clarity // TRUST

Have you ever said, “Pray for me to have clarity.” or “I just need God to give me clarity about what I’m supposed to do.” or “I can’t move forward until I have more clarity.”

Chances are, you’ve picked up on that language and that idea over the years if you’ve run in Jesus loving circles. But, I’m starting to wonder if we’ve really gotten this idea FROM Jesus, or if we just made up this “need for clarity” on our own.

I’ve been reading a book called Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God. In it Brennan Manning recounts a story of a man (John Kavanaugh) who spent some time working alongside of Mother Teresa. She asked him one day, “And what can I do for you?” and his response was “Pray that I have clarity.” Mother Teresa’s response was an immediate and emphatic, “No, I will not do that.” She explained to him the reasons why she would not pray such a prayer: “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of. […] I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

Manning goes on to say that…

Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.

“We ourselves have known and put our trust in God’s love toward ourselves” (1 John 4:16). We have a God who LOVES us, no less than he loves the men and women listed in Scripture. Think about Hebrews 11 and the list of people of great faith it contains. Think about their stories. Do you think they had clarirty? I had never thought through that before, but stopping to think about that… No. They lived in great uncertainty and confusion never knowing what was going to happen next or how exactly it was all going to work out … but in the midst of that they found great faith… great trust in the God they knew was with them… and that TRUST took them beyond their unclear circumstances and into LIFE with God!

Manning, Brennan (2010-10-12). Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God (pp. 5-6). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

When Helping Hurts | read together ch. 4

So, I’ve actually finished reading W.H.H. by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett, but I’m pretty much WAY behind in the blogging. I have a feeling though that no one is really waiting on the edge of their seats. But, I’ll just keep the posts coming as I have time. :)

I wrote this post for chapter 4 like a week ago but it turned out to be more of a book report than an actual discussion. I don’t like that. It’s not really the point. So today, I changed it a tad but it’s still kind of reportish. I just don’t feel like really rewriting. If I do, I’ll never finish blogging through the book. So, here’s what I have. I’ll try to do better next time. ;)

TODAY: CHAPTER 4 – “Not All Poverty Is Created Equal”

We’ve decided we want to help. We want to do it in an ACTUALLY helpful way. So, how do we know what that is? This chapter gives us a good starting point:

A helpful first step in thinking about working with the poor in any context is to discern whether the situation calls for relief, rehabilitation, or development.

What are the differences? Relief is “stopping the bleeding” in a crisis. In this situation, the person/community is basically unable to help themselves. Rehabilitation happens after the bleeding has stopped, helping people to get back to where they were before the crisis hit. Development is a long process of empowering people to be “more of what God created them to be.” These changes – the becoming more of who God wants us to be – happens to everyone involved – the helper and the helped. [Remember, we are ALL broken. Just in different ways.]

Relief is probably the one of the 3 that more people focus on most. It is also the one that is done at the wrong time in the wrong place most often and the one that can cause the most damage when done inappropriately. In many ways, relief is the “easiest.” People go in, stop the bleeding and it’s “done.” It’s easier to complete a project than to live in relationship that is required for rehabilitation and development. I’m not saying relief is bad… It’s very very good when it’s NEEDED. But often times we do this in times, places, and situations when people are in NEED of rehabilitation or development. Why is this SO important? Because…

Relief efforts applied inappropriately often cause the beneficiaries to abstain from work, thereby limiting their relationship with God through distorted worship or through no worship at all.

When we keep putting band-aids on problems instead of helping people to be equipped to take care of it themselves, we are hurting them and their ability to have the relationships they were created to have with God and others.

Rehabilitation and development take a lot of… time… effort… knowledge…commitment… messiness…  willingness to have our own lives changed.  It takes NOT have an ”I-am-here-to-save-you” attitude.

The gist of this all is that helping to alleviate poverty has no quick fix. Oh how we all wish it did, right? But it takes time. Lots of it. It takes relationships. Deep ones. It takes taking the time to understand a culture. It takes asking the right questions. It takes a constant recognition that the person you are helping is made in the image of God, just like we are. It takes remembering that we are ALL broken, though in different ways. It takes humility. And it takes responsibility to choose to do it well.

Thankfully, I’ve had some great examples of this in my life. I didn’t know how good of examples I had until I started reading this book. I’ve also had some bad examples too. Later… eventually… I’ll probably talk more about both of those.

my hope comes from…

I write myself notes of various kinds. Partially because I like notes – because I like words. Partially because I need help remembering things. One note that’s been on my wall for a few months asks me a question that I need to remember the answer to: “Where does my hope come from?“

Today I read this:

Each morning that greets me is full of hope
Not because I am successful at what I am doing,
Or because the people near me appreciate me,
Or because circumstances are easy,
But because God is, and he is my Father.
 To look at the morning any other way
Is to believe a lie.
To live in hope is to live in truth;
To live in truth is to bring him glory;
To bring God glory in my daily living
Is the highest form of worship.

[Lane, Timothy S. (2008). How People Change (p. 222). New Growth Press.]

… a reminder of where my hope comes from. It’s not from you and how much you like me or respect me. It isn’t found in any relationship. It’s not from my job and it has nothing to do with where I live.  It’s not determined by the ease from which things come together.

My hope comes from God and from knowing God as my Father… knowing Jesus as my Savior… being filled with the Spirit.

The way I live should reflect that… the attitude I walk through each day with should reveal that I believe that…
It doesn’t always.
But I’m learning…

When Helping Hurts | read together ch. 3

Let’s (finally) talk about Chapter 3 of When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett.

In this chapter the authors give us a definition of poverty alleviation.

Poverty alleviation is the ministry of reconciliation: moving people closer to glorifying God by living in relationship in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation.

I love that definition. I love that it encompasses the whole person. As Christ’s ambassadors we are called into the ministry of reconciliation. That includes helping with material needs but it also includes dealing with the relational side of people’s lives. It’s messy and it’s hard. There’s no quick easy fix. In fact, there’s no sure fix at all. They remind us throughout the chapter that “the fall really did happen” and because of that, on this side of eternity, there will always be brokenness; that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do all that we can to participate in bringing hope and healing and HELP to those in need of it. God has made it clear that we are to persist in participating in those things until He puts an end to it all, and we must remember that we are ALL broken and in need God’s saving grace.

Our relationship to the materially poor should be one in which we recognize that both of us are broken and that both of us need the blessing of reconciliation. Our perspective should be less about how we are going to fix the materially poor and more about how we can walk together, asking God to fix both of us.

…

But part of our striving is also to fall on our knees every day and pray, “Lord, be merciful to me and to my friend here, because we are both sinners.” And part of our striving means praying every day, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, for without you we cannot fix our communities, our nations, and our world.”

I love the emphasis they place on helping the whole person.

The goal is to see people restored to being what God created them to be: people who understand that they are created in the image of God with the gifts, abilities, and capacity to make decisions and to effect change in the world around them; and people who steward their lives, communities, resources, and relationships in order to bring glory to God.

When I read those lines… I think about the country I’ve been living in for the past year… I wrote a post a couple months ago about how so many here do not believe they have any ability to effect change in the world around them because of what they are taught within the system they were born into. So many do not know, understand, or believe that they were created in the image of God and that he has given them gifts and abilities that he desires to see them change the world with. I’ve had the privilege of teaching some this year and watching their eyes open to the possibilities of influencing. I think about India… where Hinduism teaches caste and people believe that the level they were born at is the level they must stay and that their value is determined by their position at birth. So many live hopelessly, believing they have no worth, not recognizing that they were made by a Father who loves them and wants them to know Him and to live for His purposes. I think about a friend in America… who thinks that the mistakes she has made in the past have determined her worth now and in the future. She thinks that God hates her and is punishing her financially and relationally for all that she’s done. She believes that she will never be able to “succeed” and that no one will ever be able to love her. She thinks that the very broken representations of love she has experienced in her life are the only forms of love she’ll ever know. She doesn’t see who God made her to be or how she could ever do anything to glorify Him. She thinks she lost her chance. I think about so many people in so many places… who need help learning how to relate to God, to people, and to the world… the way God desires us all to. I think about how their lack of knowing the truth influences material poverty. I think about the layers and layers of heart issues involved in helping people in these types of situations, before/during/after we address the material issues that we sometimes recognize first.

In discussing how to help Fikkert and Corbett tell us that we should begin with helping people to have a proper worldview (understanding of themselves, God, others, and the world around them). They then give us 5 things we should remember, recognizing that TRULY helping is rarely a simple thing and sometimes it is more complicated than just correcting their/our understanding.

[1] having the right concept about how a relationship is supposed to work does not automatically make the relationship work well. …  Healthy relationships require transformed hearts, not just transformed brains.

[2] Satan and his legions are at work in the world and have the capacity and desire to damage our relationships. Even if all humans had the correct worldview, Satan would still be on the prowl, attacking us and the rest of creation, thereby causing “poverty” in many manifestations (Eph. 6:12).

[3] one of the results of the fall is that the entire creation is cursed (Gen. 3:17-19), meaning that crops fail and tsunamis happen even when our worldviews are not faulty.

[4] other people sometimes actively work against or undermine the efforts of an individual poor person to change his situation.

[5] most of the systems in which the materially poor live—systems that contribute to their poverty—are outside of their control. Transforming the worldview of the materially poor will not transform these systems, a point that will be elaborated on in the next section.

Conclusion: This life of helping, offering hope, being ambassadors that carry the ministry of reconciliation is complex and requires faithfulness, diligence, patience, deliberate work, massive amounts of God’s grace, and … is gonna get messy. Because we are messy. They are messy. And let’s just be reminded again – the fall really did happen.

So there we are. Now we each have to find a way to deal with it and do our job. I’m excited, though intimidated… but thrilled that God has chosen to use me.

When Helping Hurts | read together ch. 2

Okay. It’s catch up time. First, I know it’s SUPER late… but I’d like to say I appreciated what Kacie said about Chapter 1, discussing WHY Jesus came…

And… they do! But the thing is, I think Jesus came to save sinners and reconcile the world to Himself. That was His purpose, and thus it is the purpose of the Church and the purpose of every believer in the Church – to call all men to Christ.

[and]

I think the purpose of the church is to participate with Christ in drawing all men back into relationship with God. Our love for those around us drives us to care for suffering as we live out this mission.

I absolutely agree and I really think that the authors would agree as well. I also agree with her statements that God being angry with Israel because they neglected the poor is not the entire story. Neglecting the poor is a symptom of neglecting a right relationship with God. I think the important part, and what I thought that they were trying to point out, is that the fact that God chose to name it specifically means it matters to him – a lot. Not more than salvation. Not more than souls. Of course, we need to remember that. But the focus of this book is on the poor, so I understand their emphasis on it. [She also posted a great Piper video that you might want to watch!]

Also, I wanted to mention that in our group discussions over here I was glad that Scott had taken time to look up the word “poor” in lexicons to find out what kind of poor the Scriptures they quoted were referring to. Did it just mean “poor in Spirit?” No. It really meant materially poor.

______________________________

Now on to Chapter 2. How do you define poverty? Most people think first, and maybe only, about the material aspects of poverty. But there’s more to it. The framework that the authors take us to is a relational one. They pull from the work of Bryant Myers, a Christian development thinker, who focuses on the relational nature of the Triune God and that when he created us in His image, he made us as relational beings as well.

Before the fall, God established four foundational relationships for each person: a relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation. These relationships are the building blocks for all of life. When they are functioning properly, humans experience the fullness of life that God intended because we are being what God created us to be. In particular for our purposes, when these relationships are functioning properly, people are able to fulfill their callings glorifying God by working and supporting themselves and their families with the fruit of their work.

The problems relating to poverty stem from these four basic relational areas and we ALL suffer from poverty in some of these areas that play out as “poverty of spiritual intimacy, a poverty of being, a poverty of community, and a poverty of stewardship.”

I really really like what he said here:

Every minute since the fall, each human being is the proverbial “square peg in a round hole.” We don’t fit right, because we were shaped for something else.

For some people the brokenness in these foundational relationships results in material poverty…

[and later on...]

The fall really happened, and it is wreaking havoc in all of our lives. We are all broken, just in different ways.

We were made for a perfect relationship with the Father, and with each other, with the world, and with ourselves. And in order to be effective at alleviating any of the poverty of any of the types in the world, we must recognize our own brokenness and our own need for Jesus, otherwise we’re just going to make it all worse.

In the end of the chapter the authors remind us that while we all do face some type of poverty there is something unique about the materially poor, something God asks the rest of us to step into and help to change.

I feel like I’m just summarizing here and that there’s a lot of my own thoughts that I don’t have time to say because I really want you to know what the books says. So putting the book down… For a list of reasons, this all gets very personal to me. A few of my friends here got together tonight to talk about chapter 2 and (what we’ve read so far of) chapter 3. As I talked about it, I had to work not to cry. I think it is so important for us to not just look at the poor and think, “Well, if they would get off their butts and get a job their lives would be better.” or “Well, if they hadn’t made such poor choices with their lives then they wouldn’t be in this mess…” There’s always more to the story than we see… And maybe some people are lazy and, yes, a lot of people have made poor choices… But what if that’s NOT the case? And what if it is? What if we take time to get to know people? To step into the messes of their lives and see what the story is? And to love them… NO MATTER WHAT – like Jesus did for us. And what if we share with them how important Jesus has been to our stories? And what if we stick around to show them how Jesus wants to be a part of their stories too? I mean, either we do that… Or we give them a handout and check “help the poor” off our “To Do List”… Or we write them off as hopeless… I’m pretty sure the latter two aren’t going to bring any sort of restoration… And that’s what Christians are called to, right? So I guess we better get ready to get messy…

And that’s all the rambling I have for tonight. I hope it makes sense. It’s late and I’m tired, but I was determined to get this posted. I’m guessing I won’t make my goal of Chapter 3 by Wednesday. Thursday. Thursday is the new goal. ;)

There’s a lot more I would like to talk about but this is a blog post, not a book. I’m hoping my friends will talk about the parts I didn’t get to. So, if you want more [read the book... and/or] click around to read other people’s reactions, thoughts, insights… Anissa @ Oasis,  Brittany @ His grace displayed, Jon @ Hands Wide Open,  Kacie @ The Well Thought-Out Life, and Christine (and Scott) @ We Are His Hands.