For the Joy: Chapter 2

FOR THE JOY

CHAPTER 2

Beware of the drift

For this reason, we must pay attention all the more to what we have heard so that we will not drift away. Hebrews 2:1

The house I grew up in was five blocks from the community recreation building where there was an indoor pool. They didn’t charge membership fees like a standard YMCA, so you paid for each activity. The fee to swim was $.50 per person, which was cheap entertainment for us. My two older brothers and I were allowed to walk down the street to go swimming, as long as the boys kept an eye on me, and we were home before dark. I was a fearful kid and didn’t like to take risks, so I spent most of my time hanging out in the shallow end of the pool, jumping off the side and watching people dive off the diving board. Sometimes they dove right out of their suits, which was hysterical to me! Truth be told, that was the main reason I brought along my goggles.

One particular day, I was feeling brave. Against my oldest brother’s command, I sidled along the pool wall, under the buoy rope, and into the deep end. I felt pretty safe. There was a gutter that ran along the perimeter of the pool, so I had good grasp as long as I was holding on. My brother and his friend were hanging out on the wall of the deep end. He told me to go back to the shallow, but I assured him that I was fine and didn’t have to do what he said. I got close enough to be seen but not close enough to get yelled at and pulled myself up on the gutter, took a deep breath and plunged myself to the pool floor twelve feet down. Once my feet made contact with the floor, I allowed myself to sink a little lower. Then I’d bend my knees to launch myself back up. Once my hand broke through the surface, I would reach for the gutter to steady myself, and start the sequence over again. The first few times I was perfectly fine. It was exhilarating.

I was having so much fun I forgot that I needed the wall to steady myself and just bobbed up and down. When I was sufficiently worn out, I reached for the gutter but it wasn’t there. I had drifted. Panic struck, and I began to flail in the middle of the deep end pool, splashing and gasping. Each time I got my lungs full of air, I yelped for help, but my mouth would fill with water, and I’d go down again. It seemed like forever before my brother noticed my struggle. While still holding tightly to the wall, he grabbed my arm and pulled me to safety. I clung to the gutter for dear life, coughing and panting, as he turned back to his friend and kept talking as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just saved me from drowning and sudden death at the tender age of nine.

The drift is real. It is so easy to feel safe and confident in the pool when you are holding on to the edge with both hands and your body clinging closely to the wall. Even when there are waves from a cannonball off the high dive, if you are holding on, you are safe from going under. It’s the same thing in the faith journey. You are good, as long as you are paying attention, holding tightly to the truths that you’ve learned, diving into the Word every single day, and abiding in Christ moment by moment.

The drift comes when you wake up late, too late to read your Bible. You tell yourself you’ll read it as soon as you… get out of the shower, are on your lunch break, get into the pick-up line, after the news, before bed. The drift comes when days go by and you haven’t even opened a Bible or listened to anything that builds you up and points you to Jesus. The drift happens when that guy at work that is so funny and such a good work buddy, smiles and says he likes your dress. Your mind drifts back to that lingering smile later that evening. The drift happens when after a fight with one of your kids, you find yourself in a drive-through of McDonalds or the donut shop or the liquor store and bury your hurt or frustration with consumption.

The drift isn’t obvious. I had no idea I was slipping further and further away from the safety of the wall until I was already drowning. If it was obvious, it’d be easy to deter it by formula and habit. Nooooo… it creeps in silently. The thoughts are subtle. “It won’t matter if you don’t read your Bible today, you deserve to sleep a few extra minutes after that awful night.” Or “What do you really get out of reading one chapter, anyway? It’s not enough to matter.” The lies are stellar. They chip away at what you know is true, and you exchange truth for the path of least resistance. It’s easy to get too distracted and too busy and too consumed with Facebook or Instagram or Amazon or Netflix to spend any time with God. But Jesus knew we would drift. That’s why He said this:

“I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. Each branch IN ME that does not bear fruit, He takes away and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it (oh, hi there, Suffering. I didn’t hear you come in…) so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in ME.” John 15:1-4

The metaphor isn’t complicated, but it’s important to understand. IF you are in Christ, and you aren’t bearing fruit…the fruit of a viable relationship with God, abiding in Him and producing good works, then the Father may very well TAKE YOU AWAY! A branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in JESUS.

Abide. To stay and keep staying. When I think of abiding in Christ, I envision a little one with his mother, never straying too far from her side as she goes about her day. My little boy, when we are home, checks in with me often. If we aren’t in the same room, he will come find me. When we are away from home, he inevitably finds my hand the moment we are out of the car. He stays close. He feels me holding his hand. He calls my name, and I answer. He makes eye contact with me in a room full of people. He stays connected to me.

It’s very similar with Jesus. We make contact with Him as we read His Word, the Words of eternal life in the Bible. We think about Him, meditate on His Word, and allow those thoughts to permeate our lives throughout the day. We memorize the words so that they float to the front of our minds at random times. We listen to music that brings glory to God, through lyrics and skill. Long after we shut off the sound, the songs continue to play in our heads, continuing to bring glory to God. We pray in private, under our breath, in our mind, in crises, in the quiet of morning, in the dark of night, and throughout the day with our people. Our engagement with Him is unceasing, our thoughts always returning to Him. We read books, listen to podcasts, have conversations that come back to Him and the work He is doing in us, around us, and through us. We have an awareness of the sins we are prone to as He reveals them to us. We avoid them, fight them, starve the desire for them because we know that when sin is allowed in our lives, it separates us from God, and that is the last thing we want when we are abiding in Christ 

When I was very young, a team came to our church for a week-long Kids’ Crusade. We learned a verse set to music that we sang every night. We sang it loud and quiet, silly and serious, over and over until it was set in our memories. I still sing it at random times when it comes to me. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, oh Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.” Psalms 19:14

I wrestled with a consistent pattern of prayer and Bible study for decades. I would get a good rhythm going, and then my life would shift. We’d have a baby or we’d move across the country or we’d have another baby... It might take months before I could establish a new routine, so my devotional time just fell to the wayside. To curb that, I started watching for markers in my day, things that don’t change. One consistency is that every morning I wake up with my phone alarm. When I look at my phone to shut it off, the addiction grips me, and I am compelled to check Facebook. Or my email. Or my bank account. At some point I decided I would not look at anything until I had read a chapter from the Bible app. I found a reading plan on the YouVersion app that tells me what to read every day. It became automatic, and I developed the habit of reading my Bible every morning, without fail. I can honestly tell you, there are days when the words don’t sink it. They seem to fall flat on my soul with no reverb. But I believe the Bible when it says, “the Word of God is living and active…” I know that my efforts to abide in Christ are not in vain, and that God can give those words roots in my heart, whether I feel it or not. In regards to busyness, this habit can be injected into your busyness in so many other areas, you’ll be shocked. If every time you check Facebook (or whatever you compulsively check) you purpose in your mind to read a Psalm first, you’ll likely be reading more of the Bible than you have in years! 

It seems like prayer is easier, you don’t have to be alone to do it. You can pray in your mind, thinking about God, talking to God, asking God for help throughout the day. That is how I prayed for years and years. It was good, and God honored those prayers. But when I set aside a few minutes every day, specifically devoted to prayer, I began to notice a deeper connection with God. I start by spending five minutes in silence with Him. After that, if there is time, I bring my thanksgiving and the petitions of my heart to Him. When I stop everything to enjoy His company for five solid minutes, it is as if heaven and earth have collided. We are together here, just like in Eden. My favorite time to meet Him is at daybreak with a cup of coffee.  I can’t explain it, but His presence changes me, and I love Him more and more. The Heidelberg Catechism answers the question, “What is the chief end of man?” with this answer, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” John Piper offers a slightly different answer with this, “To glorify God BY enjoying Him forever.” I look forward to those few minutes alone with Him every single day, and I believe it’s because that is where I enjoy Him the most.

Sin is so tricky… it makes me mad. It sneaks in stealing and killing and destroying and making a mess of things. It’s a gentle wooing away from what it true and good and beautiful with the promises of better, and more, and instant gratification. Why would anyone ever give it the time of day if it didn’t taste good for a minute or an hour or a month. It really does taste good, but the sweetness will turn bitter once it sits in your belly and sickens you and shames you for eating it. It will take everything from you. It’s a lie from the father of lies, and you are not so holy to avoid it without some careful sidestepping. Let me tell you one of the things that will loosen the power of sin in your life. It’s confession. Turn the lights on in the areas that are hidden. Sin wants to bury you in shame and cause you to hide from the truth, hide from accountability, hide from freedom, because it knows that as soon as it comes into the light, you’ll discover its deception. Confess your sins to God and then TELL SOMEONE! Say it out loud. Get the words out of your mouth, no matter how hard or embarrassing or reckless or devastating it is. Say the words. Turn on the lights. Let the air on it and allow healing to begin.

About a month ago I found myself in a pickle. I had been waffling between diets, as is characteristic of most of my past thirty years. The thing is, if you’re on keto, you can eat fat as long as you don’t eat carbs. If you’re on WW you can have anything you want if you load up on free foods and write down your points. If you’re on Intermittent Fasting you can eat anything between the hours of this and that, but not during the fasting hours. If you’re counting calories, you can eat anything if you’re keeping track and you stay under your limit. When I’m between diets, I forget the rules and eat all the things all the time. When I’m slipping because of a fall-out with my husband or a hormonal hurricane, I tend to eat a lot of sugar. I mean, a ton of sugar. Sugar in my coffee, in my tea, full sugar soda, candy, cookies, cookies, cake, cookies, ice cream, and cookie dough. Also cookies. I had a rough day, alright?

On Tuesday afternoon we went to the library because that’s what we do on Tuesdays. Early that morning I had driven a long route so I was tired and hormonal. I went into the library with a mission. It wasn’t to check out library books. Rather, I had my mind set on the vending machine they had recently installed. Why a library needs a vending machine in the lobby I’ll never know, but today I was excited about it. As I walked through the doors, my heart began to race. Here’s the thing, we’ve had this vending machine in the library for months. I never cared about it before, never even looked at what was in it. Today, I had a feverish attraction to it.

I sent the kids to look for their books and headed back to buy myself a snack or two. As casually as possible, I strolled in the direction of where it was set up, pretending to be perusing the books on the shelves nearby. You can imagine my shock when I arrived at the precise location, and there was no vending machine. I moved a little more quickly down another isle and another looking for the blasted machine but it was gone. GONE. No Cheetos. No candy bars. No sodas. No packages of gum. None of it. Finally, I asked one of my girls if she knew where it went, but she just shrugged. I tried to be cool, “That’s weird, isn’t it? I wanted a candy bar. Hahaha.”

Realizing I wasn’t getting my fix from the library… this is so embarrassing to admit, but I think it’s important. I hustled the kids through the checkout line and drove over to Dollar General, one of their favorite haunts. I knew I could find what I wanted there, and so much more than I could get from the stupid library vending machine.

We stormed the place like a mob and spread out like ants at a picnic. The kids went to the toys while I made a b-line for the candy isle, where a guy with a cart was blocking my entrance. I didn’t want to look too obvious, so I just went into the next isle where I hit the jackpot. Yellow Zingers. The isle-blocker finally came out of candy paradise, and I moved in with haste. I stood there looking at my options for the better part of ten minutes. I don’t even know what I was looking for. The same guy that was hogging the isle before, tried to move in on me, but I stood my ground. It made me mad that he kept trying to get in the way of me getting my fix.

I felt hostile. Possessive. Angry. And humiliated. I left with the yellow Zingers, Andes mints, and a bag of snack-sized Snickers, all of which I promptly hid in an empty drawer in my bedroom. Alarms were going off inside me as I stashed the yellow bags, but I pushed past them, hard.

I thought that this must be what addiction feels like. The feelings I was carrying around like a precious hidden treasure resembled those of an addict, looking for the next hit. I couldn’t help what was happening inside me, but God was calling me away from it. Here’s the lie I believe when I want what I want. “This isn’t a big deal. It isn’t going to matter.” I wasn’t going to eat the whole box of zingers. I wasn’t going to eat all the candy in one go. It’s not like I was going to binge it all and then purge or anything like that. I just wanted to have them tucked away in my drawer so that when I needed a little escape, I could go into my room, close the door behind me, slide the drawer open, and savor the goodies hidden therein. All. By. My. Self. If that doesn’t resemble sin in the most impervious way, I don’t know what does.

Imagine sin is a sweet little kitten and you are a fifth grader in the home you grew up in. Your dad is deathly allergic to animals and has given you strict and careful instructions not to even touch a cat or you could bring the dander into the house and the consequences could be deadly. You’ve always been fine with that, none of your friends have cats. You have a sort of fear of them anyway, knowing they could kill your father, or at least you would have to be quarantined for a very long time should you ever have any contact with one, for his safety.

You’re walking home from school one day, and you hear the tiniest cry from under the bushes. Your bleeding heart pleads with you that someone needs help! You push aside the branches and find the sweetest little white ball of fur struggling to get out. A teeny white face with striking blue eyes makes eye contact with you and lets out the most pitiful “meoowww”. Your heart bursts. It is so sweet and tiny and you have to help it, it needs you so much! It’s in trouble!

In the back of your mind, you hear the warnings from your parents. You know you shouldn’t, but it’s in distress. For a moment you think about walking away. Not your cat, not your problem, but then it cries out again and you have no choice but to help. You reach through the leaves to disentangle the helpless animal and carefully bring the baby kitty out of the bush. Before you realize it, you’re holding it close to your body to give it warmth and comfort. It feels so right. You saved this kitty from imminent danger. How could anyone ever say that this is wrong?

You set the kitten down on ground delicately and begin to walk away, when it cries out to you again. You stop, looking back, and it runs to you, wrapping its little self around your leg. You pick it up again, who knew an animal could be so soft? Holding it to your face, you take a deep breath. It smells enchanting. You feel like your heart will burst all over again. You love this little kitty!

A tiny tickle in your throat triggers a short coughing spell. Setting the kitty back on the ground, you to your senses and continue toward home.  

Still coughing as you walk through your front door, you wipe your eyes and nose with your sleeve; they are running like crazy. Going into the bathroom for a tissue, you catch a glimpse of your face. Your eyes are red and swollen. As you wipe them again, the itching sets in. Glancing at the mirror, you see red bumps surrounded by hot redness on your neck and coming up on your cheeks. You are itchy all over. Now the tears. How are you gonna hide this? The coughing, the itching, the rash… you will surely be found out! And what about your father? Have you put him at risk now that you are home?

A prayer in The Valley of Vision, page 99, says “Great was Thy grace in commanding me to come hand in hand with Thee to the Father… that I may live repenting of sin, conquer Satan, find victory in life.” We must be putting to death the deeds of the body so that we might live!

“When a man sees his lust as a trivial thing, it is an indication that he is not mortified. (putting to death our natural impulses) We cannot go forward (in Christ) unless we recognize the danger of our own hearts. We need to be intimately acquainted with the ways, wiles, methods, advantages, and occasions in which lust has the victory.

“This is the way men deal with their enemies. They search out their plans, ponder their goals, and consider how and by what means they have prevailed in the past. Then they can be defeated… We need to know how sin uses occasions, opportunities and temptations to gain advantage (over us).” Voices from the Past page 56.

I used to believe it was easy to get close to God. We sang a song in Sunday School that taught that if you read your Bible and pray every day, you’ll grow. If you don’t, you’ll shrink. True enough, but I didn’t consider sin in that equation. Sin separates us from God, no matter how much we read the Bible and pray. Jesus said, “If anyone comes after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” and again in John, “if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”

To be a follower of Christ is an all-encompassing endeavor. We are not of this world, but we have to live in it. We have bodies of flesh, but we walk in newness of life. We are surrounded by people in the world, and we are called to be salt and light in a wicked and depraved generation. That is much more powerful than we realize, so we must draw strength and wisdom and courage from God to fight sin and overcome temptation as we represent Him in the world.

Be careful of the drift, darlings. It will surely drown the life and Light out of you.