It took two and a half years, but I finally finished reading Les Miserables (insert wild, nerdy rejoicing). In it, I read about a major cleanup operation – the saturated underground sewer system in Paris.
It was a formidable campaign; a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation.
The operation was complicated; the visit entailed the necessity of cleaning; hence it was necessary to cleanse and at the same time, to proceed…They advanced with toil. The lanterns pined away in the foul atmosphere. From time to time, a fainting sewerman was carried out.
Still with me? One more little section:
At certain points, there were precipices. The soil had given away, the pavement had crumbled, the sewer had changed into a bottomless well; they found nothing solid; a man disappeared suddenly; they had great difficulty in getting him out again.
— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
The project was tackled in 1805 because one man was willing to go into the putrid darkness and do something about it.
His name was Pierre Bruneseau. He did what needed to be done in the place and time he lived in, willing to be the cleanup operation and go into the dark when others shuddered at the thought of it.
God nudged me as I read it. What would happen if each of us took this approach with prayer?
What would happen if those darkest, most hopeless places, institutions, and people were tackled in prayer on a level that no one has had the grit and persistence to take on before?
What if we prayed – really prayed, with bright, life-giving detail – over those who’ve grown wild, refusing to admit fault, admit reality, admit their own weakness? What if we were brave enough to picture what it would look like if the darkest businesses were replaced with those that breathed life in a community – and then we prayed it into existence?
A friend said this in a sermon and it stuck with me: The presence of fire in the Bible often symbolizes the presence of God. The fire on the mountain, the burning bush, the pillar of smoke, the tongues of fire that could not be contained in a room.
His presence sanctifies, purifies, covers, and brings light.
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
– Hebrews 12:28-29
The light yoke of responsibility, maturity, and surrender are only a breath away. The heavy yoke of filth and blackness costs so much, and lies to those who are in it that the effort to take the deep breath of surrender isn’t worth it. What if we made the road smoother through prayer that refuses to give up on them?
I’ve also been the one who was lost, and losing, and needed someone to fight in prayer for me. Many of us would not be who we are today without those who fought the darkness for us.
We have loved ones stuck in this kind of mire, and this is where the fight comes in for those of us who love them and are tempted to just wash our hands and give up on them. Giving up seems easier to us, just as it seems to them, because the pain of disappointment after raised hopes is so hard to bear.
But this stubborn, unyielding prayer is where we fight, because the decision between hope and despair is where the battle rages. This is where the outcome of victory or defeat is decided. And we should take someone with us, because even spiritual proximity to the morass can threaten to suck us under, too. We can be the powerful loving ones, clinging to a healthy vision of the one who is lost in darkness, refusing to let it go.
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
– 1 Peter 5:8-9
We cling to this hope and pray it into existence regardless of the blackness that pulses and threatens. We could fade away and give up, but heroes run into the battle and not away from it. Our loved ones need us to be those heroes – because they too are meant to be heroes, and that’s why the enemy fights so desperately for them.
That enemy whispers, “Give up. Lower your weapons.”
This, like last Saturday’s news, is not about political parties or an election. This is about a fight for our culture.
Last week’s assassination attempt was meant to do more than kill one man, which is horrific enough; we need to recognize that that man was not the only intended target.
Every American watching on live TV – plus those who would see the videos replayed ad nauseam in the future – was a target, because it was intended to horrify and traumatize every witness: Not just those attending the rally, but every man, woman, and child who watched, live, with cameras rolling.
All were meant to see the gore and blood and terror.
And it was meant to be replayed and replayed and replayed until all were desensitized to the horror and it became ho-hum in our culture.
So this was a message, too: Don’t threaten the status quo, and stop fooling yourselves about how “free” you are. Just so you know, this is what happens to people whothreaten those in power.
Some of them will do whatever it takes to stay there.
So yes, we are under attack. There are people who want to make our everyday activities a war zone of fear and panic – and if that strikes you as hyperbole, you’re just not paying attention.
I “just happened” to be reading about another attack this week – in a less dramatic way than Trump “just happened” to turn his head at the pivotal second, but the source of both moves was the same, no doubt – and have been praying through its lessons all week.
It’s one of the most famous battles in the Bible so you’ve probably read about it and heard it mentioned in a hundred sermons before. But there’s good news for us here, and it, too, takes place after there has been exposure of evil, followed by government reform:
After this [King Jehoshaphat’s reforms] the Moabites and Ammonites, and with them some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat for battle. Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, “A great multitude is coming against you from Edom, from beyond the sea; and, behold, they are in Hazazon-tamar” (that is, Engedi). Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
– 2 Chronicles 20:1-3
The first part of this last sentence is key because two things happen in conjunction that don’t always go together:
1) Jehoshaphat felt afraid, and 2) he sought the Lord.
Wait, why is that weird? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?
Yes, it is. But it’s not what we always do when we’re afraid. We know it’s what we’re supposed to do, but that’s totally different.
What tends to happen when we’re afraid? Often we panic and look for the obvious answer rather than seeking the Lord (we see this throughout the Bible, too). Alternatively, sometimes we feel shame immediately after fear because we know we’re not supposed to be afraid, and that drives us from the Lord too, because shame is a separator.
But Jehoshaphat didn’t fall for those. He did the right thing, sought the Lord, and led his people in doing the same thing, per verse 4:
And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord.
Then King Jehoshaphat prays. And as he recognizes who God is and what He does, he’s also reminding himself and his people:
And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said, “O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you.
He continues: You cleared the land for us. You gifted it to us. We’ve lived here and made a sanctuary for Your name, and remember? Ages ago, back when the Ark was brought into the Temple and Solomon prayed, we made a deal together: If disaster comes, and we cry out to You, You will hear and save us. And here we are, under attack.
Then he says this:
O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
– 2 Chronicles 20:12
There they stood, like we do, with their families: husbands, wives, little ones. Waiting. Wondering what to do. Knowing that anything we can do on our own is just a drop in the bucket, so futile without God’s help.
And then the Spirit comes.
And through Jahaziel, a man who is never mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, He speaks:
And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz. You will find them at the end of the valley, east of the wilderness of Jeruel. You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”
– 2 Chronicles 20:15-17
Isn’t that nice? I mean, the Holy Spirit was right there telling them exactly what to do, where to go, and what would happen.
That would sure be handy for us right about now, too.
But what if He has already told us what to do?
What if we just need to be focused on those things? And rather than apologizing for how insignificant they seem, what if we realized how powerful they are?
To sum up, let’s look at their instructions:
Do not be afraid. There it is again.
Do not be dismayed. Not the same as fear; more like “disillusioned” or “discouraged.”
Okay, those are the things we don’t do. Got it, easy peasy…riiiiight.
But now, for the things we do:
Go meet them tomorrow, stand against them. On the offense, not the defense. And this is interesting because I was just looking at this other passage recently:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
— Ephesians 6:12
Ready for some Fun With Greek? Of course you are, yay!
The repeated use of the word “against” struck me in this verse. The Greek word is “pros” and some translations use the word “with” (“we wrestle with the rulers” etc).
But it means a motion TOWARD something to interface with it. It’s not defensive, but offensive — we are to make the move forward, against, toward the threat, not simply to stand where we are and hold our current ground.
We offensively oppose the spiritual forces of evil — pressing forward and even plowing over (or through) enemy ranks.
So we’re looking at two different instances of “standing against” in Scripture: One in Hebrew and one in Greek, but both are in the context of battle.
We do not step back and diminish anything we’re already doing. We don’t cower or cave or shrink; we take what we have and press onward, against the threat. We don’t give the enemy room; we take the land and make him shrink back. We don’t give ground; we gain it.
The daily small things we do are notes in the song as we march our days forward: making these sandwiches, learning this skill, memorizing that verse, reading those books with the kids, having that talk with a friend. We will not cede this ground; we will not live in terror; we will not let our children grow to know a country that is less than what we ourselves were raised in.
We will not be intimidated into shrinking silence and survival mode, pursuing safety over sanctification, choosing the idolatry of living in fear of man.
We will live in loud freedom, instead.
They set a net for my steps; my soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves. My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody! Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.
– Psalm 57:6-10
Our steady, life-giving routines are the chorus we keep coming back to: Turn this page in the Bible and move on to the next chapter. Pray with your spouse, pray with the kids. Weed the garden, harvest the veggies, delight in the flowers blooming. Make the meal, gather with friends. Take something to the neighbor, pick up the trash along the road. Call your grandparents, or your grandkids. Chat with the grocery clerk you see every week.
For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.
The Kingdom is here, at hand, all around us and within us. The Kingdom is peace, joy, and righteousness, and every move to abide and reflect Jesus makes earth a little more as it is in heaven.
God is setting an ambush and routing the enemy as the Word reigns in and around us. That Word hovers through the land as we read, sing, remind, write, recite, and declare.
We don’t need to be on stage; we’re all leading worship.
All were meant to see gore and blood and terror, but instead, we witnessed a miracle. And singing and rejoicing as we take the land, we will continue to do so.
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I sat in the parking lot with Finn and Kav, waiting for the bus of campers to arrive. The boys were great but it was hot and muggy, and I was the whiny one. I’d skipped breakfast, wasn’t feeling well, and was starting to lean toward the exhausted and hangry side of things. A quick search in the car for snacks only produced a couple tins of mints.
Finally, I saw the girls, who had pulled into the other parking lot and gone through the opposite side of the building, and started to spill outside into our parking lot – and I tried to flag Cham down, but missed, and she went back in.
Ughhhh, fine. We got out to fetch her, and found her just inside. Hi, hugs, ready to go?
“I don’t think I can go yet.” She looked at her camp leader, who was on the phone listening to someone.
I raised an eyebrow, and the leader gave a tired smile.
“Okay,” she said into the phone, “so you want me to ask them…if they encountered God…and if they want to share a testimony?” Ah, talking to our youth pastor.”And see if they want to…record it…on a video?”
My extremely unspiritual response was, Ohh, no way. I had been sitting in the parking lot for twenty-five minutes, having hot flashes in a sweatshirt while trying to entertain two boys and wondering how many calories could be gleaned from an entire package of Altoids. I didn’t care if the campers saw angels, were slain in the spirit, or raised the dead; I needed to get home, eat some food, and probably go to bed.
Isn’t that terrible?
Every month, my premium subscribers and I have a q&p (which stands for question and ponder because I don’t need more pressure in life) and last month someone asked how we can keep from burning out, from losing our fire. We talked about people we respect who seem to have lost their first love, who used to be spiritually mature but now feel heavy to be around, who somehow waned, who seem more focused on problems than Jesus.
So, what causes that? How do we not end up there? And how can we help them return?
Hard questions, no easy answers, especially when we recognize our own struggles with just being tired and hangry. But let’s hash out a handful of them.
fear…or, worship of safety
We talked about how there’s a pooh-poohing tendency among some who’ve lost their fire, who walk in fear versus walking in love because safety is revered more than Jesus. And when safety is the idol, unfamiliarity can breed contempt.
Many fire starters seem dangerous and unfamiliar – new methods, new speakers, new worship styles…but also, old methods and routines (like prophecy or fasting or praying in tongues) can feel threatening to someone’s careful bubble of propriety if they’ve never experienced them before.
Sometimes people have weak beliefs that they don’t want challenged (or exposed) by those unfamiliar things. Further, they often don’t think other people could handle being exposed to them, either – which is fear-based control.
But we don’t walk in fear; we walk in love, and perfect love casts out fear.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
– 1 John 4:16-18
We still tend to face two trees – the tree of knowledge of good and evil, versus the tree of life – and sometimes still choose the forbidden tree of knowledge. Not that knowledge is bad, but the desire to be right at all costs is, because it places our trust in ourselves and our own goodness and right-ness.
If we want to be right more than righteous and free, if we are so busy accusing and policing others, if we are wanting all of our steps micromanaged in safe assurance rather than risking the wild interlocking of freedom and obedience, we aren’t looking at Jesus.
But He’s the One we need to know.
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
– 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
pain…or, fear 2.0
Acute pain, whether it’s physical or emotional, can overshadow everything else. I’ve struggled for years with a terrible skin condition and sometimes my skin hurts so bad as the water hits it in the shower that all I can do is focus on breathing as the humidity sears my nerves.
The other night I sat in the shower and had this moment of wondering why I was still there, doing nothing…I realized it was because I still needed to shave, but I was dreading the action of reaching out and grasping the razor with my hand. In the back of my mind, I knew that curling my hand around it, no matter how lightly, would be even more painful because my skin cracks with the movement, and movement comes with pain.
Some people’s fire has died out because they learned that movement can come with pain – and it’s not always true, but in their eyes, for the times it has been true it’s made it not worth the risk of trying again. The pain is louder than everything else.
We think of the phrase “first love” and things like innocence, naivety, joy, even immaturity or childlikeness come to mind. But life has hard spots that tend to harden us and teach us to fear. We realize there’s more to love than sunshine and rainbows, and sometimes the clouds take over.
In my life, I’ve developed a fairly jaded view of adoption, especially compared to people who have no experience with it. It’s not something I’m proud of; it’s something God is currently, actively working in me to heal. But that jadedness and hardness comes from being burned, from trying and loving and pursuing, and being rejected and wounded and traumatized in return.
Ministry can be really, really hard on people, and on marriages and families. It’s not meant to be (just as adoption isn’t meant to be traumatic) but it is the nature of the battle. It takes a lot of solid, core-nurturing structures and supports in place for people to take on any critical mission and not get burned while they’re fighting on the front lines. So for these spiritually mature people we hold in high esteem who seem to have lost that fire, I wonder if something like that has happened. I wonder how many are wounded warriors who have seen too much and not known what to do with it – or they didn’t have a community to help them deal with it.
resistance…or, unwillingness to surrender
Have you heard the Lord ask you to do that one thing, but you put it off, and eventually just never did it?
Yes? In a way, that’s a good sign. Not because you disobeyed, but that you remember, because it means you still hear Him.
However, if the answer is no because you’re inclined to shove something nebulous that you don’t want to be reminded of back into its hiding place – something you don’t want to deal with, something you want to forget, something you have no intention of ever letting the Lord convict you about – that’s a bad sign. Because eventually we can silence the Lord’s volume in our life by not responding to it. Coolness and stagnation come from resisting the Spirit; we get calloused to His nudges and promptings.
Sometimes we’re guilty of a willingness to do many good and hard things just to avoid the one thing He’s calling us to grow in. And we put spiritual spins on it: Worshipers will sing rather than intercede. Intercessors will intercede rather than process, confess, or forgive. Servants may attend all the functions and do, do, do while avoiding deep study of the Word, and allowing it to do the work in them.
The good news is it takes only one second to turn the volume back up again, as fast as thought: Lord, I’m sorry. I want to hear and obey. Make me willing.
distance…or, lack of abiding
We are responsible for our own abiding and proximity, but we’re also meant to hold each other up. Let’s go back to the fire analogy: We can be around people on fire, or we can be around people dripping wet, and their effect on the atmosphere is likely to affect our burning, too. And some church communities (or friend groups, or families) are just not burning.
Some of us have forgotten what it means to burn so much that the slightest movement that’s warmer than lukewarm seems to be fire, and it’s good enough.
We do ebb and flow. And that’s why we need each other, why we need to be discerning about our closest friends and community.If I get burned so badly there’s nothing left in me to light on fire and I just feel like wet ashes, I have friends who can listen and show me what it is to be on fire but not be consumed. And when they need help, I can do that for them, too.
But if I’m around those who are contentedly not burning, they’ll pat me on the back and tell me it’s okay to lose my fire. And if that attitude takes hold and I stop abiding entirely, who will be around to rekindle me?
So we need to circulate and remind others who they are and how they’re meant to burn, but maybe be careful about not overdoing it – be aware of our own abiding, and keep returning to those we trust who remind us of who we are, because our own fires can be put out by too many wet blankets. We need Holy Spirit to blow through and bring oxygen to keep us aflame, but we need the Living Water to keep us from burning out, too. Abiding in Him will keep us firmly in the sweet spot: On fire, but not consumed.
Here’s who we are:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
– Ephesians 2:19-22
We are the house on fire He dwells in.
We don’t demand the furniture be arranged just so; we trust He knows the best layout. We open the Word as He opens us, and the clutter starts to burn away: the distractions all over the counters, the misunderstandings and misconceptions laying every which way on the shelves, the regrets spilled all over the floor. He puts things in their right places, making sure some don’t take up more space than they’re supposed to and that others take their rightful place on display instead of hidden away in a dusty corner.
He creates restful order, sweeping out lies, opening the windows and letting fresh air in so the smoke blows out – leaving pure joy, holiness, and desire. We didn’t know we could survive the fire until we surrendered to it.
