Summer Rituals, Drunkenness, and Blessed Self-Forgetfulness

I’m down in Myrtle Beach, SC for CO’s Summer Training Project (STP, formerly called beach project).  This is my fifth summer project and has become a rhythm of my life that I look forward to year after year.  Living with 120 college students who want to grow in their faith is a dream come true! (check out the STP blog)

Summer, the beach, community living can look very different though – here’s an article that caught my eye in the NY Times: “Summer Rituals – House Share: Where the Party is Perpetual.”  It’s about a group of 20-something (mostly) professionals who move into a house on the jersey shore and party all summer.  6 guys live there year round and they squeeze in 8 girls for the summer.   House members drink the entire summer, and maybe surf a bit too.  It’s an interesting read and includes little interviews with the residents.  One of the girls at the house explained it this way – “I work hard, I work a lot, and I need a place to unwind for the summer.”

The article got me thinking about fun and drunkenness, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.  We have so much fun here at STP.  One of our staff guys said somewhat seriously, after a dance/ game time at our Monday night meeting – “there is a fine line between being a Christian and being drunk.”  What he’s getting at, I think, is the freedom so many of our students have to be goofy, have fun, and at times make a fool of themselves.  (Check out our blog soon for examples of this – a few nights ago we had the worlds best social that involved building boats that had to float the length of the hotel pool while re-enacting a given “boat” theme.)

For many people the desire “let it all go” is a key motivation for getting drunk and is why getting drunk can be so fun – for a time you lose your self-consciousness, you’re often more personable, more free in interacting with others, and the cares of the world just don’t seem so pressing.   But being drunk never lasts and over time works less and less well at “freeing you from yourself.”

Tim Keller has a great sermon on this called “Blessed Self-Forgetfulness.”  As we grow in Christ, we grow to think of ourselves less and less, be less enslaved to protecting our image, less concerned over what others are doing and how we can one-up them.  Maybe that’s part of the reason I love the STP community so much – there’s a sober reality of our sinfulness, our constant need for Jesus Christ, and the great promise we have that He will bring us to completion (Phil. 1:6).  These eternal truths anchor restless souls, allowing us to forget ourselves and enjoy life and people, and all that God made.

Worshipfully Sad

This time of year is a time of transition for every student.  And if you’re in college ministry your life never ceases to run on the school calendar, so every May is full of goodbyes, “last times,” evaluation of the year, and summer preparation.

This year the goodbyes have been more pronounced and feel especially sad.  I’m saying goodbye to 2 of my closest friends on the staff team, Karyn Tomlinson and Brittany Hayes.  And I’m saying goodbye to an amazing group of senior girls that I’ve been with for the last two years – here’s a picture of us from tonight:

These goodbyes are sweet things!  It’s good for campus outreach staff and graduating students to go out into the world.  That’s our vision – to build laborers on the campus for the lost world.  It would be weird and ingrown if everyone always stuck around.

But there remains a weird uncomfortableness with transition.  A lot of these feelings of sadness are intensified for me personally because I’m very aware that this wonderful life I have here in MN with college students is not going to last forever.  Next year, Lord-willing, I’ll be transitioning too – settling down to a new stage of life and ministry in Thailand (I’ll blog about that some other day ).

As I’ve reflected I’ve thought about these realities:

1. Life on earth is always changing.  Even for the rare case of those who live for a lifetime in a small town, they’re still going to experience changing friendships, death, births, marriages.

2. Life on earth for followers of Jesus Christ is particularly transitory.  Hebrews 11 tells us that one of the marks of faith is living as an exile and stranger on the earth.  Jesus commands us to go and make disciples of all nations.  If we live with a desire to share the Gospel and if we live like heaven is our home then moving and forming new relationships becomes normal.

3. But it’s ok to recognize that the constant coming and going of Christian community does feel unnatural because we’re fashioned for eternity.  In heaven there will no more goodbyes.  That’s a sweet thought.

So as all the pacts are made to regroup throughout our lives (both the single staff girls and the senior girls discipleship group have already been planning ways to coordinate reunions… and we all keep joking that if I am in Thailand, Hawaii will serve as a perfect halfway point ), our ultimate hope isn’t in seeing each other on earth, or even living in the same city (or the same house like many of us do right now).  None of us knows what the future holds, but the one thing we can all say with confidence – we have eternity in heaven together awaiting us.  And there we will see our Savior not dimly, but face to face and worship him together. Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.

Laugh Attack

Do you ever just start laughing about the dumbest stuff? I just got an abdominal workout laughing about the US Postal Service with Kristina (a NWC student I disciple).

It all started with an offhand comment that the USPS is suspending Saturday service and progressed from there. Here’s the topics we covered that were hilarious to us at the time.
- Post Offices are always ghetto
- Postal workers usually are old and slow
- Fed/Ex Kinkos is always clean and efficient
- What if mail was like our garbage and everyone had their own company?
- And then there would be the really bad post offices in poorer areas and these plush ones in the suburbs but they’re all essentially doing the same thing.
- And for the financially strapped you would chose the cheapest, and by extension slowest and least reliable company, but hey at least you even have mail service!
- What if mail became like health care and some people were so poor they they were like “I don’t really have a mailing address because I don’t have postal service”
- And then what if politicians ran on agendas of mail service as a right for all Americans and passed bills requiring mail service?

Then there was a pause in our laughter because we needed to breathe and cough. But wait, we kept going:

- Big stamps are funny – like the last time I went to buy stamps for supporter newsletters and thank yous I thought – “I don’t want those boring freedom bell stamps; sure I’ll be all creative and take the modern art stamps” which then resulted in stamps that were so big they were covering up the addresses on my little thank you cards
- who buys collectors stamps anyway?

I’m well aware that none of these thoughts is especially humorous… or even remotely humorous. But just trust me, 11pm, in the McDonalds parking lot, attempting to eat dollar cones… they just are funny.

Forgetting Not His Benefits

It’s been a while since I last posted – between weddings, birthdays, retreats, my life’s been wonderfully busy!

Through all these things I’ve felt a fresh since of thankfulness for God’s goodness to me.  He could have just saved me from my sin and left it a that, but He’s heaped blessing upon me:

A great group of single staff girls to work with – we’re a diverse group, who probably wouldn’t have met in high school had we gone to the same school (the nerd, the athlete, the party girl, the artist) but they’ve become some of of my closest friends.  They push me towards Christ and help me have a lot of fun!

A great house of women to live with who throw fun birthday cookouts:

And an amazing job!  I just spent the weekend with 50 college students who want to intentionally give their lives to making Jesus Christ known and helping others grow in Him:

“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

~ Psalm 103:1-5

This song has been on my mind:

Food Ruts

Do you have certain foods that you go back to over and over?

Lately my favorite lunch is a BLT.  It used to be a veggie omelet (eggs are so cheap and throw in some veggies and eat with toast – a filling, nutritional, quick meal)  Back to the new BLT craze – my BLT’s are more like a BST because I use spinach.  Then, instead of mayo I use hummus.  Recently I discovered Moroccan hummus (nothing too special – just from Super Target) which is sweeter with a kick (with honey, coriander, and cardamon).

And my favorite healthy snack is edamame (soybeans) -which you can just buy in the frozen foods section and steam in the microwave.   They’re a high protein vegetable and fun to eat.

But stovetop popcorn will always be a favorite!  It’s a Wilder house staple; we keep a 50lb Sam’s club bag of kernels in our basement.  It may look like “whoa! is there a secret horse you’re feeding down here with that feed bag?”  No, its just our never ending supply of popcorn kernels.   And when people stop by (which we love and they do often!) we always have a snack on hand.  Our twist: add parmesean cheese to the corn+oil+salt goodness.

What draws you to the Gospel?

When you share your testimony, what do you emphasize?  Most testimonies I hear through friends, students involved in CO, and my own testimony focus on a fresh realization of  our own sin, leading us to realize we’re far off from God, and our need to look outside of ourselves for someone else to pay for those sins.

And I love to hear testimonies like this.  Anything that upholds justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone has my 100% support.  This is Gospel 101 and I will stick to it until my dying day!

I have been thinking lately though how this way of communicating can be a very American way of viewing the Gospel.  Most Americans assume we’re doing ok with God, we’re not “that bad” and we’ll probably go to heaven – this is not an assumption that people from other cultures have!  A lot of evangelistic efforts in America are (or if not, they should be!) centered on exposing the horrible reality of our sinful state and our total inability to fix ourselves apart from God coming in and making us a new person (ie dead people don’t make themselves alive, someone has to come in make them breath again, start their heart).  Americans need to be shocked out of their default “good” standing with God.

It’s interesting to interact with believers from other cultures though.  Often their testimonies have a very different flavor.  For example, while in Thailand several months ago I met these women (Rung, on staff with CO Thailand, with Bow, and Ah):

As I listened to them share how they came to believe in Jesus Christ, they all emphasized experiencing Christians love them and then having a breakthrough in understanding that God, the Creator of the Universe, loved them too and sent Jesus to die for them.  The love of God is really central.  If Americans seem to assume that God automatically loves them (who cares about sin?), most Buhhdist Thai’s assume that God is impersonal, apathetic, and demanding on their lives.   The Biblical concept of a God who wants to be personally involved in our lives and sacrificed His son to make that relationship possible is new – and the best news ever!

And then I started reading this book…

… the story of Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a prominent Hamas (Palestinian freedom/terrorist organization depending on who you talk to) spiritual leader, Israeli spy, and follower of Jesus Christ (if you’re thinking “wait those 3 categories don’t go together’” you’re right they don’t, and that’s why the book creates a stir).  Listen to him share what gripped his heart as he first began to investigate the Bible and Christianity:

“Then I read this “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.’”  That’s it!  I was thunderstruck by these words.  Never before had heard anything like this, but I knew that it was the message I had been searching for all my life.” (p. 122)

For a man who grew up in a brutal world of torture, revenge, and injustice, the concept of forgiveness, love towards enemies felt so new, and God used it to draw him into relationship with Christ.  Only the God of the Bible who forgives people through sacrificing His own son can lead someone to show forgiveness.

I don’t want to create artificial lines of separation – I’m sure American Christians can relate to the testimonies of Thais and Palestinians!  I’m just enjoying the way God uses different “hooks” to draw hearts from all over the globe into relationship with Himself.  I want to see more clearly and more fully the beauty of all that’s offered us in Christ, and then be a better fisher of men!

Do we over-spiritualize decisions?

Being in my 20′s and working in college ministry, I’m constantly having conversations with my peers and girls I disciple about God’s will for their lives, especially around springtime when everyone’s wading through post-graduation options, summer plans, housing:  “Do I go to project this summer?” “Should I date this guy?”  “What about applying for jobs in another city?”  “How do I know for sure if this is right major?”  “Do I sign the lease for this apartment or that one?” and so on….

And it’s a good thing to seek God’s guidance on these decisions!  He is our Heavenly Father who cares about every detail of our lives.  But worldliness is a nasty disease and often sneaks into our thinking – we become obsessively concerned about what we do, where we live, and who we’re with rather than who we are.  Often we become paralyzed because we’re waiting for some sort of emotional or super-natural sign that God wants us to do “x.” (see Kevin deYoung’s Just Do Something)

When we do finally make a decision we can find false comfort in “spiritualizing” them – God’s “calling” me to move and start a new life in this city, I feel “called” to marry this man, I need to change my major because I’ve realized a new “calling” for my life.  This sort of language can be dangerous because it immediately silences others’ counsel (who wants to disagree with God?) and it justifies laziness – it’s easy to cut out prayer, counsel, evaluating and just go with your gut in every decision, and then stick a spiritual “calling” label on it.  Also, for me especially, using spiritualized language about life decisions can be a hidden sort of pride – “I know exactly what God wants…” It’s harder to humbly admit “I’m not positive if this is the right decision, but it makes the most sense and I’m going to move forward…”

Here’s an interesting exert from Anthony Bradley (theologian, professor, World Magazine blogger) on this topic:

“Here’s the bottom line: the Bible simply does not generally use “calling” to justify everyday choices or big-life decisions. There are a few notable exceptions for a few biblical characters. The Bible, however, does not generally use “calling” in terms of vocations, college attendance, numbering children, whom to marry, house purchases, which city or neighborhood to live in, and so on. In fact, the Greek word for “calling” is only used in the New Testament around 11 times and its almost always in reference to a divine callings related to salvation or callings to live a holy life. This is what it means to “live in God’s will.” God’s “will” may have nothing to do with whether or not one should move to Seattle instead of Chicago but it does have something to do with what kind of person one will be in either Seattle or Chicago in whatever job one chooses while living in whatever neighborhood one desires.“

Read the whole article here – it’s short and worth it!