Rocky Soil

From the Parable of the Sower:

Image by: georgeparrilla

"A sower went out to sow his seed....

...seed fell on the rock; when it sprang up, it withered, since it lacked moisture....the seed on the rock are those who, when they hear, welcome the word with joy. Having no root, these believe for a while and depart in a time of testing." Luke 8:1-15 (HCSB)

A couple of posts back I was talking about 'Character Over Kingdom" which leads to a simple directive: wait.

Connected to this thought is another great line: Excavate Rather than Build.

The parable of the sower describes a kind of believer who 'has no root' - in other words he is shallow and therefore unable to withstand difficulty. It's the same basic image as the guy who builds his house on the sand instead of the rock.

As I've walked through the last several years I can't tell you how many times I've been in a conversation where somebody winds up saying something like "You're different - I've never met a 'deep' Christian." I don't take this as a compliment to me or other Christians but instead a reflection on the likelihood that a LOT of Chistendom is living in rocky soil.

I suspect that all of us, at basically every point in our lives, are not characterized by any one of Jesus' soil metaphors but by all of them at the same time. Parts of my life welcome God gladly but thwart deep roots. Other parts are plagued by crows and still others are so sun baked that nothing gets through. But I'm just thinking about the rocky soil right now.

The thing about a rocky filed is this: there is good soil under there, it just takes hard work to get to it. Rocks need only to be noticed, lifted and moved out of the way to reveal what was always there, waiting to be put to good use.

Building 'depth' requires work, patience, and humility. I suspect many who stay shallow their whole lives do so out of ignorance more often than laziness though no doubt both come into play. Still, I think the biggest enemy of clearing stones is our addiction to comfort.

What you see is NOT what you get.

Let me bring in another image - the iceberg.

I think it was Craig who I first heard say that when you meet a man (or woman I presume) the entire thing we call their personality is really just the exposed part of something is driven by experiences, hurts and motives that are far, far deeper than any of us realize.

John Eldgredge says something similar that a man's personality is typically just a very elaborate fig leaf designed to mask what he is desperately afraid of - being known. I suppose that's not the entire thought - most men would kill to be truly known by just about anybody. What they fear is being 'exposed' where their worst image of themselves is revealed to be actually true.

The iceberg image is used to make a point about all of us - our lives are profoundly shaped by things that go on way beneath the surface, often so far down that we can't even see them in ourselves. For many, many people this reality is never understood and they go through life confounded by the things that seem to go wrong over and over and over again. In the context of this blog and The Intensive the iceberg is an invitation to deliberately go deep into our hearts to see what really lives there - to ask the tough questions and not walk away until we have answers.

• What are my real motives for being in this job?
• Why do I get so angry when she says that?
• Where did my passion go?

Knowledge is power. Understanding our own motives, desires, and fears can be absolutely pivotal in the way we go forward into a better future.

But 'soul work' is hard work.

Very

hard

work.

The iceberg is an image of what's really happening in our lives an in everybody's life. It's also an invitation to go deep into our hearts to look around. The rocky soil is a picture of the alternative, of a life 'unexamined' as Socrates would say.

Both images imply this idea of work to do, things to see and understand about ourselves. And yet - so few men take the time to try.

"God will give you everything you need for free. But everything you want - you'll have to work for." - Bill Johnson

I've found that all of the good stuff, all of the stuff that changes faith from a Sunday club to a full-throated crazy-talk adventure ride, is just beyond the veil of convenience. 

So I for one want very much to be 'good soil' where God's words, every thought, every murmur, every sigh, has a place to land where it can take root. I know that will take effort and perseverance and sacrifice but seriously - is it even remotely possible that it wouldn't be worth it?

The Power of Sonship

Jason Upton has a song called Sons and Daughters that always stirs me at a profound level. I think I first heard the song around 2006 (plus or minis a year or two) in a season where my understanding of God, and particularly the Holy Spirit was growing in big, punctuated steps.  He sings in another song "breaking off rejection with the spirit of adoption" and I gues the whole idea of son-ship is kind of a recurring theme for Jason.

I'd obviously heard the idea before, that I was God's adopted son, that we've been grafted in and all that but I never felt it. In point of fact I actually am an adopted child in this world too. My bio-folks, as best as I can tell, were young and when bio-mom got pregnant they set up a closed adoption before I was ever born. I was handed to the people who in my mind are my real parents, when I was only a few weeks old. Mom was very open with me about the topic and for as long as I can remember it was an open subject with no weirdness, no bias, and no judgement. In fact I used to joke with my sister that mom and dad picked me but they were stuck with her. I have one brief, unaccounted for, memory in which a woman in a yellow blouse with long straight dark hair is leaning over me with a smile. I suppose that image could be just about anything- a nurse, a social worker..my other mom. Anyway, I've always said that my adoption was a total non-issue but more recently I hear the Spirit whispering that perhaps that's not true, that deep down is a reef that I'm only barely aware of shifting the flow of my life in deep but mostly imperceptible ways.

Maybe because of that experience the subject of adoption took on a certain coldness, a subject that I sensed was supposed to be delicate and managed carefully because bad things lay just below the surface. Perhaps I picked up on the subtle notion that the polite, hoped-for response of a well-adjusted adoptee was to act as though everything was just fine.

Going back to Jason Upton, when I soaked in that song, something I found myself doing often, I heard something in his voice that made me laugh and cry simultaneously.
Jason felt it.
He somehow knew he was a true son of God and it infused his words with passion and affection and came off like a cat purring on someone's lap in front of a fire. He sung contentment and safety and a belonging that I certainly didn't feel and only barely comprehended. It was so joyful and rich and intimate but somehow open and public and it made my heart long for that kind of experience with God.

Something Morgan said first when I heard him in January but also at the Intensive was that if a man could truly live in that identity as a son that he would be 'Unstoppable.'

Unstoppable?

It sounded kinda cool. The man in me likes the idea of being powerful and effective and capable of overcoming any obstacle but it seemed like such an odd thing to say given the context of sonship. Like a non sequitur  or a mixed metaphor. But the thought has kept rolling around in my head looking for a place to land and I think its just starting to gel.

There's a persistently bent place in my heart that clings to a notion that I'm something like an employee for the Kingdom or a volunteer in 'The Army of the Lord.' What's under those is a fierce independence that is not fully healthy. It's my 'you're not he boss of me' thing. But I am simultaneously aware of the truth that I am fully dependent on God. The problem is that those two ideas have an oil and water quality for me. On a good day I can keep both fluids in the same vessel but what I lack is a stable synthesis of the two - I think that synthesis might rest in the idea of Sonship.

I just saw Darren Wilson's new movie Father of Lights and I had one of those experiences where you've heard something many times before but today it sounds totally different.

It is a Father's joy to see His son succeed.

Suddenly I saw that dependency on my father was not the same as weak or hobbled or 'dependant' in the way we describe someone in a wheelchair. Jesus says 'I can do nothing of myself...' and yet he does  CRAZY STUFF! Jesus only did what he saw his father doing and yet he was...

Unstoppable.

With my eye on this topic I'm realizing that this idea has been circling around me for years and slowly working its way into my heart. To be honest it looks as though I've been resisting it but God has been patient, drawing me toward his heart through a kind of emotional back door. Jason Upton and Kim Walker keep singing about it. People like Morgan and Bill Johnson keep talking about it and I see now I've ben the frog in the slowly warming pot, but in this case it's a good thing...a really, really good thing.

To put the plane on the runway as Bill Jastram would say, the way I understand and cope with the challenges that inevitably come against my life and my calling changes dramatically with how I understand my position with God. If I'm an employee then it's important for me to be 'productive.' If I'm his son then it's important for me to be simply present. If I'm an orphan, even a well liked one, then I'm like Oliver asking 'please sir can I have some more' but if I'm a son then I know that everything in the refrigerator is partly mine and from there, with the Pridogal's father's words in my mind that "Everything I have is yours"... From there, 'unstoppable' doesn't sound so odd after all.