the altar, and is THISCLOSE to sacrificing Isaac when God stops him.  God says, "Okay, you have shown me that you love me more than your own son.  Your trust in me is greater than your love for earthly things, and I'm going to bless you in ways that you can't even imagine."  Abraham had to let go of his love for Isaac and trust God.

3.  Figure out how to make God the Lord of your life.  People use the metaphor of putting God in the drivers' seat.  Hey, if that works, run with it.  Here's a verse that I've found extremely helpful from Romans 14:18, "Your task is to single-mindedly serve Christ" (this is from the Message.  Yes, I'm a seminary student, and I'm supposed to hate the Message, but if it helps me look at and understand the Bible in new ways, I'm going to use it.).  In everything that I do, I need to ask, is this serving Christ?  Does this conversation serve Christ?  Does this relationship serve Christ?  Is what I'm thinking serving Christ?  If it is, then I will continue on.  If not, then I won't do it, because it's not going anywhere.  I think that as long as I'm doing that, the trust will come.  Abraham served God, and as a result, trusted that he was going to fulfill his promise.  I think God will do the same for me.

That's not to say that I'm going to be awesome at this.  I'm not.  I'm going to continually have to identify my desires that are getting in the way of trusting God.  I will have to ask every single day if every single thing I do is serving Christ.  This isn't going to happen overnight.  And there are days when I'm not going to want to do it.  But I know that if I do, God's going to give me so much more than I ever expected.

So Mom, you asked for a blog post.  Hope this met your expectations:)

Also, this is the first time I've told people other than my family about this blog.  If you're not my family, be gentle.  I don't do well with criticism (maybe that deserves it's own blog post).

Inadequacy sucks...

Originally Posted 12/11/11

There's like seven million things on my mind, and I can't write them all down at once so bear with me while I organize my thoughts.

1. Sometimes people in seminary make me feel dumb.  Because they're so smart.  I mean, seriously, they're really smart.  They even sound smart when they talk about everyday things.  And somewhere, someone is always having a deep theological discussion.

I think that sometimes we live up on our high holy hill and forget about the outside world.  That's one of the perils of being in seminary - we forget how to relate to people who live in the real world.  It's great to have deep theological discussions, but we have to remember who we will be preaching/teaching to some day.  We need to be able to reach out to the non-believer and talk to them at their level.  We don't want to scare people off with our big words or theological concepts.  We have to be like Paul.  In 1 Corinthians 2 he basically says: look, I'm not coming to you with brilliant thoughts or speech.  I'm coming to you in weakness and in fear.  Because I have something to tell you, and it's not about me.  It's about Jesus.  And it's awesome.  And you need to know about it.  And I'm not going to use big theological arguments, I'm not going to sound smart and use big words.  You know why?  Because I don't want you to come to faith because of the wise things that I say.  I want you to come to faith because of the amazing power of the Holy Spirit.

That's what matters: God working in people's lives.  The message that we are giving is more important than sounding smart.  We are at seminary to get Biblically-based theological training so that we can tell others about the the most important thing in the world.  So sometimes we all have to tell our brains to shut up, and work on our hearts.  We have to believe this message that we're telling people about.  When we talk to people, that's what's going to come through to them.  If we sound smart, we may end up alienating them.  But if we connect to people on a heart level, I think we'll reach them more.

2.  I say this because I'm feeling inadequate right now.  Inadequacy sucks.  You just feel like no matter what you do, you'll never measure up.  I'm the worst at this.

I constantly compare myself to other people.  We all do this.  It's exam crunch time, which means a lot of reviewing with other people, reading their papers, and helping each other study.  So when I read my friends' papers, I compare my writing style to theirs, and they always sound smarter than me.  I feel like I write at a 6th grade level, and they're all writing at college level.  I feel like I don't sound as though I belong in grad school.  So I'm feeling inadequate in my writing.

I feel inadequate in other ways too.  There's some amazingly beautiful girls around school.  They're not perfect, but that only adds to their beauty.  When I compare myself to them, I fall short every time.  They have better hair than me.  They have better skin than me.  They have better teeth than me.  They have better personalities than me.  They have better style than me.  Of course, being around so many guys doesn't help either.  Because it's been so long since I've dated anyone, I get really hard on myself.  I tend to think I'm not pretty enough or skinny enough or smart enough or Christian enough, and that's why no one will date me.  And I look at the girls who are dating someone and think, oh, if only I were like them, I would have a boyfriend.  As a result, I feel inadequate in the way that I look.

I also feel inadequate in my walk with God.  Being in seminary is especially hard for this.  You feel like since you're going to be preaching/teaching about God, you have to have an awesome faith.  It has to be perfect.  And there's people here that seem to have that.  They are in the Word, they talk about their faith all the time, and seem to have this great relationship with God.  I don't.  This is my second time in seminary, I've been telling people that I'm a Christian for about 15 years now, and I'm still a baby Christian.  Praying every day is a struggle for me.  Reading my Bible every day is really a struggle for me.  I look at some of the people here and wonder how they got to be so close with God, because I don't think it will ever happen for me.

Here's the conclusions that I've come to regarding these issues:

a.)  What I think about myself is not necessarily how others view me.  My friend Sarah read my blog, and she said I was a great writer.  When she told me that I gave her a look and said, "huh?"  She told me that when she reads my writing, it's as if she is actually having a conversation with me.

So I thought about that.  And decided that yes, that is what I am trying to do.  When I started this blog, I said it would be for family and friends, so I could tell them the events going on in my life.  So you can have a conversation with me without me actually being there.  I write in a similar way in my academic papers.  It's because I want my readers to get a sense of me, of who I am, where I come from and where I'm going.  It's my thoughts that are coming out on the page, no one else's.  I want you to know how I'm engaging with whatever I happen to be writing about.  Sounding academic is great, but when you lose your voice in your papers, you sound like you're simply spouting information.  There's nothing personal about it.  It could have come from anyone.  I want my papers to be uniquely me.

b.)  Even the most beautiful woman in the world compares herself to someone else.  It's just how we roll.  One of the beautiful women that I mentioned earlier told me the other day that she is jealous of my hair.  I was completely astonished.  Someone is comparing herself to me?  That just doesn't happen!  The fact is that there's always going to be things that we don't like about ourselves.  Whether that's our hair, teeth, sense of style, whatever.  I think it's more important to focus on what we do like about ourselves, instead of focusing on what we wish we had.  So let me tell you about what I like about myself.  At home, I'm generally surrounded by blue-eyed people.  But here, there's not so many, and as a result, I've come to the conclusion that I have some really fantastically blue eyes.  And it's awesome.

c.)  When it comes to my walk with God, there's really only one person I should be comparing myself to.  That person is Jesus.  All I need to do is try to be like him.  Not any of these other people that I know at school.  Because chances are, they've got stuff they're struggling with too.  Everyone falls short somewhere, it's not just me.

That wasn't seven million things.  It was two.  Hope you're okay with that.  When I started this blog post, this was not really what I intended to write about.  Sometimes, it's as if the words take over and I have no control.  Weird.  But apparently it was on my mind if I was writing about it.

Here's the funny story.  It's not really that funny, it just shows you a little bit about what life is like as a seminarian.

I was at work the other day, talking to a kid who is about 9.  He was talking about a comic book or a TV show or something, and said the word enemy.  So I said out loud, "hey, did you know the Hebrew word for enemy is oyev?" (Oyev is my Hebrew transliteration.  That's not really how it's spelled) He gave me a funny look.  Then I realized, he probably doesn't care.  He probably doesn't even know that the Hebrew language exists!  Only in seminary would you start putting Hebrew words in everyday conversations.

It's exam crunch time now, and I should be studying, so I'm going to do that.  Happy Sunday!

The Holes In My Armor

Originally Posted 11/22/11

Warning: Theological Content.  Also, this post is very long.

Today I’m going to talk about an issue that has been on my mind for…well, to be honest, the last few years.  Yes, you read that correctly, years.  It’s something that I’ve generally kept to myself, because I don’t always feel comfortable sharing this, because people don’t really understand.  You think you do, but you really don’t.  It's a really personal issue for me, and I don't know how to share it without getting into the gritty stuff that is my life.  So you're going to read the grit today.  This is the stuff I don't normally share with you, because it might make you angry.  You may still not understand.  But if I don't attempt to help you understand, I will regret it.

The issue is loneliness.

Oh, loneliness!  You might say.  I’ve been lonely before.  True.  Many of us have been lonely before.  But few of us have ever really suffered from true loneliness.

You see, loneliness is more than just being alone.  It’s more than just needing the physical presence of another person.  Loneliness goes deeper than that.  Loneliness means that you can be surrounded by people and still feel alone.  It’s the feeling that no one is there to meet your emotional needs.  There’s no one who loves you, BUT there’s also no one to give your love to.  It’s the feeling that there is no one to walk alongside you to share in your joys, your sorrows, to help you through troubled times.  Someone who understands not only your feelings, but also why you feel those feelings. There’s still more to loneliness than that, but I don’t know how to explain it.

Sharing your emotional needs with someone is essential for human functioning.  When we cannot do that, we are missing out on a basic himan need.  There’s a psychologist named Maslow, and he was the guy that identified some basic human needs.  He actually came up with a hierarchy, an order of needs that need to be met.  Here’s how I picture it:

Imagine your plane crashes on a deserted island.  You’re stranded.  You have no supplies. And you’re stuck there forever.  What’s the first thing you need? Food and water and other physiological needs.  That’s the first level of the hierarchy.  What comes next?  Shelter.  With shelter comes safety.  The next thing on the list: love.  Emotional needs are third.  Before a job, before confidence, before self-esteem.  Emotional needs are THAT important.  

Here's how I know all of this.  I am lonely.  So lonely that all I want to do is curl up in my bed and cry. And I have been feeling like this for at least 5 years.  Even amongst my family, I've felt lonely.  And for the past 5 years, you've been saying go out and make friends!  Meet new people!  Call up your old friends!

It's not that easy.

Being around people doesn't cure the loneliness.  If that were the case, I would have tried it a long time ago.  In fact, sometimes that makes it worse.  Because even if I was with my old friends, we weren't connecting on the emotional level that I needed to connect on.

Here's what I've heard my entire life: Beth, you're a Christian.  You have Jesus.  You shouldn't feel lonely because Jesus is always walking beside you.  Read the footprints poem.

Yes.  I know.  But.

Christian school teaches you how to be a fake Christian.  I'm like an M&M.  I have a candy-coated Christian shell, and a melty disinterested Christian on the inside.  I've accepted Jesus as my savior, I know what it means that he died for me, etc, etc.  Throw a theological or Biblical question at me, and I can probably answer it.  But I'm a baby Christian.  I have not had a true relationship with God ever.

Ever.  In my life.

As a result, I am lonely.  And that loneliness has become my idol.

Huh?

In church this past Sunday, the pastor was talking about things that are idols.  He quoted Tim Keller, who wrote that the things that we think about when we're by ourselves, with nothing pressing on our mind - those are our idols.  When you have down time, and you have nothing else to worry about, if you're not thinking about God, whatever you're thinking about is your idol.  When I have down time, I think about relationships.  I think about what could be if I were in a relationship with a guy.  I think that if I were in a relationship, that would solve all my problems, it would cure me.

Nope.  Here's the truth.  Our idols can't save us.  Only Jesus can.

Spiritual warfare is a real thing.  It happens, even if we don't talk about it.  Well, I'm going to talk about it.

Satan likes to attack our weak points.  I compare it to wearing armor.  When soldiers wear armor, their enemies always go for the weak spots, the holes in the armor.  Satan comes for our holes in our armor, and makes it really hard for us.  My hole is loneliness and my desire for a relationship.  That's where he gets me every time.  And makes it really hard to trust in Jesus alone.  He makes it hard to realize that Jesus can fulfill all my needs.

So.  I've finally figured out why I'm at Gordon-Conwell.  It's to work on my relationship with Jesus Christ.  To realize that Jesus is enough to fill my wants and needs.  Everything else - classes, work, studying, friendships, none of it is as important as my relationship with Christ.  For the first time ever, I am going to be in relationship with Christ.  I realize this is going to be a process.  And not an easy one. But my hope is that even if I've angered you, you will help me in this process, and encourage me to grow.