Tight

Perhaps this post could also be titled "A year in review."

"I will extol You, O Lord, for You have lifted me up, and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord my God, I cried out to You, and You healed me. O Lord, You brought my soul up from the grave; you have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit." (Psalm 30:1-3)

I snapped this photo about a month or so ago, after I got a nice paycheck and restocked my pantry. Heck yes, I celebrate the contents of my pantry. I think it's nice to be able to afford to eat something besides peanut butter.

I think I've blogged about this before, but around the beginning of this year, I felt like God said 2014 was going to be "a tight year," at least for me. When He said that, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to get fired." And I did.

This was definitely a tight year financially. It was interesting getting to practice what I preach about tithing. ("So, the One who has the power to send people to hell gets paid first. Everyone else, too bad, so sad, you're gonna have to wait 'til next month to get paid.") I hadn't been in this tight of a financial situation in a long time, and it was awesome getting to see God take good care of me. Yes, at one point, I was living on peanut butter and raisin bran, I lost weight involuntarily, and on a couple of occasions I felt myself get a little lightheaded. But I'm still alive. God definitely made sure of that. (And I rediscovered the versatile, wonderful world of toast. Need breakfast? Soup crackers? Dessert? A new cat toy? No problem! It's toast to the rescue! Cheesy theme music playing.)

This was also a tight year emotionally. I had no idea that I would need to get into psychotherapy again, but I'm glad I did. (And I'm glad I blogged about it.) It was good to have professional validation that I'm not crazy. (Even though I did just write a public service message for toast. Cheesy theme music continues.) I had no idea that I would need to work through some depression issues and suicidal thoughts YET again, but I sure am glad I did. Hey, when you gotta poop, you gotta poop.

I discovered a huge wad of bitterness inside me that God had to uproot. I asked Him to suck out all the poison, just as if it were a venomous snakebite (which, metaphorically speaking, it probably was, multiple times). He encouraged me to just let Him draw it out. In the process (which I still need to participate in), I noticed that I had been using a forgiveness prayer (that one of my church's classes taught us to pray) like a formula. That formula wasn't working for me anymore. So, I just started kinda puking out forgiveness prayers however naturally they felt to me -- whatever seemed necessary to unclog the junk that was hurting me inside my heart. That seemed to work a lot better.

I guess you could say that waves of issues started charging toward me like a tsunami, and I just kinda surfed through them as best I could. God did say that I would find freedom by riding the waves that would come, and He was right.

And, of course, I'm still learning how to surf my way through life (because there are SO many things that just won't work with a formula), and there's still more work to do. And I'm very OK with that.

Speaking of work, hopefully without giving away too much information, I found a job nearly three months ago at a magazine that serves the metalworking industry. I've never worked in a machine shop, so I have to do quite a bit of research to edit and write materials at my job. In the process, I've learned a lot.

I didn't realize how huge the metalworking industry was all over the world. And I've learned that there is a huge variety of ways that you can cut metal. But the idea of it is pretty basic: All you need is a tool that's strong enough to cut through a hard hunk of metal, something to hold it down with, and a reliable computer-controlled machine to do it with. These machines can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they can use very sophisticated technology, but when you think about how many metallic parts a machine shop needs to produce in a given day, the cost is understandable... especially considering that all of the metallic parts usually need to look exactly like one another. And the unending quest for efficiency and productivity is also understandable.

An interesting thing happens when you cut a hard hunk of metal with a hard metallic tool: Your tools can break, if you're not careful, because of all the friction. It can get dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. So, these machines are equipped with specialized liquid that cools the hard hunk of metal while it's being cut.

The process is so automated that you don't always need a human being to do the job. Sometimes, you can just program a robot to do your metalwork for you, perhaps over the weekend or after you've gone home for the day (which I learned is called "lights-out manufacturing," a process that is often used in the automotive industry).

So, modern-day metalworking is pretty much everywhere, and it's a pretty big deal. And I'm really glad the technology wasn't around during biblical times.

"But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand." (Isaiah 64:8)

For me, in addition to having a "tight" year, I felt like God told me that themes in 2014 would be "fun" and "flexible." I did have fun this year. I relearned how to have fun this year. And I had to constantly be flexible for all the changes that would occur. I mean, it's hard to ride waves if you're not flexible.

I think the concepts of "tight" and "flexible" seem contradictory, but God recently showed me how both concepts are at work at a potter's wheel. The clay needs to be flexible, and it also needs to be ready for the potter to squeeze it tightly in His hands so that He can shape it into whatever He wants. (At least, I'm assuming that there is "tight"ness involved while working at a potter's wheel. Hmm. Maybe I need to do some more research. Or I could make some toast! Cheesy theme music resumes.)

But one thing is for sure. God is a potter. He isn't a manufacturer who entrusts lights-out, hands-off creation to a heartless robot. If I want Him to reshape me into something new, I need to be soft like clay. I can't be hard and cold like a hunk of metal. I'm not really talking about that iron-sharpens-iron concept that Proverbs 27:17 talks about. I'm talking about presenting myself to the Potter who insists on taking His time to restore me, reshape me, and re-create me into something original -- not manufactured, not copied, not mass-reproduced at a factory. God is a Potter. He isn't a factory owner.

I really think this is a huge misconception that Pharisees have. I know because I used to be one.

" 'How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?--but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.' Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (Matthew 16:11-12)

Leaven is dangerous. It makes bread rise. It makes things puffy. What if you were making bread, you mixed leaven into the dough, and then you suddenly realized that you were supposed to be making unleavened bread (i.e., tortillas or crackers (NOT toast)) instead? That would be tragic. You couldn't just identify a section of your dough and say, "OK, here's where all the leaven is. If I can just chop it off, I can still make my unleavened bread, no problem." Nope. That leaven is ALL mixed throughout the entirety of the dough. There's no way to get it out.

Unless, of course, you resort to drastic measures. Just using my imagination, perhaps you could hire a wizard to cast the leaven out of your dough. Or perhaps you could go redneck on your dough and hire a demolition crew to blow it up for you. Or maybe you could just pretend that your dough is OK and just invent a new kind of waffle. (Puffy competition for IHOP? Minus the toast.)

I think maybe God uses very drastic measures to miraculously squeeze the leaven out of us ex-Pharisees. I think this happened in the Bible, too. In John 3, a Pharisee named Nicodemus was serious about following Jesus, so when he asked Him how to do it, Jesus replied with the famous "You have to be born again" explanation. Of course, Nicodemus was flabbergasted. "Um, I'm a grown man. You're saying that I have to crawl back inside my mother's womb and do the whole birth thing all over again??" In a metaphorical way, yes. And it ain't easy.

I think perhaps the most drastic example of transforming a Pharisee in the Bible happened with Paul (the Pharisee previously known as Saul). After dedicating his life to killing Christians, Paul's life came to a screeching halt when Jesus showed up one day and asked him why he was persecuting Him. The incident blinded Paul for three days before he ended up dedicating his life to converting people to Christianity.

As an ex-Pharisee, I can say that self-righteous, hyper-religious people have some severely wrong, terribly skewed, tragically inaccurate ways of seeing God and His Kingdom. Sometimes Pharisees need Jesus to show up in a blinding way and be like, "Um, you need to stop what you're doing before you kill anybody else. It's time to stop spreading your death-filled life around. Enough is enough. I'm about to go redneck on you and blow up your leaven-poisoned dough."

One major mistake that Pharisees make (and I used to do it a lot) is teaching, in a nutshell, that God is a manufacturer who treats His children like just another hunk of metal that needs to be machined... and that advancing in His Kingdom is like becoming a lights-out, hands-off, heartless robot that's supposed to machine a certain quota of metallic hunks, or else.

That's one major way that I was hurt at a spiritually abusive church where I was deeply involved many years ago. We were all basically taught, in a nutshell, that God wanted to put us on an assembly line. Get saved --> learn about the Father-heart of God --> get some inner healing --> become a lifegroup leader --> go on a short-term mission trip --> get "called" to a foreign country --> go to missionary school --> become a long-term missionary for at least 2 years. That was life. Everybody had to do it, or they were considered to be spiritually inferior.

My gosh. I understand now that that is totally NOT how God's Kingdom operates at all. I think it's more like the following. Get born --> get born again --> find out why you were born --> cling to the One who made you get born in the first place --> learn to like Him, because He doesn't ever, ever, ever want to leave you, and the more you get to know Him, the more you realize how you deserve to not be born at all, and the more thankful you are that you were born in the first place. Or something like that.

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye. Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not come near you." (Psalm 32:8-9)

God's Kingdom isn't a machine shop. It's a potter's wheel. Freedom isn't a formula. It's a Person.

For me, lately it's been Him telling me to not rush my freedom and to let it happen very gradually. It's been me learning how to be flexible and to be ready for the tightness to squeeze in around me. It's me having fun with the most wonderful Friend, the most faithful Father, the most powerful God in the universe. It's me not really caring about all the things that I used to care about.

I really just want relationship. And I have it with Him.

Happy new year!