Great Changes Begin Great Stories

12 May, 202011 May, 2020Marissa

Think about your favorite novel, movie, or TV show. It probably begins with the main characters going about their ordinary lives. Bilbo Baggins lives peacefully in his hobbit hole (The Hobbit). Elizabeth Bennet is socializing with her sisters and putting up with a mother eager to marry her off (Pride and Prejudice). Luke Skywalker is moisture farming on Tatooine (Star Wars). A pastor is sailing with his family to a colony in the South Pacific (The Swiss Family Robinson).

Then Gandalf arrives with a party of dwarves. Mr. Bingley moves to Netherfield. Droids arrive carrying secret plans that must be delivered to the Rebellion. The ship crashes on an uncharted island. Something changes, acting as an inciting incident to push the main character out of their normal life and into the events of the story.

We’re currently living in a time of great change. People are talking about what the “new normal” will look like and speculating about how much things will change now that there’s Covid-19 in the world. There have been many other times of great change throughout history — pandemics, the industrial revolution, natural disasters, colonization by European powers, terrorist attacks, the falls of empires, the birth of Jesus Christ. Some are terrible, some depend on your point of view, and a very few are spectacularly good.

We have very little control over how the world changes. But we do have some control over if and how we change in response to those changes. In many ways, we get to decide whether the effects of this pandemic will be an inciting incident for personal growth, a speed bump as we continue on much the same as before, or something that derails our path.

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We would not have had a story if Bilbo stayed home, Elizabeth refused to speak with Darcy a second time, Luke didn’t follow R2-D2 into the desert, or the Swiss family had been rescued after only a week on the island. Now, I’m not saying you should ignore social distancing guidelines and go running off on a grand adventure. For us today I’m talking more about an internal adventure and a commitment to positive change.

Some of the greatest journeys we can go on are those of self-discovery, and they’re often prompted by change. The biggest moments that stand-out in my mind as times that sparked personal growth were starting college, beginning a dating relationship with a man I’d been friends with for years, and then the breakup which ended that relationship. Maybe this pandemic will be another one for me, and for many other people.

Whether you’re stuck at home and have some extra time on your hands or not, the changes in the world around us can serve as a reminder to look inwards and evaluate ourselves. We might ask questions like, “What impact am I having on the people around me for good or ill?” or “How can I become a healthier individual mentally, emotionally, and physically?” or “What do I want the next part of my story to look like?”

We can’t control when quarantine restrictions lift, who gets sick, or most other things associate with this pandemic. But we can control how we respond to the changes that are happening in our lives and the world around us. Let’s commit to making sure the great changes we’re going through now spark great next chapters in the stories of our own lives.

If you’re looking for some ideas for where to start working on personal growth, I’ve finally found an Enneagram book that I like. It’s called The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile (please note this is an affiliate link, which means if you click and make a purchase I’ll receive a small commission at no additional cost to you).

I haven’t quite finished it yet, but even just reading the introduction and chapter on my enneatype has given me some additional clarity on a couple issues I’ve been struggling with for a while. You might want to check this book out if you’ve been curious about the Enneagram or want some ideas for personal growth. I borrowed it from a digital library, so that might be an option for those who (like me) prefer to try out a book before buying it.

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The Central Question of Job: A Broader Perspective On Suffering

9 May, 20208 May, 2020Marissa

Suffering, and questions about why God allows it, are the main thing Job and his friends talk about through the majority of the Bible book that bears Job’s name. We often say that it is a book about suffering. Since reading Philip Yancey’s book The Bible Jesus Read, however, I’ve realized Job’s story is actually about a whole lot more than suffering.

Yancey says that if you’d asked him what Job was about, he would have once said, “It’s the Bible’s most comprehensive look at the problem of pain and suffering” (p. 46). But then he took a closer look. Job asks all the questions we want God to answer about suffering, but then the book points us to a completely different way of looking at the problem.

The Stage Is Set

The book of Job begins by setting the stage for a dramatic story. We’re introduced to Job, a man who “was blameless and upright, and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1, quotes from WEB translation unless otherwise noted). He had ten children and exceedingly great wealth, as we’d expect such a good man to have in light of God’s promises to bless those who follow Him. And then something happened.

Unbeknownst to Job, he becomes the central figure in a wager between Yahweh (God’s proper name, see Ex. 3:14-15) and Satan (which means adversary). The “god of this world,” who actively opposes all Yahweh’s plans, comes before Yahweh and issues a challenge in response to a question.

Yahweh said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant, Job? For there is no one like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil.”

Then Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven’t you made a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will renounce you to your face.” (Job 1:8-11)

God holds up Job as an example of a faithful person. Satan challenges that Job only follows God because he gets something out of it. This begins what Yancey calls “a cosmic drama in heaven — the contest over Job’s faith” (p. 49). Satan has attacked God’s character, alleging that He basically bribes people to follow Him. God gives Job the opportunity to prove otherwise (p. 52). Read more →

Don’t Settle for Less Than the Best You

5 May, 202020 August, 2021Marissa

I recently reread one of my favorite books, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. And I found that he spends quite a bit of time talking about the theme of my blog—finding our true selves in the people God created us to be. I didn’t purposefully have Lewis in mind when I wrote that tagline, but I’d read Mere Christianity before and I’m sure that’s partly where the idea came from.

Yesterday, I was struggling to come up with an idea for today’s post. It’s hard to go wrong talking about C.S. Lewis, so I thought I’d share some of what he has to say about finding the truest versions of ourselves. Of course, given the sort of man that he was, it is impossible for him to talk about such a topic without pointing readers to God.

“The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs,’ all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. … I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.”
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

It’s an interesting concept to think that that no matter how hard we might try on our own to be an individual, authentic self we will actually be moving away from our real personalities if we are not moving toward God. As the inventor of personality, God is the one best qualified to tell us what we are meant to be. It’s the potter and clay analogy—that God is the potter who decides what sort of vessel He is making us to be (Is. 29:15-16; Jer. 18:1-6).

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A choice to be different

Perhaps the idea of needing to turn to God to find ourselves sounds like it goes against free will. It does not. The very fact that we can reject God and try to be something other than what He intends attests to Him giving us a choice. But choosing anything other than Him just means we’re crippling our self-expression and rejecting the greatest path to personal growth. Finding ourselves shouldn’t be our focus, though. In fact, getting too caught-up in the self is a good way to lose track of our truest personality.

“At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints.”
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

There’s so much fullness in Christ that becoming like Him does not mean we all turn into little carbon-copies of each other. He made us to be gloriously different, and we learn exactly how to do that when we lose ourselves in Him. As Jesus said, “He who seeks his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39, WEB).

“But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality; but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.”
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

Transformation, not just improvement

One of the points that Lewis makes quite eloquently is that the work Jesus is doing in us involves a whole lot more than simply making us better people. A lot of us come to Jesus and think we can basically stay as we are. We try to become “good” (well, good-ish) when in fact God as a much higher plan for us. He wants us to be perfect, and that means a deeper change.

“The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves,’ to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good.’ We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown.” — Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

This sounds drastic, and it is. It may also sound impossible, but don’t despair. God knows what raw material you’re working with and He’s not worried about how far you are from perfection when you first come to Him. In fact, He does some of His best work with the people who the world would describe as the most hopeless (though of course He can work with anyone who is willing to let Him).

If we try to do things on our own, we’re settling for less than the best. That includes settling for a version of ourselves that is missing something essential from our Creator. If we go through life focused on self, even if that simply means trying to be good apart from God, we will not find happiness. But, to quote the final line of Mere Christianity, “look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

The quotes I took from Mere Christianity are all found near the end of the book (several from the final chapter). If you’d like to read everything leading up to them, I highly recommend this book. Here’s a link where you can buy it. (Please not that this is an affiliate link, which means if you click and make a purchase I’ll receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.) If you’d like to read Mere Christianity without buying it, the full text is available online.

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Don’t Give Up! Keep Running Your Race of Faith Without Looking Back

2 May, 20202 May, 2020Marissa

Do you ever feel stuck in the past and discouraged by how hard it is to move forward? You’re a Christian and you know that’s supposed to give you hope, but somehow that just doesn’t seem to be the case.

It’s disheartening to feel as if you can’t move forward from your past or that there is no way out of your present. Especially if you feel like you’ve done something so wrong or your circumstances are so hopeless that there’s no point trying to fix things. These sorts of worries weigh us down emotionally and spiritually. They can make us feel heavy, foggy, and hopeless (and may lead to other symptoms of depression as well).

Jesus never promised that life as a Christian would be without trials. He only promised to help us through those trials, and since He has all power and authority in heaven and earth this is an incredible promise (Matt. 28:18). It can be easy, though, to lose sight of the big picture and get distracted by all sorts of nasty things that cling to us, weighing us down and making it hard to keep moving forward. We might wonder how to get unstuck, or even if it’s possible.

The Cage Door Is Open

One thing I’ve realized is that most of the things that are holding onto me are also, at least to some extent, things that I’m holding onto right back. Jesus promises to make us free and to wash us clean of any sin. If we stay in a cage or keep rolling in the dirt, then it’s not because He has failed in some way. It’s because we’re still susceptible to the attacks of the enemy and the pulls of the world.

I don’t say this to make us feel guilty or ashamed (that’s another thing that weighs us down, and shame is not a productive emotion). I want to encourage you to shift your perspective. Instead of seeing yourself as a victim trapped in a locked cage made from whatever’s holding on to you (fear, past sins, personal shortcomings, etc), you can picture yourself as someone in an open cage where God is holding the door and asking you to come out. He knows it’s hard. He knows it’s frightening. He knows there are often circumstances outside your control that keep pulling you backwards. But He isn’t giving up and He’ll be there patiently helping you for as long as it takes. Read more →

Are You a Vanishing INFJ? Here Are 5 Tips for Keeping in Touch With People When You Want to Withdraw

28 April, 202027 April, 2020Marissa

One of my most popular posts on this blog is one I wrote back in 2016 called “The Vanishing INFJ.” Not only does it get quite a bit of traffic, but I’ve heard from several INFJs who contacted me specifically about the idea of them “vanishing.” It’s often something they hadn’t realized about themselves, but recognized immediately when they read my article.

Many INFJs have a tendency to drop out of contact with people. We get distracted by the world inside our own heads and might cancel plans, respond very briefly to communication attempts, or ignore other people entirely. Some INFJs might do this very rarely, other quite frequently. It depends on a variety of factors, including the INFJ’s priorities, maturity, personal growth, and how much social energy they have left after dealing with the people they come in contact with each day.

As an INFJ, you might think it’s perfectly normal to go months without contacting someone. You might not even notice it if you’re used to retreating inside your head for long periods at a time. Or perhaps you do notice it, but you worry about intruding on others and so you don’t like to reach out first. Maybe this time your vanishing is prompted by some outside influence, such as the social distancing regulations designed to help stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As you become aware of your tendency to “vanish,” you might also notice that it can have a negative effect on your relationships. Assuming these are relationships you value, you’ll want to find ways of keeping in touch with the people you care about and not letting your “vanishing” get in the way. Here are five tips for keeping in touch with people even when you’d be more comfortable withdrawing.

1) Give Yourself Alone Time

This may seem a weird place to start a list of tips for keeping in touch with people. After all, “alone” is the opposite of keeping in touch. It’s one of the things that happens when you vanish.

INFJs are introverts, however, and that means we need a certain amount of introvert time. One of the reasons we may want to vanish is because we’re burned-out and need some time to recharge. Before you try to push yourself to reach out to others, make sure you’re taking care of yourself as well. Read more →

How Do You Get God’s Attention?

25 April, 202024 April, 2020Marissa

What sort of thing makes God pay attention to a human being? Is it loud shouting from morning to evening, as the prophets of Baal did in 1 Kings 18? or putting yourself in danger so He’ll save you, as Satan counseled Christ to do in Matthew 4? Or wearing Bible quotes on your clothes and making sure people know how much money you give to the church, much like the Pharisees did in Matthew 23?

Clearly, those are all horrible examples. The first comes from people who turned their backs on the one true God, the second from the adversary himself, and the third from religious leaders Christ condemned for their legalism. But do we ever try anything similar, thinking that we need to sing longer, preach louder, or do more in order to make God notice us?

It’s easy to fall into this trap, especially in a culture where we’re constantly told we need to stand out to get ahead. However, the things that make us stand out to the world aren’t necessarily the same things that catch God’s eye. There are several places in the Bible where God describes what type of person He will pay attention to, and it’s not always what we might think.

Sigh and Cry

I’ve talked about the practice of lament quite a bit in the past few weeks, so it makes sense to start there (see “Learning How To Lament” and “Trusting God When You’re Confused By Him: A Study of Lamentations 3“). Lament is a prayer of painful complaint, where you bring complicated emotions to God and re-affirm that you trust Him even when you’re hurt and confused. It’s most likely what these people Ezekiel writes of were doing:

and he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writer’s inkhorn by his side. Yahweh said to him, “Go through the middle of the city, through the middle of Jerusalem, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry over all the abominations that are done within it.”

To the others he said in my hearing, “Go through the city after him, and strike. Don’t let your eye spare, neither have pity. Kill utterly the old man, the young man, the virgin, little children and women; but don’t come near any man on whom is the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.” (Ezk. 9:3-6, all quotes from WEB translation)

You can read the context for this in Ezekiel 8 through 11. Ancient Israel had once again departed from God and He intended to punish them, but a certain group of people caught his eye. He marked the people who recognized and lamented the abominations done within their nation and even within the Lord’s sanctuary.

God tells us that He is unchanging, the same yesterday today and forever. If in the past He was looking for people who cared deeply about His ways and were heartbroken when others do evil, then we can assume He is still looking for the same today. One way to get God’s attention is to join Him in grieving over the abominable things done in the world around us.

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Poor, Contrite, Trembling

Yahweh says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build to me? Where will I rest? For my hand has made all these things, and so all these things came to be,” says Yahweh: “but I will look to this man, even to he who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:1-2)

God is not impressed with wealth, pride, and power. He doesn’t need us to build more impressive temples and churches, or give more impressive offerings. He just wants us to be the kind of people He can work with; the sort who will listen to Him and recognize how much we need Him.

Humans tend to think that we need to do something impressive to be noticed, but that’s not how God operates. Instead, He chooses people wise enough to know that they are foolish, weak, lowly, and nothing without Him (see “Growing In The Wisdom From God” and 1 Corinthians 1:25-29). He gives the kingdom of heaven to those who are “poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3). Those who fear the Lord and honor His name are treated as His own special possession (Mal. 3:16-17). If you want to get His attention, then you have to get out of your own way and be vulnerable with Him.

A Perfect Heart

There’s a verse in Proverbs that says, “Yahweh’s eyes are everywhere, keeping watch on the evil and the good” (Prov. 15:3). There’s nothing hidden to Him, even what’s inside us (Jer. 16:17; 17:10). He is able to see everything, and He’s looking for something specific.

For Yahweh’s eyes run back and forth throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (2 Chr. 16:9)

The Hebrew word for heart can refer to our whole inner man, and “perfect” means complete, whole, safe, and at peace (lebab, H3824, and shalem, H8003). God is far more concerned with our inner man than the outer appearance (1 Sam. 16:7), and it catches His eye when we’re whole-heartedly seeking Him.

He doesn’t just take notice for no reason, either. He looks for these sorts of people so that He can act powerfully on their behalf. It would be more than enough just to have the Creator of the universe notice us but He goes several steps further. He enters into our lives and shows Himself strong for us when we’re seeking a relationship with Him.

Righteous

Sins separate us from God. Removal of sins is needed for us to have a close relationship with God, which is one reason Christ died to take away sin. When we “miss the mark” of righteousness, we can repent and ask for forgiveness, and Christ will keep cleansing us of sin so we can be in God’s presence. That does not, however, mean we shouldn’t try to do what God says is right. Jesus said that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments (John 14:15, 21; 15:10). And as we keep growing toward perfection and remain faithful to Him, He considers us righteous.

Yahweh’s eyes are toward the righteous. His ears listen to their cry. Yahweh’s face is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory from the earth. (Psalm 34:15-16)

Peter quotes this in his first epistle, leaving no doubt that these words are relevant for New Covenant Christians as well as the psalmist of old (1 Peter 3:8-12). Being righteous involves loving God and doing what He says. And that simple act of obedience and faith is enough to catch God’s seeing eye and listening ear.

If we want to draw closer to God, we can’t rely on our own way of doing things or on conventional human wisdom. We must do things God’s way. The things that catch His attention are the things that make us more like Him. He will respond when we humbly seek Him, when we’re heartbroken over what breaks His heart, when we’re whole-hearted before Him, and when we pursue righteousness so that we can fellowship with Him.

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