The yoke of freedom

This morning I'm reflecting on the sort of relationship God wants to have with us as his people, and how we often say we want that, but at the same time fail to give him control for one reason or another. Jesus gave an amazing offer to us when he said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” ‭‭(Matthew‬ ‭11:28‭-‬30‬ ‭NIV‬‬).

First of all, does everyone even know what a yoke is? In Jesus time people would have understood this reference, but in case you don't know, "a yoke is a wooden crosspiece fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to a plow or cart. A yoke allows two animals to share a load and pull together." It can also imply the carrying of a burden depending on how it is used. One major problem many of us face is that we fail to realize that we are weary and burdened, therefore we fail to see how we are in need of a relationship with God and that what he offers us is far better than what the world does. If we look at Jesus' words closely here, he does not offer to completely remove the yoke we are attached to, rather, he offers to replace it with HIS yoke. This seems to imply we are all yoked to something. At first glance this could be easy to shrug off and say whatever, but if we really look, I wonder how many things we are in fact doing this with. I think that we often look to those things for purpose and identity, rather than to God our creator, and this leaves us controlled and in a sense enslaved by these things rather than being able to do them in true freedom. How many of us are yoked to our career or jobs, or our relationships, or our family, or addictions? The list goes on and on and on. We all have a natural void inside of us that we need to fill with something, and we look to those things we fill it with to give us a sense of purpose and meaning. I assure you, if you aren't yoked to Jesus, you are yoked to something else.

Jesus offers us true freedom, a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light. How do we take him up on this offer of freedom? It starts with us realizing that we are in fact weary from carrying the burdens of the world, and we need to remove the yoke we have taken on ourselves and allow Jesus to replace it with his. Jesus never said that it was an easy life to follow him, which is why we are told to take up our cross and follow him. Compared to the burdens of the world though, it is extremely light and easy, and we have a savior who comes alongside and is in fact yoked together with us and helps to carry that load.

Reflections on Martin Luther King Jr, the Christian minister

Martin Luther King Jr, obviously well known for his civil rights activism here in the US, but perhaps decreasingly known for his pastoral role as a Christian minister. An article published online by PBS in 2006 said this, "The role of pastor may be one of the most overlooked sides of Martin Luther King Jr. but it was one of the most important aspects of who he was." His Christian faith is what was at the core of everything else he did, preaching biblical love as Christ has for us, rather than violence, to inspire social change.

I was recently introduced to a sermon MLK did several versions of, where he drafted an imaginary letter in the style of one of Paul's letters in the New Testament, addressed to American Christians. The entire sermon is very good and thought provoking, and even today, over 60 years later, still feels very relevant to us in our current day here in America. I'd like to share just a couple sections that struck me the most personally:

"I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unchristian world. This is what I had to do. This is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such principle as this: “Everybody is doing it, so it must be all right.” Morality is merely group consensus. In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup Poll of the majority opinion, and how many are giving their ultimate allegiance to this way.

But American Christians, I must say to you, as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Or as I said to the Philippian Christians, “Ye are a colony of heaven.” This means that although you live in the colony of time your ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity. You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity, both in heaven and earth. Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to the nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God's will, it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory, evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God."

Reference:

MLK Jr Sermon Transcript

God revealed in nature

I believe that nature is one of the biggest proofs of God. Sure, you can also take the opposite view and say it's random, but I think creation speaks for itself. Paul also made this declaration in Romans, "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse," (Romans 1:20 NIV).

The more science moves ahead and we get more and more data, it only serves to reinforce my faith that none of this happened just by chance. The sheer complexity of all life is just astounding. It is remarkable to consider the odds of things just lining up randomly to not just create one type of life, but an entire Earth full of it. When I ponder these things, it helps remind me of how great our God is. There is nothing too great or too small for him. He can handle whatever we bring before him, whatever load we are carrying. For the God who created everything also created you and I, "‭‭For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb," (Psalms‬ ‭139:13‭ ‭NIV‬‬). No matter what you believe about yourself or what you are going through, God loves you and he has a plan and purpose for your life.

Christmas reflections 2023

Merry Christmas everyone. With today being the day set aside to recognize the birth of Jesus into our world, I think it is worth pausing to reflect on a few things. In the old testament, Isaiah 7:14 prophesied how Jesus would be immaculately conceived and born, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." It is generally thought the book of Isaiah was written between 500-700 years before Christ. In Matthew's Gospel in the new testament, after describing the circumstances surrounding Christ's conception and birth, he made this connection to Isaiah in Matthew 1:22-23: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)." The bible is very clear about who Jesus is, he is the son of God born into our world as a human being, fully God and fully human, born to save humanity from it's sin and brokenness. The well known verse John 3:16 summarizes this well, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

My question for us to ponder is, who do we believe that Jesus is? In my opinion, the question is not whether Jesus actually existed, but who do we accept him to be, based on the claims that he made? Outside of the bible, there are historical records of Jesus being a man that existed. In an article by History . com, they said "Within a few decades of his lifetime, Jesus was mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians in passages that corroborate portions of the New Testament that describe the life and death of Jesus." In my opinion, to deny that Jesus was a real person who actually lived would be a pretty ignorant viewpoint to carry given biblical and non-biblical sources we have that help to validate his existence.

So given that Jesus was a person and a historical figure, what do we do with his claims, and how does that impact our lives? Given that Jesus was a real person, I think it follows that it is worth considering what the bible has to say about him. Jesus brought claims and teachings that would completely change the world. He is arguably the most influential person that ever walked upon the Earth. Many have set out to discredit or persecute Jesus, only to have their lives radically changed when they actually experience him and his teachings firsthand. Jesus did not beat around the bush about who he was and what he came to do. In John 14:6 Jesus stated: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." He made an exclusive claim that he was the only way to God, which is one of the main reasons the religious leaders of his time hated him and plotted to kill him. A person who made the claims that Jesus did should not be dismissed easily. He is either telling the truth (and if that is the case then this has eternal consequences for every one of us), or lying in a way that no normal person would.

CS Lewis once said in his book Mere Christianity: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

So what do you think about Jesus, who do you accept him to be? Do you base your opinions only on things you have heard about him, or perhaps based on what you have seen in people who have represented him poorly? There is simply too much at stake here to not do the research ourselves. People are flawed by nature, no one except Jesus is perfect and even the best of us will get it wrong from time to time. Looking at people is not the same as "...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith," (Hebrews 12:2). As Christians, we are called to "...let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven," (Matthew 5:16), but we screw up and paint the wrong picture of who Jesus is sometimes. If you've never actually looked at Jesus himself before, I encourage you to do your own investigation and look at the evidence. If you don't think he is who he said he was, look deeper and ask yourself why? Ravi Zacharias once said, "A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God." This is why Jesus said in Matthew 5:3 that "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Those who are humble and low in spirit, those whom this world has left broken, poor and destitute, it is they who know they have nothing to offer God and see in themselves their complete need for him as their savior. Christmas is the designated time of year where we reflect on the fact that God has provided us with that gift already, but the choice is ours if we will accept it.

The Lord is our strength

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him."

Psalms‬ ‭28:7‬ ‭NIV‬

This verse struck me as so profound this morning. It is so simple, yet there is so much depth contained in this one verse. If we hold this verse up as a mirror to our own heart, I wonder what we see? I think it's so easy to say that God is our strength. You can put that on like a bumper sticker and say it all day, but how do we actually apply it to our lives? If our heart truly trusts him, how do we respond when our plans fall apart when life happens? Do we trust there is a reason when our prayers go unanswered or the trials of life come knocking on our door, even though we don't know what that reason is? No matter how things happen in our lives, does our heart leap for joy at his presence and at what he has done for us, and at what it has cost him? The proof is in the fruit that shows up in our lives, not just by the words we say.

I have heard it said that happiness is not guaranteed in this world, but joy, that is a choice we make. Let us be joyful at what our God has done for us and how he has shown his immeasurable love for us through his son Jesus Christ. Let us praise him with the song of our life. ❤️

Thoughts on backsliding in our faith

There is a phenomenon that I have witnessed in many people who have come to faith in Jesus Christ, who over time seem to lose their forward momentum and relinquish the power and authority we have in him and return to old ways of living again. In full honesty, this was my own experience for many years of my adult life. What I ponder now is, what causes this? Knowing this is a question with many possible answers, I will here only discuss what I can personally attest to, which I do believe to be very common in our world.

I would submit to you that perhaps this "backsliding" has a lot to do with pain. I would say that this pain is not just physical, but also includes (perhaps more often) emotional pain and trauma. I would also add that this would not just be the painful things themselves that we have endured, but rather what we think and believe about those events, and how we manage the emotions that go along with them. I believe the problem for us arises when we have a lack of trust in Jesus to handle these highly guarded areas of our heart, often due to issues we have with trust based on our prior experiences. I believe that God has designed our minds in a way that allow defenses to be put into place to help us to survive those situations when they happened. Although a defense we may have developed as a child in reaction to a painful event certainly had a purpose at the time (when we lacked skills and resources to cope in a healthier way), these defenses often do not serve us well as adults and can cause lots of problems in our lives.

I also recognize that as human beings, especially in our modern Western culture, that we have a nature bent towards comfort and a tendency to try and avoid pain at all costs. This seems to me in a way by design, but what if our cultural view on pain is of great detriment to our minds and spirits as well? What if, the pain we experience when feeling negative emotions is actually by design too, intending to point us in the direction of where the source problem is that needs to be addressed? I would also submit that not all cultures have viewed pain in the way our modern one does, as something to be avoided at all costs, embracing a very individualistic view of suffering.

What if we can begin to view pain and suffering as a way in which God reveals to us the things within ourselves that need to be further refined, the things that ultimately keep us from experiencing his love in full measure, what would happen then? What if, when confronted by the emotional pain of our past, instead of choosing to numb out with alcohol, drugs, medication, food, shopping addictions, workaholism, and a long list of other things, what if we chose to face those things head on and invite the Lord to help us to see what defenses we are acting out of and to show us his truth in those areas? How would that change our hearts towards ourselves, those around us, and especially the Lord himself?

Jesus did not ever beat around the bush about pain and suffering, he was very clear that those who follow him will face many challenges and hardships, but the picture he paints is clear, he walks through it with us, and there is renewed life on the other side of the pain. It is therefore my conclusion that a very common cause of this "backsliding," is really caused by our desire to avoid pain and suffering at the end of the day. When Jesus calls us to follow him, there is to be a dying of our old self to make room for who God is calling us to be in him. Paul said "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here," (2 Corinthians 5:17).

I will admit that when I first became a Christian years ago, I think I subconsciously adopted a common way of thinking in our Western Christian culture that indirectly sends a message that when we accept Jesus all the painful things of our past should be gone! Right? I'm afraid that's just not what I see in scripture. When "...Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," (Matthew 16:24 ESV) I don't see a picture of an easy life at all. I believe this verse is describing the process of sanctification that we are all called to go through when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior. This involves self sacrifice, the putting aside of our own ambitions for the sake of becoming holy for God's purposes. Knowing how pain and trauma have affected my own life, and my relationship with the Lord, I can say that without facing those things I could not continue to grow in my relationship with him. How could I if I choose to keep building walls that keep him out? I'll offer that most of us probably don't build walls to directly keep out the Lord, but walls are walls, they are intended to block something from getting in or out. If He has called us to "...be transformed by the renewing of your mind," (Romans 12:2 NIV) I just don't see how this is possible if we aren't giving him access to the darkest recesses of who we are, past and present. If we are self medicating with substances or activities or whatever, then we are not truly relying on God fully, we are building walls and compartments and telling him that he doesn't get to go in there. We can do this, it's our choice, but I believe it is a way to either stop growing in our faith, or to lose it altogether. We need to believe that we can trust Jesus, he is safe, and we can trust him with the most painful events of our lives.

CrossCounsel LWC Orientation Testimony

I was given an opportunity to share my personal testimony and experience with CrossCounsel International Ministries at an orientation event held at Living Water Church, and I was honored to be part of the experience. Below is the transcript of my testimony that I shared at the event:

 Shane Buol - CrossCounsel LWC Orientation Testimony

Hi my name is Shane and I’ve been coming to CrossCounsel since August of this year, but first I want to tell you about myself and what brought me here.

I had a rocky start to life, having young parents who both came from broken homes. I experienced a lot of dysfunction stemming from drug and alcohol abuse in my home, sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbor boy, and many other things. As a young man I started using drugs to escape my reality. Eventually, my parents quit drinking and became Christians, which led to me placing my faith in Jesus as well, although the core issues of my past had at this point still gone unaddressed. During my senior year of high school I was listening to some dark heavy metal music that triggered memories of the sexual abuse from my childhood and I suddenly realized that what happened to me was not normal, and I sank into a dark depression. After confiding in a friend that I was thinking about committing suicide, he called my parents and told them he was worried about me. My parents got me into counseling right away, which was my first experience in the chair. Although that method of counseling didn’t address the core feelings I had buried inside, it did provide a way for me to reframe the past and I was able to move forward without wanting to end my life.

As an adult I found myself struggling with substance abuse in various forms. As time went on, I began to realize that this was not a sustainable pattern. In 2018, I had been working long hours at my job, and my mother-in-law passed away from cancer. These events triggered what I consider some form of a mental breakdown, and my emotional walls began to crumble. I knew I needed help, so I set out to find a place that could help me sort through my issues. The first place used traditional talk therapy, and it did help in that it provided a safe space to share some of the things I kept closely guarded, but it still did not address the core issues inside. I eventually stopped going and found myself in the same cycles as before. I found another place that used more advanced methods of therapy, and I saw some wins there. That was the first time I had experience with going back to childhood memories and allowing myself to feel them. I realized for the first time how significant several of those events were and how they shaped my behavior up to that point. After going through the MELT process later with CrossCounsel, I can now see that the insights I had experienced at that place fell in line with the first half of the MELT process (M & E). It didn’t address the false beliefs I had internalized though, so I again found myself repeating cycles of past behaviors.

Around this time, I had begun to hear about CrossCounsel through the Men of Fire group at Living Water. I began listening to the podcasts regularly and couldn’t deny the power of the testimonies I would hear on there. After experiencing a bout of anxiety on a recent camping trip, I knew I had more work to do. This time, I set up my first session with CrossCounsel. To date, I have seen results in some form during each session, but I had a profound moment of truth I experienced in my most recent session just a few weeks ago.

That session was inspired by a situation that happened between my wife and I, where I reacted in my opinion, like an immature little boy. I came into my session wanting to dig at whatever was underneath this event, and I went to 4 or 5 memories from my childhood. Not long after that, I experienced a peace and warmth that came over me and I just started crying. It was as if the Lord drew a line through all of those memories and showed me that I had felt unsafe in all of them. After that, I felt the Lord tell me, “I am safe.” The effect this had on me was immediate. Although I had always known in my head that Jesus was safe, I knew that my heart just believed it for the first time. It felt like a weight had been lifted off of me. When I got home I shared my experience with my wife and my two older kids, explaining how the past memories connected with the present. As the next few weeks unfolded, I noticed that I didn’t feel the desire to guard my heart like I used to. I also wanted to share my experience with as many people as I could, because it was so powerful to me. I shared my story with several guys at Men of Fire, with some friends, and even with my Dad, who was able to confirm one of the memories and offer his own perspective on it. All of these experiences felt like a domino effect to me, like God was showing me how when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and honest, he will use our pain and bring something good from it. I think it was no coincidence that at this same time I was reading through Ezekiel 37, which is about his vision of the valley of dry bones. It was as if He was showing me that it’s not enough to get the skeletons out of the closet, He wants to put tendons and flesh on them and put them to use. He wants to breathe life into the dark recesses of our mind, so we can experience His love in full measure.