DANE FOWLKES

I experienced a tantalizing taste of autumn this weekend, all the more surprising since we are barely into summer. I enjoyed the unexpected respite while vacationing on the Atlantic seaboard. A cool coastal front initiated dipping temperatures and relief from a steady sequence back home in central Texas of near 100-degree readings and high humidity is palpable. The contrast was refreshing. Already I’m daydreaming of sweaters on the golf course, cuddling on the back porch with a lap blanket, and the scent of burning wood from warming fires in nearby chimneys.

Contrast is a good way of understanding Christ’s command to be light. Webster’s defines dark as “having little or no light.” Light illuminates quite simply because it is the opposite of dark; luminescence is not a little different, it is antithetical to shadows. I cannot help but ask if I am a cool front to anyone’s emotional and spiritual drought. Do I leave a pleasant vestige that lingers when people brush up against me? Am I an obvious contrast to the shadowy nature of contemporary culture and that which masquerades in our postmodern world as acceptable? “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light” (Plato). 

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that[a] they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16, ESV)

What some might miss in the familiarity of it all is that Christ’s statement about being light is an imperative. The Greek word lampsato. Illumination for believers is never optional; according to Jesus, our light must shine. In light of this (pun intended) I question myself—does my participation in the human race brighten any corner of the marathon?

Are you warrior or spectator? That may strike as an odd question since you may or may not have served in the military, but effective engagement is a matter of the heart. Consider this quote from the chaplains of the U. S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division:

“When Spiritual Readiness meets adversity, Spiritual Resiliency sees you through.”

Spiritual resiliency is the heart of the warrior. Warriors cannot be restrained from the battlefield. They push through fear and danger, rushing forward into the fray while spectators shrink from battle and every difficulty, resigning themselves to mediocrity—content to watch the sacrifice of others from a safe distance. Warriors are resilient and resilience is the practical and enduring posture of strength.

Jesus of Nazareth employed the fullest meaning of “strength” when he said:

“Keep alert at all times. And pray that you might be strong enough to escape these coming horrors and stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36 NLT).

This is no casual strength Jesus offers; no mere guarded optimism nor temporary adrenaline rush. As John Eldridge reminds us: “Hard times require something more than willpower. Jesus warns us, practically commands us to ask for strength.” The word Jesus uses for strength in Luke 21 means “to be strong to another’s detriment; to prevail against; to overcome; to prevail.” It implies a struggle against an adversary we can and will prevail over. The strength God offers and urges us to ask for and display is combative strength, a strength to fight, to overcome. A strength that prevails. The warrior heart embraces adversity and challenge while advancing to attain the higher good.

I have great news for all of us—resilience is something God desires to give.

“My strength is gone,” (Daniel said) “and I can hardly breathe.” Again the one who looked like a man touched me and gave me strength. “Do not be afraid, you who are highly esteemed,” he said. “Peace! Be strong now; be strong.” When he spoke to me, I was strengthened. (Daniel 10:17-19)

Resilience is something imparted by God into our frail humanity. I cannot think of better news: This strength that prevails—this mighty, combative warrior strength—is available to all who request it. Our Creator offers courage to stand against all odds. What will we choose?

Grace is far more than a theological construct; grace is the foundation of eternal life as well as abundant living here and now. The irony is that while life itself does not exist apart from grace, so many of us seemingly strive to grow beyond it. Discipleship is not a bold step forward into self-reliance; it is a desperate collapse into the Father’s embrace. Only in the Christ-life is victory achieved through unconditional surrender.

“My newfound helplessness led me to a far more personal understanding of the grace I had always preached. I found myself clinging to it like never before, gulping it down because my thirsty soul couldn’t get enough. Previously, I would have assumed the goal of discipleship was to need the cross less and less as I matured. Instead I found the opposite was true: I needed it more and more. And I began to see that the Bible challenges us to grow in grace – not grow out of it.” (Jeff Peabody, author of Perfectly Suited: The Armor of God for the Anxious Mind.)

If you would like to begin your day with a challenging meditation, consider this Old Testament passage:

“This is what Jeremiah told Baruch one day in the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign as he was taking dictation from the prophet: “These are the words of God, the God of Israel, to you, Baruch. You say, ‘These are bad times for me! It’s one thing after another. God is piling on the pain. I’m worn out and there’s no end in sight.’ “But God says, ‘Look around. What I’ve built I’m about to wreck, and what I’ve planted I’m about to rip up. And I’m doing it everywhere—all over the whole earth! So forget about making any big plans for yourself. Things are going to get worse before they get better. But don’t worry. I’ll keep you alive through the whole business.’”” (Jeremiah 45:1-5 MSG)

Oswald Chambers writes in the same vein:

“It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people’s feet. Suppose God wants to teach you to say, ‘I know how to be abased’— are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket — to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity.” (“My Utmost for His Highest”)

Here’s the profound question posed by chambers and alluded to be Jeremiah: Am I willing to remain anonymous in service to and for Christ the Lord?

Do you know yourself? Note that I did not ask, “What do you think about yourself?” A world of difference languishes between the two, awaiting the intrepid individual with courage enough for self-inventory. Some refuse bold introspection because they fear a result something like the opening lines to Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground”: “I am a sick man….I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man….I’m sensitive and quick to take offense, like a hunchback or dwarf.” The lives that matter are the ones who dare to say “I am a sick man,” then quickly turn to the Physician. In the words of Yiddish author Shalom Aleichem: “When you die, others who think they know you, will concoct things about you… Better pick up a pen and write it yourself, for you know yourself best.”

Many of us whittle away our days stumbling over ourselves. Lacking clarity, we fail to see the trees for the forests that loom nearby. “No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it” (Barbara Brown Taylor, “An Altar in the World”). Forests are unique to the individual, but each holds potential for revealing trees if we know where to look and are willing to look long and hard enough. We are all tempted to busy ourselves with forests of good things, but lose ourselves in the mix. How long has it been since you reflected on important questions like: “Who am I?” “What is wrong with me?” “What is right in me?” The only real difference between those who ultimately navigate the narrow way and others who meander aimlessly down side roads is that the former are able to contain their fear long enough to filter from the chaos what is true about themselves and what their Creator can do to make it right. Communing with the Creator is a regular necessity, but there is also need for people to take communion with themselves. 

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:5, 8 NIV)

It is hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone and that a new year is here. New Year’s Day can be the most excruciating day of the year for me. Forced to access performance professionally, I carry the spirit of evaluation into more personal areas, more-often-than-not a painful exercise. Finding it difficult to confine appraisal to the immediate year, thoughts frequently drift back over a lifetime and herein lies the rub. It is far easier to lament failure than to celebrate progress. Disappointment looms large when moping over a big picture that encompasses missed opportunity, impotent decision making, intentional disobedience, and insufficient courage. Shadow boxing with the worst of me, I am in danger of ending up with jaded expectations of what lurks in the fog ahead. Thankfully, God offers a better way.

“God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.” ~Henry Ward Beecher

Actually, a New Year holds incredible potential as a rich time for evaluation as well as prayerful planning. There are plenty of dissonant voices sounding off against resolution-making, but I relish the idea of new beginnings. Perhaps it is because I know what it is to live with regret, but I enthusiastically approach this fresh reset for righting wrongs, pioneering efforts, and course correction. “Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life” (George McDonald). We are not created to live in reverse. Our bodies face forward; our lives should as well. Each of us has reason to occasionally crane our head around to look behind, but the greater portion of our time should be spent scanning what lies ahead. The horizon spreads before us, not abaft. Our past is forgiven and our future guaranteed. Regardless of how you look upon such things, I encourage you to carve out time this week and next for ample reflection, prayer, and more than a little self-forgiveness.

“Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

(Philippians 3:13-14 | NRSV)

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:4-6 | ESV)

Knowing how to end is one of my biggest challenges in writing. The ‘when’ of finishing usually works itself out; it’s the quality of closing that remains in question. The same may be said of human existence. These days I find myself face to face, face to back, and face to knee with my own physical decline and inevitable mortality. Just last week I was down on my knees installing cement pavers around our new home, complaining to my grandson Josh how I had shortened the lifespan of my knees by wasting my childhood pretending to be a horse. He promptly suggested I would be walking with a cane by the time he was his brother’s age (that will be in only five years), then added, “if you’re still alive.” There’s nothing like the brutal honesty of a child to set one to thinking. Frankly, I understand better now more than ever why my mother said so often that she wanted Jesus to come again so that she wouldn’t have to die. She was secure in her relationship with Christ; she simply preferred to bypass the finality of ending. I wish that she could have done so and to be honest—so do I.

I can truthfully say that it’s not the dying that disturbs, it is the fear of not fully living while I’m still alive. “We must be careful with our lives, for Christ’s sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously”(Buechner). There is not much I can do about the weakening of my knees or the chronic catch in my lower back, but I do have within reach the ability to write my own epitaph. What happened or didn’t happen yesterday pales in significance with what I do right now. According to Sovereign God, every breath is taken in “the fullness of time.” This life does count, and this very moment matters. The living of this day should consume each of us, not remorse over the past or fear of failing to have tomorrow; the only way to know we will end well is by fully living for Christ right now.

Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:31-33 | ESV

I heard an aged preacher say, “When you get to the end of your rope, you dare not let go.” Painful as it undoubtedly is, it is a gift from God to be allowed to come to the end of myself. Stripped bare, raw, exposed as entirely inadequate—in unrehearsed moments of excruciating enlightenment we learn anew Jesus Christ alone is sufficient. More than that, He is the desired beginning and end of all things, and the joyful substance of everything in between. Grasping “God is love” ignites a spiritual chain reaction of loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. How could a pauper express anything less to his redeemer King? The Lord is teaching me much these days, and the absolute joyful necessity of abiding in Him is front and center of what I’m both learning and being reminded of.

“The final secret, I think, is this: that the words ‘You shall love the Lord your God’ become in the end less a command than a promise. And the promise is that, yes, on the weary feet of faith and the fragile wings of hope, we will come to love him at last as from the first he has loved us—loved us even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, because he has been in the wilderness with us. He has been in the wilderness for us. He has been acquainted with our grief.” (Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember)

Am I saint or sinner? When I lower my guard, I easily become confused as to who I am. If not very careful, I slip into thinking God is here to serve me—ensuring my health and well-being. Such line of thought could not be farther from the truth. I was not placed here for my own enjoyment or amusement, never intended for any self-centered pleasure. When I place myself at the universe I lose the heart of a saint and decline into the sad state of sinner. Sin is, by definition, self-seeking. But you and I were created to be saints, not sinners. A saint, by definition, is a Christ-honoring servant. The soul-stirring reality is that I am in this world simply to serve the Master’s bidding. What I want is irrelevant if it is outside the all-compelling desire to know Him and respond reflexively without thought or consideration of consequence. I am not here to leave a legacy or orchestrate memories centered around me. I am here these fleeting moments to reflect the image of Christ. Recall Christ’s depiction of the vine in John 15–the value of the vine is seen in the beauty of its fruit. Go and be beautiful so the world will know the worth of Christ Jesus our Lord. Be a saint, for Christ’s sake.

While many comfortably retreat and debate the efficacy of security and correctness, will you join me in storming the gates of hell? Does not the indwelling Intrepid Spirit compel relentless assault against the kingdom of darkness so we may establish in its stead the Kingdom of Light? Plain and simple, you and I are called to lay our lives down if that’s what is required. The question should never be “how will I die?” but rather “how will I live?”

“I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live….” Galatians 2:20

At the very least, we must come to grips with the reality Christ’s soldiers embrace a dangerous faith and embark upon an epic adventure demanding unwavering allegiance. Make disciples, not excuses.

“If by excessive labor, we die before the average age of man, worn out in the Master’s service, then glory be to God, we shall have so much less of earth and so much more of heaven…. It is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed.” (Charles H. Spurgeon)