Batter Up! -- Hope Chronicles 83

Have you ever noticed a phrase that you've heard all your life but never known the origins? One such phrase for me is in the form of a question, "Who's gonna bat for me?" My take on it is that someone cannot bat for some reason so a fellow teammate bats in his place. (This may or may not be accurate.)

Recently, I was surprised by some confrontation on a issue in my life. The issue is confrontation and how I respond. I'll admit that I do get stubborn but it was hard to hear that I get mean with my words. I've been challenged to look at this area and make amends.

I've wanted to respond with a "Yes, but. . . ." In other words, "I'll own my stuff when they own their stuff." Which a friend pointed out is the problem. She thinks I need to just own my stuff and not worry about their stuff. My rallying point is, "But that isn't fair. There's a double standard here . . . ."

As I've thought and prayed about it, I've realized that my attitude is really born out of fear. The relentless question in my mind has been, "But who will bat for me?" When I was a child, my dad was fairly abusive. My mom knew about what was going on but didn't step into protect me. I learned this lesson: if I don't protect myself then no one will. And I think it is the mode I operate out of today. When someone confronts me the barriers go up and I peek through the slot in the heavily reinforced door.

Admitting my part without a respective commitment from them, seems like making myself vulnerable and defenseless.

This summer I read Gary Haugen's book Just Courage. It's a wonderful little book but really challenging. The final challenge is "Do you want to be safe or brave?" Haugen writes

". . . . I'd like to be brave, but I'd also like to be safe. My heavenly Father, however, loves me deeply enough to tell me the truth. He says I can't be both brave and safe. He wants me to be clear that I have to decide -- and he wants me to choose to be brave, which means choosing not to be safe."

The challenge is that God wants us to be brave knowing that our real safety (maybe not in the concrete ways we want) resides in Jesus and what He did for us on the cross.

So, please pray with me as I begin to look at my relentless concern about who is batting for me? Jesus was and is batting for me. There is hope in that.

But I need the courage, the bravery, of letting my defenses down. At the heart of the issue is trusting that God has my best in mind and is batting for me. I'm not sure how to do that, so your prayers would be appreciated.

Finding My Way

Henry Ward Beecher said, "The strength and happiness of a man consists in finding the way in which God is going and going that way too." Oh, such wise counsel. Who could not be strong and happy following in the footsteps of Jesus.

Yet, I struggle to know which way God is taking me. I think I know and then things keep falling through on me a bit. Right now it is something at church that I was looking forward to doing and now won't be able to do.

I find my heart tugged more and more about the impoverished, but I'm not sure what I am suppose to do. I do think God may be directing those thoughts.

I recently read Gary Haugen's book Just Courage. In the last chapter he says that God asks us if we want to be safe or brave? We cannot have both, though there is a sense of safety in following God. God, I want to be brave, but I don't know how. Will you show me?

Contest

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to remind you that the contest is still going on. Every comment through the last day of September is an entry. I'll select the winner That night and announce it October 1!

For those of you who don't know, the contest is to win a book by Gary Haugen called "Just Courage: God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian." It's a life changing little book.

Click the picture to go to the original post!

What God Has Done

I officially do not know how many books I have going at the moment. I think there is one in every room. My community group (what my church calls small groups) just started reading John Ortberg' The life You've Always Wanted. I've only read the first chapter and need to read the second before Friday.

The first chapter is titled "We Shall Morph Indeed." It's basically about God's transforming power in our lives. Did you get that? It's about God's power -- not my puny attempts. Having just read Lisa Whittle's chapter on authenticity, the two melded in my mind.

Lisa wrote that we want to be fully known but that we put up a charade to hide our true selves. Yes, we are insecure. But God knows us fully. Really. Part way through, Ortberg writes, "The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope." Since I'm all about hope this year, it caught my heart. He outlines different words that are used in scripture in talking about tranformation. There meanings include:

• the real formation of the essential nature of a person
• In Galatians, Paul says, "until Christ is formed in you"
• To be conformed to the image of the Son
• It denotes change -- ugly caterpillar to a butterfly

Essential to the changed nature is wanting to do the things that God would have us do rather than just doing them because.

He really caught my attention with Mabel. She was blind and had hearing loss. She lived in a nursing home. Half her face was being eaten by cancer. She had been getting progressively sicker for 25 years. At one point Ortberg asks her how she can lie in her bed and sing hymns. Her answer was "I think about how good he's been to me. He's been awfully good to me in my life, you know . . . ."

If I were Mabel I would be sunken and shriveled emotionally. I do not know if I could sing hymns. Sometimes my depression steals my ability to think of all that God has done for me. If a woman in Mabel's condition can be thankful, can I learn that thankfulness as well? When I am at my worst, can I still see God? That is the question to ponder.

I've also recently read Just Courage. Ortber's book reminded me of that when he said that we no longer do something out of habit or a have to mindset. We do it because it is on God's heart. Interesting how the two books overlap! What is God trying to tell me?

Don't forget about the contest. Every comment from now until Sept 30 gets a chance to win. Click the graphic if you want to know more.

Does It Matter To Me?

It's a small unassuming little book with a big message: Just Courage by Gary Haugen. The subtitle is "God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian."

I'll probably be reflecting on this book for a long time and hope to share some of it over the next couple of weeks. But I don't just want to share it here, I want to give a copy of the book away. To enter, leave a comment below with some aspect of God's concern for the world and maybe how you are responding to that. You see, I need ideas on how God may want me to respond!

About half way through the book is this quote:

We must seek to rescue our neighbors with dedication and urgency with which we would go about trying to rescue our own family or even ourself. In a world of injustice, loving intervention on behalf of the oppressed is simple obedience to Jesus' must fundamental command to love our neighbor.

Do I have the same urgency to help those around me -- particularly the oppressed that I would have if it were happening to someone I knew and loved?

I think I have in the past. I think of my time as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). I spent 3 years representing two children in the foster care system. It was a demanding volunteer position. I averaged about 40 hours a month on my case over that time. I had that sense of urgency for those children.

But what about now? I have a couple children through Compassion International. That's a good thing. I pray for them daily. But what am I doing on a more active level to advocate/love someone who cannot do it for themselves?

Ideas please!

If there is some way you are showing that what matters to HIM matters to you please let me know. Or maybe you know someone who is taking action for God. I'd love to hear about them as well.

The contest will go until September 30. Every comment will be an entry. Oh, and I'm adding some quotes from the book to the quote section of my blog. Just click the word quote in the navigation bar and scroll down until you see "Gary Haugen: Just Courage."




ps: I'd love to have you promote the contest on your sites. If you want to, you can add the graphic by right clicking on it and down loading it to your site. Then click the paper clip/world icon and enter the address of this post or my general address of http//amylbrooke.blogspot.com Thanks!

What Does My Life Reflect?

A few weeks ago I wrote an email to International Justice Mission -- IJM. The point was to let the founder & CEO know that many years ago I had read his book The Good News About Injustice and that it had stayed with me in a huge way. It was born out of Gary Haugen's time as the director of the United Nations genocide investigation in Rwanda in 1994. (Click here for info about the struggle in Rwanda.) It stuck with me. As a result, when I started sponsoring one of two Compassion International children, I asked that one be from Rwanda.

I heard back from a couple staff at IJM. They thanked me for the email and told me that Gary had another book out in July that I might be interested in. It is called Just Courage. I ordered and picked it up the other night.

It is an unassuming little book. But when I started it last night, I realized that it will likely be all meat. And the meat begins the first page. He writes about reading John Stuart Mill's essay on "On Liberty" as a freshman in college. Here is a bit of what he said:

Writing in 1859, Mill was trying to explain the process by which words lose their meaning, and he casually offered that the best example of this phenomenon was Christians. Christians, he observed, seem to have the amazing ability to say the most wonderful things without actually believing them.

What became more disturbing was his list of things that Christians, like me, actually say -- like, blessed are the poor and humble; it's better to give than receive; judge not, lest you be judged; love your neighbor as yourself, etc. -- and examining one by one, how differently I would live my life if I actually believed such things. As Mill concluded, "The sayings of Christ co-exist passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland."

And that is the jumping off point of the book. Do we live a life that reflects that we believe what Jesus said to be true? If we say that we believe, do our lives reflect it? The challenge is that we often stop short in truly following. We go as far as we feel safe or in control or to where the risks seem manageable.

God calls us to go farther -- to live a life totally dependent on Him. Yes, we are to go to our limits but then we give up and let God take us the rest of the way.

Does my life reflect that I truly believe and will act on what Jesus has called me to. Honestly, there are a couple of times that I can think of that might have that sense of utter dependence on God. But was it? I think of volunteering a number of years ago as a CASA or Court Appointed Special Advocate. I was trained to advocate for a child (or in my case, children) in the child welfare system. It was totally volunteer. We got exactly 40 hours of training on the system, the court process, child development, etc. Then we met with the child, the foster parents, the biological parents, the case worker, the therapist, etc. And we wrote court reports and testified in court.

Yes, this was a good thing to have done. But then I think about what Gary is saying. I look back and think of volunteering 40 hours a month of stress and strain over three years. But, I don't know that at any point it took me to that point beyond myself in total reliance on God. Yes, it was a good thing and reflected God's care for the helpless, but was their more to give? I was a natural observer. At that time I had studied Interpersonal Communication in undergrad. I communicated, perhaps at my best, in written form. But I had also trained with InterVarsity to do dialog teaching -- to think on my feet in the midst of a presentation. So, I kept my head when asked questions by both sides in the courtroom. When did I move beyond my own abilities? Did I?

But Gary is careful to make us realize that it is not just about the big things (or what the world tells us are big things) we attempt for God. It can be in other choices -- caring for aging parents, making ethical choices in a work place, giving when it doesn't feel like we can.

I think of people I've met here in blogland that I think are relying on God in those big ways. There's Lelia raising her granddaughter and trying to plumb the depths of a rebellious teen's heart. There's Nicki facing a young daughter's surgery. There's Renee planning and working toward the adoption of children from Ethiopia. There's Michelle facing the loss of a job. There's Beth who recently went on her first missions trip.

So, the question I am pondering and invite you to ponder is, "What does my life reflect? Does it reflect a sold out belief in my savior or that I find the words on the page of my Bible to be pleasing but not worth losing sleep over?" I hope that my life reflects a sold out belief in Jesus. But sometimes I suspect I live comfortably within my abilities rather than utter dependence. So, with some hesitation because it is likely one of those prayers that will cause an up turn in my life like praying for God to teach patience, I think I will cautiously pray that God show me what it means to live out a sold out belief in Jesus.