SKUBALON...AND...HOLDING IT ALL IN AN OPEN HAND

It shouldn't surprise me that Satan continues to wage war, and that he's good at it. But it is always harder i.e.., more humiliating, to admit that he has found your weakness when you are in a leadership role. I have had the privilege, as of late to be in the position where I have had to ask forgiveness and admit I was wrong. (Believe it or not this is not a novel position I find myself in. It happens daily with my husband and my children, but this is on a more grander/less intimate scale.) I say privilege because for me, someone who continues to contend with the heart-sins of pride and a critical spirit, coming face to face with my wretchedness has a cleansing affect on me. It brings me to a place where I am stripped of any self-aggrandizement my mind wishes to indulge in. As a friend said best, it puts me in the place I love to be in the most, "in the dirt at the foot of the cross". What a precious place! What a sorrowfully sweet place. To be reminded-again!-that I am nothing. That the only thing I have to boast in (as Paul so eloquently put it) is Christ crucified. Everything else is skubalon! I stepped in a pile of skubalon once-with bare feet...yeah.

I can be the most confident leader, fully prepared for every scenario. Equipped up the yazoo with contingencies, strategies and methods. If these fail, I can do the whole thing by myself. After all, it takes longer to train somebody to do something than it does to just do it yourself, and then you don't have to deal with their learning curves. But I continue to learn in deeper and deeper ways what Paul was really getting at when he says in our weakness He is strong. It is precisely at these moments of utter weakness, inadequateness, ineptness and failures; when God takes a screw-up who can not possibly______! and chooses to use them AND their failure to 1) bring glory to Himself and 2) accomplish His purposes!

All my righteousness is filthy rags, and only a girl post menstrual can fully appreciate that simile! Hah!! I love the way the bible is so graphic. Thank God for making the gospel so simple, even if it is hard to believe (see John MacArthur's book, Hard To Believe--most excellent!). That is another post. So is the next point leaning around the corner of my mind: the relevancy of the gospel. I have many thoughts on the faithfulness vs. relevancy debate...I never promise profound thoughts, just thoughts. I've gapped. Redirect.

It is the most vulnerable place to be. The place when you are face to face with your sin, and you confess that sin to others. It is past the point of justifying, shifting blame or making excuses. I don't think that there is room in that moment for pride, at least I don't believe I've ever experienced it there. I leave room for error in this as I am acutely aware that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. No one short of the One who judges our deepest thoughts and motives can ever know.

So, Zachary survived Wildwood Leadership Camp, Haiti and the Navajo Reservation, but the day he came home he almost slices off three fingers with a machete. After a trip to the emergency room, 27ish stitches, a trip to a hand specialist, surgery scheduled for Wednesday and many many talks about what the Lord is trying to teach Zach and us through this experience, I have been mulling over in my mind holding "things" in an open hand. This has been a recurring topic in our band throughout the years, as God gives and takes away. Zachary and I discussed the possibility of God using this experience to make him aware of the fact that his guitar playing could be an idol-worse case. Or just something that he must be willing to hold in an open hand before God. In his heart, allowing God to take that away if He chooses. Not inferring that we can give God the green light-that's laughable, and definitely not suggesting that God is fickle and hasn't made up His mind. Yes, a blast to the openness theology heresy. But recognizing that we have nothing, ability, personality, instinct, gift, that He hasn't given us. It is all His to do as He wills for His glory and for our good. Zachary loves playing! It probably gives him the greatest joy. He feels the closest to Jesus when he is playing/worshipping. Yet even those good amazing things that God gives us, those things that we may think define our closeness to Him. They are not HIM!! They need to be held in an open hand stretched out to God. A sacrifice to Him. I think that when we begin to close our fist and pull it to our chest it becomes skubalon. Hard lessons to learn...