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It was really, really challenging because we had moved to New York to plant a
church. The church was going so well,
yet I felt like I had a bunch of
brokenness from my past that I'd never fully resolved.
I had idols in my heart. I had unrealistic expectations. I had pride. I had
all of these things,
and what I hadn't had yet was life circumstances that would reveal the
roots that were in there,
and so when these life circumstances opened, these
roots of brokenness broke through the soil and began to bear fruit.
You know, one of the things I learned from the book of Job - the difference between Job and his
three friends
is that the three friends never talk to God. They only talk about God, but Job
talks to God and so I said, I don't need to
talk with a buncha people about how mad I am at God. I just need to tell God how I
feel.
So I'd just go out late at night, spend a couple of hours every night
walking around the Upper West Side of Manhattan crying out to God,
asking him to step in and act and change me and
move on my behalf and it was like a really disorienting
thing to be a pastor of a great church plant in New York
and feel like my soul was withering and that I was a total hypocrite.
So I felt like I couldn't with integrity keep being a pastor if I
didn't attend to the deeper issues of
my soul so I really just pressed into that for a season.
We demand the right to control the outcomes of our lives,
and I had to learn to surrender that. God doesn't promise the outcomes, he just promises
relationships with us.
And so I had to let go of a bunch of that stuff and in many ways,
rebuild my faith from a more pure place of humility and dependence.
James K.A. Smith says - and I think this is really true - we're not just brains on a stick.
He says that we're creatures of passion and desire,
and so that classic philosophical statement "I think, therefore I am" - he says
that
that's probably not true. He says it's probably more like "I love,
therefore I am." And so I wanted to find
something or somebody where all of this
passion and desire would be met and fulfilled. And
the pain, the brokenness, the heartache, the wonder - all of that could
find its end and its consummation in a person.
And that ended up being Jesus, so there were some intellectual answers but
that wasn't the thing - it was that passion of my heart
meeting the passion of God's love that ultimately changed me.
And I'm not just saying that - that's for real.