Leave your plain vanilla life: “Go ahead . . . I dare you”

 

Sometimes when we think God has gotten something all wrong, as I did when He sent us to Lomalinda, the Bible tells us to look back and remember what God has done. In fact, the Bible frequently reminds us of the importance of remembering.

 

Mike Metzger drives home the point:

 

“Many churches have forgotten the premium that the historic Judeo-Christian tradition placed on remembrance . . . and recalling the right things. The ‘great sin’ of the Old Testament was forgetfulness (at least it is the most recurrent offense). ‘Remember’ is the most frequent command in the Old Testament.”  (Clapham Memo, January 19, 2007, “Back and Forth,” by Mike Metzger; emphasis mine) 

 

How sad it is that we are so forgetful.

 

Ah, but when we take time to remember what God has done in the past, everything takes on a new perspective.

 

Last week I told you my memories of how God so kindly prepared this cowardly home-body, me, to do the unthinkable, the unfathomable—to move to South America—by (1) leading me to the public library to learn about Colombia, and (2) leading me to books Wycliffe missionaries had written and magazines Wycliffe had published. And as I read, I changed. Through other people’s stories, God helped me envision myself doing the impossible. They showed me how to do it, in specific, practical ways. (Read more at “Slow steps of progress wrapped in grace.”)

 

But God did even more to prepare me! He choreographed people and circumstances that brought Marie Goehner into my life. Let me tell you my memories of that.

 

Before Dave and I and the kids left the States for Lomalinda, Harvey and Shirley Strand (my sister-in-law's parents and also dear friends of our family) invited us to their home to meet their friend Marie.

 

Marie had been a nurse in Lomalinda for a few years but had returned to the States to help her aging parents. She was grieving over leaving Lomalinda and longed to return.

 

But while she was home, God continued to use Marie in significant ways. One of them was to prepare me and my family.   

 

That evening at the Strands’ home, Marie showed us and our parents slides of Lomalinda and told us many stories. Hearing how much Marie loved Lomalinda, and seeing photos of homes, geography, and our future colleagues’ faces helped prepare me mentally, spiritually, and emotionally to move to Lomalinda.

 

And listening to Marie was enormously comforting and helpful for our nervous parents, too. What a gift from God!

 

Fast-forward a few months: As I struggled to adjust to living in Lomalinda (that’s putting it mildly—it was really messy at first) gradually it became clearer to me that we are God’s workmanship, that He has created specific things for us to do, and that He prepares them in advance (Ephesians 2:10).

 

And He also prepares us. Through Marie, God was gently, lovingly persuading me to be willing to leave my family and my home—and leave my plain vanilla life—and relocate in Lomalinda.

 

And once there, when I got into trouble, I needed to remember how God had prepared me to be there.

 

A man so different from me, Chuck Swindoll, writes, “Call it the rebel in me, but I simply cannot bear plain vanilla when life has so many other flavors far more interesting and tasty. God has so much more in view for all of us. God has arranged an abundant life for you [John 10:10].”

 

Chuck encourages us to “take life by the throat and . . . take the Lord up on His gracious offer to give you a rich and rewarding life.”

 

But then he asks us the big question—he acknowledges the elephant in the room: “Why is that so hard to embrace?”

 

“He’s here for you. He’s in your corner. He wants to pour out His great pleasure on you—He desires that you live abundantly, joyfully, freely. Why not try living abundantly, joyfully, and freely for a change? Go ahead . . . I dare you.”

(Charles R. Swindoll, from Good Morning, Lord . . . Can We Talk?)

 

“Growth suffering”

I recall that day with deep regret. And pain.

 

You, too, have regrets. You remember suffering the pain of them.

 

But did you know there’s good pain and bad pain? Did you know suffering the good kind can be helpful?    

 

Dr. Henry Cloud explains the difference between bad and good pain—between destructive and valuable pain.

 

We can suffer bad pain for various reasons. One is the pain someone else inflicts upon us.

 

But there’s another pain that we bring upon ourselves because of our own “character faults,” Dr. Cloud says, the pain that comes from “repeating old patterns and avoiding the pain it would take to change them.”

 

Dr. Cloud says we need to recognize the pain we bring upon ourselves is “a wake-up call,” otherwise we are wasting that pain.

 

Wasting our pain. Think about that. Are we wasting our pain?

 

For several decades now, I’ve cherished five little words Chuck Swindoll spoke on his radio program. The words changed me. He said, “GOD DOES NOT WASTE YOUR SUFFERING.”

 

So, if God doesn’t want to waste our pain and suffering, we’d better not fight against Him by choosing to waste our pain!

 

Dr. Cloud says that wasted pain “is the pain we go through to avoid the good pain of growth that comes from pushing through. It is the wasted pain we encounter as we try to avoid grief and the true hurt that needs to be worked through.”

 

With God’s help, our job is to “face the growth steps [we] need to keep from repeating [our] mistakes.” This is how good pain can help us mature.

 

“We all have coping mechanisms that cover up pain, help us deal with fear . . . and help us hold it all together,” writes Dr. Cloud. “Trials and suffering push those mechanisms past the breaking point so we find out where we need to grow. Then true spiritual growth begins at deeper levels. . . . Righteousness and character take the place of coping.

 

“This kind of suffering is good,” he continues. “It breaks down the ‘weak muscle’ of the soul and replaces it with stronger muscle. In this suffering, the prize we win is character—a very valuable prize indeed.

 

“Suffering is the path Jesus modeled for us, and he modeled how to do it right. He went through it all with obedience and without sin. This is the difference between those who suffer to a good end and those who suffer to no good at all.” (Click on Dr. Cloud’s article, “When Suffering Helps and When Suffering Hurts.”)

 

The good kinds of pain and suffering lead us to ask ourselves (a) what is God trying to teach me, (b) what God is trying to help me do now, and (c) will I cooperate with Him?

 

James 1:5 says “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

 

The Nelson Study Bible (NKJV Version) says this about James 1:5 “The wisdom God gives is not necessarily information on how to get out of trouble but rather insight on how to learn from one’s difficulties. . . . It is not more information about how to avoid times of testing but instead a new perspective on trials.”

 

So there I stood on that blistering hot afternoon in the middle of nowhere in South America, feeling like an utter failure as a wife, mother, and child of God.

 

And I had choices to make.

• Would I recognize this as a wake-up call?
• Would I embrace the pain and regret and suffering and would I learn from the experience?
• Would I push through? Would I climb up out of this low point with a change of character? And a deeper, more mature faith?
• Were the battle and perseverance part of the training for what God planned for my future?
• Would I choose to mature as a person?
• Would I let the experience bring me into a more intimate relationship with God?

Often it’s difficult to see any good in our failures and suffering, but God asks us to not waste those times. He holds out His hand and says, “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

 

Today He’s offering His hand to you. 

It’s a strong yet gentle hand. 

Go ahead. Grab ahold of it.

 

Setting out before dawn in Bogotá

Before dawn on Tuesday, August 17, 1976, in our little borrowed room in Bogotá, the alarm clock jarred us into consciousness.

Groggy and shivering from the cold, we pulled on layers of clothes and stuffed barf bags into pockets, remembering Laura Rush’s words from the previous day:

“Don’t forget plastic bags.”

“Plastic bags?”  I had asked.

“Right. Most people get carsick on the drive through the mountains.”

Sigh . . . .

Downstairs in the office, we and the Rushes assembled baggage, seventeen pieces.

A van-like taxicab hummed outside the open office door, its red taillights aglow.

Shivering in the dark, we piled our luggage inside and on top and in every nook and cranny.

We must have resembled Moses and his family when they set out for Egypt, as imagined by Chuck Swindoll, who wrote:

“What a sight that little family must have been as they headed down the desert road . . .  the family’s belongings . . . tied to the donkey’s back. They were leaving a steady job, family, security, and the familiarity of their own surroundings. Midian wasn’t much, but it had been their home for forty years. And now they were on their way. . . .” (Great Days with the Great Lives)

In Chapter 5 of Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go, I wrote:

Soon hints of daylight peeked through a haze. Bogotá’s streets already bustled with cars, pedestrians, donkey carts, and buses belching noxious fumes. 

Our taxi driver zigged and zagged around snarled traffic. We clung to door handles and bumped against each other. 

The driver brought us to a halt on a block lined with one-story buildings, soot-covered, grim. Decaying fruit and vegetables littered street and sidewalk, along with shreds of yellowed newspapers, bloody spittle, cigarette butts, and more. I forced my eyes to focus instead on our cabby, who darted through a filthy door. 

A pack of men spied us. They wore woolen garments, torn and frayed. Hair tangled, matted. Teeth missing. Faces and hands smudged with the gray that clung to doors and walls and air. 

One of them sauntered toward our taxi, stooped, and peered at us, his nose nearly touching the window. He snarled what was, I guessed, an obscenity, tottered sideways, turned, and shuffled away. 

The driver returned, a receipt in hand—a permit to transport us, Laura said—and we set off again, our eyes and throats stinging from exhaust. (from Chapter 5, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go)

Be sure to come back next week—I’ll tell you about our wild and crazy journey! I’m so glad no one had yet told us horror stories about the journey we faced. If they had, I’d have been terrified to set out through the Andes in that taxi. In my case, ignorance was bliss.

Chuck Swindoll asks all of us:

Have you stepped out in faith like [Moses did] recently?

Have you made a move, followed the nudging of God,

into realms you wouldn’t have even dreamed of five years ago?

He will honor your faith as you trust Him in that kind of walk.

Those who remain in the false security of Midian

never get to experience what Moses experienced

on that winding highway to Egypt—

the sense of moving in the strong current

of God’s will and plan.

Press on!

(Chuck Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives)

“If you don’t like disruptions, stay away from God”

Sometimes God throws unwelcome surprises at us.

We can be happily minding our own business, doing the best we know to do, diligently fulfilling our roles—good roles like parenting and spousing (is that a word?), ministry, chores around the house and yard, maintaining friendships—when BAM! Out of nowhere, God blindsides us.

He interrupts our living.

He disrupts our dreams.

He intrudes on our plans.

Chuck Swindoll writes that an intrusion “is someone or something that thrusts itself into our world without permission, without an invitation, and refuses to be ignored.” (Day by Day with Charles R. Swindoll)

  

I don’t like such intrusions. I don’t like to have my goals interrupted and my life knocked off the rails. How about you?

But if we’re people who believe God is important, if we’ve committed our lives to Him, we must listen when He disrupts.

Recently I heard Rev. James Broughton III say something like this: “God interrupts your life and then he disrupts your life. If you don’t like disruptions, stay away from God.”

And so it was that at the beginning of my memoir, God (with help from my husband Dave) interrupted my comfortable life. Disrupted my serenity.

They both were disregarding my plans and dreams—and waiting for me to do the same.

If I went along with God, if I did things His way, the life I’d planned would get tossed upside down and inside out.

Life became confusing. The pain in the core of my being zapped the breath out of me. I struggled to make sense of what my life meant to me, of what my husband and two preschoolers meant to me—and what God meant to me. And what the four of us meant to God.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, 

neither are your ways my ways, 

declares the Lord. 

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, 

so are my ways higher than your ways 

and my thoughts than your thoughts.” 

(Isaiah 55:8-9)

“The world bombards us . . . telling us that unless we have the newest, the biggest and the best we will never be happy. But God says, ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness’” (Matthew 6:33). (From The Bible Study)

Gulp. I had been thinking and planning like a self-centered, materialistic suburbanite determined to chase after the American dream.

This was a wake-up call telling me to bend my thinking more toward God’s perspective.

He seemed to be saying, “My purposes for you are different than what you always expected. And my purposes for you are good.”

“God is … quietly, invisibly, secretly planning our steps; feeding us our lines; moving us into position; unifying everything we do,” writes Lawrence Kushner.

“We are chastened to realize that what we thought was an accident was, in truth, the hand of God. Most of the time we are simply unaware. Awareness takes too much effort, and besides, it’s more fun to pretend we are running the show. 

"But every now and then we understand, just for a moment, that God has all along been involved in everything. As Rabbi Zaddok HaKohen taught, ‘The first premise of faith is to believe with perfect faith that there is no such thing as happenstance.… Every detail, small or great, they are all from the Holy One.’ Everything is organically, seamlessly joined to everything else and run by God.…” (Lawrence Kushner, Eyes Remade for Wonder)

BAM! Out of nowhere, God had blindsided me. 

He was giving me a wake-up call.

I had a lot of thinking to do.  

A lot of reconsidering to do. 

A lot of praying to do.

A pay cut, no medical insurance, no retirement plan

During my lifetime, the American Dream has been so pervasive in our values, assumptions, and expectations that we have allowed it to be a comfortable, acceptable, welcome part of Christianity.

The American dream: Upward mobility. Abundance. Living the good life.

Back in my twenties, those were my goals. I admit it. In my circles, including my church circles, that was the thing to do—that was the way we lived.

Like I said in “I was chasing the American Dream,” when I was a teenager and a young wife and mother, I never questioned those goals. I never questioned my motives for pursuing them.

What a shock it would have been for me if, back then, I had read David Wilkinson’s words in The Prayer of Jabez: “Do we really understand how far the American Dream is from God’s dream for us? We’re steeped in a culture that worships freedom, independence, personal rights, and the pursuit of pleasure.” 

Christianity and the American dream clash when our motives for getting more money and possessions are to show off our success, to impress others with our lifestyles, to use our status as a way to compete or exert power, or to pursue self-indulgence and self-gratification.

My husband, Dave, sensed I planned to pursue that kind of American dream, and I thank God for giving me a thinking, questioning man. Dave didn’t want that lifestyle for our young family.

This topic is not easily covered in one short blog post, but I’ll highlight Bible verses that spoke to my husband’s heart back in our pre-Lomalinda days (and later, spoke to my heart, and still do):

Jesus said: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothes? . . . Do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:25-33, NIV).

The New Living Translation words verse 33 this way: “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

Eventually I realized I needed to look at the American dream in a new way, the better way. Dear Chuck Swindoll—my life and faith would be so different without him!—says, “If I am to seek first in my life God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, then whatever else I do ought to relate to that goal . . . . Every decision I make ought to be filtered through the Matthew 6:33 filter: where I put my money, where and how I spend my time, what I buy, what I sell, what I give away.” (Dear Graduate: Letters of Wisdom from Charles R. Swindoll )

Here’s another of Jesus’ teachings: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. . . . No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:10-21, 24 NIV).

Or, the New Living Translation words verse 24 this way: “No one can serve two masters. . . . You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

The New Century Version words verse 24 this way: “You cannot serve both God and worldly riches.”

Each person and family must decide how to apply those teachings of Jesus.

My husband and God eventually persuaded me to let go of chasing after that American dream.

Instead, our family took a big pay cut and moved to Lomalinda—no medical insurance, no retirement plan. We had to believe God would give us everything we needed—and He did! (And there’s a huge difference between what a person needs and wants.)

I recommend the following for more on this topic:

Priorities

The Christian Worldview and the American Dream

Should Christians Pursue the American Dream?

Haggai, Chapter 1, in the Old Testament (Caught Up With Taking Care of Our Own Houses) 

Should Christians Strive for the ‘American Dream’?