Die Schätze meiner Krise

Treasures of my Crisis

Several months ago, before I left for Austria, I had chosen a little slogan that I used to explain part of why I was coming here.  They were some words for me to live by, and I think even posted them in the very first blog entry.  "God needs to do a lot of construction work on me, but that almost always requires some demolition work first."  Little did I know just how prophetic those words were going to be.

Vienna was a time of major demolition in my life.  As I said several entries ago, God never does things the way I expect Him to, even when I have some specifics on what He is going to do, and this was no different.  Rather than working on me gently and being a tender, well-trained surgeon painlessly removing problem areas from my life, He allowed me to carry on with a self-destructive mindset and several self-destructive habits and patterns in my life.  This gave my spirit the momentum needed to become a wrecking ball targeted at, well, me.  In God's infinite creativity, He used me to do the demolition on myself.

Through this process, I struggled greatly, rarely fixing my eyes on Christ and, even then, never for an extended period of time.  I experienced major homesickness, loneliness, emotional exhaustion, apathy, frustration, and most importantly, saw very clearly who I am apart from Christ.  Those on the outside probably had no idea of this internal struggle.  The reason for this is quite simple: when busying yourself with friends, fun, drinking alcohol (which, I must ashamedly admit, I did far more of than I had ever desired to do), smoking cigarettes, even just sitting on the computer killing time, it's easy to forget your pain.  But at the end of every day, or in those moments of silence on the trams, or when the kid with the yellow shirt who is almost old enough to go to Reckless comes along with his dad and holds his nose until he is well past you, staring at your smoldering cigarette in disgust; well, in these moments, it is difficult to live with yourself.

Luckily, His mercies are new every morning.  I am finally being refocused with the Lord, and have learned several things in the process.  What follows is, I think, the most important.

We are not meant to live spiritually alone.  Not so long ago, the concept that our relationship with God is an entirely personal thing became very common.  "When we worship together, don't think about your friends.  It's just you and God, alone together, in an empty room."  This view, I believe, was developed to help us combat religious and superficial ways of thinking, to help us avoid trying to "fit in" as a "normal Christian" on the surface without having any real contact with God on the inside.  It also helps us avoid getting caught up in man-made emotional passion instead of Spirit-breathed life.  That is all good; but this view, like any other, has extreme dangers when taken too far.  It leads us to completely forget the importance of our corporate Christian life!  When I came to Europe, I thought it was going to just be me and God, all alone, and that I was going to grow with leaps and bounds because of that solitude.  Because of this view, I acted accordingly: I was barely involved with the excellent church community I found (only made it to two Sunday services aside from my home group), and did not seek to find other Christian friends.  Now, upon arriving in Marburg and finding another incredible church, my mind has been opened to how foolish that was.  Just this week I have been at the church multiple times, met some incredible people, and gotten the chance to talk a lot of spiritual things over with my new friend, Daniel, all in German.  When I am with these brothers and sisters, celebrating Christ together, I feel spiritually "at home" again.  At first, I thought, "How can this be?  Why do I need other people to connect with God?  Doesn't that make my faith worthless and based on man?  What happened to 'Forget everyone else.  It's just you and God'?"  Then I realized, my relationship with God doesn't depend on other people, and if God intended for me to be alone for a time then of course He would be there.  But He has commanded us to live in relationship: with Him and one another (the two most important commandments, remember?).  Or how about, "They will know you are Christians by your love"?  By ignoring the Christian communities God had provided me with, I was disobeying Him and missing out on a major part of my spiritual life.

This "empty room" spirituality has left the Church as it left me, thinking we all have to fight it out alone with the devil even as we stand in a room with hundreds of other worshipers.  We are God's army and His bride, and He prayed that we may be one as He is one with the Father.  If you are feeling discouraged in your walk, or feeling like you have no walk at all, I challenge you to consider your Christian friendships, or lack thereof.  If you are not functioning in a healthy community that is family to you, then maybe it's time to seek one out.

Be encouraged, my friends.  Speak openly with your Christian brothers and sisters about your struggles and failures.  You will find that we all have a great amount in common in those areas.  It will encourage you and it is a spiritually healthy thing to do - not just to whine over your sin, but to spend time in honest relationship with others.  It will uplift your spirit and bring you to the throneroom of God.  I will close with a passage from Isaiah, a passage that we often think of in the future tense because it was written prophetically.  But remember that Jesus Himself declared this passage, and He has already fulfilled it.  This passage is for us as Christians!

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
Isaiah 61:1-3

Schmuck für Asche.  Beauty for ashes.