Fear and Crossing "The Boulevarde"

A few times a week, in order to get to church I have to cross The Boulevarde during morning rush hour. Now I am not using insider's Sydney lingo to describe a specific street; it is quite literally called, “The Boulevarde” and if that strikes into your heart a sense of trafficky awe and wonder, then its doing its job. It is not a wide street by New York standards, having only two lanes each way, but with no traffic lights anywhere near the section I approach and given the Sydney commuter's utter disregard for pedestrian existence, crossing this street is usually the part of my morning when I either wake up or die.

Well earlier just today, I was taking my usual stroll to church but a little loopier than I usually am in the morning because I stayed up late working on a workshop the night before. As I got to The Boulevarde, I leaned over the street to get a look at the traffic and then jumped back onto the sidewalk mere meters before a bus flew right past where my face just was. As the advertisement on the side of the bus flew past me inches from my eyes, I involuntarily used God's name in vain (I'm sorry, God) and adrenaline rushed into my veins. Apparently this morning God graciously allowed me to wake up instead of die.

As I came to my senses and said a prayer of thanks and relief, I sprinted across the boulevard safely and started thinking about my near collision with something much greater and weightier than I. In particular, I thought about the feelings that grew within myself as I thought about how powerless I was as I stood before all that inertia. Now believe it or not, I've seen buses before. I know that they are neither the largest vehicles nor anything particularly incredible. But when my face was at such an intimate distance to one as it sped past me, my awe and wonder and fear increased.


(kind of like this, but more accidental and with wetter trousers)

I realized this week that there's a certain continuity between the feelings of wonder and fear. As wonder increases towards infinity, the emotion gives way to a sense of fear. As the object of wonder increases in immensity, so does it increase as an object of terror. As our perception of something mighty becomes clearer, so does our response change from awe to fear.

I wonder if many Christians feel this way about encountering God. When we believe ourselves to be in the presence of the Almighty, do we experience him so clearly as to fear him? I think of passages like Exodus 33, when God causes all his goodness to pass before his servant Moses, and how it was so powerful an encounter that God actually had to protect Moses, covering him with his hand, so that Moses could only come out and see God's back. I think of Isaiah 6, when the prophet beholds God on his great throne, being worshiped by a temple of angels. I think of his exclamation of utter terror and dread as he realized that he, a sinful human, has seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

What is our experience of God? When I come before God to worship or to pray, from what angle am I approaching him? I daresay that nowadays, our tendency is to approach God from an overly friendly perspective. God is my best friend, and when I am feeling down, he comes to cheer me up like Tinker bell or one of the fairy odd-parents! When I am feeling empty, he fills me like a hot bread bowl full of New England clam chowder.

Draw me close to You
Never let me go
I lay it all down again
To hear You say that I'm Your friend

You are my desire
No one else will do
'Cause nothing else could take Your place
To feel the warmth of Your embrace
Help me find the way, bring me back to You (Draw Me Close – Hillsong Australia)

Now read carefully because I am not saying that God is NOT our friend or our most intimate lover. Believe it or not, the Bible portrays Christ's relationship to his church as a loving husband, one whom he loves so deeply he would die for unconditionally. He fulfills our deepest longings for intimacy, for presence, for comfort, sympathy, and oneness. But God's love and care must be understood in light of his utter transcendence as the Almighty Ruler of the Universe. To discard that truth is not to INCREASE our perception of his love, but to WEAKEN it's incredibleness! If God is not my Lord and King, then my amazement of his intimate love for me actually will decrease! Think about it, because this principle works in all areas of life. What would bring you more awe, that your college buddy called you and wants to play pickup ball on Saturday, or that President Obama wants in on your fantasy baseball league?

My first response, if Mr. Obama did call me up, would be “AWEsome!” If he considered me a good friend, I would feel pretty good about myself. But when I meditate on God's greatness alongside his commitment to love me, that awe and wonder increases beyond its borders. Awe, when it increases past a certain point, gives way to fear. Have you ever thought about the fact that the ONLY thing that separates your sinful, sorry self from God's raging holy wrath is the good and perfect name of his Son, Jesus Christ, who took your place in punishment? Does that not impress fearful joy into your heart?

As a closing thought, I would like you to think about your experience of the holy and awe-ful. What do you revere in your life? I confess that there are too few things in my life that I find sacred. Perhaps in our post-materialistic and post-scientific world, it is exceedingly difficult to find anything in life that is more than profane. I think if I were to dig deep, I would find that the objects of my reverence are not God but things invented by man. I venerate the human intellect and human achievements. I can read a passage like Proverbs 8 and think, “okay that's cool. God formed the very foundations of the earth with wisdom.” But then I turn to my friend and then think, “What! There is NO WAY you finished that Sudoku puzzle already! It's been like 9 minutes!”

We must balance our experience of God's love with our understanding of God's fear-eliciting immensity. If we do not, then perhaps we don't see God completely as he truly is and that is something that we must pray for. I pray that each day, my fear of God would lead to a humility concerning myself as well as a deep desire to obey his commandments and live in a way that is pleasing and honoring to him.

Take my lips and let them be filled with messages from Thee

First of all, I hate this hymn. I think the melody has done the words of this song the greatest injustice. It has rendered it impossible for me to say this sentence without creating an awkward break in my speech. How many of you Christians, when you read this title, said it in your head like this:

"Take my lips and let it be - filled with messages for Thee"

How awkward is that! Anyway, moving on.

I am not a good writer, speaker, or thinker.

On Sunday, 18 April 2010, at about 6ish in the evening, I made this line a prayer for the first time and the following story explains how I got to that point.

For the last 4 weeks, I've been feeling not unlike (I don't know why I chose to use the double negative here; it is both grammatically awkward and conceptually difficult to apprehend, but it's what first came to my mind and this is my diary so I will keep it this way) Zechariah the father of JBap. I haven't been mute, but I might as well be. I feel thrown off my rhythm, out of my groove, endlessly searching for the right word or phrase or entire response altogether. A large part of my responsibilities this year is to meet up and disciple individual students at GracePoint, teaching God's Word, leading them to Christ, helping bring the Bible to bear in their life issues, and encouraging them in their Christian walk. I haven't been able to do any of that adequately. I don't know why, I just feel like every time I meet up with someone, I can't seem to get anything rolling and I can't think of what I want to say when I want to say it! I leave and go do training or reading hours later, and then what I should have said hits me.

My words and thoughts feel crossed up inside my head. I feel inexplicably inarticulate. I think of illustrations too late. A thousand and one good ideas and concepts float in and out of my head each day. It's like my life was a spaceship and all these thoughts which were previously stacked up neatly onboard are now floating everywhere because somebody sabotaged the artificial gravity.

IT. PISSES. ME. OFF.

But it has been teaching me radical dependence on God. I say radical dependence because I have been learning recently how utterly helpless we are in every walk of life. It seems like every lesson in my life for the past few weeks has been converging on this one motif: that before God we are utterly incapable of helping ourselves in anything. A couple of quick examples:

1) We have recently started a sermon series on Exodus at GracePoint. As I read through the narrative of the ten plagues and how Pharaoh in all his worldly might cannot overcome God's tireless will, I think of the arrogance that we develop when life is going well. Pharaoh was the ruler of one of the most powerful nations in the Ancient Near East. He had a vast army and a slave nation at his disposal, not to mention the Nile River, a perpetual stream of living water in that society. He was as successful as he got yet it did not produce thankfulness or praise in his heart. How often and quickly do we become overwhelmingly big-headed when we find ourselves in a position of comfort and power in our world? How often do we accredit our success to ourselves? How often do our prayers become like that of Bart Simpson's: "Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing!"

Yet we later find out, for all his might, he couldn't stand toe to toe with the Almighty God for 10 rounds. God systematically attacked and destroyed Egypt's economic, cultural, and religious fabric and didn't even break a sweat. Before God, The king of Egypt was as helpless as an infant.

2) A week ago a volcano in Iceland erupted, throwing massive clouds of ash and debris into the air and causing officials in 38 countries around Europe to ban all air travel for a week. Millions of people were stranded in Europe and millions more were kept from flying into their countries, causing massive inconveniences all over the world. My friend's parents were vacationing in Paris at the time and their flight was canceled. As flights are finally starting up again today, officials predict it will be weeks before everyone who was supposed to leave during this time finds a flight home.

One stinkin' volcano. For all the effort it took, God could have barely twitched a pinky muscle. And it inconveniences the entire world. It reminded me once again of how precariously human society sits on a balance of God's grace. For all of Sir Francis Bacon's triumphant claims of subjecting mother nature to the will of man (and that was an opinion from FOUR centuries ago, albeit before the atrocities of the 19th and 20th centuries shattered our naivete), we are all collectively so helpless in our world. Sure, death by lion mauling has gone down since the invention of guns and since the dawn of modern medicine we have ended one major world disease (polio).

WOOPTY. FREAKIN'. DO.

One earthquake. One arbitrary twitch of earth's tectonic plates. That's all it takes for God to claim the millions of lives that belong to him. One tsunami. One clump of dirt falling into the ocean. That's all it takes. We are so great and powerful, aren't we?

And that's it. We are helpless. If the Scriptures are true, then we are told that our lives are at the mercy of God the creator to do as he pleases. In addition, we are told that our sin put the price of death on our heads. What a wonder that there are still men and women walking about believing they have any measure of control over their fates.

To bring this all back to my original point. I am not surprised that I have felt so inarticulate lately and that it has been the source of much grief to my life. It has curbed this growing, sinister root of arrogance and pride in my heart. Am I so praiseworthy? Am I so well-spoken and useful that my ministry is indispensable to God's kingdom work? What a ludicrous idea! But I confess, this belief is present in my heart and has put me in a dangerous place. In that light, God muting me was the most loving form of discipline that could be offered me. In my inability to speak, God has allowed me to watch helplessly as he did his work in my life and in the lives of those around me. In my figurative silence, I have seen myself become not so much an instrument for God's work but a video-camera recording it all in wonder.

This time period was not easy. It made me angry that I couldn't speak well. I felt like I wasted so much time meeting with people if I couldn't even properly encourage them. I hated it. The only thing that I could effectively do was write things down. According to the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, I am an INTJ and one of my difficulties is expressing thoughts and insights that I receive intuitively.

I don't know how much longer I will feel this way. I don't know if I will always be frustrated in verbal communication because of who I am. I don't know if I will always be a better writer than I am a conversationalist. Even having said that, I am not a naturally good writer; I labor intensively at these things. All I know is, I am called to preach and teach the Word and I will be equipped by my Lord. If this is the thorn at my side, then fine; I will just learn to trust that he will put words in my mouth when he pleases to. In my life, my prayer will be this:

"Take my lips and let them be filled with messages from Thee."