THE WIND AND THE WAVES (Come Join With Us Part V)

[This is part VI of the Come Join With Us Series that starts here]

I joke that I am a Born Again Mormon. It is true that I have felt a direct connection to Jesus Christ that has become more tangible and real than any other religious or spiritual experience.  I wondered if it could last.  Dark Utah winters are hard on me, and all the unresolved life baggage isn’t magically carried away by some cosmic bellhop.

I’ve had a very hard winter and challenges continue.  But I’m happy to report that the change—the deep sense of God’s love for me, an intense love for Jesus Christ, and a lack of fear—it has stayed with me.  The sorrow is back, and I’m doing difficult work with my counselor to process past issues, I still wrestle with theological questions, but I do it in the safe arms of a loving God.  There is something changed in me, a solid foundation and sense of intimacy with the Divine.  I feel forgiven, and I feel Him continually on hand, ready to forgive again whenever necessary as I stumble along my path.

We all live in a very challenging time—great storms, wind and waves rage about us.  It is very hard here and many of us have to deal with painful things we never would have expected.  We don’t have a lot of control in many aspects of our lives.  Many of us are empty, sorrowing and aching on a soul-deep level.  We are strangers in a strange land, a fallen people in a fallen world.  Further, that blessing and curse of free will provides us little safety—we are surrounded with 8 billion people who are free to do whatever they want to each other all the day long.  It’s a recipe for global mayhem, scriptural prophecies are no comfort at all, and you can see why so many were scared to take the risk to even come here in the first place. 

But the promise was that Christ was big enough to swallow it all and we would be able to come home with all the education and growth of this experience but be cleansed from the stain and pain of this fallen world. We could go into the pit and find our pearl and purpose, and were promised a Savior to get us out, clean us off, and it would all work out for the best.  We were to keep our eyes fixated on him.

After my “saving” moment, as I said, I didn’t feel afraid anymore, even if I did feel sorrow.  I understood I had to keep my eyes off the wind and waves and on my Savior, looking to light instead of darkness, and only then could I take on this task of living—a task that feels as impossible as walking on water some days. 

In my seeking for light, I felt a instinctive desire to praise Him and thank Him for what he’d done for me.  When Sunday would come, I would go to Church hungry for Christ, sometimes starving, ready to worship the God that makes blind see.

“And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Nephi 25:23, 26).

Our Hymns are a beautiful reflection of this—full of praise and worship and our dependence on God.  (Remember this tip when you don't know what to do and feel lost--"It is as simple as 123."  As in Hymn 123).

Yet in our lessons and conversations with each other, too often we let our eyes wander from the light to the darkness.  We let the adversary sneak in, sow fear and doubt, and call our attention to the wind and the waves.  We move from the childlike dependence Christ asks to prideful independence and act like it really is all on us.  And as a result, sometimes our Church meetings can start feeling less like worship and more like self-help and pep talks about working harder to tread these waters. For someone hurting and needing comfort, there is greater balm in finding and clinging to the lifesaver that is Christ. 

I’ve seen the disastrous fruits of my self-help.  The principle of self-sufficiency was never intended to extend itself to Christ himself. Christ is both the author and finisher of our faith, who even grants us life and breath from moment to moment, King Benjamin says.  We rely on him for everything whether we know it or not—yet too often His name is only mentioned to conclude talks and prayers.  

Now we are told that we are to preach nothing but repentance to this generation, which can be interpreted to mean we must spend all our time berating our weakness.  But what is repentance?  It’s a turning away from sin and self toward Savior, accepting his cleansing Grace. If we want to be good at something, we watch the master, we learn from the best.  Said another way, when we’re bowling, we don’t watch our hand, we watch the pin we are aiming for and allow that image to adjust our physical actions.   

But when I put my focus on the false idol of my human weakness—it destabilizes the peace I had felt as I focused on the true God and His love.  Throughout last fall and winter, too often I came home from meetings sinking in my life’s water, hungry and aching, fixated again on my lack instead of my God’s plenty, on my darkness over His light.  I find myself wondering again if maybe even in my exhaustion I really do need to just find a way work harder to earn grace.  My eyes leave His, I’m back on my own in the storm. 

Then that particularly painful day the first Sunday of the year hit and sent me reeling. My perception and pain was causing Church to become a traumatic experience.  I went home and told myself I couldn’t go back, thus the seven weeks.  This inactivity wasn’t final or declarative, but more slippery and cowardly—a few weekends away here and there, a headache, a work deadline, etc.  My sweet visiting teacher and a few friends in the know watched petrified as what everyone (including myself) thought was a rock-solid valiant churchgoer crumbled to dust in a moment.

With over two months of missing church, you may find yourself called into the Bishop. 

The first meeting was a little awkward.  We have a wonderful, kind Bishop who is sincerely loving and concerned.  He encouraged me to consider that this difficulty was more related to my perception rather than what was happening in the meetings themselves. I’m the first to admit my perceptions are inaccurate, and I clearly have a lot of baggage going in.  But were the meetings secretly full of worship, praise and comfort in Christ and I just am not noticing it?  Maybe in my exhausted state I just can’t see it through all the pioneer fortitude being declared.  

Originally he was worried maybe I was being a perfectionist and letting Satan make me feel down on myself.  But I fundamentally don’t believe in perfection without Christ, and have no interest in trying to do that on my own and see no scriptural foundation that He expects me to be perfect without Him. 

I know it’s mercifully not all up to me.  I’m just raw and exhausted and need the comfort in Christ that I know is there, and the continual cry of self-improvement is overwhelming and discouraging. It took a couple of tries but eventually there was good understanding with the Bishop and we had a good talk.  In the end, I want to look at Christ’s light and rejoice in it, but it seems worship is always focused on my own fallenness. That's not worship at all.

The Savior says “I’ve got you. Fear not. Have faith. Just look to me in every thought.  Keep your eye single to my glory.” Christ’s plan for perfection was simply that despite the inevitable mistakes we would make in this world, if we looked to Him, he would make us whole—perfect—through Him. 

Satan says, “You’re on your own.  Look at everything you are doing to mess this up.  You know, if anything goes wrong down there, it’s on YOU.  Just try harder with that puny arm of the flesh.  Just go a little faster than you have strength. Oh no, this will NEVER work out. Your life plan is completely derailed.”  Count on him to be the eternal Alarmist.  Satan is the real perfectionist—wasn’t it he who wanted to make sure every detail was controlled and no mistakes were allowed? 

But still we listen to him. 

Around this time, I wondered out loud to my friend, “Couldn’t we spend a little more time rejoicing in Christ, praising him for this 99.99% of our salvation rather than myopically focusing on our own pathetic fraction?”

My friend said, “Well it makes sense that we’d spend most of our time at Church talking about what we should do.  Christ has done His part, and that is assumed.  All we can do is focus on ourselves and what we can do.” 

And I totally agree with this, as long as we can agree that all we can do is look to Christ.  Without that caviat, I don't agree at all.  Christ says to look unto Him in every thought, and that we are completely powerless to do anything without him.

Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.(Alma 26:12). 

I have spent enough time worshiping the false idol of my weaknesses and relying on my own arm of flesh to purge them.  I have seen God change in moments errors I futilely strived against for years simply because I finally looked to God’s power instead of my weakness.  I’m done with self-help, but I will look and live.

“It should be clear that Christian spirituality begins with God, depends on God, and ends in God.  We owe our capacity to be spiritual to the grace of One who creates us free to share our love.”— Marjorie Thompson

When I’m hurting, I am comforted when I glory in the strength and power of my God.  Yet some of my friends will look at me skeptically and worry that such talk of grace puts us at risk of complacency.

Do we really believe that resting in Christ’s grace and love makes us complacent and lazy?  For me, it’s just the opposite.  With my eye on Him, I am filled with His love, I am happier and energized and hopeful and end up doing more, but more efficiently.  I even physically feel better. I’m led by the Spirit in the moment instead of by tasks and checklists which can’t fortell the unseen demands of the day.  When I feel His love, I’m beautifully compelled to share His love—the ACTIONS get easier.  His burden really is lighter than the ones we place on ourselves.

When my eye isn't on him, I'm too hopeless to move.

We don’t need to work harder to earn His love and grace, we need to work harder to FEEL and REFLECT his love and grace. We are so afraid of being complacent that we avoid the word “grace” as if it isn’t the complete fuel on which we run.  

 “The spiritual life is not a task of self-reformation…Spiritual growth is essentially a work of divine grace with which we are called to cooperate.  Free and active cooperation is our share of the labor….All is grace, yet all depends on our willingness to work freely with grace.”  (Thompson again.)

Our work is to allow God to reform us.  It is cooperating with him.   It is Capax Dei.

NEXT: PART VI: CAPAX DEI 

Post by Valerie Wise Christensen.
PART I
PART II: THE MISSING FACTOR
PART III: THE DARKNESS
PART IV: THE LIGHT
PART V: THE WIND & THE WAVES

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life