Yeah, She's Crazy

by Noah Clay

  In that moment, I found myself unable to speak or move, merely making a noise that sounded kind of like, "oh." Here I sat asking God how I would make enough money doing something else to have my 2.5 kids and a sheepdog living in our perfect house with a white-picket fence. Yet, just outside of the very car I was riding in, a young girl was making the decision to miss out on an event that she loved to take a nap, so she wouldn't feel hungry. She had no dad in the picture, and her mom was in and out of jail/drug circles. And, this little girl was hungry. But, I was concerned with money to achieve "perfection."

  *******

  When you finally realize that God is everything, having nothing can be seen as a gift. It is through this process that you finally see just how much you need God and just how willing he is to provide. He gave everything, so that we can experience him fully, not so that we could have everything ourselves. It's quite simple, really. When our hands are so full of stuff, it becomes impossible to receive the grace God pours down on us so freely.

  The question we have to ask ourselves, and that has been weighing on my heart since the conference, is, "what am I hungry for?" Do I honestly, earnestly hunger and thirst for righteousness? Or, am I so full of stuff that I can't see or feel anything God is trying to show me? Am I napping so I don't feel that hunger? Or, am I begging for satisfaction? Do I abandon a call to mission work to seek out something that will pay more? Or, do I trust that God will not only satisfy my hunger but fill me full of his goodness?

  Sometimes, hunger isn't about eating. It's about knowing you have a need to be fed and anxiously waiting to be.

  Chapter 20a.2

  A few days after writing that post, a friend of mine shared that the main thing she loved was my vulnerability. So, I learned to accept the parts of me I had previously wanted to hide. I worked to let God have his way in my heart, fighting back my own desires so that the glory would go to God.

  My focus shifted in a major way, and I began to see people the way God saw them. I knew that they weren’t perfect, and I stopped trying to make them perfect. Instead, I reflected on the beauty within and shared Christ’s love. My job wasn’t to fix that person. Even God gives us free will, so who am I to tell God he is wrong?

  My life wasn't perfect by any means at all, but I grew so much closer to God and his people by simply letting myself. I was the one holding myself back from what God had in store. And in doing that, I not only robbed myself of God’s provision, but I robbed others of what God could be using me to do in their lives. So, I stepped back and let God use me for his glory.

  There was just one area I didn’t give up, because I really thought it was personal. I thought God should be focusing his time on saving people instead of trying to steer my personal life. So, I kept this one tiny part of my heart fenced off, because I didn’t really think it would matter to God anyway.

  That area was dating.

  There is just something about being 20 years old (with the thought process of a 35 year old) and having never had anyone truly, actively pursue a relationship with you that makes you feel pretty crummy about yourself. After a while, you begin to feel like there is something wrong with you and that you are unlovable in that capacity. Yes, Jesus loves you, but you can't marry him and raise his children.

  So, you seek to remedy the problem in a variety of ways. Some people simply lower their standards, while others leave the standard the same but actively seek out more people in more places who can fill the standard. After nine months of working to act in Godly wisdom and seek righteousness, I wasn't about to undo such progress with a bad relationship. So, I chose the latter of the two options.

  Yes, y’all. I did online dating. I went with the Christian site, so I would meet nice men. But, I think I joined the wrong site, because the men weren’t actually nicer or more Christ-like. There were just less of them.

  God had worked so incredibly hard to graciously give me a new identity that was no longer "rejected," "denied," or "abused" but was instead "beautiful." But on my Christian dating profile, I was no longer "beautiful." I became a strategically worded portrait of worldly perfection. I highlighted all my strengths, ignored any weaknesses, chose only pictures that featured me looking well put together, and threw in the phrase "God's will" enough times to make even the biggest skeptic view my profile more than once. And with this done, I searched.

  The searching was the part that truly chipped away at the new identity God had given me and replaced my pure longing for a relationship with heart-numbing lust. As I carefully selected criterion after criterion for my advanced searches, I replaced men of God with points. Good qualities would score points, while less than preferable qualities would lose points. At the end of each profile view, I'd tally up this mental score sheet and determine whether the man whose profile I was viewing was worthy of a "maybe interested" or simply a swift but sure "not interested." With each profile I viewed, my view of God's creation became more fogged by the world's view of perfection.

  The whole system became a game to me of seeing who would view my profile in return and if anyone would actually send me a smile (which sounded cute at the time, but is now laughably embarrassing). I thrived off of the attention and crashed when a profile I'd viewed didn't view me back. Still the cycle continued with me caring less and less about the man behind the profile and more about the system I'd put him in.

  Yet even in the midst of our wandering, God is crafting a plan to bring us back to him. He never stops to say that we have messed up too much or too bad to come back. Even if we look at him and tell him we don’t need him, God stands by and waits for the moment when we realize we actually do.

  So once again, I found myself pleading with God to take my life back. He obliged and put me back on track, seeking and trusting him alone. He spoke truth and clarity into my life and showed me that the men I so casually sorted through and put in lists were just as much his children as I was. And when I tried to envision my life around who I wanted them to be, I was just as guilty of lust as anyone else. So, I deleted the account.

  Permanently.

  Chapter 20b

  It's definitely not easy to just accept that God will place the right man in your life at the right time. Even harder, is accepting the fact that he may place that man in your life long before he intends to do anything to build your relationship. Yet, what is always certain is that God is always faithful, despite our trespasses against both him and our own selves. You can't make people choose to love you, and you can't make them want a relationship with you.

  But, why would you?

  There is a God who loves you in a way that the human brain cannot even begin to comprehend. As much as we argue otherwise, God is the author and perfector of love. He doesn’t stop at making things new; he moves even farther, working even harder, to make things honoring and glorifying to him. So, while we can’t always see or understand God’s plans, we can rest assured that they are being brought together for his glory.

  What is simply and purely amazing, though, is finding joy in God, himself, in the meantime. As I’ve addressed in previous chapters, joy doesn’t necessarily equal happiness. Joy doesn’t require that you be thrilled with your life, and that’s where I think a lot of people get it wrong when talking about Christian dating.

  God doesn’t require that we love being single. He requires that we love him. He understood that it was good for us to have companions. After all, he made them. He created the very idea of marriage brought it into existence.

  Granted, God does speak through Paul in the New Testament that it is better to remain single. This is so that you can focus your time and heart on God without marital/family responsibilities and distractions. He doesn’t say marriage is bad, though. Inasmuch, it’s not bad or wrong to want marriage. Some people are wired that way, and God uses marriage to paint a beautiful picture of the gospel.

  The joy I’m talking about comes from being able to serve others, love God, and seek his will in spite of having what you want. This
is reflected in scripture through Matthew 26:36-56. In the first ten verses of this passage, we find Jesus praying in the garden that God would find another way to save his people. Even Jesus asked that something different happen. Jesus wasn’t thrilled with being brutally executed in a public forum. No one would be.

  But, then come the second ten verses. In these, we see Jesus willingly offering himself to Judas, knowing what this means. When Judas comes for Jesus, he (Jesus) actually says to Judas, “Do what you came for, friend. (Matthew 26:50a, ESV).”

  Dang.

  Jesus just spent the entire night praying that there would be another way, begging his dad to do things differently. Yet, when the time came, Jesus offered himself up to those who came to kill him. He didn’t run and hide or fight back. He didn’t avoid what he knew was God’s will, despite how much he wished there was another way.

  In today’s culture, I’m not sure we really grasp the significance of that. We have everything at our disposal and can order just about anything instantly. When a whim strikes us, we act. We don’t stop to think of the consequences or what may come.

  In the days of Jesus, all people had was time. It took a full caravan days and sometimes weeks just to reach a neighboring village. So much time and effort went into the simplest of trips that anyone would have had time to run and hide. There was no GPS or federal agency to track your whereabouts.

  So, in that day and age, Jesus had a definite advantage. Not only could he have probably escaped by none other than his human abilities, Jesus was God in the flesh. Ergo, he could have easily snapped his fingers and been whisked off to his rightful throne in heaven by thousands of angels. He could have vanished in the blink of an eye. He had the power to do whatever he wanted.

  And with that power, what he chose was to obey God.

  Wow.

  Just as Jesus longed for God's will to be done in his life, in spite of what he wanted, we must also ask for God's will to truly be done. We may not see immediate answers, but the key is to be anxiously waiting for God. Don’t settle for complacency or let your heart grow lukewarm. Use whatever is happening in your life to honor God.

  That’s how joy works. In spite of whatever is going on in your life, you are able to still praise God. You still seek him out and honor him in all things. And, in that, you take joy which perseveres.

  Chapter 20c

  Be careful what you sing in a worship song, because God has a truly awesome way of making it so.

  I once heard someone preach that it was his goal to not sing lies to God with his worship. So many times, we wander into church half-asleep and only half-concerned with what God plans to do in us. And in that passivity, we miss the fullness of who God is, where our worship is no more than words we sing because we are expected to. We find ourselves not really caring and remain unmoved by the God of the universe surrounding us with the very essence of his divinity.

  But when we embrace God fully and totally, surrendering the totality of our own selves to glorify him, he moves mountains. Sometimes, this embrace can be as small as a brief touch with the tips of our fingers. It is in those moments, though, that something much greater moves us to reach out to someone greater.

  You see, when you truly desire to know God and to be truthful with your worship, he responds with his holy truth. You may be terrified, and you may only sing a few lines of the song, before you stop to avoid the lie. But with that line, if only a few honest words, you give your heart to be used as God pleases, holding nothing back.

  And with your heart, God makes known the fullness of his glory, so that you may rejoice in his victory. He seeks to draw us into his holiness and lifts us up with the glory we’ve given to him. By this process, we are freed from our chains. Greater than this, though, we are freed to lift those very chains back up to him, so they may be no more.

  One summer, I had the incredible privilege of hearing a good friend lead a devotional for a group of 12-15 year-old girls. She shared her story, talking about freedom and the new identity we have all been given through Christ. And in the course of her talk, she said, "God didn’t set us free to set us free. He set us free to give us a purpose."

  Those words immediately convicted me and drew me to a place of complete humility before God, as I struggled to wrap my head around the depth of his grace. While I was still so lost in my own efforts, God was allowing me to be used for something so much greater. I saw that God’s grace was perfect in spite of my imperfection. His mercy was made complete through my need.

  Now, I’m not saying that God creates evil and puts it in our lives to watch us squirm. This goes back to an earlier chapter, as well, when I addressed the difference in our perception and God’s reality. We deserve destruction. It’s that simple.

  Anything other than what we deserve is grace. So, when bad things happen to us, that isn’t God “testing” us or “punishing”

  us. He is a good God who loves his kids. Yet, he can’t even look upon sin. So, when we are filled with our sin and living in the midst of it, God has no choice but to step back and let the enemy have his way with the Earth.

  We already know, though, that God wins. Even while the enemy watches and waits for opportunities to harm us and draw us away from God, God puts together a beautifully immaculate plan to bring us back.

  With that said, I do very much believe that God is over all things, great and small, and he has plans to use even our own evil to bring us back to him. God allows us to go forward with our wrong decisions and trespasses, so we may truly understand just why we needed him in the first place. God doesn’t make us choose him or love him. He doesn’t make us follow him or acknowledge him. He loves us so much more than we can ever imagine, so it breaks his heart to watch us turn. Nonetheless, he gives us that choice.

  Inasmuch, we deserve whatever comes our way, but it is by God’s grace, that we live to see each day and are able to experience joy. It’s not the other way around. God doesn’t punish us with hard times. We did that to ourselves. When you see things this way, you realize just how present God really is.

  So, let’s go back to looking at how we approach him. Why do we take God out of our worship of him? If God is truly ever-present, why do we envision him a fool and aim to remove him, claiming that he left us or turned his back on us? In doing so, we are the ones turning our backs on him. God is still there, waiting for us.

  God has a plan for us and a purpose for us, regardless of our response. As my friend stated, God didn’t give us a new life and a new identity to abandon us and hope we figured things out. He gave us our new identities, because those new identities reflect him and draw us in as rightful sons and daughters.

  Our new identities are so beautiful and powerful that it is glaringly obvious when our human nature comes through. We can’t hide from God or lie to him with the hope that he won’t notice. God created us to worship him. He knows when that worship is no more than a few words we lie about to get through a Sunday morning.

  Part Four

  Chapter 20a.3

  Before I go any farther, I feel it is vitally important to mention this section gets messy. It may be long, hard, and difficult for some of you to get through. It’s got some sensitive stuff. It’s got some hard stuff. More than any of that, though, rest assured that it has God. This period of my life really changed me and shaped me. But, God still pursued me.

  With that, let’s get started.

  In the last section, I was writing about dating, worship, and finding joy in God’s will. At first glance, I was finally getting it together. But under the surface, I was fighting a nasty battle with Major Depressive Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and strong symptoms of anxiety brought on by both. I had (unknowingly) struggled with both for years, but it wasn’t until the end of August 2013 that I decided to seek help.

  Our society places this unbelievable stigma on mental health that makes those with mental illness feel ashamed and broken. If someone with cancer confided that information in you, you would
help them get the care they needed. The same goes for things less severe, like a cold or the flu.

  We are really good at pretending to care for sick people.

  We’re not good at loving those with a sickness we’re scared of.

  I can’t speak for other mental health conditions, but I can assure you that depression is just as much a disease as any you could ever be vaccinated for. I didn’t choose it, and I’ve done everything I can to treat it and prevent it. Yet, there are still some days that I can’t shake it. Just like you can’t tell a tumor or vomit to disappear, you can’t “snap out of” mental illness.