Still loved by the Father… It has been an interesting journey, and one I am not really sure how to explain. Somehow, I think this message is important. I have no expectation of outcome, and that is freeing. But i feel compelled to write nonetheless. The desire for identity has consumed me. What will my legacy be, what will the impact of my life be? How will I affect the world? I needed to be important, valued, noticed. That seems so natural, and widespread as a desire. Born to shine, and all that. More recently, I have been considering where the inner drive for recognition comes from, and how it is managed, (if it’s not to be overcome). I think of the great spiritual ones among us and they seem to be unselfconscious. Unaware really, of how they are seen, or even if. Not so with me. From daily tasks, to the clothes I put on, being noticed, valued and liked/respected, are part of my skin, so to speak. Over the past several years I have come to believe more fully in my incompetence. A friend suggested it and I will be grateful forever for his insight. What if I am incompetent? What if I am insignificant? Shudder. I would not then be valuable, useful, admired. I would not be lovable. For love stems from our performance. Do well and you will be approved of. Do better than well and your name will be up in lights. Or so I have internally believed. But what if that is a lie. A very big lie. One that many well-intentioned parents or preachers have passed along. Often times inadvertently. If it is a lie, that love is tied to behavior, then I must shed the hold of the lie on my life. What if my performance could not determine my worth? What if my performance were totally unrelated to my worth? Some cannot think such a thought. Certainly, every where we go we see that performance and value go hand in hand. It’s pushed in media, sports, education, and employment. It is so ingrained in the culture that movement from it is in itself an opportunity to be rejected. It is in the church as well. And while it is the way of the world, I would submit it is not the way of the cross. There, an entirely different value is demonstrated. The cross has no need to be noticed, it is the anti-performance. In fact, by the standard of the world’s system, Jesus was a total failure. Think with me about this: If my value cannot be undone because of my performance, or rather, I cannot perform in any way to create value, there is an opportunity to live a different kind of life. A life that does not know the fear of rejection, one that does not know the fear of failure. This is a very new idea for me. Here is how I am beginning to see it: How I am measured by others cannot trump how I measure myself. If I measure myself by other’s assessment, I am a prisoner of their values. If I can come to the place where I have no interest in their value system, I can be free of the measures of the world. What does that mean? Start with this idea. Freedom begins when you accept that You are incompetent. By that I mean, you alone can produce nothing of value. The good your life appears to create is either an illusion or the work of a force outside yourself. It is not you. You can do nothing. Truly. Believe this and become free. Every breath you breathe is sourced outside yourself. Every thought is sponsored. The brain waves are permitted to flow by a regulator whose power to stop you is sovereign. You cannot persuade, alter, choose or change anything without help. You bring nothing to the table. Believe this, deep within your soul, and something wonderful happens. You can stop trying. You can stop striving. You are free to merely BE. In that state of simplicity, you are loved. Since you can’t change the world, stop trying to. You will not affect the culture, so give it a rest. You do not have the power to make one hair of your head (naturally J) black or white. You can let go of you anxiety on that one too. Does that sound depressing? NO. To the contrary. Once I stop trying to affect the world around me, my kids, my spouse, my school, I can let someone who has the power to change the world have at it. He is free to do in the world what He desires. I can stop trying to bang my head against the wall, doing what I can/ought/should to no avail. What’s neat about that is this: He lets me participate in what He is up to. I get to see Him change the world as I wander through it. He brings love to unlovable people. He brings hope to the desperate and strung out. He offers help to the hurting and strength to the weak. And He uses my surrendered life to act in this world. It isn’t a puppet on a string, because God is relational, not distant. It is rather, Him infused within my being, acting out His good in the world. Sounds familiar, right. Just do what Jesus would do? No. No. This isn’t imitation, it is incarnation. This is Him actually using your hands and feet, eyes and ears to infiltrate the culture to bring His culture, His kingdom. What is revolutionary for me is the idea that I can be indifferent to my own place in it. I do not need to be seen doing it, because I am not doing it. This is the very crucial difference for me. I am not doing it. When a friend became an agnostic, I tried to talk him out of it. I tried to pray him out of it. I tried to love him out of it. Guess what? I cannot affect change in him. Only God can. For real. All my attempts amounted to no change. A powerful testimony to me. What if I quit trying to do what I cannot do. What if we are incompetent and that is not something we can alter. What if we accept it. Move into freedom. That does not mean we do nothing. That means let Him do what He is doing and get our will out of His way. Life becomes, Father, what now? Father, who now? Father, where now? Indifferent to my significance relative to the outcome because only He can produce change. I don’t ever need to count the people who have come to Christ through my witness. People only come to Christ because Christ draws them. I have no part in it. I do get to let God use me to draw them. But be sure of truth, it is God who is at work. Jesus stated this. The works He did were really the Father’s work’s, the word’s he spoke were really the Father’s words. He didn’t need to check off a box each conversion, saying, I got anther one. He didn’t get any, His Father gave them to him. The Father is doing the work, the Father is loving the world, the Father is moving in the political arena, or the neighborhood group, or the classroom. And truly, there is power when He moves. This is not merely a theoretical discussion. There is a fundamental shift in thought, action and values when we believe this. Consider: when men move, they measure the results: how big is your church? How many conversions have you had? What are the results of your effort? Doesn’t this really boil down to an attempt to document superiority of one over another? Superiority of a method or how committed the people are? Leaders who measure can receive rewards and plaques and acclamation. But this work is accomplished by people who do not believe Jesus when He said, “apart from me you can do nothing”. So we take it on ourselves to do his bidding. Apart from Him. We act in His name. Since when is that what He is about? Lots of people acting? We act loving, but do not love. We act giving, but we do not give. We act kindly, but are not kind. We spend our lives acting! And the world sees right through us. The solution is not to refine our act. That is what many leaders do. They work out in ever greater detail what it means to be “Christlike” and lay that heavy burden on their congregation. The messages are filled with ‘do more’, do better, strive, work harder, see results, measure yourselves by external works of discipline. Wow. So much for “my yoke is easy, my burden is light”. Good Christians are tied up in knots wondering if they are getting it right, doing enough, performing up to God’s, oh so high, expectations. Seems different than His claim that “my joy may be in you and your joy may be made complete”. That phrase by the way comes as Jesus describes what it means to be one with the father, I in Him and He in me, you in Us and Us in you… When He is allowed room to live out through us, we will be like the wind, led by the Spirit to do strange and wonderful things that are outside our personality that are prompted not by our considered intellect, but by the sense of His movement in a direction of His choosing. This is a fundamentally different way to live. This is not a structured life, disciplined into goodness. That was not the life of Jesus. He got up early to pray because He loved the Father, not because He needed to show others how righteous he was. When I love the Father, it becomes immaterial to me whether you know about it or not. What matters is that I let the Father love you through me. I could not see this until I came to believe that I really could not make a difference. That Barry had nothing of value to offer. It’s like Paul identifying that his righteousness is like filthy rags compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. He offered the world intellect, spirituality, and an impassioned desire to destroy the followers of Jesus. Till he left his religious values and became a follower of a new and living Way. One that was not about him. To sum up. What if you were to stop trying to do what you cannot do. What if you stopped trying to be good. What if you stopped trying all together. What if you were willing to surrender to the One who delights to do you good. The one who wants to be in you. Living out through you. Reminding from inside your being that He is at home there, that He likes it there and He is working to remodel you into a place that enables you a full vantage point of the work He is doing. What If He wants to paint the Sistine chapel, and let you sit by and watch, handing Him the brush He needs... why would you pick up your crayons and try to help? Let Him be the Painter. Accept His impeccable workmanship. Let him live through you. Yours, Mr. Stranz | 
