Why I Love James.

When people are asked who their favorite Biblical figure is, (besides Jesus, of course), I most often hear: “Paul” or “Peter”. I know that these two dudes were like, BIG honchos in their time. Peter was endowed with the oversight of Jews in the Christian Church. He was an authority. Paul was endowed with the oversight of the Gentiles in the Christian Church. He was an authority. I don’t begrudge either of these men their authority, (although reading Paul’s writings usually make my head spin most of the time). But when people ask me who my favorite New Testament figure is, know what I say?

James.

Yep. James. The brother of Jesus.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never been big on empty words. Although I use them quite often. Maybe it’s because I sometimes, in my cynical mind, worry about “windbagging”. You know, when people start to talk (or write) just to hear themselves talk or see themselves write. I’m not saying any of the authors of a divine Word are doing that, but James has a way of being like,

Here it is. Point blank. Bottom line. Do with it what you will.

He also has a way of encouraging action. Because to James, faith without action is like a body without a spirit. Basically, walking dead. It’s not okay to James to merely believe. He says even the demons believe and tremble. They know what’s up. They’re aware of the truth. Does that change what they do? Nope. Because shallow awareness does not lead to change, or, as some Christians like to call it, fruit-bearing.

I think that’s become an issue with me. And in today’s society. We confuse “belief” with “faith”. If you believe something, you obviously live your life by it, right?

WRONG.

Just because you believe something to be true doesn’t mean it has any impact on your moment-to-moment decisions and the way you live your life. I believe that Subway sandwiches are the best sandwiches in the history of creation. Does that have ANY impact on how I live my life on a daily basis? Nope. It’s just something I believe.

Now, if I took that belief and used it to fuel a personal ad campaign about the superiority of Subway sandwiches and stood on street corners for hours distributing pamphlets about Subway and spoke through a megaphone about Subway and it’s superior sandwich product, I would be DOING SOMETHING with that belief. It would have an impact on my day-to-day life.

Lame analogy? Maybe. But what do you believe? Like, really believe? Does it have any impact on your life?

If not, then, according to James, it’s really rather worthless.

Because the grace of God, the salvation of Christ… it is life-altering. It cannot merely sit still. Authentic divinity produces authentic, unwavering, unapologizing results. Notice, I didn’t say “immediate”, (something I’ve been struggling with lately), but I did imply “permanent”. Permanence. When a life is ruined by grace, it is never the same. It can’t be. It has encountered the divine and that encounter leads to action which produces fruit. Results of a life rooted in Christ.

I love James because he speaks of patient endurance. Divine control over the enemy of emotion. Who DOESN’T battle their emotions? Who DOESN’T, at least from time to time, want to explode like a shaken soda pop bottle? And, if you’re anything like me, you allow yourself to be shaken easily. Self-control is a spiritual fruit, a result of being rooted in Christ, and with self-control, you start to find that being shaken isn’t so easily done. (Side note: It drives people crazy when they can’t shake you. Try it.) When you no longer root your sense of value or worth or identity in the words, actions, and approvals of others, and when, instead, that identity and sense of worth is rooted in Christ, you become like a bottle of water. People can shake and shake and shake, but when they twist the top off, you will remain as you ever were. Non-reactive. Neutral.

I’m not saying there aren’t things in this world that shouldn’t cause action. I’m talking of REACTION. There is, I’m finding, a difference. Righteous anger leads to righteous action. It is given through knowing God’s heart and knowing what breaks his heart and what lends itself to his wrath. Reaction is often a knee-jerk thing of the flesh. Of humanity. It’s not about what has angered God or is an injustice to the Kingdom, it’s about what has angered YOU and offended YOU. The self. And self apart from God is nothing good.

What I love about James is that he speaks of action based on and rooted in an unshakable faith. Not reactive. Action-oriented. Deeds are not the life blood of faith, faith is the life blood of deeds. That’s why I love James.

I am the Fruit Ninja.

Not too long ago, my sister traded in her phone for a new Android phone and discovered this game called Fruit Ninja. After extending our contract, (a necessary evil), I traded in my phone for this same Android phone. Pretty soon, all three of us in the house were sitting around a table, not talking to each other, hearing nothing but the sound of swishing blades and splattering fruit as we all were absorbed into this game.

If you have an Android phone, only check this game out if you have time. I never got into games, really, not even Angry Birds. But I simply cannot stop playing this one. We all started getting high scores in the three different modes of the game, and my sister’s fiance, Cody, outdid all of us. I got absorbed into the Classic Mode of the game and kept playing and playing… until one night, I said, “Hey Cody, what’s your high score?” When I told him the score I had just gotten, he said, “That’s not possible.”

I don’t say any of this to boast. (Okay, well, I kinda say some of this to boast). But I do have a point.

In my nightly combings of the ever-wonderful website, Pinterest, I saw this phrase that said, “It always seems impossible… until it’s done.” That caught me off-guard with its truth. Much like my conquest of the Classic Mode in Fruit Ninja, it really seemed impossible. Until I did it. Until I just kept going and defeating and eventually, came out on top.

Now, I’m not saying that I naturally come by the strength to defeat and conquer on my own. But a phrase that’s been turning itself over and over in my head all night long, (simply won’t go away), is this: “But by the grace of God go I.” His grace and his grace alone are responsible for my comings and goings, and for my triumphs and victories. John the Baptist said, “As I decrease, he increases”. There’s something so wonderful about this statement. So simply wonderful. As I diminish, he is amplified. As the volume is turned down on ME, the volume is turned up on HIM. I really just love that.

It seems impossible some days. But if my countless fruitless hours (pun intended) playing that game have taught me anything, it’s that it always seems impossible until it starts being done. Until it starts happening. And then, all of a sudden, it’s not so impossible anymore. Audrey Hepburn, I think, (although I don’t know because you can’t ever trust the internet with quote sources. I’ve seen Eminem and Winston Churchill credited with a single saying), said, “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m possible’”.

Loss of Desperation.

I’ve grown up in the church, and I remember this chorus we used to sing when I was younger.

And I, I’m desperate for you. And I, I’m lost without you.

It was tonight as I was journaling that, through my own decisions in the last two months and the ensuing situations, I have lost my desperation for Christ. I don’t feel desperate for him anymore, I feel indifferent. And that scares me. It scares me a lot. To be indifferent is to be cold… uncaring. And you can’t feel that way about a Christ you claim as your own. So what happens when you do?

Well… I’m not entirely certain yet. I have to be honest in saying that I cannot pretend to know the answer to that. Of course, I wish I did. Maybe it’s as simple as asking him with everything left in you to restore that desperate longing for him? Maybe I’m over-complicating things. (I tend to do that.)

I know that I will be truthful about where I am. I’m not going to pretend Jesus and I are all chummy when we’re obviously not, and it’s obvious to anyone who digs just past the surface of my life because of the -lack of- fruit produced. A fruitful life is one rooted in Christ, firmly planted there and watered by The Spirit. Right now, that is obviously not me. I think to pretend otherwise would just be absurd and pointless, really. But I think Christ can mold me into that person. For the first time, I’m not looking at what I have to DO to become better because I think maybe I’m finally starting to understand that nothing I do can make me worthy, that it has to be Christ in me and through me. Now if I can just get out of the way, maybe it’ll be time for this life to start being used to fulfill things again.

I want to be desperate for Christ. Longing after him with every breath in my body and every ounce of my strength. 

Humble me.

You know what’s worse than sinning?

Being defiant in your sin.

I am, of course, talking to myself. A little over a month ago, I fell from grace in a way I never thought I would. When it happened, I felt defiant. See? I wasn’t broken. No, I was empowered. I was better because of what I had done, and I was sure that I was better because of what I had done. I felt like a woman, mature and strong.

Of course I felt that way… until God came looking for me. In a way I have never understood before, I now think I understand what Adam and Eve must have been feeling when God came tromping through the garden that night, calling them by name. You feel as though you have to run. You have to cover yourself in your shame because if he sees you… it will be the end of you. And that’s exactly how I’ve felt. If he sees me and sees what I’ve done, it will be the end of me.

When you finally decide to turn around and face it instead of running, you’re brought to your knees. I know in the deepest part of myself that grace covers me and that my Jesus has forgiven me. But make no mistake, I am also, for maybe the first time, keenly aware of the fact that he is not happy about what I’ve done. It doesn’t please him. In fact, it breaks his heart.

And so it breaks my heart.

I don’t want to take his forgiveness for granted. That is, perhaps, my biggest fear, if only because I’ve done it so many times before. It’s like, “Alright, I’ll just take this forgiveness and be on my way! Thanks, dad!” But that’s not how it’s supposed to work. I know that he doesn’t want me to soak in my shame and sit in my own brokenness. I know that. But I don’t want this to be yet another time where I say I accept his grace and his freedom, and then reach around, chain myself back to everything I’ve done, and be on my way.

I wish I knew how to change everything. But I have to admit… I haven’t got a clue.

Growing strong in the broken places.

I wish I were as witty as she is.

She like, exudes the essence of cool.

How the hell is she so self-assured?

These are the kinds of thoughts that plague me on a daily basis. In a desperate nighttime conversation with my boyfriend, I was crying and trying to tell him that he had no idea the broken past that I come from, the one that I still attach myself to every day because I know no other way then to live from experience. But where is the separation in living from experience and being shackled to a past filled with regrets and mistakes?

So in this conversation, I kept repeating something. “You don’t know what I’ve done. You just don’t know.” And he, bless him, was desperately trying to understand where all of this emotion and angst was coming from. I don’t buy into the philosophy that a woman is “too much to handle”, (although I struggle with it like most women), however I can openly and freely admit that I am a lot of person stuffed into one body. And perhaps part of the reason I have such a big personality is because it has shielded and defended me at times that the little girl inside my spirit was too timid, frail, or weak to stand up and fight.

I have this horrible fear of not living every moment in my present mind, of not taking in every breath and being consumed by gratitude for it. Paradoxically, this fear paralyzes me and keeps me stuck inside my room and on a computer blogging about my feelings rather than getting out of this house and living the way I desperately want to. It’s an interesting circumstance, isn’t it? How someone who can seem so filled with zest for life, someone who longingly searches for beauty and learning and all this world has to offer can be a slave to her own fear.

I think the best part of those conversations with my already-long-suffering boyfriend is the self-realizations that I come to without being forced. Without anyone sitting me down and saying, “Look, Ash… this is the way it is.” And there’s nothing I love more than discovering something without another person’s help. (I’ve been that way my entire life. It’s not going to change now.)

I realized, through constantly repeating, “You don’t know what I’ve done,” that I was right… he didn’t know what I had done. No one did, apart from God and myself. Isn’t that true for everyone? No one can know the full details of a person’s life. It’s impossible. And so, of course, that got me thinking. What a perfect tool for isolation, right? I’m a big fan of the notion that isolation is the most effective weapon in the War of Worth. If I isolate myself and convince myself that I am alone in my suffering, then no one will ever be able to reach me. And because I’m alone, I’m the weakling of the herd whose easily picked off. Consumed in her own self-guilt.

So maybe they don’t know what you’ve done. (They is like “x” in an equation.) You’re right. They don’t know. But Jesus knows. And guess what? He offered you grace all the same. He reached down and saved you, anyway. Whatever you’ve done, whatever you did, and even whatever you’re doing… none of it nullifies the Cross. Nothing you can do, will do, have done… none of it nullifies the Blood. Nothing cancels out Jesus Christ. No action, no word, no thought. That’s the God I serve, so it’s really time for me to start living like it.