Kicking Crutches

It has been a lively week for this UCO staff worker! I had a sense, about 1-2 weeks ago, that the Lord wanted to give the Ann Arbor UCO Summer Household ladies a home before UofM's spring break. Why is this significant? Because it can be a jungle of a process to find the right kind of housing for Women's SHH. I won't bore or stress you with the details of that process! But I can say that I believe God gave me extra zeal and wisdom so that I could help Him fulfill this word. Yesterday was the final day before UofM's spring break and, lo and behold, our faithful God did secure a house for us; a deposit was paid and a form was signed. There is at least one household of six women (that is, six women have committed 100 percent) at this point, praise God!

Throughout these past two weeks, the Lord's been speaking to me via this housing search about confidence and humility. First, confidence: God seeks a faithful yet decisive servant. He wants the kind of servant who, while the Master is away, goes ahead and takes risks in order to double the amount of talents originally given to him by the Master. This kind of servant knows his Master that well, that His Master is demanding. (Matthew 25:20)

Mary at Bethany: she poured out the oil and wiped Jesus's feet with it and her hair. Did he say to her, "Mary, take this oil, pour it out on my feet, and wipe my feet with your hair"? No. She took the initiative. She didn't have to ask Him or need Him to ask her to do this specifically. She knew Him. (John 12: 1-8)

There are other examples. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the father needs to make it explicit to the older son that the older son had always been welcome to have a celebration with friends. Clearly, the older son has not taken the kind of initiative that the tennant and Mary do. There is still something lacking in the older son's understanding of his father's love and nature. Similarly, the father needs to put the robe on the younger son's shoulders and encourage this son to feel welcome as a son rather than a slave. The younger son still has more to learn about his father's love. (Luke 15: 11-32)

As I have already said, I think the Lord has been revealing more about confidence and humility to me through my SHH housing search in ways similar to those in these Scriptural examples. Okay: what is humility not? It does not consist of focusing on weakness or defects; that too, is an expression of pride, this kind of self-deprecation. This self-decprecation is sinful because it consists of a focus on the self rather than God.

True humility exists when our eyes are fixed on Him alone, when our hearts are fixed on the state of His rather than the state of our own, however 'good' or 'bad' that state might be. In times of blessing, all he asks is that we thank Him. In times of distress, all He asks is that we turn to Him. True humility says "I need the Lord" not only because we "know" by faith and by the Bible that we "need" Him. No; even more profoundly, true humility says "I need Him because I love Him." Our love for Him becomes so strong that we can say it is a matter of need. An example: when a man or woman says that they "need" another man or woman, what they mean to express is really love.

God makes it very clear throughout Scripture, in such examples as I have already given, that He does not "need" a slave. He is God: He does not "need" anything or anyone. He wants and desires to lavish love on sons and daughters. He wants the older son to come inside, the younger son to feel comfortable dressed in fine things, to give His children the Kingdom. He wants the Samaritan woman to not just have water but Himself.

Perhaps a more radical example is Job. So often times, I wonder if we say "Poor Job!" too quickly. I wonder whether we can say, "Blessed Job!" The Lord does not want Job to just have good or bad things. God is after the full capacity of Job's heart to love. God cares more about the heart of Job than He cares about the earthly concerns Job has. God's unrelenting and perfect love for Job drove Him to purify Job's heart, even if that meant suffering and ridicule for Job. And then He lavished on Job and gave back to him tenfold all the more because that is the good nature of our God!

God's love for His children is truly relentless and pure. How could we ever hope to imiate such love in our response to Him if He didn't so strongly encourage us to sacrifice all for Him? He knows our condition, our weakness, so He made His loving encouragement Law. And when we failed to keep that, to fully receive His love through perfect obedience to the Law, He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, that we might be assured all the more that He understands our Fallen condition and so that ultimately, we might be saved from our condition.

Yet His Law and His Son remain the keys to understanding our Father's heart. His Law is not to be discounted. It is an instruction manual to God's heart; we learn much about how He loves and His Nature when we study and keep His Commandments. If it seems as though God has unreasonably high expectations of us, if the Commandments seem too strict, this is only because of our woundedness not His unreasonableness.

And yet we have a Divine Physician, Jesus Christ, who heals us through His death and resurrection! The title of this post is "Kicking Crutches." God has, as I've said in various ways throughout this post, been encouraging me to kick the crutches of fear and self. God has been showing me that although I am a sinner, with His grace, I can really be confident and run. We can kick crutches and run on His strength and grace. We can seek and expect to find the unexpected. We can find a housing situation in downtown Ann Arbor for two months before the end of February. We can walk on water as long as we don't look down and look up at Him. We can trust the grain of wheat to grow even if we can't always see it growing from beneath the ground.

We really can, do, and love "through Jesus Christ who strengthens us" (Philippians 4:13).