Author: Neil McLamb

⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” ⁷ Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” ⁸ Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” (John 13:6-10, ESV)

Approaching the time that He would be crucified, Jesus chose to wash His disciples feet at the last meal He was sharing with them. Peter, as usual, did not mind speaking up on how he felt and refused for Jesus to wash his feet. Once Jesus told him of the importance of being washed, Peter wanted much more than just his feet washed. However, Jesus further explained that Peter was already clean, except for his feet.

Trusting in Jesus is much more than just acknowledging that He has “paid for my sins”. Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to the Father is something that I personally identify with and enter into myself. Following Christ, the old me has been killed off and buried. The man God created me to be has been made fully alive. God has made me His son and a citizen of heaven. This was a permanent adoption, and I can rest in the fact that He will never turn away from me.

Walking through this life I will need my feet washed frequently due to the filth I get myself into. This will not always be a fun process but a necessary one. My behaviors will not always be in accordance to who I am in Christ because I often lose sight of this new identity. However, the overall ugliness that once separated me from God has been purged in a one-time washing that never needs to be repeated. In Christ, I am forgiven, a saint, a son of God, blessed, and loved unconditionally. 

During this time of year that we have chosen to focus on gratitude, I am very thankful for the truth that the washing that God provided through Jesus is eternal. I am thankful that I do not have to worry about slipping out of His hand at any point. I pray that I, as well as my readers, can rest in this truth despite the temptation to think we are too messed up at times for Him to love and accept us.

Good friends of ours were visiting us recently at our home. They had their little boy with them, who was entertaining us all. I watched him as he was interacting with his mother and father, which, for some reason, really caught my attention more than usual that evening. Then, all of a sudden, something bad happened in the football game we were watching on TV. “Dang it!” exclaimed the father. I believe I yelled out something as well. Then, without hesitation, “Dang it!”, exclaimed the son.

Now, before anyone gets carried away, this is not a post designed to guilt us parents into “being better role models”, so if that’s where your mind just went…please, reboot and then continue reading. Rather, this post is a simple appreciation of how our children tend to copy us and how this relates to us and our relationship with God.

Where does this come from? I know it’s a natural tendency…pretty much everyone knows that. Our kids want to be like us, and this is clearly seen when they are young. When our children came into this world, we, the parents, were the first and biggest thing in their lives. In a healthy parent-child relationship, that child learns that he or she is loved, accepted, and protected. In a not-so-healthy environment, a child may not learn those things, but he or she still yearns for those things to be true. A child almost intuitively wants to trust the ones in the parenting role. This inevitably leads to a desire to imitate those parents, even if it is something they do subconsciously.

Created in the image of God, this must have some relevance to our identity as children of His, but have we gotten this thing backwards? I have heard many times how I need to imitate Christ. I need to “do what Jesus would do”. This often times leaves me more frustrated than when I started. It should come as no surprise that I fail miserably time and time again. I am trying to imitate perfection, you know.

In watching the young man at my home a few nights ago, I noticed that no one had to ask him to repeat what his father had said. And this young man’s copying of his father’s behavior is not limited to comments about a football game. I have seen him copy both of his parents in awesome ways that any parent would be happy about. No one has to ask him to do those things either. He just does them, as I stated earlier, intuitively. A deep, and personal, relationship has been formed between this young one and his father (and his mother, too, of course). He trusts them, fully. He knows who they are and what they are willing to do for him. He has seen it. He has experienced it first-hand. Yes, he rebels, at times, as all children do, but he looks up to his parents and, deep down (even when he is being difficult), has a desire to please them.

I believe this to be the same with us and our Heavenly Father. We can never imitate the good behavior Jesus exemplified without first following in His footsteps regarding the trust He had in His Father in Heaven. Jesus was perfect, but by His image being displayed through that young man in the story above, I am seeing just how perfect He was in the role of a Son. He trusted His Father fully. He had an intimate relationship with God, and this led to Him doing the things His Father would do. No one had to remind Him to love others. No one had to tell Him to speak the truth. It came as a natural by-product of being God’s Son.

And so it goes with me. As I fall deeper and deeper into this relationship God initiated with me and know Him as a true Father-figure, I find myself doing the good things He plans for me. This is not to say that there is no effort behind the works. I have said it before, and I will say it again: walking by faith is difficult. There is a concerted effort, but the most effort goes into my trusting Him as that perfect Father that loves, accepts, and protects me no matter what.

And for those of us that are feeling guilty after reading the story I shared above about the father and son, remember this: we don’t become great parents by guilting ourselves over silly things like an angry comment at a ballgame, striving to do better, or putting on a good act. It’s foolish to think we can be perfect or even fool our kids into thinking we are. The best thing we can do as parents is to be honest about and pursue our own relationship with God. Our kids ARE watching, and it’s important for them to see a parent being a child in an authentic relationship with our Father.

I encourage you to follow the link below and either read the letter or watch the video:

http://www.fathersloveletter.com/

One morning, a couple of weeks ago, I woke up from a not-so-great night’s sleep. I went to bed a little later than I really needed to, and then I woke up a little earlier than I really wanted to. Oh well, no big deal, except for those that I live with. My patience runs thin and my filter is almost non-existent when I go without enough sleep. And if you think that’s bad, you should see me when I’m hungry!

It would be quite easy for me to blame my irritability (and the behavior that goes along with it) on lack of quality sleep. If that’s not enough, I could blame it on the fact that I had a stressful week at work. And if that doesn’t prove the point that it’s not really my fault, I will throw in that the weather has been less than ideal for me.

We often blame others for our own issues, but I know I often blame other things as well. Blaming others, circumstances, inanimate objects, or anything else prevents change. Blame gives me an excuse to act any way I want.

The fact is, insomnia did not make me snap at my wife that morning. On another day, being hungry and not being able to eat when I wanted did not make me act like a total jerk to the ones I was waiting on to go get something to eat. And, NO, the devil did NOT make me do any of that stuff, either.

Although it’s painful to admit this, my behavior always comes from what’s inside of me already. Many things in this world cause stress, but stress, at it’s worst, does not cause my behavior to be bad. The very worst it can do is reveal things I am trying my best to hide. Nothing removes a mask quicker than stress. For example, it becomes a lot harder to act nice to people when we are at our wit’s end. We lose the ability to hide our true feelings when we just don’t have any energy left to keep our masks on tight so nobody sees what’s underneath. And our true feelings, like behaviors, are evidence of something going on in our hearts, so it’s important to actually take a look at them.

Instead of making excuses, no matter how good they can seem sometimes, we are much better off to own our behavior and emotions. They are always evidence of something deep inside of us. For example, my anger (that’s really what it was) became apparent when lack of sleep brought it to a head. Acknowledging that it is coming from me, not lack of sleep or stress, helps me to take a look at why I am really angry. The answer to that question is usually surprising and completely unrelated to what I was blaming it on.

Taking personal responsibility for our actions allows us to acknowledge our own sin. This is part of repentance. It opens the door for God’s Grace to wash over us, revealing and healing the things in our hearts that need addressing. We take hold of this through faith, because it requires trust in the Lord to be responsible with our behavior. It’s scary to humble ourselves and let others see that we have messed up. It may lead to others making fun of us or pointing the finger of blame at us. It may lead to others being angry or upset at us. It could really set us back on our personal goals at the moment. Faith takes courage. It is scary, even terrifying at times, to exercise faith. It’s much easier to keep on hiding and blaming everything else. But it is more rewarding to be real. Blame is bondage, whether we blame people, places, or things.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV)

In the long run, the freedom we experience when we are ourselves, good or bad, is awesome. Even when what’s revealed is bad, it forces us to actually deal with things we’ve been sweeping under the rug. Often times the path is rough before it gets better. However, it’s through this type of living that we are able to be who God created us to be.

We live in a world full of rules. At times, when we struggle with authority, this can be aggravating. At other times, rules can be comforting because they protect us. In a recent experience, I noticed myself hating the rules that were blocking my goal: I wanted my son to be allowed, with his teammates, to compete at the State 2A Cross-Country Championship. A rule, unfortunately misrepresented by officials, stood in the way. This angered me a great deal, and to be honest, I find myself still struggling at times as I work through the process of accepting that things did not turn out the way I planned.

We use rules for order, and they are necessary for that purpose. However, sometimes the rules become downright excessive. It’s almost ridiculous (perhaps it is at times) how many rules we have in society. We sometimes make rules on top of rules in an effort to cover all of our bases. It becomes a control issue. We try to prevent anything “bad” from happening with well-meaning rules, but they often wind up not working as we planned. More often than not, an increase in rules spurs more of a likelihood that people will try to break the rules. We are perpetual loop-hole seekers, or line-steppers (as Charlie Murphy once said).

Church-life is no different. Over time, just as the Pharisees did years ago, we have accumulated more and more rules. Do this, don’t do that. We fall for the misguided notion, like the rest of society that we live in, that more rules will lead to morality, making people behave. It just doesn’t work out that way. The harder we try to follow the rules, the more we miss the mark.

Our rules, of course, are just a faint, blurry reflection of God’s Law. God revealed His Law a long time ago to His people. Since then, we have attempted to add to it (and take away from it at times) in order to make it into something we can follow. The truth is, we can’t follow God’s Law, and we certainly can’t follow all the rules we’ve piled on top of it. The rules simply are not enough. They are not the answer. No matter how hard we try, we find over and over that we are incapable of keeping the Law. And our rules, although they are necessary to an extent and helpful, just don’t provide the protection and morality that we often hope they will.

What is missing with our rules? What is missing when we strive to follow God’s Law? Grace. When we are so stuck in our position regarding a rule, things that only Grace can grow in us (things like love, patience, and mercy) fall to the wayside. Jesus once said, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on the Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” Although the obsessive rule-follower might say, we can’t break the rule of resting on the Sabbath, Grace screams out of love, “You’re son needs you! Help him out of the jam he is in!”.

Obviously, God’s Law regarding rest is important to follow, but there are times when other things become the priority. We only realize this when we are comfortably residing in His Grace. The Law is good, and rules can be good…but when Grace is absent, they are all a curse. When we are pushing ourselves to be good by “doing all the right things” and “not doing the wrong things”, we are missing Grace, which is the one thing that gifts us with what we really need. Relying on Christ’s fulfillment of the Law is the only way to fulfill it, not attempting to keep it ourselves. And mysteriously, when we truly follow Him, we are more apt to fall right in line with what the Law states. When we trust Him, we also love, forgive, work, rest, and worship the One who has freely given us His Grace.

And for me and my recent bad experience with rules and those enforcing them, Grace is the answer here as well for my anger and hurt. I must continue the fight to trust the One who is Sovereign. I must remind myself of the truth that He is greater than any decisions made by a human governing body. Not only that, but He is able to work far greater things out of a situation than any plan I could come up with, even when I felt so strongly that mine was the only way things could be made right. Fighting for my son and his teammates was an honor and a blessing, and I don’t regret it one bit. Now I must trust that One who is infinitely mightier than me has been, and is currently, fighting for them as they move forward after this difficult time in their lives.

Some of us consider ourselves goal-oriented, while others…not so much. However, we all have goals, whether we realize it or not. The mere fact that we all have needs dictates that we will at least have goals designed around meeting our particular needs. So, it is safe to say, we are ALL goal-oriented. However, this may not be such a good thing, depending on the reasoning behind our goals. 

Forgive me while I plunge into the political realm for a second to offer an example. I dare say that there are some politicians out there that say their goal is one thing, but their hearts are really set on something else. One might say his goal is to help a certain segment of the population, while his true intent is to appease and use them in order to get the votes he needs to be elected. Money may be a factor, but power usually is a big temptation for elected officials. So the stated goal is to help others, but the real goal may be to help himself.

A good personal example of trickery with goal-setting is if I were to smile at someone as if I were listening to them. My expressed goal may appear to be to care about them and hear what they are saying. However, my real intent might be to get out of that conversation without the other person being mad at me for being uninterested in what they are saying. Therefore, my real goal? It may be to simply to be accepted or avoid conflict. To avoid the controversy and rejection, I put on an act, appearing to be interested when I am really not. As with the politician in the previous example, I am more about helping myself than the other person. 

With it being so easy to hide our true intent, at times even from ourselves, it becomes a way of life for some of us. Those of us that are desperate to be accepted, we may put on a people-pleasing mask everyday in order to meet our goal. For those of us who are anxious, we may avoid certain things in order to feel safe. This winds up keeping us from experiencing life and being joyful. And to be fair to the politician in the example above, many of us struggle with the same thing he struggles with…feeling insignificant and searching for something to make us feel better about ourselves. For him, it may re-election, for us it may be moving up the corporate ladder, going out with an attractive person, being recognized for an accomplishment, or simply winning a pick-up game of basketball.

Identifying our true goals is important. It helps us realize what we are really after, so then we can begin to address what is leading us to run after such things. To do this, we must take a look at what we are doing and what we are feeling. These are evidence of our true intent. For instance, if we are getting anxious or angry, that may be a sign that we are not getting what we want (hence, our goal is not being met). As with my example of smiling and “listening”…if I find myself feeling anxious, or even a little frustrated, with the other person, I very well could be after more than just an opportunity to listen to them share their heart about something. 

While identifying goals is important, when you boil it all down, attempting to revise our goals may not be the next best step. A better step is to give them up altogether. Bad, or unhealthy, goals come from bad beliefs. We can’t surrender our goals without our view of things being changed first. If we believe we are unlovable, trying to drop the goal of being loved is unhelpful. Even if we could be successful in changing that goal, we still have a major issue: we believe we are unlovable!

Self-esteem is a high commodity. Books geared towards helping one build up his or her self-worth have been flying off shelves for decades. Motivational speakers can fill large stadiums, drawing crowds easily whereever they go. Counselors, therapists, and ministers all see people regularly who are struggling due to how they see themselves. As a whole, we are hungry to feel better about ourselves.

There appear, to me, to be more than one phase that we can be in regarding how we view ourselves. There are those of us in the first phase: “Complete Awareness Phase”. In this phase, we are completely aware of how negative our view of self truly is. We look in the mirror and hate what we see. We find it very difficult to see even one thing we like about ourselves. We may even struggle with seeing that we have a purpose. When in this phase, we are depressed/emotionally distraught. We feel hopeless most of the time. This is a scary place to be.

The second phase is the “Aware But Hiding Phase”. Some of us know exactly how we view ourselves, but we are “working on it”. We are attempting to cloak just how unacceptable/unsuccessful/unlovable/ugly/weak we think we are. There is a considerable amount of anxiety associated with this phase. The uncertainty of whether we will find what we are looking for is stressful. In this phase, we hide behind things such as our children, hobbies, work, wealth, power, attaining goals we set, appearance, skills, knowledge/education, or a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse. In this phase, we work our butts off to find a satisfiable view of ourselves through something outside of us.

The third phase is the “Unaware and Striving Phase”. Similar to the previous phase I mentioned, this one includes a lot of trying to find worth in things in this world. The difference is, in this phase, we are either so good at finding temporary feelings of worth in people/performance/things, or so oblivious to the truth for some other reason that we are also temporarily unaware of just how in the tank our self-worth is. A good example might be a professional athlete who is very good at what he or she does. The only time people in this position might realize how they truly view themselves is when they have an injury and cannot perform at the same level anymore. Then they are faced with the truth: “Their value was dependent upon something that was fleeting!”.

I would bet that 99% of anyone reading this, including myself, is in one of these phases, at least in some way. I admit, Phases I and II are popular choices for me. Years ago I was provided with knowledge about myself that made Phase III difficult for me to reside in now. The veil has been removed. Now it feels like this: “scramble to put the tiny veil back on or sit in a pile of miserableness”.

In this world, there truly are no other options…not that I can see this morning, while I sit here in this quiet house, pondering the things that run through my mind early in the morning before anyone else is up. But as a person who has seen, firsthand, others find freedom from the cycling through of those three phases, I need to remind myself where my real worth is found. Yes, I do have worth, despite the lie that I believe that I do not.

When I make a large purchase (car, furniture, etc.), I often do not know enough about the item to know the value of that item. Without some trustworthy information about that item, I might wind up purchasing something for more than it is worth. To get the best idea of its value, I think the ideal source to check is the designer/creator of that item. He or she would know what materials were used, who assembled it (and how carefully they did it), and how valuable it truly is.

In searching for our worth, we need to look to the One who knows us best: our Creator. He knit us together in the womb. He knows what “went into making us”. He valued us so greatly that He paid a high price for us to be set free and to call us His own children. He sent His own Son, who willingly chose to be put to death to save us. We were purchased for a price so high it cannot be fathomed. Our value and worth, dependent on God’s love for us, is as great as that immeasurable love. God, our Father in Heaven, cannot love something of no value.

Perhaps “self-worth” is a bad way to describe the true worth we have in Christ. It is a “worth based on Christ”. Although our feelings, what others think, what our experiences teach us, or even what we think might contradict the truth about our value in Jesus Christ, they are all flimsy things to rely on in evaluating our view of self. All the failures and rejection in the world will not and cannot devalue us one bit. The value placed on us as children of God is eternal because His love for us is eternal.

The setting in 2 Samuel 7 is this: King David has finally come to a moment in his life that he can rest. He has spent years fighting battle after battle. God has given him victory over the opposing forces time and time again. Now, David wants to do something I think many of us would think about doing at a time like that. It’s time to move on to the next big thing. David wants to build God a temple to dwell in. He may have been thinking, “Why slow down now? Let’s stay busy with ‘the Lord’s work’.” At least that’s probably what I would have said.

However, that was not God’s plan. Instead, God put off the building of a temple for David’s offspring. Nathan, the prophet at the time, delivers the message to David. The following passage (2 Samuel 7:18-29) details David’s prayer after receiving this news from God. The ESV of the Bible calls this “David’s Prayer of Gratitude”. David goes on and on praising the Lord, recognizing all that He has done. His words reflect an awe of God. David is worshipping his Heavenly Father deeply and passionately. David didn’t get what he wanted, but he got what he needed: a stop sign from God. It appears to me that, instead of “getting busy with something else to do”, God called David to slow down and rest.

Years ago, I discovered a hobby that I really enjoy: lifting weights. Any weight lifter that knows anything about building muscle will tell you, you don’t grow muscle in the gym. You put in the hard work in the gym, but you grow when you rest. If you don’t rest, you just tear your body down, and it doesn’t have time to repair itself. One workout plan I have followed for a while requires a full week off periodically. It’s called “Strategic Deconditioning”. Without this crucial rest break, the workout only leads to overtraining (injuries, sickness, and actual LOSS of muscle mass). But after this crucial week off, your body is ready to move to the next phase of training.

David was probably worn down from all the fighting. Although he did not realize it, he needed time to rest, heal, and grow. We all need those periods in our life where we stop for a moment and chill out. I know for me, when I find myself pushing myself harder and harder, I eventually find myself anxious, having a difficult time getting a good night’s sleep, and short-tempered. I also find myself isolated from God. And it’s not that I am not doing the things typically acclaimed as what a Christian “should be doing”. I may be spending my time in my morning devotions, attending church regularly, and participating in the new small group study on Sunday nights, but the busyness of it all detracts from any depth in my personal relationship with Christ. Even seemingly good things can often become more of a chore to mark off of my list than an intimate conversation with God and others.

And so I sometimes find myself struggling, itching to jump forward. I try to recall how disastrous that can be when I do not take a time-out every now and then. I have definitely experienced that before. It’s not fun. “Waiting on God” is hard. But as with the story of David in 2 Samuel 7, I can see that “waiting” doesn’t necessarily mean twiddling my thumbs. The down-time He gives me is not only healing and relaxing, but it is crucial to my growth. It’s crucial to my relationship with God becoming more real to me in a world that screams at me to “STAY BUSY!”, all the while robbing me of the relationships with Him and others that really matter.

Anyone who knows anything about me probably knows that I have been a fan of old-school Smashing Pumpkins music for a long time. Recently, while listening to one of my favorite songs, a lyric sung by Billy Corgan stood out to me. In the song “Soma”, he makes the statement, “The opiate of blame…is your broken heart”. While I think Corgan was pointing towards something else entirely, I began pondering something about the “opiate of blame” part.

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:2, ESV)

Taking time to examine our hearts is a crucial yet underused discipline. Much of the time, we can look at the fruit in our lives, or lack of it, and be clued into what is going on with our hearts. However, although our hearts always reveal themselves eventually, sometimes, the true evidence is not seen at first. It is possible for us to put on a good act. And when what we are doing looks good to us, and especially to others, then we are typically satisfied not to investigate why we are doing what we are doing. We often fail to appreciate the importance of the motivation behind our actions.

For instance…when we decide to “kill someone with kindness”, we must be careful not to think too much of ourselves. Our intent is still to “kill”, even if the weapon of choice makes our actions appear more acceptable to ourselves and others. Although our actions may make it look like we are doing the right thing, our heart is still bent towards overpowering or hurting, not loving, the other person. When we don’t take the time to honestly look at what is motivating us, we blind ourselves to the truth and our wayward hearts eventually do some damage. Unfortunately, the damage is usually what it takes to finally bring us around so that we decide we MUST take a look at our hearts to see what’s wrong.

Several years ago a good friend of mine turned me on to an awesome singer/songwriter by the name of Derek Webb. I love many of his songs, but a line from one song in particular jumped out at me as I was writing this post:

“…you can make your life look good
You can do what Jesus would
But you’d be surprised what you can do with a hard heart”
(lyrics from the song, Ballad in Plain Red, by Derek Webb)

These lyrics say, more eloquently than I can, how easy it is for us to get caught up in doing what looks good, while losing sight of what really matters. If our motivation is off, everything is off, no matter how great the performance is. And there is only One who can straighten out a heart issue…and He loves for us to open up our hearts to Him to do so.

Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind. (Psalm 26:2, ESV)