Disconnected

While I was home over Spring Break, I had the opportunity to grab coffee with one of my oldest friends. It was so refreshing to sit and talk about what the Lord is doing here in these seasons of our lives, to reflect on where we have been, and to dream about where we are going. As my friend caught me up on everything going on back home, one thing she told me really caught my attention. On Wednesday nights, our staff and volunteers have been doing Youth Alpha with our high school students. Youth Alpha is designed to spark questions and create discussion among the students about the core beliefs of Christianity. As my two friends sat down leading their group of high school sophomores, one student spoke up and said something like this, "God is like the wifi. I want to know him, but I don't have the password." What a profound statement out of the mouth of this fifteen year old kid.

What he was articulating in that moment, maybe more clearly that any other student I have ever heard, was the disconnect he was feeling between himself and his creator. He wasn't struggling with the idea of God, he wasn't battling to accept the existence of God, he was losing the fight to find himself connected with God. This is the reality for every person who has never accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. They may believe in God, they may know he's real and want to see what he is doing, but they don't have the access required to be a part of it. We've all sat in coffee shops or friends' living rooms and tried unsuccessfully to guess the password to the highly coveted, free wifi. Very rarely have I been successful in doing so. People riddle their passwords with capital letters and numbers of seemingly no significance making it impossible for me to know what it is without getting up and asking. God didn't complicate things, though. He didn't create some long, impossible to remember password, and he doesn't keep it hidden where his houseguests can't find it. He simply humbled himself, became a man, took my place on the cross, and overcame death so that I could type in "Jesus" next to "password" and have access to the Father.

We don't have to live disconnected. If I'm honest, though, somedays I feel like my connection is pretty slow. Some days, I go into my network preferences and start typing in alternative passwords. I try things like "personal achievements" or "relationships" or "self-gratification" or "good intentions" and then I find myself in the middle of weeks like this one and it feels like I'm back on dial-up. You remember those days, right? Only one person can use the internet at a time, if I'm on the internet then you can't use the phone, it takes a solid 5 minutes to even get onto your home page, and good luck googling anything really quick because it just isn't going to happen. I get frustrated and want to throw my laptop across the floor, but the whole thing could be solved if I would just stop trying to fix what isn't broken. I get frustrated and want to lie down and give up, but the whole thing could be solved if I would just stop trying to substitute things for Jesus.

Forget Me Not

I love reading the heart of King David poured out on the pages of Psalms. There is something significant that happens on the inside of me as I read and see the reflections of a man who was able to articulate so rawly how I am feeling, yet still be called a man after God's own heart. One of his songs in particular has resonated so deeply within me as I walk through this new season of transition in my life.

"As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you O God. My soul THIRSTS for God, for the living God. When shall I come and see his face? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?' These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar."

As I read this passage out of Psalm 42 this morning and the emphasized words above jumped off the page, the Lord spoke something to me so clearly. "I can lift your soul and still your heart if you will just remember me. When did you stop thirsting?" Knife. To. The. Heart. My first reaction was to defend myself with, "Excuse me, Jesus? Yeah, hey, real quick question... what exactly do you mean by remember you? Also, I'm pretty sure I am DYING of dehydration over here I'm so thirsty. Did you not read my last blog post?"

Realizing that probably wasn't the best approach, I stopped for a moment to gaze with him into my own heart. Typical Jesus, he had a point. I suffer from severe spiritual amnesia sometimes. I find myself in the middle of the rushing river of life and it's trials, and my first reaction is to fix my eyes on the tide. My heart quickly wearies from the striving as I tread water attempting to stay afloat. I forget the rivers that he dried up before my eyes and the waters that he parted so that I could walk across on dry ground. If I could just stop for a moment and remember his faithfulness, his steadfastness, and his consistency, my heart would not tire. Here is Jesus saying "Alexis, forget me not in the middle of your battles."

In addition to the amnesia that creeps in in the midst of my battles, I also tend to suffer from memory loss in the middle of the mundane. There are days that I complete and feel really great about, days I complete and feel really determined never to repeat, and then there are days that I complete and I feel absolutely nothing. There was no thirst. My soul was not in want for the face of God. Perhaps I didn't experience a great enough accomplishment that I felt I owed credit where credit was due (Jesus forgive me when I forget EVERY good thing comes from you), or perhaps I didn't experience a great enough challenge that that I felt I needed to ask for help (Dad teach me to rely on you for my very being). Here is Jesus saying "Alexis, forget me not in the middle of the mundane."

Can you say "heart check?" I had a major one this morning. So many times we forget to place the Lord ever before our eyes. We fill ourselves to overflowing with all the wrong things until there is no thirst left in us. The only possible solution is to imitate David as he spoke to his soul, prodding it to replace its hope in God. The only possible solution is to remind ourselves of the faithfulness of God in and out of season. The only possible solution is to remove every other cup as far away as possible until we thirst only for the living God. Lord, I remember you. My soul longs to see your face.

Privilege in Pain, Glory in Dying

I can almost guarantee that you have never considered something as undesirable as pain to be a privilege. I had not ever considered it, either, until I progressed out of a season of pain into a season of painful silence. In my season of pain, I felt compelled into the presence of Jesus. In my season of pain, I felt a sense of life and security. In my pain I found purpose, and drive, and motivation, and will power. Here in this season, I find stillness. Here in this season, I find feelings of intense disconnect. Here in this season, I find myself in the dying, and it is extremely uncomfortable yet unexpectedly beautiful in the most indescribable way. Naturally, I am going to try and write a blog about the most unexplainable thing I have ever encountered.

In some respects, the past month of my life has been the most uncomfortable thing I have ever encountered. I wake up in the morning and struggle in vain to find some kind of normal. My rogue heart strives to find just one thing besides the Lord that is consistent to cling to as if he were not enough. I sit down at the end of the day to process my thoughts and consider where I am, and I come up totally empty-handed, unable to pinpoint what the Lord is doing in my life. I feel as though I am floating through my days and weeks, collecting scratches as I bump up against the rough edges of unfamiliar environments and try to squeeze into places that were not meant for me.

What is happening, Jesus?

At the same time, I am realizing like never before exactly what I was made for. I am realizing what my heart burns for. I am starting to see a glimpse of what Jesus had in mind as he sat down to craft me, and opportunities have been unfolding more rapidly than I could have ever imagined for me to carry out what I was built for. Even at the end of those days when I feel most alive, however, there is  a wrestling on the inside of me that stops me in my tracks. When I am doing what I most love, whether it be loving teenagers or holding the hands of the homeless or lying on the floor of my room in worship, I can feel an opposing force rising up on the inside of me and war being waged in the depths of my being.

What is this, Lord? 

Turns out, this is the dying. This is my flesh being put to death. I can honestly say I have never been in this place before. I have never passed through a season of life quite like this where the Lord asked for my hand and then walked beside me in near silence concerning my own heart. He is being so intentional in every minute of this season, and I am seeing almost none of it as it transpires. I know he is working because I feel the shift, the struggle, the battle taking place. I see his purpose in it all. I understand that I cannot live my life if there is any of me left to live it. I find glory in the dying because he considered me, and now calls me higher. He is taking me to a place where I no longer live, where nothing of Alexis remains. He is gutting this space and creating a meeting room to conduct his business, and I am losing who I am in the process in the best way possible.

No one serves so faithfully as a dead man resurrected, for he has nothing standing in his way. 

Throwing Out Plan B

When I crawled out of bed at 11pm last night to grab my laptop and start writing, I thought this was going to go an entirely different direction. I have written, erased, and rewritten these first three sentences (and almost every sentence after these) about four times now and I am finally giving up my own ideas about what I am about to say. You and I are officially on a journey to hear from Jesus together, and I am just as curious as you are to see what he has to say.

We have all been taught the importance of having a backup plan. We have them for almost everything in life. In case of fire, take the stairs. In case of a flat tire, keep a spare in the trunk. In case of emergency landing, check under your seat for the cushion that doubles as a floatation device (this one always makes me really nervous). These kinds of backup plans are wise. If the building is burning down, you don't need to be standing in line for the elevator. If you blow out a tire, you don't need to ride the rim all the way to your destination. If your plane goes down in the Pacific, you really shouldn't rely on your 8th grade swim team skills to save you. All great things to take into consideration.

However, some backup plans can be extremely harmful to the plans of God on your life. Sometimes we use backup plans in the same way we would use emergency exit stairs, except there is no fire, only a fear of one. "Jesus… I am going to follow you wherever you may lead me. Unless of course it starts to look like I can't make a living off of that, so I'm going to get that second degree in mechanical engineering just to be safe." A few years later when the economy plummets and times get hard, the temptation is there to take the emergency exit and walk away from where the Lord has you in order to stabilize your financial situation without any regard for the fact that when the Lord calls a man, he provides for his every need. When we start to make our decisions based off of what we see and not what we have heard from the Lord, we end up on the path to Plan B, and Plan B can be a long, bumpy road when we are trying to pave the way for ourselves.

Sometimes our backup plans don't look like career paths, but something much more personal. However, no matter what our backup plans are for, they always have something to do with our control over our own situations. "Jesus… I know you are asking me to trust you completely in this situation. I know that you want to be the one to work it out from start to finish, but I am just going to keep my foot in that door in case you need help and I need to barge in and manipulate any part of this thing to make it go "our" way. I'm just here in case you need backup." Assuming that we recognize the irrationality of our "in case you need help" logic, Plan B signifies an area of the heart that is still resistant to trusting God. What area of our lives is so big that God is not capable to work out even the most complicated detail without a single strategy of our own?

Not only does Plan B rob Jesus of our trust in the moment, but it also comes back to stir up doubt in the years to come. When we make our own plans and pave our own paths, we will always be able to look back and question whether or not we did the right thing. When we stick with plan A, following the voice of Jesus all the way, there is no room left for questioning. He always does the right thing. When life gets really hard on the road to Plan B, there is no reference point to look back to that promises everything will work out in the end. When life gets really hard on the road to Plan A, I can still my heart, remember the moment that I heard Jesus whisper his plans, and know that it doesn't matter what I am seeing, because he is already waiting at the end of the road.

Here is the challenge to both you and I… Would we be so bold as to trash every Plan B in these seasons to come? Would we live our lives with a violent faith that says, "Jesus, if you don't come through, I'm not going through, because I am not deviating from the plans you have set before me." That seems like a really big risk, but it isn't like the risk of being stuck on the side of the road with no spare, or the plane going down without a floatation device. We already have the promise that he WILL come through. The hard part is in those moments or seasons when it does't look that way and everything is telling us otherwise. The hard part is when we wish we would have kept our foot in that door because we can't see how Jesus is possibly going to work out the situation without any help on our part. But friends, just hold on a few moments longer, because Plan A with Jesus has never failed… not once.

(Not) Empty-Handed

Take a moment and hold out your hand in front of you. I promise I'm not going to try and tell you your future or anything, but I want you to get a good look at the palm of your hand. Some of us have little hands, some of us large hands. Some of us have soft hands, others calloused hands from a hard day's work. My hand happens to have a wrinkle in the shape of the letter "M" and a freckle in the middle that has been there ever since I can remember. Regardless of how big or small or tender or tough your hands are, there is one true statement about every hand in the world: it can only hold so much until there is no room left to hold anything else.

I'm going to lead you to my point with an extremely practical example. Lets pretend you and I are talking face to face and I ask you to offer me your hand. If I pull out a bag of pennies, I can only place so many pennies in your palm until all the free space has been filled and the excess pennies begin spilling onto the floor. If I decide I want to place quarters in your hand, I am going to have to remove some of those pennies that are already taking up space in order to make room for the new coins. 

Our lives are a lot like our open hands. We have x amount of space that we can fill as we please. If we want to fill it with a lot of work, then there might not be as much time left for family. If we want to fill it with a lot of fun, then there might not be much time left to get the job done. But what about Jesus? Where does he fit into our open hand principle? Because Jesus will take just as much of our space as we want to give him. If we want to throw out 1 square inch of distractions, Jesus will come inhabit 1 square inch. If we want to clear half the room for Jesus, Jesus will take half the room. However, regardless of how much space you decide to offer Jesus, in order to make room, something else has to go. 

Sometimes we live with tightly closed fists. After all, it is extremely uncomfortable to open our hands and let something go that we have held onto for a long time. We fear opening our hands because we are afraid that one day we will turn up completely empty-handed. On top of that, Jesus isn't a great space-sharer. The Bible tells us that we serve a jealous God. When we assign Jesus a little space between work and relationships and possessions and goals, all those things that are pressing against his space become increasingly less comfortable until we are willing to let them go to make more space for Jesus; or until we decide to remove him and allow them to take his place.

It all comes down to a decision of what you really want most out of life. It all comes down to a decision of whether or not you will open your hand, clear every inch of space to make room for Jesus, and face the fear of being left empty-handed. I'm going to let out the secret, though. When you open your hand for the sake of more of Jesus, it will never be empty. It's impossible. Never one time has God forsaken his people who abandoned everything for the sake of knowing him more deeply. Not once.

In fact, you would be in a much safer boat to go ahead and bulldoze that space you have reserved for all your hopes, dreams, goals, and ambitions, and to allow Jesus to invade that place and rebuild some of those dreams according to his plan. It would be to your benefit to release your tight grasp on your career path so that Jesus could come and straighten the way for you no matter how much of a different direction it seemed he was taking. It would not hurt you one bit to lay down every relationship in your life before the Lord and ask Jesus to resurrect them and place them back into your hands according to his plans and purposes for your life in this season. There are some things you might need to let go of in order to make more space for Jesus that you will never see again. That is okay, friend. Once that area of your life has been invaded by the presence of God, you won't feel the sting of any lack.

When the world looks at my hand, I am sure that to them it appears to be empty. When I look at my hand, I see the fullness and the richness of God's plans for my life. I keep my fingers spread open wide, not in a hurry to cling tightly to anything, but willing to allow any and every thing to pass through onto the ground trusting that Jesus will keep for me everything I have need of. It really is the only way to do life with Jesus, and I would not trade it for the false sense of security that comes from placing anything of my own design into the palm of my hand. Would you be willing to open your hand today?

It's Always Been A Waiting Game

Life truly is one giant waiting game. We wait in traffic, we wait in line, we wait for the promotion, we wait for the news from the doctor, we wait for the perfect opportunity. Most anything that is worth anything to us requires some kind of waiting on our part. Waiting is nothing new. Waiting wasn't invented when Apple decided to make us stand in line for the new iPhone or when Chic-fil-a opened up a second drive-thru lane that really only serves to create a bigger parking lot problem. Since the beginning of time, man found himself waiting.

Abraham waited for God to fulfill his promise of a child who would be the first of many offspring. Jacob waited seven years as he worked for his wife Rachel and then seven more after he was deceived by her father Laban. Joseph waited from the bottom of a pit and then from the deepest part of prison to see the fruition of his dreams come to pass. Moses waited for God to soften Pharaoh's heart to see the release of his people from slavery. Joshua waited for the Lord to deliver his people into the Promised Land. David waited to become king as he fled from Saul. Esther waited for the Lord to save her people. Daniel waited to be delivered from the mouths of lions… And all of these people received the promises of God.

Then, for 400 years after the latest Old Testament prophet delivered his message from God, the world waited in silence to once again hear God speak. Man waited to be delivered from his sin problem. He waited to be set free from the chains that had bound him since before the time of Abraham and Jacob and Joseph and Moses. Creation cried out for a deliverer, and the time had finally come.

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shone… For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore." Isaiah 9:2,6-7

The waiting was over. God not only opened his mouth, but the WORD BECAME FLESH and dwelt among us and showed us his glory. That baby, the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace, grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. He began to reveal himself as the perfect solution to the sin problem that we had been waiting for. He found himself at the age of 33 years old hanging on a cross, fulfilling his own plan that he had since the beginning of time for our redemption. He overcame death, and he eradicated the sin problem for all those who were willing to believe both in that moment and these moments that we are living in now.

Christmas, Christmas is the celebration of the end of the waiting game. We don't have to wait for another savior. We don't have to wait for another redeemer. We aren't facing the possibility of another 400 years of silence. Jesus already came and sealed the deal with his Holy Spirit. THIS IS MY FAVORITE GOOD NEWS. The end of this waiting game signifies a beginning of a whole new way of life-- full of PROMISE, HOPE, PEACE, JOY, and PURPOSE. And now, now we wait for something different. We wait for the moment that we get to stand face to face with Jesus, whole and complete, perfected in every way. This time, we do not wait alone, unsure of when his promise will be fulfilled. We wait FOR Jesus WITH Jesus, knowing that in the blink of an eye when this world passes away, when we breathe our last breath, the waiting is over and a whole new day begins… again.

CHRISTMAS. IS. AWESOME.

Lessons from the Man in Manitou

Manitou Springs, CO

This weekend, I had the coolest opportunity to go see some of my dearest friends in Colorado Springs. It was an AWESOME time to reconnect with incredible people, spend some intimate time with Jesus, and unwind at the end of an insane semester. We did all kinds of super fun things from soaking up some awesome worship at Every Home for Christ to exploring the snowy, narrow mountain roads. On Friday afternoon, we decided we would head up to Manitou Springs to try and tackle some Christmas shopping for our parents. In an attempt not to ruin Christmas, I'll just say that my mom loves unique things and she LOVES her homeland of Colorado, so I figured one of the little shops in Manitou was bound to have something for her. A shop filled with brightly colored metals and stones caught my eye, so we decided to venture in.

After looking around for a minute, the owner of the shop casually walked in from outside to greet us. The older gentleman walked us around the store telling us about all of the great deals and discounts he was going to offer us, and seemed satisfied when I settled on the perfect gift for my mom. We walked over to the checkout, and that is when the real conversation started. Seemingly out of nowhere, with no prompting from us, the man from Manitou started talking to us about his life. 

He told us about serving in Vietnam, watching his friends die on the field in front of him, and coming back at the end of the war seeking something real to alleviate the numbness that plagued him daily. After being back in United States for some time and struggling day after day just to find something to hold on to, he decided to return his Native American roots and began practicing suspension and weekly rituals at the sweat lodge. Every week, he goes and has his body pierced so that he can be hung from metal hooks in his chest, torso, legs, or back. He told us that all of these things are done in an attempt to feel something real, TO EXPERIENCE SOMETHING THAT COSTS HIM. He tried all kinds of religion, and this is where he finally settled because at least in pain there is 'something.' This man in Manitou is simply searching for something that makes him feel more than dead inside and he knows that feeling alive always comes with a cost. 

I can't tell you what my face looked like as I stood there and listened to him. I don't know if the tears fighting their way to the surface were evident to anyone but me, but my heart shattered. This man had seen death and experienced heartache and then came back to the United States and all he could find to make him feel alive again was more pain and more heartache. THIS is why a Christianity that costs us nothing must soon come to an end. This is why the church in America that promises nothing more than prosperity and riches to its converts can't go on much longer.

We will soon live in a nation that is so hurt, so desperate for something real, so broken and so numb from tradgedy that the church will finally have to be what it was meant to be. We as followers of Jesus will finally have to take up our cross and follow him. We will finally have to respond to the call to count everything as loss for the surpassing glory of knowing Christ. I am sorry that the man in Manitou never found a place among a body of believers where he was shown just how real life with Jesus can be. I sit here and weep over the fact that we were not there to extend the love of Jesus that strips away every bit of numbness and leaves a heart of flesh once again. I lament over the fact that the Christianity that was promoted to him promised a life that would cost nothing, and as a result, he walked away.

I take hope in the fact that there is a trumpet sounding, calling for all the sons and daughters of God to pick up their swords once again and FIGHT for something REAL that will COST EVERYTHING. I rejoice in the fact that true relationship with Jesus IS available to every hurt, broken, and calloused heart looking for another chance to feel again. I sing for joy that the day is coming and is here now that God is raising up a generation who will seek his glory and lay down their own because they know they have found the better thing.