Stepping Up
Football
Stick with me for a minute because there will be a football analogy, but it is one that everyone will be able to understand.
The quarterback on a football team is the guy who initially gets the ball and either throws it to someone else, or hands it off to someone else. When he steps back to throw it, he is moving away from 3 to 8 super huge guys who are trying their best to hit him really really hard. The quarterback has friends though. He has 4 to 6 guys who are trying to push the other guys back. But pushing forward is always easier than holding back, and eventually the 3 to 8 super big, super sweaty, super mad guys will come crashing through. It is that moment that I want to talk about, because it is at that moment that the successful quarterback (read: yourself here), instead of running away, will step forward.
This is weird, but the guy actually walks into the onrushing angry guys, and if he is confident enough and times it right, the momentum of the guys who want to turn the him into jelly carry them past him. At this point the quarterback has created more options for himself and his team. This is a very fun and interesting thing to watch, and reminds me a lot of what it means to persevere in the face of our own sin and low self-esteme.
You may hate sports or football, but what you understand at your soul level, is that what we look for in our entertainment is the bravery and courage that we want to possess in ourselves.
But beneath it all is a fear that we are not good enough.
The current worldview is the way that most people see the world and themselves. The current worldview says “you’re too small, or poor, or weak, or sinful, or ugly, or not the right gender, or not the right age to have any power or voice or fulfillment”. The current worldview is the anti-gospel. It is the lie of perfectionism that says: for you to be of any consequence whatsoever, you have to live up to some invisible and impossible standard. It says: that to have value you must be perfect.
The big BUT (I like big BUTs)
The big “BUT” is that God (the creator of the universe), does not expect perfection from us, AND loves us anyway. The message of the Son incarnate is singular in its scope and meaning: we are fallen, we are loved, we are worth risking existence for. The current worldview becomes anti-Christ when it changes the message of Jesus’ unconditional love to a cheap message of the tollbooth: come to worship, but first clean up your act.
We have churches full of people who are not saved - not saved from their sins. They may be forgiven by God, but not by each other and certainly not by themselves. Many in the church are great at marathons - marathon lives at putting up false fronts, marathon lives of running from guilt, marathon lives of not ever coming close to (but endlessly circling) the Gospel of grace.
Leave the marathon behind.
Step up and let the bad rush past you.
Step up into community with us.
Step up into the unmerited and unconditional love of God.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
My favorite definition of love is this: Love is when you love someone for who they are and for who they aren’t.
God loves us exactly where we aren’t and exactly where we aren’t.
I think it does take courage to accept that, because it requires us to forgive ourselves and love ourselves, and to forgive and love others.
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I think this is something we need to be reminded of all the time. People come through the doors of our church knowing they have messed up. When your alcoholic next door neighbor has her third child out of wedlock, she knows her life is a mess. When your office-mate annoys the daylights out of everyone at the company, he knows he’s socially inept. But, the reason we exist as a community of faith is to carve out a place in this world, which is already just thrilled to beat people up, where they can come and be known…really known…and be safe. Are we expecting them to get their lives cleaned up before they come? Or, are we seeking them out, wooing them the very same way that God is wooing us and them? Are our own hearts big enough to say to them, “God absolutely and passionately delights in you!”?
It’s so easy to say, “Yes, of course we do.†But, you know, this week, I was talking with some people from our church about a woman who doesn’t attend Evergreen. She is one messed up, broken, hurting woman who has made several really bad choices in her life. One person joked about part of her circumstances which involved crimes committed against her and another mentioned another area of failure with the connotation of…â€Can you believe that?†My heart just broke. They saw a sad and scandalous joke. I saw a woman who desperately seeks love and security in the wrong places and is now totally devoid of hope. And I asked myself, “How often do you do exactly the same thing?”
The people who were talking are good people. They love God and they are passionately committed to helping others in their walk. This isn’t about “those terrible judgmental peopleâ€. This is about each one of us going before God regularly and asking, “Am I loving those who are precious to You? Do my thoughts about people who are not like me please You? Am I expecting others to get cleaned up before they come to you if their sins are different from my own? Or if they are the same ones I struggle with? Who do I think about with a lack of grace and love?†I’ve almost been afraid to pray ever since.