Loving the Unlovely.

What you say and do has a bigger influence than you think.
I just finished reading an email from a friend of mine who used to go to my school (which is a CHRSTIAN school, staunch Baptist.) He left last year because he had gone there since preschool, and he still felt that he didn't fit in. I don't know when the rumours started, but some guys started telling everyone that he was bisexual, and then gay...and I know he wasn't always this way because he liked my friend (who was a girl) when we were in ninth grade and last year he asked me to homecoming. These guys thought it'd be funny to creep out one of their friends, a "homophobic", so they told this friend of mine to go in the bathroom and corner the guy to creep him out. And he did. Nearly everyone made fun of him...and he wasn't unaware of this.
A little while before he left the school, he wrote me a letter confessing all kinds of hurts in his life, and I won't expose those but I will say that he was hurting. A LOT. He felt used. Situations at home were far from perfect, and he contemplated suicide all the time.
In the email I got tonight, he said "What bothers me the most about [your school] is that they make fun of people for being different, I became so stressed, I almost killed myself, then I found a friend in something that didn't judge me, didn't bother me, didn't put me down, it was music. It opened my mind to the ideals that being different scares people and that can mean being superior." Marilyn Manson understood his hurts, Marilyn Manson's lyrics applied to him. His gay friends understood him, his gay friends accepted him. His boyfriend cares about him. And as for everybody else: if you can't make them love you, make them fear you. So he spread some death threat rumours, told people he was communist, etc. etc. And mission accomplished: everyone feared him.
My friends, we failed at showing this guy the love of Christ. When he was telling me about his new school, he even said "there are a lot more nice people there than there are at my school (which is sad, cause many would think the opposite.)" 2 Corinthians 5:20 says "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us..." We've done a pretty bad job representing the love that Jesus has shown us. How is he to know that a Saviour loves him? He's heard the gospel a zillion times, but he hasn't SEEN the gospel, if that makes sense. The Marilyn Manson song he told me about that really had lyrics that applied to him has a part that says "I never really hated a one true god but the God of the people I hated." If God acts anything like "His people" do, then he's not interested. OUCH.
Do know that I'm not trying to preach to you guys and hate on everyone, because I have done a cruddy job loving others too, but man...how far will we go for a joke? He mentioned that another thing he didn't like about my school was that some find it humorous that they think some people are going to burn in hell. You guys, hell isn't a joke. Hell is for real. It is a sick nasty place worse than anything we can ever imagine; it is eternal separation from God and that is sickening. Yet we joke "haha you're gonna go to hell for that", etc. etc. Is it really worth it? (And while I'm on that note, I just want to remind you guys, especially those of you who have been walking in Christian circles for a long time: don't get so comfortable with the things of God that you no longer fear Him. And when I say fear I mean revere Him...a lot of times it's very easy to make jokes about Him or to so casually mention the name of Jesus, and we don't realize the power that is in the Name and we obviously don't have a good picture of how truly awesome our LORD is. Just a reminder.)
Is it worth it, friends, to joke about gay people? Their lifestyle is wrong, yessir, and homosexuality is a choice they have to make for themselves, but most of the time it's our fault for leading them on that path anyways. If they're told constantly "haha you're gay" or "go away, faggot" then it might enter their brains that maybe they are. It's like eating disorders...if a perfectly normal-sized girl hears some people snickering about her weight, she'll think "Oh my goodness I'm fat" and she might develop an eating disorder...was she really "fat"? No. But others' heartless words led her to believe that. And she acted upon it.
I just want to challenge you guys: watch your tongue. Watch your facial expressions. People notice if you exchange judgmental glances with a friend after someone said something a little odd. We're ripping people apart with our words. What we may see as harmless leads the harmed to go home and long for dying!
It's far better to be known for being silent than to be known for tearing down others. And the latter is far easier to do; I think those who don't talk that much have a lot more wisdom than the rest of us.
So, my friends, I'm asking you to love people. Yeah, they might say or do strange things and it might be really easy to make fun of them (even behind their backs), but right now what they're not getting from Christians is love, and they're not getting the gospel. I beg of you, please...love the "unlovely."

Eaten Up.

God totally shook me this week, and it seems like everything I’ve been learning lately at church, in my quiet times, through books I’m reading, and through my music has culminated and been summed up by Psalm 69:9:

“Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.”

I learned this verse while reading in John 2 (this is the NKJV)...
“Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, ‘Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!’ Then His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.’”

Jesus was so “eaten up” (in Hebrew it means ‘destroyed’ and ‘consumed’) with passion for God that He absolutely hated the things that God hates, and absolutely loved the things that God loves. A few weeks ago one of my friends was teaching my Sunday School class about the holiness of God, and how since He is such a holy perfect God, He hates sin more than we ever could understand. (And let me clarify what I mean by sin; sin is not “drugs, sex, and rap music.” When I talk about sin I mean doing stuff that makes God sad, or failing to do stuff that makes God happy…basically sin is rebellion against God...and every single one of us is very very guilty of that, even if you don’t do the “typical” stuff that the “moral” people look down upon.) So since God is so holy and just, when He sees us giving in to the flesh rather than surrendering to Him, it’s like we’re drinking someone else’s vomit, which is absolutely disgusting, but still not an adequate portrayal of how God sees sin. So in order for us who sin to be able to have a relationship with such a holy God, Jesus (the sinless one) came to die for us sinners before we even knew Him. (Romans 5!) What a beautiful way for both God’s love and His justice to be satisfied!

So anyways, Jesus saw sin like God saw it…so when He saw people making a mockery of the temple, He was angry. And He did something about it. May we be so consumed by God that we love the things He loves and hates the things He hates too. This should radically change the way we live our lives. In Isaiah 6, upon encountering God, Isaiah said “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” In this verse, “ruined” also means to be destroyed. So God, upon us seeing Him, will ruin who we are and rebuild us to who He wants us to be…so what a beautiful destruction!

Lately I’ve read some awesome books by people who have been “ruined” by God. Gary Witherall wrote a book called “Total Abandon” that talks about how he and his wife Bonnie were serving as missionaries in Lebanon. They were “souled out” to God; forsaking all that they were to be used by God in a country that was very closed to Christians. Bonnie was killed on November 21, 2002, by a Muslim extremist…and Gary, through his pain, forgave her murderer and continued serving God. Gary Witherall was ruined.

On Tuesday I started reading “Through Gates of Splendor” by Elisabeth Elliot. (She is the wife of Jim Elliot, one of the men speared by the Auca Indians while trying to show the love of Christ.) I haven't even really gotten to the part where he's a missionary yet; just his journal entries from his early life are so insightful.

After trying to lead Gospel meetings for youths that turned out very unsuccessful, he wrote "This problem of meeting a culture with truth from God is the most difficult kind of thing. One comes as a renovator, a conditioner of society, and society is in no mood to be conditioned. The fixedness of the human mind is the wall of Jericho to Gospel preaching. GOD must shake, or there will be no shaking." Wow! What a beautiful picture of salvation! Jericho, like the lost soul, is closed to Him and is perfectly content with the wickedness going on inside. And He commands us Christians to "walk around the walls" to pray for these people and proclaim to them the gospel, and when the time is right, if He so chooses, Jesus tears the walls of their stony hearts down, and He enters. He alone is capable of this beautiful destruction. Praise God for destroying the walls of Jericho around my own heart, so that He may enter in!

Another thing Jim said that I thought was totally cool was in a letter he wrote to his parents regarding his numerous awards and achievements for academics, wrestling, popularity, the whole gamut. But in spite of this, he said, "The LORD has given me a hunger for righteousness and piety that alone can be of Himself. Such hungering He alone can satisfy, yet satan would delude and cast up all sorts of baubles, social life, a name renowned, a position of importance, scholastic attainment. What are these but the objects of the 'desire of the Gentiles' whose cravings are warped perverted. Surely they can mean nothing to to the soul who has seen the beauty of Jesus Christ...life is not here, but hid above with Christ in God, and therein I rejoice and sing as I think on such high exaltation." I think we all can look at our own lives or our little trophy closet and see all the accomplishments we’ve made and, even if we don’t say it out loud, we take great pride in them. Truly, in light of the Kingdom of God, these things mean nothing! When I get to Heaven God won't say "Good job being homecoming representative in tenth grade, Hope. I always wanted you to be kinda popular." NO NO NO NO! If I were truly unashamed of the gospel (Romans 1:16 yay!) I would have a great deal less friends. I have abused the gift of encouragement that God has given me to make friends and increase social status...life is such a vapor, and all these things are vapors too, vapors in which I once and delighted and of now am ashamed. (In case you can’t tell, striving for popularity is one of my biggest struggles haha.)

Jim’s friend Ed McCully said this as God was working on his heart to come to Ecuador: "I have one desire now: to live a life of reckless abandon for the LORD, putting all my energy and strength into it. Maybe He'll send me someplace where the name of Jesus Christ is unknown...I'm taking the LORD at His word, and I'm trusting Him to prove His Word. It's kind of like putting all your eggs in one basket, but we've already put our trust in Him for salvation, so why not do it as far as our life is concerned? If there's nothing to this business of eternal life we might as well lose everything in one crack and throw our present life away with our life hereafter. But if there IS something to it; then everything else the LORD says must hold true likewise."

What a good point! If we trust Jesus for salvation (which is a biggie) why don't we trust Him for His direction in our lives? Why don’t we trust Him to abolish who we are and recreate us to who He wants us to be? One time a girl named Lauren was being introduced to speak to our youth group, and my youth pastor described her as “There’s not much of Lauren left.” WOW! God shines so brightly through her that (for the most part) her personality is not her own, her words are not her own; her every thought is geared towards pleasing God. Such is a life that has been “eaten up” by zeal for His house.

I’ll close with this example that I heard on Wednesday: Sometimes in forestry it’s necessary to make something called a “prescribed burn” where the forest is set on fire, but it’s controlled in such a way that it doesn’t destroy any more than what’s needed. By setting the forest on fire, the old is destroyed and new life begins. Some seeds (such as sequoia) are actually dormant until fire breaks down the seed coating. We need God to destroy who we are and replace us with who He is; it might be painful to let go of things we always loved or start doing things we always hated, but we must remember that God’s ways are always best, no exceptions.

So surrender yourself to Him.
Ask to be consumed with passion for Him.
Love Him.
Live for Him.
Be ruined by Him.
Do it.
I dare you.