Sam and the Weary Soldier
I've been thinking a great deal about truth and deception of late. In my heart I know I still have many pre-conceived ideas about God and what he wants to do in me and in us. As we start our new season of choir I would like for us to begin to think about approaching Jesus and our worship of him with a heart that is completely unfettered by notions of what he is going to do in and through us. We want him to have His way, and we don't want to dictate to him what "His way" might look like. We want to be totally yielded to him. To that end, I offer up this short story that I hope you will enjoy.
Sam was two years old when his father went to war. His father had been captured behind enemy lines and held prisoner for 5 years. Now, at age 7, Sam was about to see his father again for the first time since his release from captivity. Images of his dad, never more than vague impressions, had faded over time. By now, what Sam knew about his Father he had gathered into his inner world from a faded picture album his mom kept on the piano, and fond stories she would tell him as he drifted off to sleep.
His father was a soldier and very brave she had told him. He fought for his country and he was a hero. Sam imagined his father in a solemn ceremony receiving a medal from a stern and official looking man. People were clapping and bowing. His mom told him his father was a leader of a platoon and that other men looked up to him and respected him. Sam imagined his dad gesturing and signaling his men to close in on the enemy as shells and gunfire erupted around him.
She told him his dad loved him very much and always thought of him the whole time he was away. She told him that just the thought of Sam helped to keep his dad alive during his captivity. Sam wondered how a man could be so strong and brave. He didn't think he could ever make it through something so terrible.
A son growing up without a father has a strong idea of what a father aught to be. His idea grows out of his need and his longing for a father who is present. Sam was no different. In his inner world his dad lived as a caricature of the perfect father. He was a strong, young man. He knew everything. He never corrected Sam. He never said anything that was hard to understand. He always played with Sam - right down on the floor. He was the perfect dad. Perfect in so far as a young boy can imagine him. He was an impressive image to be sure - but shallow… not so much a portrait as pencil sketch by an unskilled artist.
Now, as he waited anxiously at the airport gate, Sam wasn't really wondering about the man that would emerge from the plane. He thought he knew him pretty well. He was expecting the man of his imagination. His dad... his hero... his mentor... his playmate... his protector and defender.
The man who emerged was slightly bent from the years of solitude and mistreatment - but he still bore the posture of a soldier. His eyes were sunken and his cheeks hollow. He wore his uniform proudly and saluted the officer waiting to greet him, but he had an air of weariness… the air of a man at the end of a very long journey that few had traveled. The horrors of war were not yet a distant memory that could be broached in the company of fellow soldiers. They were too recent. He had given much and he was tired.
"Is this my dad?" thought Sam. Sam was struck mute as the man came closer. Although he could not have expressed it, something was happening to his image of his father. It was morphing from fantasy into reality. At 7 years old some ideas are difficult to grasp, but Sam began to understand that his father was a real man who had suffered. All of the things he knew about his dad, his heroism and leadership, his devotion to his country, and his love for his son and wife, began to take on body and form in his heart. Fantasy gave way to reality as he began to see his dad as a real person for the first time.
The weary soldier approached the crowd - many admirers and well wishers stopping him to clasp his hand and wish him well. He replied politely as his eyes searched the crowd for someone. Finally he spotted them... a woman and a small boy holding her hand. The soldier's eyes went from weary to alert and sparkling in an instant. His paced quickened and he nearly ran as he finally - at long last - found himself in her arms again. Sam stood very near, looking up in wonder. The soldier, laughing and looking down at him, wrapped his thin and wiry arm around him and pulled him into the embrace as well - crying and laughing and hugging and crying some more. They were a family again. Sam thought, "I wonder what happens next?"
This simple story reminds me of what Paul said in 1 Cor 13:11-12:
Do I believe that my caricature of God reflects him accurately? Do I blissfully presume to "know" who his is... his nature and his mind? I suspect that while I'm analyzing crayons and water colors, God is the Cistene Chapel. I "see a poor reflection as in a mirror" - and remember that mirrors in Paul's day were little more than polished brass.
I want that same moment of wonder that Sam had with his father - that moment where I see Jesus and what I know about Him takes shape in my heart as reality. Can we, as worshipers, find a way to see through our own preconceptions? Can we discover the new thing that God wants to do? Do we bind God with our memory and our fantasy and our point of view and even our theology? Is the God we worship a caricature... a pencil sketch... or is He the real thing? I wish we were less comfortable with our own view and more anxious to see him as He is. Often I think we believe we are "finding the river" when in reality we are simply sinking into a comfort zone of worship. We need to ask ourselves if we worship for medication or fortransformation.
Spiritual Lemmings
Sometimes I think we presume how God aught to move based on how he is moving on others. I find it odd that people associate a location with the move of God rather than hearts. God moves on hearts. When enough hearts are bound together in faith and yielded to him there is a group dynamic that occurs. We sometimes call it revival, but it is really a breakthrough of unity and repentance. We forget that this renewal experience is available anywhere that 2 or 3 are gathered together in His name. It's not unique to a place. It is unique to the people in that place who have chosen to come together. It requires hunger, repentance and what my father used to call waiting on God. With our blackberries and cell phones and Tivos we are not so enamored with waiting anymore.
When I was a boy I remember fishing with my father at a smallish lake in Eastern IA named "Cody Lake". We fished for catfish and we had very different approaches. My father would find a spot under a shady willow. He would bait his hook and, using a Y shaped branch stuck in the ground, he would prop up his pole and wind the line taut. Then, he would wait. It was maddening. He would simply wait. He had infinite patience with catfish.
My brother and I marched up and down the shoreline casting here and there. Trying to figure out where the fish were biting. Meanwhile Dad sat peacefully eating sardines and crackers in a lawn chair while keeping and eye on his pole. I would usually catch a few bullheads and blue gills while restlessly trying different spots, but Dad was quite content to wait.
After an hour or so we usually noticed some movement from Dad. Sure enough he had a bite. He would lean down and ever so slowly reel his line in just a bit to make sure the line was taut. Then he would wait for the right moment. He could crouch there, hands at the ready, staring intently at the tip of his pole, for minutes at a time. When the fish finally took the bait he would leap into action and set the hook. The result? Usually Dad came back from fishing with a stringer of 4 or 5 pound catfish while most of my fish were too small to keep.
When it comes to seeking God are we busy running around looking for a bite, or are we waiting on Him with an open heart? I suspect we are far more like my brother and I than we are like Dad. We seem to think God is busy playing favorites and picking sides. We focus on the "place" where God is moving and take trips to Florida and Texas and Colorado to "see the move of God". Sometimes we focus on the "movement" that God is using. We end up aping a particular kind of music. We read the most popular books and mirror the theology of the most popular preachers and churches. We even focus on who God is using. We create followings around individuals and we are over-awed that a particular person is especially anointed.
In each of these cases we are forgetting that the enemy wants to distract us from the one thing that really matters - who God is. There's nothing wrong with traveling to hear a speaker or reading a good book from an annointed man or woman of God, but why focus on the movement or the place or the messenger? None of these things is lasting. None of these things is any more than an imperfectly polished piece of first century brass. He is the source. He is the river. We need to find a way to make him the center of our focus - to see him as he is and not as he is reflected in all of these other things. And it starts with that same patience demonstrated by a wily cat fisherman. We need to get our house in order and then wait upon God.
Killer Expectations
Of course we also presume how God aught to move based on what we expect to happen. When God shows Himself in some powerful way we are moved and touched and overwhelmed with awe. Unfortunately we too often spend the rest of our spiritual energy trying to recreate the feelings and circumstances of that moment rather than continuing to focus on Jesus.
I grew up in Pentecostal churches. Most of them were fairly traditional and included hand clapping, speaking and praying in tongues, gifts of the spirit, healing services, "tent" meetings. The preaching was fiery and energetic. My father, a mild mannered man in most respects, can bring the house down with smoke and thunder. I was never quite able to master the art of preaching in the Pentecostal style.
Years ago in eastern Iowa, Dad invited a traveling evangelist to come and hold services in our small town church. We'll call him Brother Tom. He had a massive pompadour of sandy blond hair, a cleft chin, and a huge basso-profundo voice that could scare sinners clear down at the tavern on the river. Brother Tom's thunderous sermons would shake the thin window panes in our simple one story church. The first time he came to preach revival broke out and over 400 hundred souls flocked to our small sanctuary. Services stretched past midnight as folks fell on their faces and sought God in repentance and sincere longing to see him move.
Brother Tom was an anointed and sincere man. He seemed truly taken with a passion to see God move on his people. But even back then Brother Tom's revivals had started to come with a feature. Tom was beginning to specialize. In most of his revivals folks were being "slain in the spirit", alternately known as "falling under the power of the Holy Spirit" or just "falling under". You may have seen this before even in some of our services. A person being prayed for (or sometimes just worshiping) will be overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit and fall down to the floor. Some folks go straight and tall with a great "thump" like a fur tree hewn in the forest while others slump to the ground in a jumble of arms and legs.
I have seen folks "go under" and stay prone for hours. I myself have been "slain" a half a dozen times and I remember each one vividly. When God works this way it is wonderful and powerful. But Brother Tom began to notice that it was a special feature of his revivals. He began to believe he was gifted to see folks slain in the spirit. Indeed, folks began coming to his services with the intent to see folks slain or to be slain themselves (rather like the coliseum without the lions).
My brother and I (ages 7 and 9) took on the task of defending modesty during these services. In our conservative church, all of the women wore skirts. When they fell it sometimes resulted in the display of a knee or two. We would walk around the alter area and politely ask men for their suit coat jackets (everyone wore jackets in those days). Then, we would wait for a woman to be slain and we would discreetly cover up her legs as she lay prostrate. It was a little like being a bat boy. We would wait in the on deck area and rush out and do our job as soon as a lady fell.
After that first revival, Dad had Brother Tom back year after year. His services became more and more about the slayings. I remember Brother Tom and Dad talking about how good a service was and saying things like "18 filled with the Holy Spirit, 15 saved and 33 slain" - a bit of a cross between a Gallup poll and a police blotter. Brother Tom got pretty good at getting people to fall too. He would work up quite a sweat praying down the glory in the prayer line.
As he got older he started giving them a bit of a push. Brother Tom started to take signs of resistance personally, or as a lack of faith. His prayer would intensify and he would talk about "yielding" to the Holy Spirit and "letting go". The crowd was with him too. Pretty soon some folks would go up to get slain and others would go up as a test to see if they could resist being slain.
Now I don't doubt the sincerity of most of the folks who were slain. As an active participant in such events I can testify that God does move in this way from time to time. I don't even doubt Brother Tom's sincerity. He was a generous, loving and deeply spiritual man. He went on to write a book on the Biblical principles surrounding being slain in the Spirit. But I do doubt the impact of these later revivals. They seemed to become all about the show of being slain in the Spirit. I suspect it was a caricature of Jesus we were seeing and that we missed what he was really trying to show us.
Here's the painful truth. We are easily sidetracked by the effects of God's move. Like children who think Christmas is more about toys than family, we rush off to play and forget our benefactor. There is no litmus test for God's move - no paricular manifestation that means revival. I firmly believe that one of the keys to seeing God move is to be open to whatever he has planned. If we can divest ourselves of our preconceptions about Him... if we can turn away from our crayons and pencil sketches and lift our eyes we might see Him in fullness and majesty - as He is, not as we imagine him.
We need to allow God to move in His way and in His time and in confirmation of His Word and His character. I suspect that if you looked at the genuine revivals in history you would find that very few of them began with a formula borrowed from past experience or copied from another move of God somewhere else. Instead, they started with open people actively moving toward God, turning away from self and yielding to Him. Why imitate the effects when you can go to the source?
Change is Hard
Ah... but there is a reason we choose comfort. Change is hard. Exposure to God's move - to his holiness, his sense of justice, his immeasurable mercy and love - these things always compel changes in us as a body and as individuals. We cannot leave the true presence of God unchanged. The move of God is awesome, but not in the same way that a husker victory or a new pair of shoes is awesome. It's awesome in the way a hurricane or massive forest fire is awesome. It can inspire wonder, but also terror. To embrace His move we have to trust Him. We have to let go and yield to His will.
Jesus, as we enter this season of choir help us to embrace what you have in store for us. Help us break free of our notions of who you are and show us your face. May we be exposed to you in a new way, and may we never be the same.
Choir Director, singer, piano player, technologist and erstwhile blogger.