Should I Stop or Should I Go?

My social media feed this morning is all a-twitter about Simon Biles stepping back from the Olympics because of her mental health. Jen Hatmaker’s take and Josh Dodd’s post are both good, but the one that really got me thinking was the one by Byron Heath. Heath rewatched Kerri Strugg’s one-legged vault from a previous Olympics and saw it with a fresh perspective as his daughters frowned in concern rather than cheering.

"Why did she jump again if she was hurt?" one of my girls asked. I made some inane reply about the heart of a champion or Olympic spirit, but in the back of my mind a thought was festering:

*She shouldn't have jumped again*

Our “indomitable human spirit” can sometimes get in the way of doing the right thing.  Sometimes the right thing, the thing the Holy Spirit is telling us, is to stop.  Maybe this is what happened with the Apostle Paul when he said that the Spirit prevented him from going to Asia (Acts 16:6).

I wonder how often the Holy Spirit is telling us to stop and we refuse to listen?

My friend is a good listener.  For the past nine months she’s been telling us that she felt like God was telling her to let someone else take her spot on our church board, and that she needed to let someone else take the lead in our children’s ministry.  She said she felt like God was preparing her for something else.  We didn’t really know what to think about that other than to say, “Ok, whatever you think is best.”  I know she works pretty hard at listening to God, so I trusted along with her that God would reveal the plan for her in due time.  Since then she’s found out that she has advanced stage cancer and her focus now is on dealing with that.  Not what we hoped God was preparing her for, but her discernment was spot on.

The whole world has been learning the hard way about stopping.  We’ve had a year and a half of pandemic shutdowns, and just when we think we’re done with it, the virus is back with a vengeance.  It’s been a tough season of discernment for me.  How much stopping is enough or too much?  What needs to change and move forward?  What do I need to let go of?

Maybe the biggest theme through it all for me has been that we don’t pray enough, and maybe more accurately we don’t pray deeply enough.  It’s hard to say what deeply really means, but I think mostly it takes time.  Yesterday I was reading about prayer in the lovely book compiled by Sarah Bessey, A Rhythm of Prayer, in which Winnie Verghese says:

These days when I pray, I send all of my hopes and fears into the air over the Hudson River, trying to remain long enough for the language of praise to come to me naturally.[1]

Trying to remain long enough is the challenge.  How long is long enough? Long enough to get to praise.  Long enough to hear God and respond.  But instead, so often prayer is that five-minutes-or-less thing we do because we’re supposed to before we move on to the “really important” business.

These days it’s not the Holy Spirit that tells me to stop as often as it is my body.  If I sit too long, my legs go to sleep or my back starts hurting.  If I stand too long, other hurts happen.  And I know that if I don’t pay attention, I’ll be back where I was a few months ago, in bed unable to move at all.  So I stop.  I’m not so much help around the house as I’d like to be since I still can’t even lift the bag of trash out of the kitchen wastebasket when it’s full, but I know what the consequences will be, so I stop.

God tried to help us get the hang of stopping by giving us a sabbath every seven days.  We have varying understandings of how to do that. Since I’m a pastor, I help others observe the sabbath on Sunday, but take my own sabbath on Monday.  It’s tempting to make that a get-‘er-done day, but my husband is good at reminding me that rest is my job on sabbath days.  He’s seen what happens to my stress levels when I don’t have a chill day, and he’s seen what happens to my physical well-being when the stress levels are too high for too long.

God is often telling us to stop. Psalm 41:10 is a great go-to stopping verse: “Be still and know that I am God.”  There’s another stopping verse in the story in which Israel was escaping from Egypt and running away from the Egyptian army. Moses told them, “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:14). 

Centuries later, when Judah was about to be invaded, King Jehoshaphat led the people in prayer, and the prophet Jehaziel told them, ”Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God's.’”  So instead of fighting, they went out singing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.” When they got to the battleground, they found the enemy was already dead (2 Chronicles 20).  They never had to fight at all.  Good thing they stopped instead of running out to fight.

Hearing God is such an individual thing that it’s hard to help people know when to go and when to stop. For myself, I’ve learned the hard way that if I wait and listen, God will let me know when to go.  And if I go ahead without waiting, I’ll usually see at some point that I jumped the gun and should have waited. 

On the other hand, praying about things with a group can be quite fruitful sometimes, as the Holy Spirit whispers are heard by at least one person, and often confirmed by another.

Knowing when to stop is an age-old question.  Maybe The Clash put it best in their classic song:

Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go, there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know . . .

Should I stay or should I go?[2]

 

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[1] A Rhythm of Prayer (p. 21). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] https://genius.com/The-clash-should-i-stay-or-should-i-go-lyrics#about 

The Ongoing Struggle

My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me. Since you priests refuse to know me, I refuse to recognize you as my priests. Since you have forgotten the laws of your God, I will forget to bless your children. -Hosea 4:6 NLT

I'm quite stuck on this chapter of Hosea today. One reason is that the earlier verses describe the state of the world in terms that sound so much like today: 

There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land. You make vows and break them; you kill and steal and commit adultery. There is violence everywhere—one murder after another. That is why your land is in mourning, and everyone is wasting away. Even the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea are disappearing. -Hosea 4:1-3 NLT

In the midst of a pandemic, with murder and violence on the rise, and bees and butterflies disappearing, just to name a few, this could be now.  And Hosea puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the church leadership. Just when I am thinking that it's those other kind of pastors that are the problem, I read this:

Don’t point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame! My complaint, you priests, is with you. -Hosea 4:4 NLT

So I'm praying about this and asking for God to show me and help me know what I need to know, and then I open my email to find this report from Barna (an excerpt from their upcoming book Trends in Black Church):

When asked what aspects of church are enjoyable, here are the top five answers from Black Church attendees of all ages:

1. Leadership of the pastor
2. Style of preaching
3. Music style
4. Friendliness of the congregation
5. Topics preached on

I am thinking, "That's Black Church.  What about white church?" But I already know the answer as I ask.  It's pretty much the same.  Pastoral leadership is top of the list.

I remember thinking this was true back in the days when I was just a churchgoer, not a pastor.  And I remember thinking that it was tough for church members to grow in their relationship with God if the pastor was not also growing in that relationship. And now that it's me, I feel the blow of James 3:1 which says that leaders/teachers will be judged more.

My first thought is I'm not a good enough leader for this level of scrutiny and judgement. But as I write this, scripture memories flood in, as God is saying again, as God has said so many times to me before, it's not your strength that matters, it's mine.  "My grace is sufficient for you."  "Here's what I require: love mercy, do justice, walk humbly with me." "Not by might but by my Spirit." (2 Cor. 12:9, Micah 6:8, Zech. 4:6)  

And, of course, the one I always come back to:

For I hold you by your right hand—I, the Lord your God. And I say to you, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.' - Isaiah 41:13 NLT

And I remember again that this is why I collect frogs, to remember the acronymn Fully Rely On God.  This is what I preach and teach, and this is what I need to keep doing myself.  Keep walking forward.  Keep asking God for help.  Keep paying attention to the Holy Spirit's nudges.  Keep looking for Jesus who is the one who is in charge, right?  Right.

But that's so hard to do, I say again for probably the millionth time.  And God gently says, yet again, I never said it would be easy.  

And I think, ugh, that again. Yeah, yeah, I know.

And I am reminded of all the verses about God's patience with us.

Sigh. 

Thanks, God.

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Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

Lots and Lots of Lots

All tasks were assigned to the various groups by means of sacred lots so that no preference would be shown, for there were many qualified officials serving God in the sanctuary from among the descendants of both Eleazar and Ithamar. 
--1 Chronicles 24:5

"Sacred lots."

The Reformation Study Bible says, "Casting lots in careful accord with revealed standards was designed to ensure that decisions were made according to divine direction rather than human prejudice."

Proverbs 16:33 says, "We may throw the dice,
    but the Lord determines how they fall."

The Bible is full of stories in which decisions were made by casting lots.  In Acts 1, the disciples prayed about who to choose to replace Judas and then they cast lots.  They were asking and trusting God to make the lots fall according to his will.

I have served on many church nominating committees, and none of them cast lots.  Human prejudice always played a role, influencing whether we thought someone was qualified, and prejudging whether we thought they would be willing.  Whether we thought they would say yes was often the largest factor in what we said out loud, though I'm sure there were lots of factors in our thinking that we didn't say out loud, and maybe didn't consciously realize.

I wonder, if people knew we had cast lots before calling them, they would be more ready to say yes?  If we believed that God made the lots fall to them, wouldn't we be more ready to trust that this was a divine calling?

I wonder if our disdain of casting lots is a form of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  They ate the fruit from the tree knowledge.  God had said, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)  When we decide rather than casting lots, aren't we trusting in our own wisdom and knowledge like they wanted to do?

We often talk in Christian circles about discernment, by which we usually mean seeking God's will through prayer and scripture and godly counsel.  Henri Nouwen describes it this way:

“Our God is a God who cares, heals, guides, directs, challenges, confronts, corrects. To discern means first of all to listen to God, to pay attention to God’s active presence, and to obey God’s prompting, direction, leadings, and guidance.” (Henri J.M. Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life)

Paying attention and obeying are key, but they are not easy.  We can get caught up going in circles around a decision, doubting our ability to read the signs, hesitating to obey when we aren't sure whether we're following our own will or God's.  How much simpler it would be to cast lots.

Nouwen points out that sometimes the problem is in how we're asking:

“In the Gospels, there are many examples of Jesus not giving a direct answer to questions put to him by his disciples and others. (For example, the mother of James and John asks whether her two sons might sit one at the right hand and the other at the left hand of Jesus in his kingdom, and Jesus responds, “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” [Matt. 20:20–23].) He does this not because he has no patience with them but because their questions are the wrong questions; they are not the questions that live in God’s heart but belong instead to the fearful, anxious world of those who do not know who they are.”

Are we asking the wrong questions?  This is certainly true in a nominating committee that is asking "who will say yes" instead of asking God who he wants us to ask. But it's not just there. I wonder how often I'm asking God for success in human terms, or for the easiest answer?  Maybe my asking needs to start with this:  "God, help me know the right questions to ask."

I find it interesting that we still sing about casting lots in the hymn God of Our Fathers (or God of the Ages in some hymnals):

Thy love divine hath led us in the past; 

in this free land with thee our lot is cast; 

be thou our ruler, guardian, guide, and stay, 

thy Word our law, thy paths our chosen way. 

Maybe the problem is that sometimes the lot will fall counter to our wishes.  We want a six, but instead we get a one.  We want the perfect life, but instead we get a real one with all it's challenges.

I've only played Dungeons and Dragons a few times, but when I did I often wanted to roll the dice again to try for a different outcome, a better outcome.  The dungeon master never allowed it.  But God does, through Jesus. We can admit our failings and try again, and God gives us grace because we were willing to humbly accept it.

Thanks, God.

A Milestone & A Prayer

The Milestone
If you have been reading my weekly sermon posts here, thank you so much for reading!  My sermons are now being posted on our new church website www.upcsterling.com.

The Prayer
Today I am inspired by this prayer that I found in the literature I brought home from the CREDO conference last year:

Holy God, be in my mind that I might let go of all that diminishes the movement of Your Spirit within me.

Discerning God, be in my eyes, that I might see You in the midst of all the busyness that fills my life.

Loving God, be in my heart, that I can be open to those I love, to those with whom I share ministry, and to the whole human family.

Gracious God, be in that grace-filled silence that lies deep within me, that I might live in Christ as Christ lives in me.

Amen.

by: Rev. Canon James C. Fenhagen