There’s a reality show in which, at each stage of the competition, the contestants are lined up before the judges and one person is eliminated. This weekly guillotining is preceded by the phrase, “In the fashion world, one day you’re IN, and the next, you’re OUT!” It is probably just me, but it seems that the host delivers this line with particular sadistic relish. It’s hard to deny the power of those words. We all yearn to be a part of some IN crowd, and oh how painful to be OUT!

Coaches and teachers have used such exclusive selectivity to great effect, making high performance standards a condition for acceptance and approval. Some are so adept that a mere frown or cold shoulder can send the student to the gym or library for hours of diligent work in the hopes that the frown will turn to a smile, and she’ll be IN. Country clubs, bridge clubs, fraternities, sororities are all famous for it. (Joe is IN; he’s one of us, but Jane is OUT!) Adulthood is not the exclusive venue for such behavior, either. On the playground an adorable six-year-old announces, “Alex and Cameron can play on the monkey bars, but you and J.J. can’t.”

This “club mentality” is one that we Christians are powerful to reverse. Rather than relish in exclusion, we can, and often do, emphasize inclusion. “Do you know Jesus? We’ll then, you’re IN.”A Reformed perspective gives us the theological underpinning for such a reversal. Concepts like Calvin’s unconditional election and verses like John 10:28 (No one will snatch Christ’s sheep from His hand.) are essential to our understanding of a secure salvation and are sources of great comfort to us. We and our brothers and sisters are eternally a part of God’s family. Theologically we know this as justification, and theologically we can distinguish it from sanctification, but when it comes to practical daily life there seems to be a disconnect.

While God’s love for us is undeserved, unearned and unconditional, it is wrong to believe that our behaviors and attitudes are inconsequential. When I sin, I’m pretty sure that something is required of me despite my “club membership” in the family of God. Christ’s admonition to the churches in Revelation 2 & 3 underscores such consequences. “I know your works, your labor, your patience . . . . Nevertheless I have this against you.” In my distorted understanding, I can interpret, “I have this against you” as “You’re rejected; you’re OUT!” Conversely, it’s easy to interpret, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you” as “Relax. Kick back. You’re IN.” I find myself wavering emotionally in my relationship with the Lord between feeling either OUT or IN.

It occurs to me that I am confusing feeling at peace with God with feeling at ease with Him. While we can and should have the former, I don’t know that the latter is ever entirely possible. I think again of Peter. In a mere six verses in Matthew 16, he hears Christ’s “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah” but then His “Get behind me, Satan!” Despite Peter’s status as one of Christ’s closest followers (surely he was IN), misunderstanding the nature of God’s kingdom earned Peter a resounding reprimand.

There seems to exist in the church at the moment a sort of laissez faire attitude that assumes perhaps too much comfort with the Savior. We waltz into and out of everything from church commitments to marriage commitments with the supreme confidence of one who is IN. Like Peter, we have no problem telling the Lord how it really ought to go down. A brother is called by God to fill an important appointment in his church but resigns when the going gets tough. He claims God’s release even though the key position remains vacant and important work is left undone. A sister rationalizes the impending divorce of a believing couple because, “It’s been years, and you know, the marriage was never really very good” and thereby denies the power of God to bring reconciliation and the subsequent glory such reconciliation would bring Him.

These behaviors are suggestive of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s cheap grace which says, “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.” This is to confuse grace with discipleship. Grace is imperative; it gets us into “the club.” But while membership has its privileges, it also has its requirements. To be Christ’s disciple means to be jealous for God’s kingdom just as Christ was jealous for it. Hebrews 12:3-8 is a good place to get a picture of what it means to be IN. To be His son is to be disciplined by Him. When we get the frown or the cold shoulder – the rebuke – it is not a rejection but the very evidence that we are in fact IN, that we belong to Him and that he has important kingdom work to do in and through us.

Moving can be such a frustration! When we moved across town recently, who knew it would take (and to quote Dave Barry, “I am not making this up”) six weeks to get our old phone number transferred to our new address. I said in last month’s post regarding testing, “Let it rain.” Well, the Lord’s been faithful! I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that one supervisor at the telephone company declared she’d never seen such a tangle. After numerous delays and crossed wires, it seemed appropriate to ask the Lord what He was doing. (Not “What in the world couldYou possibly be doing here?” though I might have been tempted, but the tried and true “Lord I’m sure You must be in this; help me to see.”

Clearly the first thing required was the fruit of the spirit: gentleness . . . kindness . . . longsuffering . . . (arrrgh!) self-control. My success or failure there is visible not only in heaven, but apparently also in some cyber-vault because each of the 2640 times I called (and yes, I am making that up, but it seems only a slight exaggeration) I was told “this call may be recorded for quality assurance.” So, patience, kindness, self-control. But what else did the Lord want?

As those of you who read my last post will know, God has been working Mark 4:35 – 41 into my soul. One day as I began to make yet another call regarding our phone service, or rather the lack of it, I paused to ask God for success. I was keenly aware that while it was proving impossible to find anyone at the other end of the telephone line who was both concerned to address the problem and powerful enough to do so, I was praying to the Lord God who is both. It is the essential dynamic of this passage in Mark. Jesus is sleeping soundly in the boat as the disciples fear that the storm will annihilate them. “Don’t you care?” they ask. Jesus rises and proves both his love and his power. In my prayer I was trying to operate within the reality of Mark 4:39 as I understood it, that the Lord of the universe could answer my prayer, calm my storm with a word – all loving, all powerful Jesus. As I prayed for success, I wanted God’s kingdom of order and peace to supercede my circumstance – my phone line to be specific.

However, as I asked the Lord what He was doing, He made it clear that the action point here did not yet concern my circumstance. His will was not that He invade my kingdom, but that I immigrate to His. My prayer became, “Lord, you are my Lord. I don’t know why we’re having this difficulty. I’d like it fixed. But I sense that you desire to do a greater work in my heart. What ever it is, do it, Lord Jesus.”

As I reconsidered these verses in Mark, it occurred to me that the disciples approached Jesus in accordance with their own kingdom. “Lord, do this; do that; comfort me; help me bail water.” But Jesus answers the disciples in accordance with His kingdom – He supernaturally silences the storm. What remarkable grace that He answers from the provisions of His kingdom and not theirs.

How often does He answer us in the same way, but we don’t have the wisdom to see it. Or worse, does He ever comply with our wishes and answer from the poverty of our own kingdoms? I think of the quail in the desert. God’s will was the supernatural manna, but the Israelites wanted meat. God gave them meat, and they choked on it. I think of the Pharisees praying on the street corners. Jesus makes clear that they have their reward, the praise of men rather than the approbation of God. It is terribly sobering to think of the ways my life has been impoverished because I was determined that God answer me according to my kingdom. How blessed that He has often answered the prayer I should have prayed and not the one I did pray. I’m struck with how earth-bound I am.

Psalm 119:35-37 has special meaning here: “Make me walk in the path of Your commandments . . . Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to selfish gain, Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things . . . .” (my emphasis). How the psalmist understands our need of God’s intervention to choose the eternal over the temporal, the spiritual over the carnal! Interestingly, it was at least two weeks after this prayer of mine before the Lord addressed the circumstance that prompted it and restored our full phone service. He was still inclining my heart, no doubt, turning my eyes. And I am thankful. Oh the blessed, frustrating, wonderful, difficult disruptions of the ultimate move, our immigration into God’s kingdom.

The gentle sound of raindrops hitting the thirsty ground woke me the other morning. This is normally a welcomed sound in our parched corner of South Carolina., but we’ve had two drenching rains in the two weeks since my husband, David, and I moved into our dream bungalow, and all this rain has been a particular problem for us. I climbed from bed and stumbled through the unfamiliar hallway of our “new” old house to the front door and peered out the window. Sure enough, water was rapidly dripping from the bead-board ceiling and bouncing off the brass light fixture of the front porch. The door mat was drenched. Water covered the entire porch floor. On closer inspection, I now noticed buckled ceiling boards and bubbling paint. How long had that roof been leaking? What kind of rot was hiding below the surface? How difficult would this repair be, and what would it cost? It would help if this were the only difficulty we’ve encountered in the move, but it is just the latest in a lengthening list of rather alarming “inconveniences.” 

Mark 4:35-41 is coming home to roost for me right now. Such an academic little story when life is tooling comfortably along, but under my current circumstances, there are lessons I need to apply. While crossing the Sea of Galilee, Jesus is asleep in the boat as his disciples face a life-threatening storm. I picture them madly bailing water and, only after they realize the fruitlessness of their actions, waking the oddly sleeping Jesus with accusations that he does not care if they live or die. With a restraint that alone speaks volumes, Jesus ignores the ironic accusation and, with remarkable ease and authority, dismisses the wind and orders the waves to be silent. Then he turns to his followers and asks, “Why are you so afraid?” Why indeed. If those waves were not capable of drowning them all, the scene would be comical—twelve men furiously dishing handfuls of water overboard in the midst of a middle-eastern version of a nor’easter as the immensely powerful creator of those waves lies completely at rest nearby.

From the calm of a peaceful shore their actions seem ludicrous. From a post-resurrection perspective, they clearly are. Christ is Lord over all creation. But here, in the rain, I find myself bailing water with a vengeance. I want to point fingers, assign blame, demand restitution. I could drown in a sea of frustration, anger and disappointment. But I hear Jesus asking me the second question of Mark 4:40, “Do you still have no faith? (my emphasis)” It isn’t so much a question of the roof. We could find a way to get it repaired, even if it means forgoing fun upgrades we’d planned to make on our home. I think the question He’s asking me is, “Do you trust me to interfere with the things you are attached to in order to bring you into deeper relationship with me, in order to refine you, in order for my light in you to burn brighter?” I want to answer, “Yes (drip, drip, drip) absolutely yes!” Let it rain.