Yeah, She's Crazy

by Noah Clay

  The truth was that Satan knew he had lost. He wasn’t trying to stop something that should happen. He was trying to start something that would only bring brokenness.

  At the end of the day, our lives, and eternity alike, God is victorious over all things. Period. And, in the end, God had and has prevailed once again.

  Chapter 20c.2

  “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14, ESV

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  When I think of times in my life I’ve struggled, there is a song that comes to mind and gets stuck in my head. Really, it’s just a line of a longer song. And at that, it’s a line that is a common sentence or phrase in Christian culture. But, we tend to overlook the significance and beauty of it as we lump it into another retired canon of “ye olden hymns.”

  “Emmanuel. God is with us.”

  That’s it. Emmanuel: God is with us.

  I know I’m probably losing some of you right now to a little kitty snooze. I’m sure some of you are even trying to place where you’ve heard it, because it sounds vaguely reminiscent of a funeral for your great aunt’s cousin. Or, maybe it was the memorial for your cousin’s great aunt. Either way, it was crusty, old, and a little bit scary.

  So, I get it. I really do.

  Just try to track with me for a little bit here.

  The reason we often think of Emmanuel as an ancient funeral chant is because it really is old and a little bit sad. You see, Emmanuel was an Old Testament term for the coming messiah. It is a Hebrew word that means, wait for it, “God is with us.”

  For so long, God’s people watched and waited for the promised Emmanuel. Isaiah prophesied that one day God would return to dwell with his people, taking the form of a human. Even in humanity, he would still be God. This is where the name Immanuel (or Emmanuel in more modern spellings) comes from. Finally, after years and years of struggle and strife, God would be returning to dwell with his people.

  The Israelites so badly wanted God to return to free them from their chains and suffering. Life hadn’t been great for them, and scripture features countless stories of sons and daughters of God begging God to show his face. From asking for children to asking for deliverance from slavery, God’s people knew they were pretty lost without him. So, they prayed and waited, hoping any day would be the day God returned as the promised Emmanuel.

  Those songs sound sad, because they reflect the cries of a people so lost in their own sin and desperately seeking the face of God. Imagine being lost with no direction and homeless with a storm coming. I can only imagine that’s how God’s people felt, but even worse, in anticipation of his return.

  Today, we are so, so blessed to have the gospel. God’s word is real, and it is true. He has given it to us and lives among us. It is truly amazing how blessed we are to live in a time where God has come as promised and lives among us through the holy spirit until the day we join him eternally.

  So, why is it so hard for us to accept that grace and go to the ends of the Earth to reach the lost, even though Christ has already shown he will be there with us?

  We wish to struggle, suffer, and fight in our sin, because we deem ourselves unworthy of the grace given to us. We so badly want to give ourselves what we think we deserve (consciously or not), and we are only willing to receive what it is that we think we deserve. Ironically, though, we forget that all we really deserve is death.

  As a direct result of our sin, we deserve to be tormented and killed, eternally separated from God. But God created us for his glory. So, he made a plan to come down to Earth from his rightful throne, dying on a cross so we could turn back around and look upon his glory.

  But even still, we look away.

  In spite of us, God is still Emmanuel. No matter where we try to put him, he still dwells inside us as we abide in him. He is still God, and he is still with me. He is here with all of us, waiting for us to accept him.

  When we walk away, God is watching us. And when we fall, he is there to catch us. But, I think it’s so much more than that. God is there because he is.

  He is not there to catch us.

  He is there to be God.

  Chapter 20-something

  During my twenty-first and second years of existence on this planet, my life was radically transformed by the power of the gospel bringing forward the kingdom of Christ in a beautiful way. I don’t really have any stories from those years, but that’s because I started finding my story being taken over by God’s story. And, I was totally cool with that. So instead of my stories, let me tell y’all a little bit about what I learned in those years.

  1. Every day, each and every one of us has the opportunity to see God and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Every day, we are given the choice to seek first the kingdom of God and be renewed and refreshed. And every day, God is working.

  The beauty of God, though, is that he is supreme whether we choose to acknowledge his supremacy or not. He desires to have fellowship with us and bless us with the richness of his love, but he certainly doesn't make us choose him. He continues to reign supreme with or without us, in spite of all we do to block him.

  2. As Christians, we tend to slip into a trap of thinking that God’s will isn’t really his will unless he runs it by us for approval first. In this season of my life, God made his will very clear by not making it clear to me at all. He taught me to trust his plan by not telling me what it was.

  I reached a point where my personal issues collided with my academics, plans for the future, current job, and plans for a summer job. I told God that I had no clue what he wanted me to do. Then, I told him that I had tried to seek his will for what would be best. I had been looking for a sign that he just wasn’t giving me. And in my uncertainty, God reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who had done that.

  The fifth chapter of the book of John recounts a conversation of sorts that Jesus had with the Jewish religious leaders. The Jewish people were God’s chosen people, but they were actively persecuting Jesus and seeking his death. They were so literally looking for God that they missed him when he actually appeared in the flesh. They had expected him to come in the way they had designed, and in so doing, they missed what God’s actual plan was all along.

  While these religious leaders were watching for a king to come in a miraculous display, God came quietly through a baby boy no one could find room for. These same religious leaders missed the miracles Jesus performed in God’s name, because Jesus had been branded a heretic. And it was those leaders, who also missed the beauty of the gospel, because they thought it was just another criminal execution.

  In the same way, we miss God working in our lives, because he doesn’t always work the way we planned, expected, or wanted. God works in the way he wants. His plan is divine and supreme, so he really doesn’t need to cater to our whims.

  In my life, I’ve found myself so busy looking for a huge and incredible wonder that I lost sight of where God was already moving in the little things. I had so much to be grateful for, and God was definitely moving in my life. I just never saw it. I missed a lot of the wonderful little things building up to what God was going to do that I almost missed the big things he did as well.

  We can’t be God, and the good news is that we’re not supposed to be. We often try to superimpose our will onto God’s will and claim it was what God had in mind the whole time. To truly be obedient to God, though, we have to be obedient to all of him. We can’t just be obedient to the sliced and diced collage of him we make in Sunday school. Sometimes, God calls us to do tough things (Jonah, Am I right?), and we need to do those things. There is beauty in God’s works and plans, even if (and especially when) they aren’t the same as ours.

  3. God works just as much through our stress and struggle as he does through our triumphs and mundanity. During my twenty-first year, God had intentionally let my vision of his will be somewhat clouded so that I would learn to lean
on and trust in him. Now, I’m not saying that God ever wants us to suffer. He doesn’t. No dad does. What I’m saying is that God allows some of the struggles and suffering of this Earth to exist in our lives with a plan already in play for how he will lead us through. God isn’t hurting us; that’s our sin. God just allows it to happen thanks to that whole “humans want free will” thing.

  In the end, God’s glory is magnified much more through our struggles. If things were always sunny and perfect, no one separated from God would care. No one would have any need, so they wouldn’t seek out the one who provides. He is strongest in our weakness and biggest in our smallness. Without us being a distraction from him, lost people see God bigger. So, God allows us to have our own free will while relentlessly pursuing us and allowing us to be part of his plan.

  4. I can’t fix my eyes on what that will be. My eyes should be fixed on God. So, if I’m looking at what I want, my eyes aren’t looking at him and where he wants me. I challenge you to not look at what anyone else is doing or demand that God make himself clear to you. Instead, clear your own eyes to see where God is already working, and be obedient to his command.

  5. We don’t have to have anything to give to God. He doesn’t ask for that. He doesn’t ask for our accomplishments, victories, labors, and trophies. He asks for our hearts and our obedience. He doesn’t tell us to do something or be something and then follow him. He simply calls us to follow him.

  Even the things that we do have are only “ours,” because they were given to us by God himself. God is not going to be impressed with us re-gifting his own presents back to him. On the other hand, it’s kind of snobby of us to take his gifts and not use them to give him glory. Let me break it down for y’all.

  Suppose your parents buy you this rad muffin pan for your birthday. Like, we’re talking high quality that you’ve wanted for close to forever, because you’re a pastry chef. Then, you proceed to use said muffin pan to frequently to make muffins for the parents of all your friends. Then, when your parents ask you really nicely if you could make some of your famous muffins for them to try, you tell them to suck it up and move on. No matter what your excuse is, that’s a pretty crappy thing to do.

  God is like this times infinity. He has given each of us so many incredible gifts. Often, though, we find ourselves taking them and racing off to use them for our boss, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, teacher, friend, etc. God knows we don’t have anything to give him on our own, so he gives us good gifts to give back to him.

  6. When you have nothing, don’t ask God why. You don’t get to do that. The answer is pretty obvious, if you read number five. We don’t have anything on our own and never will. Left to our own devices, we will struggle for ages with nothing to show for it. It is only because of God that we have anything in the first place.

  So, thank God with/for your nothingness. Praise him with your whole self. You may have nothing else to give, but you always have yourself and your heart. That’s pretty darn convenient, too, since that’s all he ever really asks for.

  If we only go to God with our hands full, we have no way of holding anything else he wants to give us. Whether that is a struggle or a triumph, it is still a blessing that God sees us and chooses to use us for his glory. He doesn’t need us; he wants us. So trust him.

  Give him your empty.

  He will make you full.

  7. God is love, and without him, we can never begin to understand it. In my twenty-second year, I met the love of my life. He took all the crazy parts of me and held them in his hands, so no one could hurt them anymore. He believed in me when no one else did, and he supported all I wanted to become.

  In time, though, the sparks fizzled and the butterflies died. He was in a rigorous pharmacy school program, and I was in law school. So, our relationship started falling through the cracks. We would go days and weeks without being allowed to call the other so our studies could take priority. We both felt we had a calling from God, and it was more important to fulfill those callings than our own desires.

  Then, Christmas break came. We finally had a chance to see each other again face to face. We talked, laughed, cried, and realized that love was a choice we had to make. Where we had previously thought our studies were God’s calling, we began to realize that our studies were actually walls we had built around ourselves.

  As the break went on, we were able to have real conversations about our relationship and our lives as God had willed. I realized that I hated law school and was only there to add another diploma to my name so the federal government would be more excited to hire me. I didn’t want to study or practice law, and I didn’t want to be an attorney. I had wanted people to be impressed by me.

  My then-boyfriend was definitely called to be a pharmacist, but not to the extent that it became his god. He began to pray harder, asking God what it looked like for him to do things God’s way. God showed him how to stay focused on school and do his best, while making God his priority. After all, the only reason my then-boyfriend was in pharmacy school was to show people the way back to Christ.

  Together, we prayed and read scripture together, asking God what it looked like for us to do life together. God answered our prayers with little glimpses of where he wanted us. He gave us just enough to know where to step next without walking the path on our own. Together, my then-boyfriend and I decided to love each other. We finally realized that love wasn’t a feeling we had but a decision we would make each day.

  Since that time, we both have stronger relationships with God, because we’re actually doing what he says. Just like in a personal relationship, listening to and talking with God are imperative to a successful relationship. Unlike a human relationship, though, God gets everything right the first time. God doesn’t need multiple second chances or back-up plans. He needs himself, and that’s it. It’s us that need to keep learning.

  With that said, our continued learning and depending on God drives our relationship with him and others. By choosing to serve God and truly love him, we are making a choice to give up everything else we think we want so we can do what God wants. It’s not about us anymore, and it never really was.

  Part Four

  There are a lot of things I don't understand in life. For example, I don't understand why people still walk on the left side of a hallway, why butter is so expensive, or why it's so hard to beat some of the levels in a candy smashing game. And in response, I find myself questioning and analyzing the situation, seeking understanding and clarity.

  But it doesn't end there. You see, we all have these basic things in our lives that we don't understand, and they bother us momentarily, but then we let them go. We don't actually try to figure them out, and we walk away, having done nothing to rectify the situation.

  And, so it goes on. This way of thinking permeates our lives, poisoning our relationships and tainting our faith. When we don't understand, we give up. We let go, and we quit.

  But some time later, we remember. That thing we questioned pops back into our minds, and starts to drive us crazy. So, we take out our favorite shovels, dig at all of our past hurts, and engage in our own variety of sense-making activities.

  In our human interactions, we seek momentary gratification that will fall under our preexisting notion of "good reasons." We aim to justify what we see with what we know because of how we feel. But when something doesn't line up, we let go.

  Through this process, we see many human relationships flare up and disappear as suddenly as they began. It isn't about the other person at all. It's about us and our own understanding.

  What happens, though, when we look past us?

  Using our stories to go beyond our own reasons and logic to make others feel wanted is a concept that is so rare in everyday life and pop culture alike. Even when we care for other people, we seek to do so in the manner of our choosing that we feel will best benefit them. We aren’t really looking at what God says other people need. We are looking at what we told God these people nee
d.

  Yet, in so doing, we are not actually doing anything to help other people. We are honestly getting in the way of what God is trying to do, rather than helping. For the four billion and eighteenth time, God doesn’t need us. He chooses to let us be part of his story and his plan, so that he is glorified. How can we honestly, rightfully say that we are serving God if we are intentionally doing something other than what he has asked us to do?

  What would happen, though, if we actually worked to fill needs and mend hearts as Jesus woul? What happens if we lay ourselves aside and make time for those in our lives? And, what happens if we make it our goal to actually make people feel wanted?

  I know what it is to feel rejected and cast aside. I know what it is to be forgotten, stepped on, and an inconvenience. And, I know what it is to be second best.

  BUT, I also know what it is to be wanted. I know how it feels to be loved, pursued, sought out, and important. And, I know what a difference this makes.

  I know what a difference it would make to me, so why am I (and why are we) so hesitant to actually tell the people we care about that we do care about them?