"Empty me of me so I can be filled with You."

For those of you who didn't know already, this past fall has seen me continue to remain on staff at Camp Highland, though some of my responsibilities have changed.  As the majority of our full time staff have been trickling out to take on new jobs and roles in life, the interns have had to step up and fill in the gaps left behind.  While this was intimidating at first, it has served to grow us and is continuing to do so in ways we could not have expected.

As a first step toward establishing a tight-knit unit between us, our boss recommended that we read The Dude's Guide to Manhood: Finding True Manliness in a World of Counterfeits, by Darrin Patrick.  To be honest, I was skeptical about it.  Any book that claims to have the answer to such a broad topic as manliness or success is written from a narrow minded perspective that believes that what works for one person should work for everyone else.  At least, that's the bias I hold toward those types of books, whether it's well-founded or not.  The fact that the cover of such a book shows a face with a long, unkempt beard and hipster glasses did little to change that bias.  In fact, it only discouraged me more from reading it.  Why would a scrawny college graduate who still looks like a teenager, who is working at a camp instead of in the typical professional world, who cringes at the click bait titles of every social media trend, want to read a book that tells him how to look and act in order to resemble an image that modern society believes to be "manly"?  Why read about how to be something you can't be?

Regardless of my feelings about the book's title and cover, which I think were common among the five of us, we began reading about a month ago.  Thankfully, the second and third chapters proved to be fairly instructive and useful.  In Chapter Two, Mr. Patrick writes about the obstacles that stands in the way of so many men seeking maturity, the most destructive of which is pride.  Humility is a necessary attribute of a godly man because it was one of the most well-recognized traits seen in Jesus.  He was called meek, meaning that He had power and every right to take pride in Himself, yet He denied Himself that right and put others before Himself instead.  He lowered Himself in order to raise others up (Romans 12:10, James 4:10, Philippians 2:5-8).  When a man, striving to show his significance, refuses help or instruction because he believes it makes him seem incompetent, he allows pride to keep him from attaining the fullness of life and godliness that God has made available to Him.

I think that's where I am right now.  That's why my posts have been so infrequent: I want to be able to work through my problems independently to show that I'm capable of succeeding and that I can be a valuable member of a team as a result.  But the irony is that I'm trying to be an independent member of a team, which nullifies the importance of teamwork.  If I only ask questions I already know the answers to, why ask them?  Am I really growing then?  Mr. Patrick writes that a father's job is to recognize potential in his child that the child may not be able to see in him- or herself, and then draw it out of him or her through instruction, discipline, and encouragement.  I want to be independent, and as a result, I hinder myself from tapping into hidden potential that may be allowed to emerge if I would only seek guidance to identify and foster it.  It strikes me now that that might be why I am so repulsed by books with simple answers to complicated questions: I want to believe there's more to the answer that I can find on my own without someone oversimplifying it for me.  So maybe that's why I'm reading this book: to humble myself and be willing to ask questions I don't know the answer to, to be taught what I didn't know I needed to learn.

I finished reading Chapter Four today, and it has raised some uncomfortable questions for me.  For the last year and a half, I have struggled to choose between continuing on my path toward becoming a band director and diverting from it to remain at Camp Highland a little longer.  Toward the middle of this fall was the first time I had felt any kind of peace about staying at camp, so I have been there since then.  The peace came from knowing that God intends for me to continue with music but that He has more to teach me through camp until He presents an opportunity for me to enter the music education field.  What set me on edge while reading, though, was that I felt as if I fell into one or more of Patrick's categories of discontented working men.  The author's directive to quit your less-than-satisfying job and find your calling was offensive to me because, even though I know God has much more planned for me later on down the road, I love what I do where He has me right now.  What I don't love is the way my attitudes and reactions have been changing these past few months.  My impatience and frustration under duress get the best of me much more frequently, and my incompetencies seem to be highlighted to my eyes.  Criticism falls on easily offended ears, and exhortation extinguishes what little motivation I already had.  And I hate that this is what's surfacing in me now.  What about that "potential" my heavenly Father is supposed to be drawing out of me?  My time at camp seems to be having the opposite effect on me.  And I'm frustrated.

But Mr. Patrick helped me arrive at a resolution that was a core reason for why I am still at camp but which I seemed to have forgotten in the midst of my discontentment: "[Your] less-than-perfect job is helping hone your passions.  It is shoring up weaknesses in your skill set and helping you overcome deficiencies in your character."  A lesson God has been bringing to my mind for a few years now is this: In order for Him to meet a need, there first has to be a need.  Since I committed my life to the Lord, I have felt disconnected from anyone who speaks of our depravity.  I have spoken of it myself, and I have always felt hypocritical about it because, though I know I am a sinful human being and can identify sins I have committed, I have never really felt the crushing weight of my guilt or understood what it meant to grieve for my sins.  But I think this period of darkness is God showing me just how ungodly and rebellious I am capable of being so that I can truly understand how desperately I need Him.  I need His forgiveness, and I need His righteousness to grow within me and throughout.  I am impatient, I am easily offended, I am not all-sufficient though I long to be able to be, I am lustful, I am prideful, I am cynical, I am short-tempered, I wear many masks to hide who I really am; and I hate it.  I need Jesus.  God caught my attention six years ago by romancing me with His infinite wisdom and glory and the joy that comes from worshiping Him through music.  I was overwhelmed with a longing to be filled with His Word and His Presence.  Now I am overwhelmed with a longing to be emptied of everything that is contrary to Him.  I pray that the holiness of Christ will flush out the sin in me and bring all my darkness to light so that I can be a faithful ambassador and courier of the Gospel of sanctification and redemption.  And I pray, as I look ahead to my future as a music educator, that I would not live so entangled in dreams of the future that I forgot about the present, but that I would embrace every obstacle and lesson as an opportunity for growth and service to the Lord that will allow me to advance His Kingdom now and in the future the next time similar obstacles arise.

Romans 12:2

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

I feel like I'm in the middle of a whirlpool of decisions to make.  Thankfully, it's a whirlpool of Living Water, so I'm being filled up as I'm being taken under, eventually to be spit out on the other side of the decision-making process.  The last couple of weeks have been full of growth, with God speaking into me more than I've heard from Him in a while.

It started with the softening of my heart at the Father/Son retreat at Camp Highland.  I had the fourth and fifth grade boys for the weekend, which was entertaining and stretching at the same time.  Other than my few days volunteering at Day Camp over the summer, which hosts children from age 5 to 10, these were the youngest kids I had been a counselor for in two years.  The newness and simplicity of their faith was refreshing, but the depth of their understanding of the stories of the Bible was incredible.  And the childlike faith that caused a ten-year-old boy to only be able to whisper, "Wow," in awe at the fact that God offers to us the same love and forgiveness Jesus offered to the repentant criminal crucified beside Him...  It causes me to react the same way: I can only whisper, "Wow," and tell and retell the story of God's faithfulness, because that same boy and his twin brother accepted/reaffirmed their faith in Christ that weekend because they wanted to know for sure that the Holy Spirit was inside of them and helping them to live for Jesus.  Hearing the fathers give their blessings to their sons the next morning was the icing on the cake.  Not a dry eye left camp that day.

Father/Daughter was the following weekend, which was just as powerful but far less involved for the male staff.  It was a restful weekend, despite one sleepless night of thinking.  As I keep coming back to camp, I'm continually reminded of just how much campers and their families impact me.  The resulting change in my life because of them is far greater than anything I can offer them, and I'm grateful for the way God has used Camp Highland to shape me for the life He has planned for me.

And that's the journey I started to search out that sleepless night.  A brief conversation with Mr. Chapman, camp's founder, set the wheels turning in my mind considering the possibility that maybe God brought me to camp in the first place so that He could keep me here.  My gut feeling has always been that teaching music is meant to be my ministry field and that Camp Highland is a great way to continue in ministry until God reveals my destination.  That night two weekends ago was the first time I had seriously questioned if I knew even the category of my destination.

I started reconsidering my passions.  That sounds bad, like I started to doubt how much I love teaching music, but that's not what happened.  It wasn't until I student taught that I began to feel comfortable teaching large band classes.  Up until then, I felt far more comfortable teaching private lessons and running sectionals and small group Bible studies.  All through high school, I wished I could make a living off of teaching trumpet lessons.  Mentorship was my passion rather than teaching.  Being a camp counselor affirmed that passion.  But somewhere along the way in college, I had convinced myself that mentorship alone was not an option.  To fall back on private lessons would mean that I had failed to make it as a teacher.  But in reconsidering my passions, I began to see how my perception of mentorship had changed and how my philosophy had shifted to favor large group teaching.  That sleepless night re-emphasized to me the value of mentorship alongside teaching.

After reaching that conclusion, I thought, "Great!  That means that if I were to stay at camp, I could keep serving how I'm serving now, and I could teach lessons and work some high school band camps, and I wouldn't be abandoning my passions."  As I prayed about it and longed for that to be God's will for me, the Lord began to let loose on me every piece of wisdom I need to be able to navigate this crossroad faithfully.

He started by leading me to Ephesians, which I'm still walking through today.  Ephesians 1:9 has been a refuge for me in this decision-making process.  In it, Paul mentions "the mystery of [God's] will."  How reassuring to know, in the midst of all this uncertainty, that God's will is indeed a mystery!  Paul goes on to say in 2:14 that "He Himself is our peace," which made me realize that I have been seeking peace in knowing what God's will is for me instead of seeking peace in knowing God Himself.  These words gave me a lot of comfort in knowing that I have no need to worry about where God is taking me.  He'll show me that in His own time.  I still need to be watchful and ready for when He does open a door for me, but I also need to be fully invested in what He's doing in and through me right now.  Jeremiah 17:7-10 supported that realization when the prophet said that the man who trusts in the Lord continues to bear fruit even during a drought.  Though I'm in an in-between stage right now, God has been faithful to continue producing results for the expansion of His kingdom while I've been at camp and in my other undertakings in the past year.

But when I identified this past year as an in-between stage, I realized that I needed to reevaluate my heart again.  I considered the benefits of remaining at camp and the benefits of continuing to pursue music, and it seems that my passion for teaching music still has a hold on me and won't let go.  I got to meet with Breyer from TNT at Hillside, and he shared some valuable wisdom with me that helped me in a way similar to how Ephesians 1:9 comforted me: it didn't make the decision any more clear, but it gave me peace about how to go about making my choice in a way that honors Christ.  Breyer recently went through a life-changing prayer journey as well, and hearing his testimony of faithful response to God's call to get up, move, and start a church plant was inspiring and made me think of Abraham and his faith.  In contrast, I feel like Moses, hesitant, doubting my own abilities and readiness for God's mission, unable to trust fully that it's God who works in me to accomplish all things and that I can't do anything apart from Him and He doesn't ask me to.

He's humbling me.  A while back, I read Philippians 4:12, where Paul said that he knew how to be brought low.  In response, I prayed that God would teach me how to be brought low—how to be humble and how to be faithfully and patiently humbled/humiliated—for His glory.  I think this is His process.  I still have not reached any definite conclusions on what decision to make, but I feel more content with where I am than I've been able to feel in a long time.  The path I see at this point is one that has me remaining at camp for a little while longer, just long enough to mature in perseverance until God opens the door for me to pursue ministry through music education.  Whether this whirlpool of decisions changes the direction of my life or not, God is using this time to teach me far more than I've been able or even willing to hear from Him, and I'm thankful for the ways He is growing me, through prayer, through His Word, in worship, and through wise counsel from experienced mentors.  He is transforming me by the renewal of my mind to be able to discern His will. Colossians 4:2 and Isaiah 62:6-7 are my mission now: to continue steadfastly in prayer and give God no rest, just as I have begun to pray about the decisions God has put before me, and to see this work of growth and maturing through to the end.

Take No Rest

Isaiah's exhortation to the watchmen on Israel's walls resonates deeply with today's American culture of working tirelessly to achieve success for oneself.  Even the Christian seeking to glorify God rather than himself tends to live by the words "take no rest" from Isaiah 62:6.  But we often take this verse out of context.  At least, I know I do.  If we would only continue reading in verse 7, we would see that Isaiah says to "give [the Lord] no rest until He establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth."  Alone, verse 6 seems to be a contradiction to the commandment that we are to take Sabbath rest regularly.  But God doesn't tell us to work endlessly.  In fact, what He does tell us to do without ceasing is pray, give thanks, and be joyful (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

I often find myself disgruntled because of the work that, in my mind, has been left to me, although it is usually work that can wait and that can easily be delegated at a more appropriate time.  I end up doing unnecessary work, which steals away my time for rest or more meaningful work.  I convince myself time and time again that the work that is left to me must be done, and things will fall apart if I fail to do my part—and "my part" is ever growing as I take on these self-imposed responsibilities.

Then one day, God gave me a wake-up call: "You are not God."

The world will not fall apart without me.  I am not the one holding the universe in his nail-pierced hands.  Two years ago, the Lord urged me to learn to "embrace the fade," a lesson to which He is recalling my attention in more ways than one, but that's a topic for another time.  The Lord is the one who works in me with all His energy, and He has no need of rest.  But I do.  I just finished reading a book by Louie Giglio entitled I am not, but I know I AM, the entire premise of which is that we are not God—if God's name is I AM, then my name is "I AM not."  He is God, I am "not God."

What a comfort to know that I am not God and don't have to try to be!  In my failures, life goes on.  God is capable in my weakness and in my absence.  Knowing this, He has decreed for me a regular time of rest called the Sabbath.  But Sabbath rest does not have to be relegated to a single day each week.  There is Sabbath rest to be had whenever my work ends and God's work carries on.  The Lord supplies my energy, yet even He demands that I break from my work in order to rest in His.  Good works have their proper time, as does holy rest.  To continue working in a time intended for rest is to say, "God, I know You have work to do, and I'm sorry to hold You up, but I'm not done with my work yet.  Let me finish up so that You can do what You need to."  As if my incomplete work could impede God's work in the slightest!  I need to remember who I am, and also who I AM not.

With this in mind, Isaiah 62 deserves to be revisited.  The key phrase is not, "take no rest," but rather, "give Him no rest."  We are only participants in God's work, which goes on even without us.  Rest is essential for life, and Sabbath rest is essential for eternal life, and God will not contradict His commands.  The way we are to "take no rest" is in our continual prayer.  While we work, we lift up our prayers through our work by striving toward what we ask, aligning our hearts and our actions with God's will.  Our "work" in Sabbath rest is to affirm the Lord's work through prayer and to trust that His grace is sufficient to accomplish all things in my absence.

I am still tempted to deny myself rest and to continue to work out of a sense of sovereign need, but I pray that He will teach me to take rest in His work and to devote myself to prayer as my tireless work (Colossians 4:2).

Names

About a year ago, while reflecting on my summer at Camp Highland, my devotions led me to John 13, when Jesus washed the feet of His disciples.  When He came to Peter, the headstrong disciple refused to be served by his Master, insisting that he should be serving his Lord instead.  Once Jesus explained the purpose of His service to His disciples, Peter immediately repented and asked that Jesus clean him completely, not only his feet.  As I thought on this, God directed me to realize that I am often like Peter in the way I seek to serve and not be served.

Moses was similarly disillusioned.  Though referred to as the most humble man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3), Moses showed arrogance just as Peter did and just as I do so often.  When he witnessed one of his Hebrew brethren being beaten by an Egyptian, Moses killed the Egyptian to protect his fellow Israelite (Exodus 2:11-12).  Moses judged the Egyptian for his sin, and in an attempt to take the place of God, he dealt out what he imagined was justice.  Again, when he struck the rock in anger to bring forth water in the desert, Moses strayed from the command of the Lord and spoke as if he himself were producing the water for the Israelites (Number 20:10-12).  Twice, the most humble man on earth tried to issue judgment in place of God.

To this man, God chose to show Himself and reveal His Name.  In order to remind Moses that there is only one true God, and it is not him, the Lord called Moses to an impossible task and walked with him to bring success.  The Lord also shared His name with Moses: I AM THAT I AM.  Louie Giglio writes that this revelation of who God is is also a reminder of who we are, or rather, of who we are not.  If God's name is "I AM," then our name must be "I am not" (I am not, but I know I AM, Giglio).  This was meant to free Moses from the burden of being the savior of his people.  No man should have to bear that burden.  Only Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was able to carry His identity as God and His purpose as the Savior of humanity with complete humility.

Now, Jesus came to serve, not to be served.  That purpose was meant for Jesus alone.  Just as God's name "I AM" points out that our name is "I am not," my name, Michael, means "who is like God," which reminds me that there is no one like God who is without need.  Though I try to serve everyone in every way as often as I can, it is not my place to refuse service from others.  By doing so, I claim to be all-sufficient, just as Moses claimed God's judgment seat.  I've found that I've been repeatedly putting myself in the place of God, whether by refusing to receive service or by ignoring advice because I believe I already possess the necessary wisdom, which Romans 12:16 so clearly warns against.

Names often create a platform from which to praise God.  Michael is a reminder that the Lord is incomparably great.  Hanani is a reminder of God's grace toward us.  But similarly, names also serve to convict us when we forget our identities in relation to the Lord.  When I believe I am self-sufficient, Hanani reminds me that all I have is because of God's grace, by which He has given me all I need.  When I believe I am like God, Michael reminds me that "I am not," and that none can compare to Him.  Anything in me that reflects God is only because Christ dwells in me.

To combat my pride, like Moses, I need to remember that the Lord is I AM, and my name is "I am not."  Knowing that "I don't have what they need" sets me free to serve joyfully, and knowing that I don't have what I need allows me to humbly receive service rather than refuse it.