I saw God today.

in the bread and the cup.
in all the mommies holding babies in the sanctuary.
in the tears of a grown man struggling to say good-bye to his church family.
in the laying on of hands and prayer for families being called away to serve Him.
in all the voices being raised as one in praise and worship to The King.
in all the little voices "talking" during the service.
in the Truth of His Word proclaimed with honesty and dignity.
in the inexplicable joy that there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
in the loving fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ.
in a room full of imperfect, real people gathered in His Name.
in the faces of His children.

I saw God today, and I plan to look for Him again tomorrow.

Finally.

Might I suggest you grab your beverage of choice. We are going to be here a while.

One interesting note before we get to the good stuff. A few of the symptoms of a person suffering from my condition include that I must finish any book that I start (with one exception to remain nameless – wouldn’t want to be responsible for bad press), and I am usually unable to read more than one book at a time. But, as of late, I have been reading some pretty heavy stuff and have been forced to give myself breaks every now and then in order to attempt to digest the words of people much smarter than myself.

It just so happens that I was in the middle of such a break with a fun book during a visit with my sister’s family one weekend. My brother-in-law had recently found out about my silly little blog and subsequently stayed up late catching up on all the entries. A few days later he suggested a topic that he would like me to address. Pentecost, but more specifically, what he considers to be one of the most incredible miracles of the Bible: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the entire group of believers at Pentecost. Even more specifically, why God chose to send His Spirit to all of them at once as they met together in one place instead of to each individual believer as they went along on their individual journeys of faith with Him. If you have been paying attention to the themes of my blog entries, you have probably already figured out what I think the reason is. But first, back to my story.

I told CAT that I would definitely give it some thought and do my best to honor his request. Upon returning home, I had finished my fun book and was ready to dive back into the depths of Frank Viola’s book From Eternity to Here. Have you figured out where I am going with this yet? No worries, I am not sure either. Would you be surprised if I told you that the next chapter in the book addressed Pentecost, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church, and His purpose to make one out of many? I thought not.

Nice coincidence, you say? Lucky, fortuitous timing? (that one was for you Cha Cha – go ahead and look it up) No way, Jose. That is what I like to call divine appointment. As you are aware, I’m sure, God has been known, on occasion, to show off. Praise Him, praise Him. And so, without further ado, let me share with you a few of my thoughts and excerpts from the book that I think capture the heart of God and His purposeful decision at the birth of the church to move the Spirit on His people as ONE instead of individuals.

God never intended us to function as lone ranger Christians pursuing only our own personal faith and ministry.

And believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women. (Acts 5:14)

And a great many people were added to the Lord. (Acts 11:24)

Added to the Lord. Or as it is stated in Ephesians, the church is the Fullness of Christ. “That means the church is the enlargement of Christ. It’s His completion. It ‘fills Him out,’ as it were, just as your physical body fills out your head. Put another way, the church is the rest of Jesus Christ” (p 264).

"Point: We Christians are not simply disciples of Jesus. We are not simply believers in the Savior of the world and the Lord of creation. We are members of Christ. The body of Jesus is not detached from Christ the Head. The Head doesn’t have one life and the body another. The body of Christ shares the same life of the risen Head” (p 262).

“Christ the Head is the great mystery of God. Christ the body, which is the uniting of Jew and heathen into one new human, is the great mystery of God. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, the church properly functioning is ‘Christ existing in community’” (p 279).

“According to the first-century use of the word, an ekklesia is a local gathering of Christians who live as a shared-life community and who gather regularly under the Headship of Jesus Christ” (p 174).

“The first thing the Christians did after believing on Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit was that they met. And they met continually (Acts 2:46). Deep down in our inward parts, every genuine believer has a broad thirst for the experience of community. In this connection, there was no such thing as individual salvation in the first century. You were saved and baptized into the body. You became part of a living community that gathers together continually.”

“According to the New Testament, salvation is not simply an individual transaction. It’s rather a translation from one community into another (Col. 1:13). It’s an incorporation into a collective spiritual reality, the body of Christ” (p 241-242).

So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another” (Rom. 12:5). Because we are connected to the same body, we are members of one another. Not rogue individuals.

“I cannot fully know Christ on my own. Neither can you. I must know Him through His body. I must know Him through my sisters and brothers. And so do you. But in order for us to know Christ through other members of His body, we have to get close to them. Christian community is God’s answer to that requirement” (p 264).

Are you beginning to appreciate the genius of the Father in sending His Spirit to the believers as a group? From the birth of the church, he established a new community, a new species. He left no question as to the importance of our new identity as members of the Body of Christ.

And not only the Body, but also the House of God.

“When Jesus lived on the earth, the house of God was limited by space and time. It was also limited to one person, Jesus of Nazareth. Consequently, when Jesus was in Nazareth, the house of God was restricted to Nazareth. When He was in Jerusalem, the house of God was restricted to Jerusalem.”

“When Pentecost arrived, the ekklesia was born. And the many stones that poured forth from the Lord’s resurrection were built together in the city of Jerusalem to form the Lord’s house in that city” (p 162).

“I want you to imagine countless living stones scattered all over the earth. I want you to see innumerable living stones living their own individual Christian lives. I want you to see scores of living stones who love God, but who are isolated and independent of other living stones. They may attend religious services, but there’s little to no ‘building together’ among the members.”

“The burning intent of your God is that all of His living stones be built together with other living stones to form His house. Not for themselves, but for their Lord. To be the house of God, by God and for God.”

"Jesus Christ did not die and rise again just to forgive you of your sins. He died in order that His Father could obtain a home. The Lord saved you and me for a high and holy purpose” (p 169).

“God’s intention has always been to take us humans (created from clay) and turn us into gold, pearl, and precious stone for the building of His house. How does He do it?” (p 219). “One of the chief methods God uses to obtain precious stones is to throw a group of His own people together – fallen, damaged, and roughly hewn – and summon them to live as a community” (p216).

“The intense heat and pressure that create precious stones often come from the hands of our brothers and sisters in Christ. The closer we get to them, the more the heat is turned up” (p 216).

“Write it down: Scattered stones can never make a house, no matter how many of them exist” (p161).

“I’m inviting you, dear reader, to participate in the building of God’s house. That means making the decision no longer to be an independent isolated living stone. But instead, to throw yourself into the building of Lord’s dwelling place with others of like mind and heart."

“Stones that are not built together with other stones ruin good land (2 Kings 3:19). Thus lone-ranger Christians are of no use in the building of God’s house. We have been redeemed to be material for God’s building. Consequently, God is monumentally disinterested in raising up spiritual giants. He’s looking for a people who are willing to be cemented together for His dwelling."

“The Lord Jesus is looking for willing vessels who will abandon their Western-styled individualism and live a shared life with other under His exclusive Headship. This is our high calling” (p 170-171).

So, why did God’s Spirit come to the believers while they were meeting together instead of as they went on their individual way? Together, not seperate, we are ONE: the Body of Christ and the House of God. And that’s all I have to say about that. At least for today, anyway.

Saying good-bye to a dream; eagerly awaiting a new dream to be revealed

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps” (Prov. 16:9).

For the past two years I have known that I had two precious babies waiting to be given the opportunity to grow, be born, and be added to our family. I have dreamed of them, given them faces and names, and loved them as if they were already here with us. I have even delayed having them placed in my body, because in my twisted mind as long as they were there waiting – hope was still alive. They were still alive.

On June 11th we were scheduled to have the embryos transferred to my womb. When we arrived at the hospital we had only one surviving embryo. As much as my heart broke for the lost baby, my hopes for another baby were still alive and well. You see, in the back of my mind, I had convinced myself that God owed the world another child from the Garrison Family. He had already blessed me with a precious girl who looks like her daddy but acts just like her mommy. So the way I saw it, with a little me in the world with tendencies toward crazy including obsessive compulsive disorder, surely the Father knew we needed a little Steven – full of love, acceptance and the desire for everyone to be happy (okay that last bit is the middle child syndrome but it could happen). But, alas, He must have other plans to bring balance to the universe.

This past Monday we found out that our final “medical” chance to have another baby was not successful (who knows what God may have planned, though). As I mourn the loss of those dear babies I have been dreaming about for more than 12 years and who have been real in my heart for the past 2 years, suddenly my Emmylou’s life becomes even more precious to me. Just when I think that I might be overwhelmed by sadness, she does another one of her crazy stunts making me crack up. It is bittersweet, though, because the desire for more like her remains a lump caught in my throat right behind the laughter.

What could have been has always been a struggle for me, and those little lives lost, dreams unrealized, futures unlived all have the potential to send me back to the place of darkness I functioned in for so many years before God brought us Emmylou. For her sake and my own, I will choose to walk in the light.

And what does a perpetually glass-half empty, un-medicated OCD person do to find the bright side? Why, make a list, of course! In order to stay true to my temperament, I will have to include both the positive and negative sides to each of my thoughts. We must be careful to never take ourselves too seriously, so in the midst of my grief – let’s laugh and celebrate this crazy thing called life, even if it must be at my expense.


 No more gestating and lactating for me (my apologies gentlemen readers).
 Unfortunately, I can’t think of a better way to spend the next couple of years of my life.

 No more painful shots in the backside.
 I would give anything to need to continue receiving those unfortunate shots.

 Now I am free to work out to lose the rest of my baby fat from Emmylou.
 Phooey, now I lost my excuse not to sign up for that Boot Camp class at the YMCA.

 Caffeine, need I say more.

 No more sleepless nights – feeding and soothing a newborn.
 No more nights spent feeding and soothing a newborn instead of sleeping. Sleep is overrated.

 I do not want my little Emmylou to be alone in the world. I truly desire to provide a brother and/or sister to be her forever companion(s).
 As my sister so lovingly pointed out, she already has four little people who adore her completely. And while they are cousins, not siblings, she will never be alone. Thank you, Lord.

 Really would have liked the opportunity to correct all the mistakes we have made so far in raising this critter. For instance, I was determined to get the next one to take a pacifier – nipple confusion, peshaw!
 Who am I kidding, we just would have made different mistakes. Isn’t this parenting thing the most humbling experience of your life?

 A sibling would have helped to prevent the critter from being spoiled rotten.
 Oh yeah, too late for that.

“God gives. God takes. God’s name be ever blessed” (Job 1:21). And while I would have preferred to hold those babies in my hands not just my heart and know them in life not just my dreams, the Father knows best. Though my heart may be breaking, my faith will not be shaken. For I know that even when God chooses not to, HE IS ABLE.

And really, how could I ask for more?

Confess your sins one to another

Please see the revision to #5 of my list of excuses posted on June 4th. I must confess that the original version was written under the influence of my sinful flesh mixed with anger, hurt, self-preservation and a dash of passive aggressiveness. A rather lethal combination. I am reminded, yet again, of the words of Paul found in Romans 7:18-20, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Can someone help me get off this train?

It never ceases to amaze me that equal to the capacity of the human heart to love is its ability to cause pain to the very people that we love. Even more amazing is the fact that, God, knowing this about our fallen nature, still includes us in the participation and fruition of His eternal purpose to build a home and grow a family for Himself and birth a beautiful Bride for His Son. The Flood seems like a much more appropriate plan.

Thankfully, “we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). I have to believe that ALL truly means ALL – including the sins, mistakes, offenses I have committed in the past and will commit in the future.

I am encouraged by the countless examples in the Bible of men and women who committed grievous sins against God and their fellow man, and yet God, in His awesome, overwhelming power and love, used those same fallen individuals to accomplish His Will in heaven and on earth. Just take a quick peak at the faith hall of fame in Hebrews and consider for a moment their stories and what God made of them.

He gives us beauty for ashes, strength for fear, gladness for mourning and peace for despair. The wretch that I am is a rather big fan of God’s economy.

And while those transgressions committed against fellow human beings may result in the loss of a relationship, they do not have the power to separate us from the love of God. As The Word states, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38).

Amazingly enough, I can readily accept the fact that there is no outside force that can change my standing with God through Jesus, but the one that is hard for me to comprehend is life, that is, my life. I get that death cannot take me from Him, but the life that I live, the mistakes that I make, the people that I hurt, and the sins that I commit – those are what scare me. His love truly is AMAZING. Incomprehensible, really.

And yet, He gives us even more than His acceptance and love in that He blesses us with people who love us as well – the good, the bad and the ugly. Oh, the gift of experiencing the love of Christ in the face of a husband who endures much pain and agony in dealing with my quirkiness. Or a sister who despite having countless wires crossed over the years is my best friend. Or a mom and dad having endured the abuse of raising me can still tell stories about me with such pride in their eyes. Or numerous friends who are honestly shocked when I share something negative about myself, because their love has blinded them to my faults – they have chosen to see and believe only the good in me. My heart almost explodes with the joy and gratitude I have for these precious gifts.

God is good. Life is good. Go love someone who does not deserve it. Thankfully, my people do.

....to the Pools of Bethesda

Part of our wilderness journey included isolation and loneliness. Noone's fault in particular, except maybe life, but there were many contributing factors. Although our previous move brought us much closer to family (2 hours instead of 24), we struggled to make the intimate relationships with friends that we had experienced in every other location we had lived.

Small town life where people are content to keep to themselves combined with our own natural hermit tendencies made living life together with other brothers and sisters in Christ seem like an insurmountable obstacle. Add to that the birth of our first child who refused to take a pacifier or allow anyone else to take care of her other than one of her people, and we ended up living holed up in a bunker being suffocated by the desire just to share our life with others.

We were meant to live in community. It is in the sequence of our Christian DNA. Not a choice or a preference, but a God-designed condition. Period. We are His Body made of many parts, His Family full of many members, and His House built with many living stones.

As Frank Viola states, "One of the great problems in the Christian faith today, I believe, is that Christians are taught to be salt and light in the world as individuals. We are exhorted as individuals to change the world for Christ. We are motivated as individuals to be agents of God's kingdom."

"'Church' has be redefined as the place you attend to be educated and motivated to go out and live a better individual Christian life. Sadly, the individual emphasis in comtemporary Christianity has overwhelmed and eclipsed God's central purpose, which is corporate. To compound the trouble, we have been handed individualistic lenses by which to read, study, and interpret in the Bible."

"Please observe that is is not the individual Christian who is the fullness of Christ. It is the church, the ekklesia. Also observe that the vast majority of the Bible was written to a people, not an individual. That includes your New Testament, the bulk of which was written to Christian communitites."

"Our new species lives, works, and behaves in community. We are a colony together. Thus the great need of the hour is for Christians to begin learning how to gather together and embody Christ in a shared-life community where we live. The Christian life is not about you or me. It's about us. And that is the church."

And so after numerous years of religious detox and lonely isolation, God, in His infinite mercy, has now lovingly brought us to the Pools of Bethesda, a place of healing. He even saw fit to include guardian angels as our across the street neighbors. They are an elderly couple who have been extremely kind to us and have been loving on our little family. We needed to be loved upon. We needed to live in community with other believers.

We went to church and a picnic with them a few Sundays ago and were truly blessed by the experience and the company. We see and talk to them at least once a day "as we go," and it has been so good to find community outside the church walls. Already in a few short weeks, we are building more intimacy with those around us than we did in years of "attending church" in our previous town.

Exalting Jesus while sharing life with others satisfies a need knit in the very fabric of my being so much more so than looking at the back of someone's head for an hour every week, stopping to answer the obligatory "How are you's" in the hallway before rushing out the door, and sitting in a circle during Sunday School for a specified amount of time no matter what the Spirit may have in mind.

One other interesting by-product of our time detoxing in the wilderness and healing in Bethesda is as a recovering Pharisee that found security in a specific denomination's doctrine (see previous post), I am now thoroughly comfortable in fellowship and worship with my precious brothers and sisters from various Christian backgrounds/denominations. What a beautiful gift. We are one in Christ, truly. May you find it so in your life as well.

It stands to reason...

that the next entry in the blog should be ...To the Pools of Bethesda. But, alas, I was stirred even haunted by a quote from C.S. Lewis in a book I am reading and felt the overwhelming need to share. As it expresses my humble situation much like the Pooh quote I shared earlier. Did I just compare C.S. Lewis to Pooh? Is that allowed? Which one of them, do you suppose, would be more offended by such a comparison? On to the topic at hand.

From J.I. Packer's Knowing God:

"I do not ask my readers to suppose that I know very well what I am talking about. 'Those like myself,' wrote C.S. Lewis, 'whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than any we have really reached. If we describe what we have imagined we may make others, and make ourselves, believe that we have really been there' - and so fool both them and ourselves. All readers and writers of devotional literature do well to weigh C.S. Lewis' words. Yet 'it is written: I believed, therefore I have spoken.' With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak" (2 Cor. 4:13).

From the Wilderness........

A few years ago, my husband Steven and I found ourselves in the midst of a struggle that surprised both of us. After being raised in church and spending our adult, married lives in places of service to the church, we were suddenly faced with an uncomfortable effort to fit in at church and with fellow Christians. The weekly messages began to seem trite and even gimmicky on occasion. Most of the time the church service left us feeling restless and hungry to participate in the exaltation of the Lord. We found ourselves learning and deepening our faith through our own personal pursuits of Bible study and reading everything we could get our hands on concerning the Body of Christ (something that I do not think was God’s intention for His people – more on that in a future post). We began begging God to show us what sin had infested our hearts that would breed such dissatisfaction.

Through those continued personal pursuits mentioned above, God lovingly revealed to us that instead of sin (while we all know there is plenty of it in us) causing our struggle; it was a new desire being born in our hearts to see Jesus high and lifted up and His Bride to take her rightful place at His side; His Body to function with Him as the Head; His House to be built by living stones instead of stones made of mortar and by His blueprint and not man’s; and His Family to truly be united under our basis for fellowship which is Christ alone. We caught a glimpse of the heart of God and nothing else will satisfy our deep longing to see His purpose fulfilled. We must know Christ, and Him crucified.

God has been using these years in much the same way He used the “wilderness” in the lives of the Israelites (although their disbelief extended the experience), the followers of John the Baptist, and even the apostle Paul.

As Frank Viola states in his book From Eternity to Here, “the wilderness has but one goal: to sift us, to reduce us, and to strip us down to Christ alone. Those of us who have left Egypt and Babylon need to be emptied of a great deal of religious baggage. The wilderness experience is designed to do just that. It’s the place of religious detox.”

“Shortly after Paul’s conversion from being a racist, sectarian, self-righteous, bigoted, highly religious Pharisee to a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, God led him to an Arabian desert for three years (Gal. 1:17-18). What was he doing there? Detoxing.”

“Undoubtedly, he was allowing years of human religiosity to drain out of his veins. Everything that Paul knew as a zealous Pharisee had bled out of him in the desert. Paul was beyond being reformed. He had to have a spiritual lobotomy. And that’s what the wilderness is for.”

He goes on to say that “there are essentially four ways you can spend your life. You can waste it in Egypt by living for worldly pleasures and material success (all of which are temporal and fleeting). You can waste it in Babylon by living for the growth and success of organized religion. You can waste it in the wilderness by living your life in transition. Or you can spend it on Jesus Christ in a building site in Jerusalem.”

While we both firmly believe our time in the wilderness has been ordained and orchestrated by God in order to bring us up to ground zero and to make us empty wineskins for the Lord to pour his new wine into, we do not wish to remain there forever and thereby waste our new beginning. It’s a detour, not a home.

In our search for home, God has now seen fit to bring us out of the wilderness and into the healing pools of Bethesda. But that is a story for another day. Until then, may we truly be in Christ alone.

Winnie the Pooh gets me....

While my personality is better expressed as a combination of gloomy Eeyore; bossy-boots, control-freak Rabbit; and know-it-all Owl, I am always amazed and encouraged by how well Pooh can articulate life, my life, that is:

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."
--Winnie the Pooh

So true it is almost scary.

10. Back to CAT, and his question. I still hesitate to write my thoughts, because as it turns out the answer to his question is the very core of my current struggle with the Western "church." Therefore, I continue to search for the words. Gotta get'em straight in my head as they overflow from my heart. I am beginning to realize it was not a random question as I originally thought, but instead, a carefully planned attempt to help me along in my quest. Thanks CAT.

Now, maybe I can sleep tonight.

Excuses......

.....for almost allowing two months to go by without adding another post. Although, I do think that Huck, Uncle Cha Cha and CAT may be the only people in the world that are keeping track, in other words - that care.

In no particular order:

1. Moved (or sold) the contents of a 2800 sq ft house into a 1700 sq ft duplex with many items now living at the homes of my mother and sister.
2. SLOWLY adjusting to the fact that the critter now takes only ONE NAP! How did this happen?
3. If you could see the condition of my bathroom, who am I kidding, the entire house - you would understand how I might find it difficult to justify spending time at the computer typing entries into my blog. See #2.
4. Now living in civilization with so many places to go and people to see. My hermit days are finally over which actually means that I am spending way too much time at Target!
5. A deep, painful misunderstanding along with years of unrealized offenses resulting in the soul-shaking death of what at one time could have been a beautiful, life-long friendship. Not as pleasant as it sounds.
6. Received a topic request from my brother-in-law, and in not wanting to let him down or to discount the honor that I feel that he actually reads my blog, I have been rumenating over said topic. Finding it hard to continue writing other personal entries until I have addressed his request. Each day that I allow to pass without writing adds to the pressure I feel to write. The pressure creates writer's block. Vicious cycle. Ironic, huh? That by NOT writing about SOMETHING, I am actually disappointing him which is what I set out to avoid in the first place. How do I get off this train?
7. Did I mention that the mall is only 5 minutes away?
8. In addition to the pressure referenced in #6, I have also convinced myself that after such a long hiatus - my first entry back has to be FABULOUS. Publishers should be knocking down my door. Bam! Here comes that brick wall again! Perfectionism and unrealistic expectations cripple me at times. Most of the time. Okay, all of the time. So you should actually be very proud that I took this step - merely making a list. No Pulitzer material here. I am just hoping that the flood gates will open yet again; and all the ramblings/neurosis that have been bouncing around in my head over the last month and a half will find coherent form (and that I will be disciplined enough to spend the time to type them out).
9. I have yet to respond to email inquiries from friends wondering how we are doing in the new place. Again, hard to justify blogging while neglecting friendships. And yes, after this I will be sitting on the couch reading my book and then taking a little nap. Someday the guilt will destroy me. What is the best way to avoid guilt - you said it, SLEEP.

Check back soon for CAT's requested topic. By the way, do you have any idea how hard it was for me to stop the list at #9? But I did it, and no, I am not going to log back on in a few minutes after racking my brain for another excuse just to make it an even 10. Maybe this OCD thing really isn't a problem for me after all.

Oops. I just thought of another one, but for the sake of principle I am choosing to leave it out. My strength amazes me sometimes. And without medication.

Back again soon for more musings.......