At the Risk of Sounding Cliché

The pregnant woman I spoke of last week gave birth to a healthy boy. However, she was not allowed to keep her son given her history of drug abuse and her still present condition of homelessness. She wept bitterly as the joy of seeing her son was squashed by the brutal reality of her circumstances. At the risk of sounding cliché, I was reluctant to quote Scripture and use phrases such as: “I’m praying for you,” “I’m here to help in whatever way I can,” or “God loves and cares for you.” So many desperate have heard such truths before and found them void of meaning and power since they were spoken by superficial Christians who have not yet learned or refused to apply the truth they proclaim. I was afraid to ask if they had any church background or to use any religious terminology given the likelihood their exposure had been misrepresented or wrongly defined. I know too well the risk since I have, during times of intense pain and doubt, been on the receiving end of Scripture quoting charlatans, “…having the form of godliness but denying its power…always learning but never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim. 5a, 7) I have been left wounded and wanting after being given only token offerings and empty promises by those who neither believed nor used what they were administering. I wanted them to know I was real. Since I was determined to be a real minister to these women, I was grieved when her friend cried out to me as I was leaving for the day, “Don’t forget us!” I first thought and started to say back, “As if I would!” But then I remembered others like her, and how often I had.

Regardless of the risk of sounding cliché and now the awareness of my own hypocrisy, I remained obedient in speaking the truth, still struggling to use terms and explanations that have not been misrepresented and defining terms that have. While wrestling with my emotions through prayer, meditating on Scripture and confessing my struggle to friends, I discovered the source most responsible for producing my unrest was not the cynicism of my audience but my own. God has been breaking and remaking me for his purpose for the past 5 years. I have learned the pain of divorce, loss of time with my son, exhaustion from hard labor, joblessness, loss of transportation, homelessness, hunger, abandonment, betrayal, violence, injustice, indifference and persecution. It always hurt the most when the source of pain came from my own family or from my own church. I remembered the depths to which I had to sink emotionally and circumstantially to find the level of surrender needed to willingly nail my identity to the cross and receive my identity in Christ. I most remember how often words and professing Christians were inadequate for providing relief. I wondered if all my efforts would prove equally ineffectual, if there was a way to inspire the hope that took so long for me to find and ultimately found while alone with God.

While a friend drove me home after church on Christmas Eve, I reluctantly called one of the men to whom I am ministering to inform him God had not led me to a source that would provide gifts for his children on Christmas morning. I hurt for him and told him so. I spoke of my disdain for the materialistic expectation our culture has imposed on children and the opportunity in the absence of provision to focus on the real meaning of Christmas. I truly believed what I said and prayed for him with conviction. But I was plagued by doubt, thinking how hollow the message must sound in light of the disappointed faces to whom he would have to confess in the morning, wondering if I spoke in a way he could understand. After confessing my doubts to my friend, she prophetically reminded me of the power of the Holy Spirit to change and heal lives and my powerlessness in the process. God had my attention.

Christmas morning, while meditating on what my friend said, I was led to Isaiah 55. I wept as the prophet Isaiah spoke to me of God’s purpose, the promise of his provision and the resulting transformation invoked by the power of his Word. Verse 10-11 says, "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” David preached Sunday about how much more sustaining, sufficient and satisfying his Word is than bread, especially in the absence of bread, and that we should feast on it. Yesterday, I was led to 1 Corinthians 4:19-20: “But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.” God made abundantly clear to me the power to heal and transform does not emanate from my articulation of words, my presence, or my help. Yet again, I realized I was being taught the too easily forgotten lesson that it is not about me. My past and present weaknesses have been made irrelevant. I am not even alive. Christ lives in me and speaks through me with life changing power the very gates of hell cannot stand against. My job is to get out of the way. I can’t even do that well.

God has affirmed these truths as I have reflected on his working through and in me, apart from me. These two women trusted me though I am a man. They have looked at me and treated me with reverence since I met them. One said I look like Jesus. Both say they have never met a man like me. They have wept as truth has been proclaimed from my mouth. I have often wept with them, equally overcome by his power. I have loved them as my sisters and they have loved me as their brother, a familial love that is so pure it erases the distinction between male and female, rich and poor, black and white, high caste and outcaste. God has provided them and the baby temporary homes. Strongholds of addiction and emotional trauma are being overcome and healed in them to their own amazement. I met them only a week ago. Their testimony has encouraged the man I am working with since he has been a witness to their transformation, having known them and their reputation for years. He needed to be encouraged because his own struggles have only grown worse. He texted me last night that his wife is on her way home from the hospital and they have no food to eat. Though I do not have the means right now to get food to him nor have I been able to offer him much more than fellowship or prayer, he said he appreciates all I have done for him. Despite the big tough guy that he is, he ended his text with “love you man.” I truly love him too though I only met him two weeks ago. I can only give God the glory for all he is and has done because I know all this is so not me or anything I even could have done. I rejoice in God allowing me to see who he is and who I’m not, allowing me to praise him as a fellow spectator of his glory revealed through me as I wonder, “why me?” Then I laugh and remember again it’s not about me.

Having been there, I understand why the lost and needy find marginal Christians and their placebo cures just as distasteful as God who spews the lukewarm from his mouth with disgust. Those betrayed are tired of empty promises and false hopes and are leery of being taken in again. They must see proof the relief found in the depths of God’s love is more potent and sustaining than the erotic quick fixes found in drugs and carnal pleasures. Few will find fellowship with God as I did. Most must bear witness to and be led by Christ followers with genuine testimonies of the efficacy of the cure before they will believe the promises that they can be cured as well. Such proof is rarely adequate when limited to occasional visits from out of town sight seers; relationships must be built within community that adequately administers the guidance and instruction needed for healing and transformation. Relationships require personal investments of time and emotion, commodities far more valuable than money and even more difficult to share if already invested in the world. They need those filled with Christ to come be Christ to them, loving them, ministering to them, and showing them how to live in a community of followers of the Way. This is the vision I have had for years and now share with Brook Hills through the Radical Experiment and the many other members of a network of ministries already present. Now that he has shown me the powerful fulfillment of that vision, I no longer feel afraid of the risk of sounding cliché. I see now there is nothing cliché about it.