 Any counselor will tell you that you will never be free in any area of your life that you aren't willing to confront. ... Bring the darkness into the light. + Danielle StricklandI love The Ultimate Exodus: Finding Freedom From What Enslaves You by Danielle Strickland. I read Strickland's brief and bold work in two sittings, and I'm excited to see its potential accessibility and application for a broad variety of people unleashed, including myself. Plus, the stories are amazing. Here is a link to the two previous posts featuring excerpts from Strickland's book: + Picking Blackberries + Bushes on Fire + Confrontation + Don't Be Afraid Below is the last excerpt from this work, followed by 10 "Finding Freedom" questions.
Chapter 3 | Tiny Little Spider Bites
+ Exodus 3:1
I believe local communities of believers who are surrendered to living holy loves in the midst of the chaos and darkness of our world can change the world and impact a generation. Holiness runs straight through the deep pain of the world ... And yet I was living a sleepy, easy, comfortable life. And I knew that success somehow made me even more comfortable.
Story 1 | A Terrible, Wonderful Dream
One night I had a dream – a terrible, wonderful dream that began to change everything for me. I was walking through a doorway into a new room. There was a spiderweb covering the doorway, but I didn't realize it; I just walked through without seeing it. In the corner of the doorway was a big, fat, hairy spider. I didn't see the spider, didn't realize I had been bitten. I entered the room and immediately began to feel incredibly tired. I looked around and saw a cot in the middle of the room. I went straight there and lay down. As soon as I gave into the fatigue, I become completely paralyzed. I couldn't move. I was still conscious – I could tell where I was and what was going on – but I couldn't lift a finger. I was completely alive, but asleep. Before I knew it, tiny little spiders came from all over the room. From every corner they came pouring out. They began to devour me, one tiny little spider bite at a time. As you can imagine, I awoke from the dream horrified. I was deeply impacted by this crazy dream. But the dream kept coming. I asked some prayer people I knew to have an intervention with me to get this dream out of my life. So they gathered and we prayed. One of them suggested we should ask God for an interpretation of the dream. To my complete surprise, God revealed something that would change the course of my life forever. In my dream, I represented the people of God. The spider represented the "fat spirit" (comfort, the world). The cot is where we end up when we've been bitten by the world's spirit. Death is where comfort ends. But it's not death in a heroic way. It's a death by small, insignificant things. It's a slow and painful slide into the reality of slavery.
The slow, tepid pace of changing values is a major reason that slaves don't they they are slaves. Simply put, we spend time on things we value. Our values determine our time, energies, and efforts. We become enslaved to things we begin to worship. How do you spend your time? I live in a culture where work is the prominent value. Money is the other one. Spending money, to be more specific. I know a lot of people who work in such a way that it smells of slavery. They hardly ever see their kids or their spouses, can't participate in community or church life, are absent when their friends need them. Many of these people are working two jobs. Why do you work two jobs, I ask them? Money, money, money is always the answer. Why do you need more money? Once they get over the offense of me even asking the questions, they answer, "For my house, my truck, my car, my ... stuff." Stuff. Loads of it. Thousands and thousands of dollars spent on big screens, sound systems, video games, kitchen appliances, and on and on and on. We get good-paying jobs and start living at a standard that requires us to keep the job, or we up our standard so that we have to work even more. Soon, instead of working to live, we are living to work. We have become indebted to the very system we thought would liberate us. I can't tell you how many people I've met who've lost it all – kids, jobs, family, almost their own lives. When they realized they were slaves, it hit them so hard that they gave themselves over to hopelessness. Sometimes through the empty bottom of bottles of alcohol, sometimes through violence and drugs, sometimes just through depression and suicide attempts.
I remember reading a little book by Tom Sine way back when I first started ministry. In The Mustard Seed Conspiracy he predicted a grim future where a whole generation of people would become enslaved to money, work, and stuff. It was the first time I ever heard anyone calling the situation we were heading into (with all our motors running) slavery. Unless we were deliberate about recognizing our condition and choosing a different way, he argued, this would cause a terrible reaction in world missions, the local church, and social change. Once I read The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, I realized that I wanted to be a missionary in order to escape the oppressive culture I had become compliant with. The dominant spirit of money, greed, power, and control was so strong, so pervasive, that even though I saw what needed to happen and had a desire to live differently, I kept gravitating toward it. I didn't eat when I was hungry; I ate all the time. I ate what I felt like eating, not what my body needed. I watched copious amounts of television even though I didn't want to. I lived with my husband in a big house and didn't make room for those with no family or no home. I chose to believe that wealth meant success and success meant happiness and happiness meant bliss. And so I lived as though that's what I wanted. I was a slave to my own desire.
Do you have any idea who many people would love to do exactly what Jesus asks them but are literally stuck with a mortgage and a car payment and a college fund? Maybe life is not just about the things we accumulate or what others think of us. Perhaps life is much more valuable than all that. Perhaps we are created for a spiritual purpose. To be a blessing to the earth. To bring hope and freedom and truth and beauty to the world. What if life isn't a competition about which one of us is most important? What if every one of us is important? Freedom is found in this awakened understanding of our purpose. Slavery, by contrast, starts with a temptation to forget who we really are and why we are here. All of us are born with value, regardless of the circumstances of our natural birth. We were born to change the world. We were born for freedom. Our task in life is to come into agreement with God about who we are. This understanding that our value comes from God and not from ourselves or the world around us is liberating at our core. I remember Sine suggesting different ways to live. Instead of more money and more stuff (which would require more work), I started to aim for more time for ministry, more opportunity to serve and to give. Make less, give more.
In her book Willful Blindness, Margaret Heffernan writes of an undercurrent present in so many moral decisions made by people in circumstances and situations from around the world: the brain's natural tendency to believe the truth we want to be true rather than truth based on evidence. Willful blindness allows horrible injustices and immoral decisions to go unchecked – think the US banking mortgage collapse or the Enron scandal. Heffernan powerfully suggests these breakdowns can be avoided when as few as one or two people stop conforming to the pattern of willful blindness. Studying the traits of "whistle-blowers," Heffernan realizes that, far from troublemakers or pot stirrers, they are usually highly committed to the mission or cause at risk. They have an overriding desire for truth. They don't want to appear to be doing good; they really want to do good. And this leads them to decide for a deep moral integrity that can literally change the world.
I pray we will all be awakened to the tiny little spider bites that can lull us to sleep and lead us into slavery and death. The slide into slavery rarely comes in a glorious battle; more often it comes through small, incremental shifts in our thinking and living. The little compromises we make every day eat away at us. Nevertheless, they are based on and emanate from a big lie that we don't even notice we embrace: We surrender our identity at the door to the dominant image of the good life we're presented with. We accept the reality before us, even if it is in clear defiance of the reality God has invited us into. We settle into the values we've compromised and the lies we've embraced.
Finding Freedom Question
What cultural values – money, success, beauty, stuff, or something else – have seemed to be a particular temptation for you?
Chapter 17 | Staying Free
+ Deuteronomy 24:17-18 When you know that you are not only saved from something but for something, it frees you to get to the actual work of bring God's Kingdom to the world. This journey will not be easy or quick. It will take a lot of time and effort and energy. But it will be worth it.
Story 2 | Great Surfing (and Ministry) is Working and Waiting in the Midst of Chronos and Kairos
I remember visiting Australia and going to Bondi Beach in Sydney. Bondi Beach is famous for its surf, so I walked into a rental place on the beach and asked for a surfboard. Once they quizzed me and realized I only ever saw surfing in movies (I'm an avid fan of Point Break and Blue Crush), they relegated me to a boogie board and told me to stay between the flags. I was crushed. My hopes for surfing were dashed. But I wasn't destroyed; I still embarked on the boogie board of a lifetime. By that I mean I almost died trying to bodysurf. After a few hours of being pummeled by the sheer power of the ocean and the riff of the waves, I took a break and talked to a real surfer on the shore. I asked him the secret to good surfing. What he told me was more than information; it was revelation. He told me the secret to great surfing was working and waiting.
Catching a wave takes work. And it involves waiting. Every time. On the beach that day I realized something really important. Ministry is just like surfing.
The Scripture has two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is a measurement of time in quantity. Our calendars mark off chronos, our clocks keep us in chronos, and our lives revolve around the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years of chronos. We work and wait in chronos. Kairos is when time is suspended, when something magical happens. Time measured in quality, not quantity. Kairos is why God is always present, why now is the time, and today is the day, of salvation. God is always measuring time differently than we do – where we are trapped (on this side of eternity) in chronos, he is kairos. We love the kairos stuff. But the truth of the matter is that most of life is lived in chronos.
If we are real surfers – not wannabes but people willing to put in the time working and waiting – we will be attentive to both kinds of time, chronos and kairos. Real surfers love all the time in the ocean. You can't have the wave until you do the time. If you can't swim, can't wait, can't balance, then you can't surf. Once you break yourself in and learn to swim and paddle and hang out on the board, once you sense the rhythm and learn to read the signs and signals of the ocean, real surfers love it all. They forget that it's waiting and work. They love the whole thing. God is looking for people who love the whole thing. God is not just in the kairos moment. He's in every single moment. He's in the waiting and the working. He's using every single event and thing in your life to work his purposes out in your life. He is growing your faith, stretching your perseverance, infusing you with hope, uplifting you with joy. He is training and surfing with you. 10 Requirements for Training to Surf (Minister) Kingdom Style 1 | I'm committed to being a real follower of God. It's about the substance. Can I go the distance, against the current? 2 | I will put in the practice. I will not despise the small beginnings. I will not be discouraged by crashing and falling. I will get back on my board and try again. I will use every opportunity to grow the substance of faith required for every kairos moment. 3 | I will be disciplined. This will require me waking up early to pray. To actually read God's Word for what he wants to say to me. To study and learn and engage in culture. 4 | I will often speak about the wave. I will watch others surf – with longing and desire, yes, but also with awe and fear. I will listen and hear the kairos stories of others with joy because every time God shows up for anyone is evidence that he will show up for me, too. I will help others to fall in love with God by talking about his amazing power and the revelation of his love. 5 | I will try and not stop trying. I will fall and not stop falling if it means that one time I might be able to stand and surf for a while. I will crash and almost drown if necessary to learn to stand up and ride the wave. 6 | I will enjoy the ocean. I will choose to see time from God's perspective. I will commit to enjoying the journey – to consider it pure joy, even in the trials, to be present in the plan of salvation God has for the earth. 7 | I will spend the time. All the time I can will be spent in the ocean. Practicing, hanging, waiting, balancing, learning, trying, swimming – working and waiting. 8 | I will remind myself there is only one way to learn to surf: you have to get in the ocean. I'm going to minister. Evangelize. Pray. Serve. Sabbath. Give. Believe. By doing it, not talking about doing it, reading about doing it, listening to someone else doing it, berating myself for not doing it. I'm going to just get out and do it. 9 | I'm going to learn to surf when no one is watching. This is not about what people think of me, or what will get me the most positive feedback or best gig. This is about me and the ocean. This is a private battle. When I get really good, I won't care who is watching anymore. I'll be lost in the ocean – captured by the wave. 10 | I'll be proud to be called a surfer. I'll identify completely with the calling of God on my life. I won't apologize for not being like others or living a different way. I'll stop thinking I'm doing something wrong when I'm tired and sore. I will embrace what God has called and invited me to. This will be my joy. There's an undeniably big moment in the middle, when the people of God take a deep, collective breath and step out into the raging body of water. It's just another step in the passage of chronos time – until suddenly the waters part, and they find themselves surfing through kairos time. God is there. God is with them. They are free. Living not just a memory of a freedom moment, but living out the ultimate freedom – slaves no longer.
Finding Freedom Questions
Can you make the commitments listed above? Who can join you in this invitation to waiting and working, trusting that God is with you and will lead you into the kairos moments he's preparing you for?
10 Ultimate Exodus "Find Freedom" Questions for Prayer:
+ What are some of things – the expressions of goodness and beauty and life – that take your breath away? + How might God be trying to get your attention? + What scares you about the prospect of greater freedom in your life? + What do you need to do to move toward the pain in your journey toward freedom? + What can help you to embrace an emptying process so that God can do something new in and through you? + Can you think of some ways you resist the emptying process of the desert in your own life? (Example: Who do you need to forgive to be free?) + Is there a whisper you should be listening for? + What are you afraid of? (Example: What other people think? Insignificance? Failure? Weakness? Risk?) Why don't you try going to those places, in your prayers or your thoughts or in real life, and inviting God's presence into those spaces? Let Him show up right where your fear is. Let perfect love drive fear out. You will encounter the sign of God's presence and power as you invite Him in. Trust me: He'll be much bigger than you were expecting. + What disciplines can you incorporate into your life to stay active in your pursuit of freedom? + What is keeping you from Sabbath rest?
Next post: CN | Abbey of the Genesee Silent Retreat by Nouwen
Here are links to previous City Notes books: Christ is all, Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan |
The mission of Emmaus City Church is to be united with Jesus as He shares and shows His Gospel in, with, and for Worcester, MA. "As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus Himself suddenly came and began walking with them.” + Luke 24:15
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
CN | The Ultimate Exodus: Tiny Spider Bites + Staying Free
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