Get Real

I’m going to show my age here. How many remember the grade school reading primers “Fun With Dick and Jane”? I remember them so clearly. Everyone, even the pets, looked so pretty.  They talked so nicely to each other. They were so encouraging, “Run Spot run. Look Jane. See Spot? See Spot run!”

No one in my family talked that way. We certainly weren’t as attractive, or nice to each other. Of course, I soon learned about idealism, and illusion. Denial became more to me than a river in Egypt, but for a year or so, I remember very unsettling feelings, that I now know as isolation and longing.  I longed for a Dick and Jane life. Surely, my family must be the only one who did not have that. I was absolutely sure that school was a place where people who knew everything would teach me everything I needed to know, so I felt very quickly that something wasn’t quite right with me.

Church of my childhood was a very loving and nurturing environment where I learned about Jesus and His love for me. It took years and years for me to figure out that church life also had very little to do with the real life of most of the people who attended regularly.

Church is where we go to learn about The Bible, God and Jesus Christ, but we can find ourselves stuck in a ‘Dick and Jane’ spirit world where we are to be victorious over sin, walk in Divine health, have the Peace that passes understanding, be delivered from our bondages, walk in love, die to our flesh, have faith, and live to worship God. We keep going every Sunday because we believe church is the place where believers who know how to do all those things will teach the rest of us how to do it too.

In grade school, I realized soon enough there was no Dick and Jane world and opened my mind to learn that life is a very messy and varied experience. As I embraced the Living Christ for myself, I became more spiritually honest with myself and God. As my education became more my own choices, my journey with Jesus became more mine as well.

I still went to church. I enjoyed church. However, my journey with The Lord  did not mirror what I heard on the pew. There, I heard wonderful caring people, who love The Lord, shuffle the Word of God as if they were fine tuning a recipe. “If you do this, and then this, and then add this-then you will find healing, deliverance, peace….”  Walking out my life with Jesus, I found myself looking at my mess, saying in my head,  “hummmmm, nope, no healing; no deliverance; no peace; no victory; no love; no fruit.”   I’d sigh. Okay, let’s try it again, if I do this, then this, then that- it’ll work.  Oh boy! Things are looking good.  I found the answer this time, but then.... nope, no victory.  “God, what am I doing wrong?”

The saddest part of the week was coming back to church. After having my butt kicked I would hear me pretend that I was eating cake on a regular basis.  Oh, I did have times that were supernaturally blessed, and I would be eager to share my own cake recipe and how it turned out, but mostly I lied by omission, by simply not telling others the truth of my mostly cake-less life.

At least half of the people sitting in a pew today are defeated in some Spiritual way, are in bondage somehow, and are desperately in need of something they can’t seem to get a hold of.

We believe what The Bible says, and it feels so good to be with others who believe it too; who build up each other’s confidence and share the how-tos they’ve learned and hold up the victory cake they are enjoying. It feels so good we don’t want to spoil it by talking about our own failures in the spiritual kitchen. We keep that to ourselves, keep it from our families and friends, and sometimes we think we keep it from God.

And I must say, we often keep quiet with good cause.  If people knew the truth, some might think we aren’t really saved or they might unsympathetically share in helpful tones how they put their cake ingredients together and got a blue ribbon testimony while we feel that familiar unsettling sense of isolation creeping over our shoulders.

Let’s take our isolation a step further.  Say, we are doing something wrong.  Well, there’s your answer!  God certainly can’t bless you or use you when you’re not obedient! Or maybe we share something that God showed us, or taught us in our failure, but it doesn’t sound at all like what we usually hear in church. ‘Uh huh, that’s wonderful’, we may hear, but the blue ribbon bakers quickly go back to their celebration conversation.

How many of us feel just as “out of place” in church as an unsaved person might sometimes?  We all have times when healing or prosperity is being taught as a Spiritual Truth, complete with how-tos and accompanying Scriptures, while there we sit, sick and suffering. We’re hearing success is a matter of our faith, and yet we think we have faith, or we thought until Sunday we had faith.

We might be hearing a message on sin that includes statements like, “When we accept Jesus, He comes into our hearts and changes us. You just won’t want to do the same things you wanted to do before.”  And there we sit, still lustin’, still coveting, still being unfaithful to our spouse, or having sex outside of marriage, or smokin’ dope, or goin’ to the bar and unwinding with a few beers too many.  Maybe, we aren’t doing it; maybe we’re just wantin’ to real bad.  Or maybe we don’t do it as much as we used to, but we’re a far cry from “just not wanting to do the same things you wanted to do before”.

Have you ever been sitting on a church pew and felt like you were in Spiritual exile?  Exile is defined as the state or a period of forced or voluntary absence from one's country or home. Do you ever shut down, go into emotional neutral, as you sit and hear preaching or teaching that seems so far, far away from your experience? We can sometimes leave church feeling farther from Jesus than when we walked through the door. 

Some of us are strong enough to keep trying to get it right, to keep working on that cake recipe, but I know the Truth.  We all feel like exiles sometimes.  We all lie about our lack of Spiritual victory.  We all keep our deepest needs to ourselves.  And we all have times we cry and mourn, or scream and holler because it just ain’t workin’ for us and we don’t understand why.

My friends, I have learned to live and get fat off of the shabbiest looking cakes you’ve ever seen. They won’t win any blue ribbons, and I can’t give you a tidy little index card with perfect instructions to take home and follow, but I can tell you how I found the Jesus who loves to bake with me and eats any old cake I make, laughing and crying along side me. I found the Jesus who sits companionably beside me while I just make a horrible mess in the kitchen. He actually encourages me to sit back and rest while He feeds me cake that He made just for me, and teaches me things I never learned in Sunday School.