Covid and the Christian, What are we fighting for?
I experienced CHURCH in my room. It was a holy moment as a bold preacher validated the heaviness in my heart from the other side of a screen. I have searched for the words to describe the grief that seems to be settling deep into my soul of late. Is it the continued isolation here in California? Is it the lack of “freedoms” I have so easily assumed? Is it the entitlement from my American privileges or am I just plain tired? The bold preacher spoke to my heart when he suggested perhaps this is not about COVID19 but the bigger story of what was God could be writing in our culture. There are greater purposes He is cultivating.
“We were happy with our ‘gods’. Our entertainment, our hustle, our social interaction, our money, we were happy. And this is shaking us up. Let him rewrite your story. But the story is that perhaps God is re-centering us.”
“What are you so puffed up about? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if all you have is from God, why act as though you are so great, and as though you have accomplished something on your own?” 1 Corinthians 4:7 TLB
Perhaps God is working divine purposes through a pandemic called COVID19. Perhaps his greatest desire is to work deeply in us and through us. Perhaps it is a time for us to turn from an attitude of assumption. To an attitude of gratitude.
My dear fellow Christian, can the church survive if we keep our doors closed? YES of course. It is not our church it’s HIS. The body of Christ has prevailed through much more than this. Of course this is not what we want, not what I want. I miss gathering so badly. I miss worshiping with others in real life. However, the purpose of the church was never to be stuck in a room. Maybe we are to fight for more than an open service or an open beach or whatever your political preferences are. Maybe we can give our selves to the great fight. The fight of faith hope and love. The fight for the other, the hurting, the widow, the orphan. Can we fight to be a community of health and hope standing in humility instead of fear? My dear fellow Christian, can we break our history of being known for what we are against and stand on the scripture–faith, hope and love–this is what we are FOR.
I was made to sit in that moment, behind the front desk, in that chair of obscurity. And it was there where pride was crucified in me. The hidden place is where God revealed more of Himself to me.
So who is anyone to say, “I was made for more,” when it was God Himself who had called me into the hidden place?
Was I made for more when I was having kids—home wiping and cleaning and cooking and crying on wash, rinse and repeat? Was it not enough in that season to care for these precious gifts, birthed in the image of Christ? That mundane is where God met me and let me know my work was not my worth. Should I be robbed of this season by wishing I was in some bigger or better place? Robbed of the very season that He gently spoke to me, “Here. Invest here. Everything else you do will be out of the abundance of this gift.”
I am talking about simply being you. You were created on purpose, and FOR a purpose. But MORE? That is the part we are wise leave to God. My extrinsic drive and hustle so often came from a place of needing “your” approval. It came from a longing for the crowd’s applause.
But I have fallen more in love with God through this process of pain—the pain of the hidden and unseen seasons. I care less and less what “more and more” might mean to you. My loss has created a desperation for more of God that some find weird. Some don’t approve. Few people will allow themselves to truly live for an audience of One. But I have learned to cherish the seasons of hiddenness, because I was never hidden from His view. It was there He had me all to Himself.
Health coaching has been this journey for me. There have been moments when I was embarrassed to admit what I did for a living. Coaching was never a dream for me. It wasn’t the title or position I ever wanted to pursue. I have at times asked God, “Why? Why so obscure? Why so far outside the way I thought things were supposed to be? Why so often hidden and misunderstood?”
But all my embarrassment revealed is that my highest goal was actually to preserve the image I had tried to hustle for myself. And when it finally dawned on me, this awareness drew me into surrender—a vulnerability to hide myself in God—to exchange my rawness for His strength. He has hidden me in Himself. And in that process, as I have fixed my eyes and my identity in Him, I have grown a for-profit business that advances Kingdom purposes. I never saw that coming.
God was leading me into a next step. I didn’t know it then, but my seasons of stillness were the moments God was doing something very special. He was making something more in me.
Life is seasons. And their beginnings and endings are in the hands of God. When He calls you into hiddenness, hiddenness IS your calling. In that moment, “less” is exactly what’s best for you, not more. He welcomes you into the hidden place with Him—where He can have you all to Himself. And where He can reveal in intricate detail the hustle you may now set down so you may wholeheartedly hold onto more of Him.