Walking with Jesus when it gets really difficult...
Christians toss certain words and phrases around so much that the meaning often gets lost. It even becomes its own language (somebody called it Christianese. And I’m sure that’s nothing to do with Good News). Fruit, works, faith, strife, and supporting elements in their periphery seem to be talking about the same general principles, and since I got a question on Facebook about fruits recently, I’ve been hitting the books about it for the past couple of weeks to get to the truth for you.
Let’s start here:
Works aren’t necessarily fruits, but they can be. And fruit can come from work, but not always.
You might rationally think that they’re both outcomes, but the truth is that it depends. And you might think that one is good and one is bad, but you’d be wrong.
It’s closer to the truth to say that one is possible with man and the other is impossible with man, but that too depends.
Besides, if we’re going to look at works and fruits, there are those aforementioned elements in the periphery that we can’t ignore if we’re going to get to an edifying conclusion, because they provide support.
So let’s just dig in.
First: let’s talk about strife.
Strife is always taken as a negative, at least when Christians use the word.
And that’s as it should be, frankly, because strife is not to be confused with strive, a verb that describes the action of struggling vigorously and making great efforts to achieve or obtain something.
Striving has to do with trying hard and making an effort.
Strife is all about conflict and bitter discord.
So they’re different. And it’s important to lay that groundwork here because it matters how we think.
It’s a fact that you can do work that’s blessed and that you can do work that’s cursed. The work that’s blessed is the fruit of faith; i.e., it’s the direct result of you putting your faith into action. This kind of faith is alive and well (see the book of James for more).
But you can also engage in work that’s cursed. It will never become greater than the sum of its parts (never bear fruit) because, depending on your perspective, it either has nothing to do with faith or it squanders the gift of faith by misapplying it to an unworthy object.
Since our Father loves us, most of the time He’s utterly bent on increasing and growing our faith. Faith is a good gift because without it, it is impossible to please God. I believe most of the time building our faith is His primary purpose.
We’ll discuss purpose here in a bit. It really does matter a lot.
For now, though, remember: I’m not trying to tell you that all work is bad. Far from it. What I’m trying to teach you is that there are good works and bad works, and one major difference between them has to do with how they relate to your faith.
Remember that strife is bad, but striving—in a righteous endeavor—is admirable.
Waiting: why does it suck?
I’ve chomped at the bit before. Sometimes it’s my default mode. I ask and I keep on asking because that’s what Jesus told us to do (Matthew 7.7).
But you need to know that God is not a short-order cook or a genie. And He’s not biting His nails waiting for you to pray the perfect phrase that will unlock your best life now. And the intangibles, the invisible attributes of your life, are what’s most important to Him. This is probably because you’ll carry them with you into eternity.
There will, in other words, be delays. At least from your perspective.
Sometimes waiting is about developing character; sometimes it’s about building faith. Sometimes it’s about endurance or entering into the fellowship of His suffering (we unwittingly ask for this when we ask to know Him more). Sometimes the delay is all about obedience. Sometimes it’s a simple test. And sometimes it’s just all about waiting. For whatever reason. And you don’t need to know right now.
And sometimes it’s about others. Sometimes it’s about the witness we bear. Sometimes it’s about the church. Sometimes it’s about what is happening to us and what that is doing in the soul and spirit of another person who is observing.
You need to embrace the fact that the gospel isn’t about behaviors. It’s about transformation, and that’s different.
The point is, you’ll almost never know the purpose of the season you’re in when you’re in it; not in full. And no matter how much that pisses you off, it’s a sure bet that if you absolutely must know your purpose right now, a lot of times the only true answer you’re going to get is this: One of God’s main purposes is building your faith. You need it to be able to please Him, so of course He wants you to have it, and have it in abundance.
More faith-building is the last thing you want to hear about when your faith has been stretched until it begins to tear and fail. When it does though, you’ll know I’m right about this: When you get to see just how much you still need Jesus, even after all these years, it will make sense that He sometimes rewards full surrender with affliction. He always has a good reason, even if it’s not clear to you yet. The psalmist said, “It was good that I was afflicted."
Or there’s 2 Corinthians 4.7-11, specifically the part that says “…always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”
We carry “the dying of” Jesus always, so that his life—which is inseparable from his death—may also be real, and not just to us but to the whole world.
To be delivered to death for Jesus’s sake is exemplary of total surrender.
Death cannot conquer this life—indeed it seems to me at this point to be a catalyst for the life of Christ.
Be careful what you complain about, then. If things are rough right now, God could be giving you exactly what you need to be able to carry on in the places where He’s taking you. Maybe you need to know that you know that His grace really is sufficient. You might know that, but until you’ve lived it, knowing is rubbish. At least by comparison.
In Christ, your pain has a point now.
Waiting can feel like slow death sometimes. And sometimes there’s nothing we can do about anything other than simply engage the process, keep taking steps, and keep trusting that what God said, He will accomplish in due season.
On a walk in the rain the other day, I took a note. Being a high desert, Boise isn’t an ideal place to grow much besides sagebrush. Yet its moniker is the “City of Trees.” We have the city founders to thank for this paradox because if they hadn’t taken the care to build the New York canal system, none of the greenery we enjoy around here today would be possible. None of our trees would ever get any water when they need it most.
Summers around here are extremely hot and dry. The rains come in the fall and winter, in seasons of dormancy. What can a dormant tree do but let these rains filter through its root system mostly unused? The rains do replenish the aquifer, sure, but the water table is well below the deepest roots of the most mature trees.
When I saw this plainly, I therefore concluded that all gardens require an agent to tend them.
In the Kingdom of God, we are the garden. The agent is Jesus, God in the flesh, and it is His responsibility to give us what we need when we need it. It is a table-in-the-midst-of-my-enemies economy in which trees miraculously grow in high deserts. The miracle is in such plain sight that it can’t help being invisible. And its source is such an everyday normality that everyone takes it for granted.
That is, except for a few with eyes to see and ears to hear. This is because revelation is the only thing that will do, and revelation is in God’s hands alone.
All a tree can do is endure and persevere through the season it is in.
For we the children of God, that means waiting.
Too often, the Gate Waiting repels the Christian sojourner, for we are in an awful hurry on our way. We don’t like waiting. This is usually because our why isn’t good enough, which means, effectively, it has gone unanswered. And that is a very painful place to dwell.
But pain is like a seed too. That means it has fruit. If you like, meditate on the three passages that perhaps speak most fluently the language of the pain of the wait:
Romans 5.3-5
James 1.2-4
2 Peter 1.3-9
There are works, and then there are good works.
What’s your motive? Have you checked? Do you know?
Sometimes it matters why you do what you do more than what you do. Jesus rejected the Pharisees but welcomed the prostitutes. Why? I think one of the biggest reasons was genuineness. The Pharisees were so concerned about their what (their works) that their why (intimacy with the Father) had become lost. But the prostitutes were so desperate to turn loose of their what that they immediately understood why when Jesus stood before them.
And because of their finely calibrated why, the prostitutes were properly positioned.
Jesus said in John 15.16, “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.” This puts the emphasis where it belongs. Your position starts and ends with God. Not you.
Let’s look at an example.
Let’s say there are two identical drivers with identical trucks. They make the same money working for the same company. They haul the same freight and take the same risks.
However, one driver is all about working his way up the chain until he becomes the big boss. Nothing wrong with that, right? Some call it bootstrapping. It is the quintessence of the American way.
The other driver, though, is there literally for everyone else but himself because one day while he was praying, God made it clear that He was about to open a door for him as a truck driver and that He had a purpose for him on the other side of this open door.
So one guy’s purpose is all about himself.
The other guy’s purpose is all about anyone other than himself.
Which one do you think God will honor most? Which one is positioned well? And do you see how your purpose is everything?
We’ll discuss a little more about purpose (and timing) before we get to the end of this post. For now, you should know: in order for your works to be righteous, they must originate with God.
If works originate with you, they glorify you and represent earning. They cannot possibly bear fruit because their source is impotent, even an illusion of power, possessing none.
If works originate with God, they glorify God and represent living faith. They cannot help but bear fruit, even without working, because they are connected to Kingdom purpose, Kingdom timing, Kingdom power. To say that there is an abundance is a ridiculous understatement. This is eternity breaking into the land of futility. It is a miracle.
And that’s not to say that work doesn’t happen or that it shouldn’t happen. Just understand that there is a big difference between your two options for where it originates. And if you’re going to find the work that originates with God, you’re going to need to learn how to surrender to Him. And His plan.
God doesn’t need a plan, but He gives us one because we need one. We can either work within His boundaries and receive favor or have a go on our own out in the wild, with the thorns and the beasts.
Seeds aren’t fruit…not yet.
There are a lot of principles in the Kingdom that are exemplified in the creation. One of them is how seeds work.
Fruit can be enjoyed today.
Seeds are a little more complicated. They don’t look like much. But if you choose to plant them, they will reward your effort and investment (remember the positive value of striving, and remember how only work done in faith is valid).
If you plant your seeds, and I advise doing this in neat rows in a well-considered field, it’s going to rope in a new variable: timing. And with timing comes power and purpose.
The work of investing in your seeds is going to test you. It will make your motives clear to you and others.
And counterintuitively, you’ll learn in the process of all this work that a plant doesn’t really labor to produce fruit. Plants produce fruit not by vain strife but because they are doing what they were made to do.
Further, timing could be more accurately rendered the times. It requires maturity, weathering due seasons, and longevity. For us, these things would be called striving; they would be called faith-founded work.
Timing is more of an event, and the times are more of a process. Timing is something you wait for, and the times are something you work in. Timing is the moment when seasons change. The times are the seasons themselves. When the seasons in our lives change, they trigger new processes that we must endure and in which we must work if we are to bear any fruit.
Jesus didn’t call the works He's prepared for us a product. He said we would bear fruit. And lots of it.
A product is something we produce by our own means and in accordance with our own plans.
Fruits are submitted to Kingdom principles.
Like cultivation.
Psalm 37 instructs us to “dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness."
My favorite sermon I ever heard by A.W. Tozer was one in which he taught on five words from Hosea 10.12: “Break up your fallow ground.” This is cultivation.
A fallow field is one that hasn’t been subjected to the plow. That doesn’t mean it’s unfruitful. What it means is that it doesn’t bear useful fruit because what grows there isn’t in good order. And since it hasn’t been planted in neat rows, pretty much the only beneficiaries of its fruit are the beasts and the birds. It tends to bear scanty fruit that’s interspersed with thorns and briars.
Cultivation breaks the ground. It turns the soil over, buries the trash, uproots weeds, and makes the field ready to receive not just the rains but seed from the farmer. Cultivation is preparation. And sometimes it needs to happen even after your seeds have germinated and begin to grow. Weeds tend to grow quicker than crops, but cultivation smartly done physically destroys weed roots before they can crowd out and overwhelm what you’re trying to grow.
Disciples engage these disciplines.
Also: contentment has counterfeits.
Contentment is wanting what you have. It’s also gratitude continually expressed, which has kinship with humility. It’s a discipline that is learned very slowly.
It is therefore extremely valuable.
Valuable things always have counterfeits.
One of the great seductions of man is that, since he is made in the image and likeness of God, he feels innately that he is destined for greatness. What he often misses when he is dazzled by that truth is that he also has been subjected to futility. We’re easily seduced, especially when ideas that flatter us are employed against us.
One counterfeit to contentment is inaction, and we justify it by calling it waiting.
We get paralyzed by fear in the face of our circumstances, and although we deny our treason out of one side of our mouth, we don’t really trust God to come through for us when resistance gets real, so we hide behind cardboard cutouts of reason and responsibility so that we can avoid going to battle.
This isn’t contentment. It’s hell. It’s madness. And it’s not waiting.
True contentment is not subject to anything, least of all my circumstances. And it takes many seasons for its fruit to come into fullness. But once I finally have it, I will notice something breathtaking: that my fear has gone.
I believe therefore that contentment has something to do with the perfection of love, which casts out all fear. And the perfection of love can't be a momentary revelation because it’s more of a season than a moment. In fact, it is in my experience a steady unveiling over many seasons.
I also believe that contentment has quite a lot to do with perseverance. You could call it endurance, steadfastness, or even longsuffering. None of these are popular. But they’re priceless, so watch out for fakes.
Purpose and timing lead to miraculous transformation.
I have proven to myself many times that when I navigate by my own purpose and timing, the only thing I have access to is my own power, which is impotent.
God said that we should come to Him—our source—with all of our requests, great or small, and that whatever we ask in His name will be done for us. Not by us. And if you’re a Christian, you know these things.
A problem arises, though, when we ask and do not receive.
James tells us that when this happens it’s because we ask with selfish motives. He’s right. Think about it: How often do we come to God requesting that He would show up in our lives with a great demonstration of power?
We err double when we think that it will build our faith for God to fulfill requests that, well, don’t build our faith. Weird, huh? We’re out of balance in the ask when we ignore or fail to consider God’s purpose and timing.
As believers, our own purpose should derive from God’s purpose. That is, we find our why only after we see God’s why in any given situation. And that takes time and effort, let me tell you.
Even if our request is that God would do something small and easily doable, if we aren’t submitted to purpose, we won’t see the fulfillment of that ask. When we don't see the results we expect, we assume the reason is that God hasn’t answered our prayers.
But that’s incorrect. God always answers prayers. We fail to receive because of a faulty motive. Our why is out of calibration.
But we also fail to understand that there are prerequisites to receiving God’s power. Before the power comes, there must be a reckoning with His purpose. And if we have to make peace with His purpose, we also must make peace with His timing, which is interdependent upon His purpose.
In other words, we step off the path into trouble the moment we make more of the prayer than the God we’re praying to. And we get the cart before the horse when we obsess over what we’ve asked for and continued to ask for but forget Whom we’re asking. We focus on the what when the what is the fruit of Whom and when.
Timing is everything in discovering purpose.
Further, sometimes we feel that our requests are not being answered when in fact God is in the process of answering them, but we’re so out of tune with the Kingdom that we’re unaware He’s working. We too easily forget that there is a big difference between timing and the times. If we’re in a season—that is, we’re subject to a process (which includes faith-founded work)—then God is busy working the answer to our requests in accordance with the times. We must embrace the process of the times God has ordained for us and the works He has prepared for us to do.
It’s impossible to live your life in moments anyway. Life must be lived as a process. Think of it as space enough for you to walk in. Moments are a pinprick. Process is a huge blank page, if you like, and you can color on it however you want to.
So embrace the slow, the wait, and the delay. Before you know it, the season will change, you’ll experience timing, the thing long asked for will manifest, and then you’ll begin the next process: the next “the times.” And He will continue to build your faith then, too.
How do I put it all together?
Work that centers on me is always frustrating because it comes with strife. If the purpose of my work is all about me, I will never break through to the power I seek (the miracle of resurrection and transformation that we see typified in how a seed becomes a plant), and I’ll always be tempted to think that God either doesn’t see me or doesn’t love me because I never see my asks touch ground. The timing will never be optimal because I haven’t submitted to the purpose (or the times I’m in), so I’ll never see the power of transformation that takes my work and makes it fruit.
This type of work can’t sustain me.
But fruit can.
And that’s where work prepared in advance for me to do, work that glorifies God, will satisfy, even if there’s striving (effort). Remember that in the Kingdom, your pain has a point now.
In the Kingdom, I can see God’s purpose, and it’s so good that I can’t help but submit to it. I can’t help but submit to God’s timing and the times He has ordained. As a result, I have access to transformative power, and I’m invested in my part of the miracle through the effort that I expend.
What’s more, my part is an act of faith: I don’t see all the details in the exchange that’s taking place, but I see enough to incentivize action on my part. Indeed, I see enough to make me want to press in to Jesus no matter what, even with violent desperation (this is what Jesus meant when He said that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force). And how could it be otherwise? When you behold an undeniable miracle—the power of God—the only rational response is to run to it.
A warning, though.
You should know that in the pursuit of these treasures, God, who is faithful, will lead you—if you are willing—to your very own deepest heart of darkness. It is a place you don’t know the way to. It is both the last place you would ever want to go and the fortress you guard most carefully. It is the reason for every mask in your arsenal. It is the reason you rage, the reason you fail, the reason you hurt, and the thing your (mistaken) identity feeds upon. It is the wound and the pain that have always—from your earliest memory—defined you. Pulling this thorn from all that makes you who you are requires a Surgeon who knows what the hell He’s up to, by God. Your heart of darkness is the deepest source of your deepest hurt, and if this surgery isn’t done in stages that take place over many years, the operation will kill you. But if you don’t go under the knife, you’re dead anyway. The wound is so deeply entrenched in your soul that the Surgeon must wound you afresh, continuously and by degrees, so consistently that it will feel like abuse, like torture, to get to the place where anything can be done about what’s been slowly killing you for all these years. And He will take you there with Him to witness what He does. Plus, He has to get you there without you knowing where you’re going and what He’s about to do or you’ll sabotage and compromise the whole mission. Remember, God is working for you but against the traitor in you, and only He can win the war for your immortal soul. Once you’re finally there at the end of yourself and the source of all your sin and pain, you will find yourself unable to keep from hurling the most vile hatred at the One who led you there—even over all your pretense of how much you love Him, over all your apologies, over all your horror at how wicked you really are deep down and how you came to need the thing you hate the most. Now you’ve been found out, all the secret hurts you hoarded for so long have nowhere to hide in this irresistible light, and you will be so profoundly outraged that you’ll be insensible. But Jesus made an exchange—a substitution—in the darkness before you could do anything about it. He became the thing you hate the most, and now you need Him more than anything. He will pierce you with a glance. He will see you, and you’ll know you are seen. You’ll realize that this has been, all along, the mission Jesus came to accomplish—even in you—and that He rejoices to become sin for even you, so that you could be won back to the Father. And you will break. Just like that fallow ground. You will see a much bigger picture, and the pain, the waiting, the suffering—all of it—will fade as you know that even in your deepest heart of darkness, the call and purpose—the Word of God—has always been valid. And to cast all your worst evils upon Christ will make sense because, of course, this was why He came. This was why He led you here to the center of you: to make you new, to bring the miracle of resurrection and transformation to your house. And to show you what a good Father really is.
In my case, it has taken 45 years to get here. My wound was very deeply hidden indeed. But there was nowhere it could hide from Him. And I pray that this year, the year we see everything clearly, the year God told me was the “time to get real,” you do precisely that and surrender to His purpose and timing for you. I pray that you produce fruit in keeping with repentance, that you submit to the exchange of your dead works and your dead purpose for those which were prepared in advance for you—a son or daughter of the Most High God. Why would you not exchange futility for favor? And why would you not do it right now?
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