My pastor was preaching.
His text and his sermon title I’ve already forgotten. But it will be a long time before I forget this.
His words were about buy-in and the Great Kingdom and meaning and God. About sacrifice and worship. About purpose and dying to self and wanting more of Him, less of me…
Well, at least some of those things were in there. It maddens me how quickly the mind blurs specifics sometimes. I’m sure he was clear in the moment. All the words going somewhere and making excellent points. I’m confident that whatever he said, he was organized and we were all tracking along. But I would soon go on to miss whatever would be said next because of this:
“I’ve arrived!”
What on earth kind of absurd deduction is THAT, mister?”
It was not my pastor speaking. Far from it. For he doesn’t in the least live, act, or act like he thinks that. C’mon, who are we kidding? No one––not the haughty, not the grossly self-unaware, not even my long, long ago pastor who very much acted like he believed he’d “arrived” somewhere important––would dare commit the social suicide of saying “I’ve arrived” out loud.
It’s clearly against our rules. So no, I hadn’t heard it.
I’d thought it.
In my own head. About myself.
Somewhere along the dividing line between my pastor’s words and my thought train about giving up my own life and being willing to hang on to the adventure that is life with God, it came to me. I had: the thought.
“I’ve arrived.”
“I have that life.”
Believe me, had you been there to hear me think it, your jaw would have dropped, but it would not have dropped faster than mine. I was more aghast than you would have been.
Oh, my, Dann.
How could you?
You can’t think that! It’s forbidden. It doesn’t matter what “good” deeds you think you may have done, you know as well as everybody. WE NEVER ARRIVE. You will never “arrive.”
OK, Ok, I know, I know! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t actually intend to think it.
Like excuses can ever stand in for truly satisfactory analyzation of mortifying mental no-nos.
I knew exactly the roots of where the thought had come from. It was coming out of our last three years. I had laid down my life. I had learned to be content in whatever circumstance. I had placed free time, my career, my finances, sanity, my spouse, and my other children at the foot of the cross. I’d let Him determine the course of my life and I’d held on for every subsequent by-product since, pleasant or not.
And I’d come out on the other side of wilderness, while not unscathed, more committed than ever to submission.
And before my eyes I saw that wilderness path in a Kingdom way with 20/20 hindsight. He’d accomplished so much. In me. In our family. I was living a type of life that in years prior I could easily remember only longing for. My very existence now was different than it had been.
I’d “arrived.” But that was too far.
How to deal with the embarrassment of consciously thinking it? Everyone knows you can’t say THAT. “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24 NASB). I figured I’d just gotten in line for some of the same kind of sinful-nature wrestling I’d engaged, like Paul, a thousand times over.
What came instead was unexpected.
The mental tape of self-flagellation had barely started spinning up in my head before it got stopped abruptly. (I know, some of you have digital files that play in your head. Others maybe vinyl. Mine plays tapes.)
Instead…
“What if, my son, you thought of it as arriving in some place? Instead of to some place?”
Wait, what!
God?
“If you’ve arrived in a place, rather than to a place, might it not actually be okay to think what you just thought?”
Whoa.
Like into a river. A stream. A place where I was knowing and understanding and experiencing both Him and a way of living that previously I had not known.
That’s not what I’d expected. And wow, maybe there really hadn’t been any pride in my heart. I’d had the thought and God wasn’t in the least taken aback by it. It just was.
OK, God!
I bought it immediately. And saw that my greatest transgression was probably the knee-jerk reaction. That was my flesh. The old nature. He never fails to tithe on his mint and, doggonit, he was going to call a spade a spade:
“That phrase is evil. Thou shalt not ‘arrive.’ Thou shalt not say it, nor think it, nor permit it within thy hearing if spoken by thy neighbor.”
I myself was so aghast at its outward appearance (weren’t you when you first read it?) that it never even crossed my mind to look any further into my heart.
I’m so glad God does.
I have arrived. I’ve been walking in places where my spirit hadn’t come previously. And there are more places, still, where he wants to take us all. Let’s let him decide. It’s weird to think that when I do arrive in those places, I might be saying so.
The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, “Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?” has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.
I Corinthians 2:14-16 MSG