FREEDOM FIGHTERS

God tells us we can hardly think we’re living in obedience to him if we’re not proclaiming freedom to others.
Then, in the New Testament, Jesus comes along, and in his first recorded sermon he declares why his Father had him come to earth: “He has sent me to proclaim freedom.” And all those who follow in the way of Jesus walk this same path. We are to proclaim freedom. Because this is what guerrilla lovers do. We are freedom fighters.

When I think of freedom fighters, I think of my wife, Jennifer. Jennifer knows what it feels like to live in bondage. As a young teenager she started suffering with major depression. It was nearly uninterrupted, unexplainable, massive depression. I met her when she was twenty. Things had gotten so bad that whenever possible she would not get out of bed, trying to sleep her life away rather than experience it.

Now, sixteen years later, not only is Jen free from depression, she has played a significant role in freeing many other women from it as well. So how did she go from being confined behind a seemingly impenetrable wall of despair to helping other women peek through and then break through the walls that held them in?

First, she focused intensely on herself. Now, most everyone I know is focused on themselves, and I think that may be our biggest problem, and it’s the reason I’m writing this book. But Jen focused on herself in a very different way.
Most people are agents for their own happiness. They do what leads to their feeling good. Jen took a very different approach. She became dedicated not to her happiness but to her wholeness. Instead of doing what made her feel good, she began doing what would lead to her being healthy. In fact, most of the actions she took made her feel bad. She sat through hours of painful counseling. She read books that made her feel uncomfortable. She asked people to keep her accountable.

She had spent twenty years digging down into a pit of depression, so getting out of it was not going to happen overnight. It took years. But Jen, though discouraged at times, never gave up. She continued to focus intensely on herself, on her wholeness, on her holiness. She did whatever it took. When she fell down, she got back up and kept walking. What about you? Are you focusing intensely on yourself? Not on your happiness but on your wholeness. Not on what makes you feel good but on what makes you healthy. Most of us live with this delusion that if I do what I want to do now, I will still become a person worth becoming. You won’t.

What we want to do in this moment is rarely what’s best for us. We need to take a longer view of life and to realize that to become someone worth becoming, I probably need to be doing things I don’t want to be doing.

What might that mean for you?
Instead of watching TV tonight, maybe you need to attend that meeting.
Instead of writing another email that glosses over the problems, maybe you need to show up at her house.
Instead of continuing to assume that seminar wouldn’t work for you like it’s worked for them, maybe you need to sign up and take it.
Instead of hoping it won’t happen again, maybe you need to confess your sin so you have a friend making sure it doesn’t happen again.
To become a freedom fighter, you must be free. Again, you can’t give away something you don’t have. So first you need to fight for your own freedom.

Second, Jen focused intensely on other people. One of my favorite people from American history is Harriet Tubman. She was born into slavery and lived in it until 1849 when she took her emancipation into her own hands, escaping north to Philadelphia from a plantation in Maryland. The first thing she did once she escaped was … go back. She returned to Maryland to free her sister and her sister’s family. She returned again to free three of her brothers. Then again to free her parents. She ended up returning on eighteen or nineteen rescue missions, bringing a total of over two hundred people out of slavery. That totally makes her a hero. And in one sense I think it’s amazing that once free, she didn’t decide to just play it safe and enjoy her freedom. But in another sense I think, how could she not return? I mean, if you’ve spent your life in the horrors of slavery and you know that people are still trapped in it, don’t you have to go back?

As soon as Jen began finding freedom from her depression, she started focusing intensely on other people. Every time she heard about some woman who was struggling with hopelessness, she would go back. She returned to teach classes for women in our church on how to find freedom from despair. When she was asked to speak to pastors’ wives at conferences, she shared her story of slavery to depression and showed them the path to emancipation.
It certainly would have been easier for Jen to just enjoy her freedom. It’s never fun to enter into the darkness of another person’s depression. Having to repeatedly go back and relive painful memories is, well, painful. But Jen chose to focus intensely on other people.

Have you made that choice? Maybe you’ve gotten through something and when you did you thought, I am leaving that behind and will never return. And that’s a great way of thinking … for selfish jerks.

If we actually care about people(other than ourselves) we can’t leave our problems behind and never return. If we don’t take the freedom we’ve experienced and try to bring it to others, we are not becoming people worth becoming. What we’re becoming is the center of a very small universe that is not worth living in because we have to live with ourselves in it. If that’s where you’ve been living, it is imperative that you get the heck out of Dodge. And if you’re leaving and wondering where you should go, go back. Return to the people who are struggling with problems you’ve gone through, people in pain you can relate to, people wrestling with issues you’ve dealt with.

The reason we need to do this is simple yet profound. It has nothing to do with our happiness and everything to do with our wholeness. Really, it’s about who we are: freedom fighters.

Guerrilla Lovers (part 3) MERCY-NARIES

When Dawson and my daughter Marissa were young, I desperately wanted to help them understand God’s offer of forgiveness and that Jesus had to suffer so we could be forgiven. So I came up with a crazy idea. I sat the kids down and shared with them that from now on, if one of them did something wrong and deserved a spanking the other could elect to take the spanking. I explained that this is what Jesus did for us. We were guilty, innocent, but he chose to “take our spanking.” (Substitutionary atonement for toddlers!)

They seemed to understand, but no one got in trouble for a long time, so we didn’t have a chance to test out my new system. One day almost a year later we were driving somewhere and the kids were acting up, especially Marissa, and I gave them a warning or two. Then I realized it might be a good chance to remind them of our family’s spanking policy. I explained that if Marissa kept up her bad behavior and it warranted a spanking, Dawson could choose to take the spanking for her. It got quiet in the car for a couple minutes, and then Marissa started whining. I asked why and she said, “Daddyyyyy, when do I get to spank Dawson? I want to spank Dawson!”

Isn’t that funny? Marissa was given a chance to avoid a punishment she deserved, and instead of being grateful, all she wanted was to dole out punishment on someone else. The problem with Marissa was that she wasn’t viewing herself as being guilty and in need of mercy, but instead she put herself in the role of judge. That’s our problem too. The reason we find forgiving so difficult is because we play judge, and so we’re quick to determine guilt and assign penalties, rather than viewing ourselves as in need of mercy. And that makes all the difference.

Did you read the story about Mark Morice? Shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, Mark Morice saw flood victims hanging on to rooftops and clinging to tree branches. He realized that these people were going to die. He noticed an 1.8-foot pleasure boat. He didn’t know it, but the boat belonged to a man named John Lyons. Mark Morice isn’t the kind of guy who steals, but this was a desperate moment that called for desperate measures. Moved by mercy, Morice took the boat and ended up rescuing more than two hundred people with it. Later he passed the boat on to others, who used it to rescue more people. Ultimately the boat was lost. After all the chaos settled down, John Lyons (the boat owner) was looking for the boat, and Mark Morice voluntarily identified himself, explaining that he took the boat and saved all those people in it. John Lyons sued Mark Morice for $12,000.

Why? Because John Lyons put himself in the role of judge rather than viewing himself as someone who needs mercy. If Mark Morice had saved John Lyons or one of his kids that day, I doubt John Lyons would have filed a lawsuit. Why not? Because he would have seen himself as someone in need of mercy. (I have to admit that when I first heard this story, I wanted to find John Lyons and punch him in the throat. Why? Because I put myself in the role of judge. 0 irony, thy sting is great.)
If you’ve been having trouble forgiving, is it because you’re viewing yourself as a judge rather than someone in need of mercy? Are you more focused on trying to punish others than on being grateful that you’ve been forgiven?

The problem is that if we go through life as a judge, unwilling to forgive, we keep ourselves trapped in a cell of our own bitterness. The irony is that we feel like we’re making the other person pay by not forgiving them, but we’re actually the one suffering. Only when we focus on the fact that we were in need of mercy and received forgiveness are we able to offer forgiveness, releasing and hurling away the past and finally freeing ourselves from the cell of our bitterness.

Wouldn’t you like to be a part of a worldwide revolution of love that employs forgiveness as its most powerful weapon? Then who do you need to forgive? To whom could you offer an extraordinary invitation? Who could you kill with kindness?

Guerrilla Lovers (Part 2)

It’s about revolution. It’s about splashing the kingdom of God all around. Generally I’m not one for war imagery and war metaphors, but it’s difficult to ignore the connotation when you’re talking about a “revolution.”

I am not an expert on warfare, but it seems to me there are two basic ways to engage in a modern-day war. One is shock and awe. This is when the balance of power is on your side, so you move in the troops, roll in the tanks, and drop bombs from above. The goal is to rapidly destroy your enemies and force them into quick submission. I wonder if, as Christians, we’ve relied on “shock and awe”, tactics too much. We’ve tried to attract people to Christianity through our big church buildings, slick presentations, cool music, and quality programs.

The other way is guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare is a method employed when you’re outnumbered by the opposing force. Guerrilla warfare relies on intelligence. You must outthink the enemy. It also relies on espionage. You must know your opponents, being able to discern where they are, how they think, and what they’ll do next.

Guerrilla warfare features strategic surprise attacks. You must hit your opponents when they’re not expecting it. These ambushes are usually low-intensity, close-proximity confrontations. You don’t have the firepower to blast away from a distance, so you sneak up close, hit ‘em quick, and get out of there. I admit this metaphor breaks down quickly because those we’re trying to reach are not our opponents or enemies. They are the people Jesus loves, and we’re bringing his love to them. But you get the point. It’s a guerrilla revolution. And it’s a love revolution, so we are to wage guerrilla lovefare. The best way to attract people is through how we live and love. We are guerrilla lovers.

Guerrila Lovers (part 1)

On one occasion Jesus walked into the temple where people were supposed to come near to God but people were in the lobby selling cattle, sheep, and doves at exorbitant prices. They were also unfairly exchanging money, taking advantage of people who had traveled there and would need an animal to sacrifice. Jesus did not promote a peaceful environment or kind business practices. Instead he made a whip and drove the greedy businessmen out of the temple, along with the animals they were selling. Why didn’t Jesus simply provide some teaching on better business practices and explain that it’s possible to be a capitalist and compassionate at the same time? Because he wasn’t Mr. Rogers Jesus. Why did he pull the angry Indiana Jones routine on the merchants in the temple? Because he was a revolutionary leader.

He was a revolutionary leader. You don’t get crucified for being kind. You get crucified for being too radical. And let’s be clear: Jesus’ life wasn’t taken from him because he was too weak to stand up and defend himself. No, he died because he chose to lay down his life. Why? Because it was necessary to advance the revolution. He was strong enough to choose not to defend himself. In fact he was so strong that three days after laying down his life, he defeated death by walking out of his grave.

Because Jesus is a revolutionary, but his was a revolution of love. Revolutions tend to be about changing the power in a certain geographical territory, but the only geography that concerns Jesus is that of a person’s soul. Jesus came to bring a revolution of the heart.