Yesterday I was hanging out with two of my girl friends chatting about life, and we got to talking about how we handle hard times in our lives. We were discussing whether it’s healthy to “indulge” our emotions–just give into what we’re feeling and throw logic to the wind. I think most women have been faced with this temptation.

Well one of my friends was explaining that whenever she gets into a place like that, her husband has trouble relating to her because she gets really “emo” and he doesn’t always know how to respond.

That stopped me. Emo?

I asked her to elaborate. “What do you mean you get emo?” She explained that she just feels really dark and likes to listen to dark music and mull over her feelings and write stories that have kind of twisted endings that reflect the way she’s feeling. Then she looked back at us and asked, “Do you think that’s ok?”

Heck yes I think it’s ok, and let me tell you why. Actually, let me begin with a caveat to this discussion. It’s NOT healthy for us as women to be mastered or controlled by our emotions. Emotion can cloud our vision of truth, and truth is our life saver when we’re drowning in fear, insecurity, doubt and guilt. We need truth, so any idea that we can just be emotional for the sake of it is dangerous. I am not saying that here.

Having said that, here’s why I like my friend’s “emo” confession. Christians have this thing about not experiencing our pain. Or at least not being honest about it. When you ask someone who’s going through a hard time how they’re doing, you’ll rarely get an honest answer like, “You know, it just really sucks right now,” or “I don’t really feel close to God.” Usually you’ll hear something more like, “It’s hard, but I’m trying to lean on God.”

Now leaning on God isn’t bad, but sometimes I wonder if this language is a smoke screen for escape. We’re escaping the voice of God and what He’s trying to say through the pain. We’re “leaning on God” to get us out of the lesson He’s trying to teach us. It’s kind of like people who act, and THEN ask God to bless their actions without having consulted Him in the first place. We just assume God wants us out of the darkness, so that’s what we ask for. But maybe He doesn’t. Maybe He wants us to stay there for awhile.

Sometimes God wants us to contemplate the darkness. I think that’s why he shoves it in Paul’s face in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul complains that he pleaded with God numerous times to remove the thorn in his flesh, but God continually refused. God wanted Paul to face the pain, to face his weakness, understand his fragility. Only then, when his pride and sense of personal strength was removed from his line of vision could he get an unobstructed view of God’s grace.

That’s why Paul then boasts in his weakness. His weakness became the means by which he finally saw God’s glorious strength. Until then, Paul’s “self-esteem” (literally, esteeming of himself) had eclipsed his vision of God. Until then, he didn’t fully understand from what he’d been delivered.

That’s why I encouraged my friend to ponder her darkness. Ponder the things that weigh her down and ask what God is trying to teach her through it. Get emo. Granted, our experience of these emotions should be directed toward God–not feeling for feeling’s sake. And certainly not sadism. But when you’re feeling low or depressed or dark, don’t be ashamed. You are not less of a Christian for struggling with the darkness. The authenticity of your faith is not measured by how cheerful you feel (Remember that the next time someone tells you that Christians should be “known by” how joyful we are. Where does Scripture say that? While joy is a fruit of the Spirit, last I checked we’re to be known by our love, not our can-do attitudes). On the contrary, your pain, or even blah-ness, can be a means for better understanding yourself, and God.

Until we do the hard work of contemplating our weakness, our understanding of it and God’s subsequent grace will be little more than head knowledge. In spite of our intentions, it will be superficial. This superficiality is rampant amidst evangelicalism. It’s not that Christians are intentionally fake. Their intentions are actually quite pure, but they’re just out of touch with their humanity. I personally have trouble relating to people who are chipper all the time because I don’t feel that way myself, and the world feels the same. In fact, I suspect that the world has a better understanding of the darkness of humanity than many Christians. Many individuals in the secular realm aren’t afraid to confront it. That’s why the darkness of the soul has inspired countless songs, paintings and poems.

But that kind of secular reflection can only lead to despair. There is no hope apart from Christ. Which is why we need to enter into that conversation. The world knows how dark humanity can be, so Christian pretensions that “everything is fine with me and Jesus” does not resound with them. We need to admit the depth of the darkness. Only then will we be in a position to point people to the light.

So as weird as it sounds, we need to get emo. We need to study the darkness and understand the brokenness of humanity better than anyone else. We need to confront our depravity and our pain head on. The better we understand it, the more magnificent God’s grace will appear. And perhaps people will then believe us when we claim to have been in darkness, but have seen the light.

The other day I was having lunch with one of my good friends and she asked me how I was doing. I smiled and told her, “I’m actually doing really well! In fact, this is probably the happiest I’ve ever been!” No sooner did those words escape my lips than my smile changed into a frown of concern as I exclaimed, “I hope it’s not because I’m married!”

I know I’m probably the first woman in the history of the world to utter that phrase. But the idea that getting married would suddenly impact my happiness so profoundly is kind of disturbing to me. If you’d read my blog for any amount of time, you know that idea goes against a lot of what I believe theologically. No person or event should satisfy us in the way that God does. If my quality of life is dramatically improved as a result of marriage, is that an indicator of some unseen idol in my life? Have I been deluding myself all along?

Now obviously it’s a good thing to be married. And this should be a happy time in my life. I should be living it up, as a number of my single friends have reminded me. But in all honesty as much as I do love being married, I don’t think that’s the ultimate source of my extreme happiness. The reason things have been so good lately is that right about the time I got married, I also quit almost everything I was involved with.

Ever since I was in high school I have been over-committed. I’ve been leading too many things for way too long, and I literally haven’t taken a season for myself in 10 years. I think it all culminated this past year when I was a campus minister leading two small groups in 2 different cities and planning a wedding. I was pouring myself out without allowing any time to fill myself up, and I hit a wall. If my life was a line graph, you would have seen a steady decline of spiritual output in 2008-2009, which ultimately ended in a crash. It’s like my spiritual life was mirroring the economy.

So I decided it was time to do some pruning. I quite my job, quit leading my small groups, quit discipling, quit everything. I started from square one. I made up my mind to have very few commitments, so I joined a small group, took on a less intense servant role at my church, and most importantly carved out a very strict Sabbath.

And let me tell you, it has been awesome. The last several years of my life have been defined by a kind of spiritual winter. It’s not that I couldn’t ever feel God, but I wasn’t really growing either. I felt dormant. This is the first time in years that I’ve begun to see the first little signs of spring popping up. I see touches of green everywhere.

It’s funny because this is so unlike me. I am over-committed girl. I tend to cram as much into my day as possible. In my mind, quantity equals effectiveness. The more I do the more I get done. The problem is that the quality was going down the tubes. It’s kind of like my husband’s insistence that he doesn’t need sleep before an exam. He studies all through the night because he thinks that the more time he spends studying, the more he’ll know for the test. In reality, studies show that a good night’s rest is actually more effective than cramming. If your brain is too tired to process the info, the info is worthless.

It’s the same for us spiritually. If our minds and bodies are too tired to process and live out the faith we profess, then we won’t be good for much at all. Plus, whenever I’m busy the first thing I usually cut out is my quiet time. Martin Luther once said that he had to spend 4 hours in prayer each morning BECAUSE he was so busy, and he was exactly right. The more I do, the MORE I need God to sustain me. It’s irrational that I would do the opposite.

So as someone who has crawled out from under the pile of over-commitment and seen the light of day, I have to tell you that it looks pretty good. I’m not as stressed, the quality of everything I do is better, and most importantly I’m recovering my intimacy with God. Don’t pressure yourself to do more than you should. Not only will the quality of your output suffer, but your witness will too. You’ll become tired, grumpy, and lacking in patience. The Gospel deserves better, so take care of yourself. It’s an investment in the Kingdom.

As some of you know, I’m now working as a free-lance writer and part-time researcher, which means I get to make my own schedule. Which I love.

The only problem with making my own schedule is that it requires a tremendous amount of discipline, discipline I really don’t have. I’ll sit down to work on a project and then out of the blue I’ll decide to check my facebook for some hair-brained reason. The next thing I know an entire hour has gone by. Poof.

After about a month of this I began to suspect that it was a bigger problem than I’d first given it credit for. But apparently God wanted to make it crystal clear. First I noticed that Ed Stetzer had posted a blog about a recent study on Christian college students and online social networking. You can read more about it on his blog, but apparently “over 30% of Christian college students spend 1-2 hours a day on Facebook alone, with 12% percent going at it for 2-4 hours each day. If you add in Twitter, email, texting, and popular websites we’re looking at a significant investment in the internet in general and social media in particular.” The study then explained,

“It isn’t yet clear whether over-zealous use of computer-based activities will be formally accepted in the U.S. as a distinctive, unique form of addiction. What is clear from our study is that a surprisingly high percentage of Christian students who frequently engage in electronic activities report several troubling negative consequences.”

Stetzer added, “Over half admit that they were ‘neglecting important areas of their life’ due to spending too much time online. Over 12 percent believe that they are addicted to some form of electronic activity. 21 percent felt that their level of engagement with electronic activities at times caused a conflict with their Christian values.”

I think what caught my attention was the language of social networking as a kind of addiction. We tend to equate addiction with drugs or pornography, but obsessively looking at pictures of my friends’ babies? I hadn’t considered that a potential threat.

Then I looked up the definition of addiction: “The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming.” Psychologically habit-forming? Bingo. I may not be using facebook to cope with depression, but I’m certainly using it as a mental stimulant when my brain isn’t entertained by my work.

Well God wasn’t done there. A day or two later I saw that John Piper had tweeted (ironically) the following statement: “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.”

Ouch. Between the study on social networking and Piper’s words, I was noticing a theme. This isn’t just about procrastination or filling my time with meaningless busyness. This is about being a bad steward of the days I’ve been given. It’s about abusing God’s time.

But God still wasn’t done with me. Yesterday I got on facebook to find that one of my favorite seminary professors had posted a status declaring that she was “going off FB for a while, and I pray that others will do some investigating of their own.”

All of this in one week.

Now I do recognize the irony in reading all these messages on the internet. But I think there’s something to them. I don’t feel compelled to swear off facebook altogether given that it does help me to keep up with old friends as their lives change and grow. But the question is how do we handle these social networking devices in a healthy way? How do we prevent them from controlling us?

Recently Miley Cyrus got off Twitter because she had become more focused on tweeting what was happening in her life than on what was actually happening in her life. I think she makes a good point. I wonder what God thinks about all this virtual noise? We are constantly attached to our blackberries, e-mails, text messages, etc. that I wonder if we’ve blinded ourselves to how self-involved we’ve become. Is that a tactic of the Enemy?

All of these technologies can be used for the Kingdom of God, no doubt. And that’s one of the reasons I would never make a blanket statement about getting rid of them. The question is whether or not we’re actually using them for the Kingdom. Perhaps that is the very filter we should use for our time on facebook and Twitter: “Will God’s glory be advanced by this tweet?” “Am I serving God by spending this much time on facebook?” If I can’t answer yes, then I don’t think it’s worth my time.

Any thoughts out there?

The following was presented by Dr. David Scholer at the Fuller Follies (Fuller’s annual spoof/talent show) in 1998. I came upon it this week after one of his current students posted it on her blog.

Now to be VERY clear, I am not posting this to be belligerent, to in any way suggest men should not be ordained, or to offer an overly simplistic response to a truly complex issue. I do, however, appreciate the way in which this satirical nod to the debate of women in ministry challenges our imaginations. There are some good arguments against women’s ordination, but there are also some bad ones. This list addresses some of the arguments that are more cultural than Scriptural.

Let me know what you think.

Dave’s Top Ten Reasons That Men Should Not Be Ordained:

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibility of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are most suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman, obviously as a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowing achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. Their conduct at football games shows this.

5. Some men are handsome; thus they will distract women worshipers.

4. To be ordained as a pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more fervently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.

3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes otherwise than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, and maybe even lead the singing on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to the traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.

1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.

As a single woman I formed a bad habit that has now followed me into marriage. I wish I’d dealt with it years ago, but it took being married to bring the habit to light. You see when I was single, I made a habit of checking out attractive men. The habit wasn’t so much an issue of lust as it was an issue of pride. I wanted to see if guys would notice me back. I wanted the attention. Since it never went any further than that, and I was single, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me at the time.

The problem is that habits die hard.

Now, whenever I’m at the grocery store or the mall and I see an attractive man, there’s a part of me that still wants him to notice me. It’s totally absurd because I’m not actually interested, nor does his opinion even matter. I have a hot man at home who notices me every day, and I am committed to him. My reason for wanting this attention has nothing to do with the state of my marriage or how well my husband cares for me. It’s simply become a matter of habit that I reinforced over years and years and years.

Now some of you might wonder, “What’s so bad about a) admiring an attractive person in a non-lustful way, or b) appreciating it when someone else admires you?” The problem is that both of these supposedly innocent acts are really just smoke screens for the seeds of sin.

Proverbs 17:24 tells us, “A discerning man keeps wisdom in view, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth.” If my marriage is healthy but I’m forming a habit of looking elsewhere, checking out the goods and enjoying attention from other men, what do you think I’ll default to when my marriage goes through a season of hardship? I will have foolishly created a coping mechanism outside of my marriage, and that can have devastating consequences. A seemingly innocent habit can lay the foundation for any number of tragic mistakes.

That’s why I’m teaching myself a new habit: don’t look twice. We can’t help it if we notice an attractive person. God created beautiful things and that’s a fact, but it’s how we respond to those beautiful things that define us. My husband often talks about me being “his standard of beauty.” That is to say that instead of comparing me to other women and noticing the ways in which I don’t measure up to the culture’s standard of beauty, he sees me as THE standard. Lucky for me, that means I always measure up!

I think it’s healthy for women to do the same. While women don’t tend to be quite as visual as men, we’re still bombarded with images of men with rock hard abs who have all their hair on their head. More than a few of us struggle with comparing the men in our lives to these unrealistic standards, so we need to make sure our husbands become our own “standard of beauty” as well.

And lastly, to all the single gals out there I can’t say enough that who you are as a single woman is who you will be as a married woman. Habits and behaviors that seem permissible now will follow you into marriage, so figure out what is beneficial for you and stick to it. The lifestyle you are creating for yourself now has the potential to either strengthen or sabotage a marriage. I honestly believe that more marriages would succeed if people had learned to do singleness better. So no matter your stage in life, don’t look twice. There are attractive people in this world, but keep wisdom in view. It is a far better guide.

About a year ago I wrote a post about a prophetic warning written by the Pope 40 years ago about the cultural consequences of using contraception. Since that time, my then-fiancé and I decided to begin the journey of Natural Family Planning, which I’ve written about it some here.

Ike and I have been married now for about 2 and a half months, and so far NFP has already been quite a blessing. It’s compelled us to talk about a lot of things that we might not have otherwise done, and has been an important part of our growing intimacy with one another, as well as building an important theological foundation for our future family.

So today I want to repost a blog that was written around the time that we embarked on this journey. What I didn’t write when I first posted it is that this information was given to us by a priest that Ike and I happened to sit next to on a plane. We were not yet engaged but we were planning on marriage and in the midst of wrestling through this big issue. As God would have it, we crossed paths with this godly man who happened to be involved in a tremendous amount of pro-life work such as teaching, and fundraising for young mothers. He was very wise and offered us a lot of insight we hadn’t before considered. We both felt that God spoke through him to confirm a lot of what we’d been considering. We are very grateful to him.

_________________

Forty years ago Pope Paul VI released a statement on contraception that, looking back, was stunningly prophetic.

The essay, entitled Humanae Vitae (”Of Human Life”), was written at a time in American history when contraceptive pills were becoming very popular. Women across the country were celebrating their newfound freedom as the history of American sexuality turned a new page.

The Catholic Church, however, was singing a different tune. Unlike the many women who rejoiced over the changing cultural tides, the Pope raised a voice of concern, a concern that we can now see was completely warranted.

Although the Catholic Church’s position on contraception has been debated among Christians (Catholics put a heavy priority on the procreative purpose of sex, whereas many other Christians do not), there is one point on which the Pope was completely right.

If only we’d listened.

What follows is an excerpt from Humanae Vitae in which Pope Paul VI projects the cultural implications of contraception. His predictions could not have been more accurate, and I have posted this today because of the profound impact it has had for women since:

Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Did you get that?

FORTY YEARS AGO, Pope Paul VI predicted the exact situation that we find ourselves in today. He warned that the practice of hormonal contraception would divorce the responsibility of sex from the act of sex. He also feared that, as a result of this divorce, men would no longer need to guard the sanctity of sex, thereby leading them to treat women and sex in a recklessly casual way.

And his fears came true.

Sex without consequences. That is what the contraceptive revolution bought our country. And what do you think happens when we cheapen the price of a costly good? We no longer value it quite so highly.

Pope Paul VI was exactly right.

So while the contraceptive pill seemed like a gateway to women’s freedom and a means for valuing the female life even more, it instead devalued women, giving men the freedom to use them for sexual gratification without weighing the implications of their actions.

Now I write all of this not as a diatribe against the practice of contraception, but to caution us about considering the ideological impacts of the decisions we make. Just because science develops a solution to making our lives easier or providing us with a convenient short-cut does not mean we should embrace it.

Whenever we seek to relieve ourselves of divinely placed forms of accountability and responsibility, we forget that God created those measures for our own protection. Sex is about more than just procreation, but the fact that sexual intercourse leads to the birth of a new human life should cause us to approach the act of sex soberly and reverently.

While the contraceptive pill can’t take all the blame for the objectification of women and the number of absent fathers in our nation, it certainly played its own part. In a consumer-driven culture that wants what it wants right now, we have taken a thousand tiny steps in the wrong direction, and those tiny steps add up to a society that has wandered horribly off the path of truth.

No, the contraceptive pill is not, in itself, an evil, but blank-check contraceptive practices do not coincide well with a Scriptural view on marriage, family and sex. It is time we start examining why. I hope you will ask yourself that question.

I think you would be shocked by how many evangelical Christian conferences are held every year. Most denominations have national and regional conferences, there are national and regional conferences for every perceivable demographic (ie. college students, women, married couples, youth), and there is a myriad of conferences for pastors of all sorts–worship pastors, church planters, multi-site pastors, youth ministers, etc. Even if we didn’t count the little retreats that individual churches put on for 50-200 people, the number of conferences with 1,000+ attendees is likely in the hundreds each year.

We Christians love our conferences. And there’s a reason for it. It’s a great chance to get away, fellowship, and learn under godly teaching. It can serve as a breath of fresh air, especially for leaders who are usually pouring into others. It’s also a great time for leaders to pool their creativity and ideas. Working together we can accomplish more, and I fully support that.

There is an element to this trend, however, that I find troubling. While these conferences are indeed edifying, the teaching is often led by the same general pool of men (and a few women), many of whom have young children. In addition to leading churches, these men are traveling around the country during the month speaking at conferences, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is healthy. Given the technological advances that not only allow us to upload weekly podcasts from these men, coupled with video broadcasting, the number of conferences would seemingly decrease, not increase. Given our options, should we be asking pastors to take that extra time away from their families?

I did some research this week to find out how much time American fathers spend with their kids. The studies I found all indicated that the average father spends about 2 hours with his children every week day (that is, interacting with their children in some direct capacity) and about 8 hours on the weekend. Out of a 168 hour week, that constitutes about 15% of a father’s time. In comparison with their wives, men spend just over half the amount of time with their kids that mothers do during the week, but they nearly equal the time their wives spend with the kids (around 90%) on the weekend. And keep in mind that these statistics only account for families in which the parents are married. In other words, this average has not been lowered by custody dynamics or absent fathers.

Now psychologists argue that this 15% is enough. In that small amount of time, fathers can do a lot for their kids, especially if they’re intentional with their time. But this does lead me to wonder what it looks like for a Christian father to put family ahead of work, as they are frequently taught to do. Realistically, dads have to work and support their families, but if they’re spending a minimum of 40 hours a week working each week (in comparison with 26 hours a week with kids), is time any sort of indicator of one’s true priorities?

The issue gets even stickier when you throw ministry into the mix. Ministry is a noble calling, so if God has called a father to preach around the world, shouldn’t he heed that call? Perhaps the most famous example of this tension is found in the person of Billy Graham. He famously spent weeks at a time away from his family following his call to preach the Gospel. Millions of people around the world have been saved because of him. Was it worth it?

In a biography of Billy Graham written by Roger Bruns, there seems to be regret from everyone in the family. He writes,

“For the Graham family, the dynamic was always the same–weeks at a time without the father and then a few days at a time with him. Ruth once told Billy that he missed the best part of his life–watching and enjoying the children as they grew. Graham’s daughter, Anne, often said they were raised by a single parent, ‘and giving your father up when he spends more time with a secretary or a news reporter that he does with me–that hurts…We knew he preached and he went and served Jesus, so I was glad to let him go because of that.’ Later in his life when Graham looked back, he said that his constant travel away from his family made him poorer both psychologically and emotionally. The children, he admitted, must have carried even greater scars. And as for Ruth, Billy wrote that if she ‘had not been convinced that God had called her to fulfill that side of our partnership, and had not resorted constantly to God’s Word for instruction and to His grace for strength, I don’t see how she could have survived.’”

While wives may have the spiritual resources to bear their husband’s absences, Graham’s words highlight the main problem with a schedule that pulls men out of the home: children aren’t similarly equipped. How, then, can a calling out of the home be reconciled with a call to protect one’s children?

Now rather than point a finger at pastors (I am in no position to judge how a family heeds God’s calling on their lives), I do think that as a Christian community we need to start thinking outside the box. With technology today, we can get the info out there without the conferences. I’m not saying we do away with conferences, but maybe we should start restructuring them. We should, for instance, consider only having one speaker present, and the rest are video feeds. A great example of this was the Nines video sponsored by Catalyst and Leadership Network last month. It was a wonderful day of information and vision casting that allowed the speakers to stay at home. The hours they would have wasted flying to one location could instead be spent with their kids.

As the Church, we should be leading the way in prioritizing family, and we certainly have the resources to do it. If the national average is 2 hours every week day, we should be above it. It would be an incredibly powerful witness if pastors only spoke at a handful of conferences a year, and instead focused on producing podcasts and writing as a means for disseminating information without leaving their families in the mean time. The conferences will always be there, but fathers only get one shot at raising their kids. As my own pastor, J.D. Greear, put it to me, “Conference speakers are a dime a dozen, but my children only have one daddy.”

My hope is that the prestige and flashiness of these conferences and the big names they draw will not lead us to sin. I fear these conferences have so thoroughly come to define us as a culture that, as Matt Chandler once stated, God will speak to us with the same words he once spoke in Amos 5:21: “I take no delight in your assemblies.” As a church, we must have the faith to keep our priorities in place, knowing that our faithfulness and the integrity with which we guard our families is one of the most powerful witnesses we can have in the world.

The next time you hear someone say, “I don’t believe in having regrets,” pay attention. You’ll most likely hear it from a celebrity on t.v., but it’s a mantra that has come to define our culture. We are a culture that doesn’t believe in having regrets.

What this really means is that no one ever wants to admit they made major mistakes in their life, or that they wish things were different for them. That’s why the idea of a life without regrets is so appealing. It encourages us to surrender ourselves to the tide of the universe, embracing a vague theology about how everything happens for a reason. And there is something to be said for focusing on the future instead of beating yourself up about a past you cannot change. Even from a Christian perspective, God sets us free from guilt. While we should feel convicted about our sin and strive to do better, the punishment for our past mistakes has already been paid. God doesn’t ask us to continue punishing ourselves. From that angle, the mantra of “no regrets” is somewhat compatible with a Christian understanding of God’s sovereignty and His grace.

However, regret and guilt are two very different things. We don’t need to bear the guilt of a sin from which we’ve been forgiven, but we should certainly feel remorseful about it. We should be sorrowful that it happened. But our culture doesn’t make this distinction, which is why the language of sin and guilt is so unintelligible to them. When we try to articulate disobedience to a world that doesn’t believe in having regrets, or when we explain sin to a culture that “did the best they could with what they had” or “made the choice that was right for them,” the concept doesn’t take hold.

This unintelligibility becomes particular obvious in discussing topics of morality, such as divorce or premarital sex. In a world where people don’t have regrets, it doesn’t matter that a person had sex with a ton of different people or that they were married multiple times. These decisions are recounted as valuable experiences that shaped them into who they are. Now they’re stronger for it. No regrets.

Under this light, the ideology’s true colors are revealed. While it portrays itself as the ultimate live-life-to-the-fullest kind of worldview, it’s really just a cover-up for selfishness. Maybe someone has no regrets about their divorce, but what about their spouse, or their children? And while a guy or girl may have no regrets about the people they slept with, what about the partners they may have hurt? While we shouldn’t bemoan the things we had no control over, or be wrought with unending guilt about the past, we should certainly regret the times when we hurt ourselves, or others.
A life defined by regret isn’t healthy, but a life with NO regrets at all is just as unbalanced.

Knowing this about our culture, it does give us some insight on how to articulate our faith. God doesn’t warn us about sin simply because He’s a prude. He’s not a stick-in-the-mud deity in the sky who doesn’t want us to have any fun. He warns us against sin the way a parents warns a child about a hot stove. It will hurt us, and it will hurt others. We live for Christ as a means for being free of those snares, not because we’re better or holier than others.

As Christians we want to be free of regrets, but that doesn’t mean we superficially gloss over the ways in which we’ve messed up. In taking those mistakes seriously, we acknowledge the people we have hurt, including God, while embracing the forgiveness that awaits us in Jesus Christ. A life without regrets does neither.

I don’t know about you, but I always get a little wary when someone states that “God told them” to do something. I wanna ask, “Wait a minute, what do you mean God told you? Did He send an angel to you in the night? Did you audibly hear His voice?” All the while thinking, “I don’t think God told you anything. It was probably just a bad burrito.”

Yet as cynical as I am in the face of these claims, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve basically done the same thing. I may not have admitted openly that “God told me xyz,” but I assumed it in my heart. I just knew I was supposed to marry the guy I was dating, or I just knew I was gonna get that job. I believed in a very powerful way that God had spoken these things to me, and they were going to happen.

However most of the time, they didn’t.

Now far be it from me to question the Holy Spirit’s leading in someone’s life. I do know the Holy Spirit will never lead in a way that contradicts Scripture, but if you say that God told you you’re gonna marry a man with brown eyes who loves dogs, then that’s between you and God. What’s more, Scripture does give us examples of people who heard directly from God Himself. We shouldn’t assume He would never do the same today.

The problem with these claims, however, is that they are tough to distinguish from our emotions. Sometimes we want something so badly that we can’t sort out our desire from the voice of God. And in my own life, desire has been far louder.

Desire, coupled with imagination, is a powerful influence in the mind of a woman. We can literally convince ourselves of something that is not at all of God, and that is a scary reality. We can convince ourselves that we can date or marry men we shouldn’t, buy things we shouldn’t, or let ourselves off the hook from following God the ways we should.

All of that to say, here are several ways that God DOES speak to us in a definitive way. If you think God has told you something, how does it line up with the following….

1. Scripture. As I said, God won’t lead you in a way that contradicts His Word. Maybe the Bible doesn’t say whether or not you should leave your kids with a nanny so you can pursue a career, but what does it say about being a godly mother and wife? Maybe it doesn’t tell you whether Alex is your soulmate, but can he lead you spiritually?

2. Godly counsel. What are your godly friends and family saying? If they are all telling you the same thing–namely, that a decision is wise or unwise–you should listen. The Holy Spirit uses the people in your life as a vehicle for His voice, so when you fail to heed consistent godly counsel, you are ultimately rebelling against God.

3. Circumstances. God never told me to marry my husband. But after I spent time getting to know him, learning about his character and how my personality matched with his (among other factors), I prayerfully came to the decision that it was wise to love him as my husband. Had our personalities clashed, that would have been an answer to the contrary. Sometimes our circumstances are clear indicators of God’s leading. If God has shut a door, that is often His way of telling you directly that He has something else in mind.

#2 and #3 are somewhat flexible since people can give you bad advice, and sometimes our circumstances are meant to teach us perseverance and patience rather than a clear negative answer. But usually there will be an extent to which the above three factors will all align on some level. If, however, you are still struggling to discern the voice of God, the last way He speaks to us is as follows…

4. Holy Spirit leading. There have certainly been times in my life when God has disquieted my spirit in a way that seemed to be coming from Him. It was usually in contradiction with my desires–perhaps I wasn’t willing to sacrifice as much for my church, or I had my heart set on taking a particular job that I never actually felt a peace about taking. There have also been times when I knew I was making a bad decision, but I did it anyway. That knowledge of the decision’s wrongness was the Holy Spirit.

While the Holy Spirit can direct our mind and instincts, it’s important to to check these “feelings” against the first three indicators I listed above. If it contradicts Scripture, or if it goes against the advice of godly women, or if circumstances keep getting in the way, then the “feeling” is likely just selfish desire. Otherwise, the leading may be affirmation of all that you already know or have heard from the Holy Spirit’s primary means of communication–His Word, His people and His world.

All of that to say, God DOES speak to us, every day in fact. But how he speaks to us is usually different from what the words “God told me to” imply. While God can certainly reveal Himself in dramatic ways, He already did so through His Son, and he continues to do so though Scripture and the Church. Many people engage in self-destructive decision making because “God told them to do something,” using it as a guise for doing what they want. At the very least, be honest with yourself and God.

And for those of us who are so blinded by our desires that even this type of honesty is difficult, remember that the ONLY promises we definitively have are found in Scripture and pertain to the Christian life. God doesn’t need to add to His promises, so be careful in doing so yourself–you may be setting yourself up for heartache and disappointment.

Right now I’m at Disney World with my husband which is why I haven’t posted in awhile. This is his first time visiting, so we’ve been going at a crazy pace to make sure he experiences it all. In fact, we’ve made it a personal goal to ride Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion every single day of the trip. And by “we” I mean “I.” Between that and the early morning character breakfasts and the fact that I was the only adult standing in line to get my picture taken with Mary Poppins, you should probably pray for Ike–I think he’s starting to feel like Ben Stiller in the “Heartbreak Kid” when he discovers that he’s married a crazy woman.

All of that to say, he’s passed out right now so I thought I’d write a quick post with the free moment.

We’ve really had a blast on this trip. I LOVE Disney World more than almost any other place. On the plane down here, Ike accused me of being more excited about Disney World than our wedding day. Maybe. But I think Ike has enjoyed it too. While there is an overwhelming number of children here, they’re also fun to watch. One day I saw a kid put his entire mouth around the round top of a hand rail that hundreds of people had touched that day. I don’t know what his parents were doing at the time, but if anyone gets the swine flu it’ll be him. We were also in line behind a boy and his dad just about to get on Splash Mountain when out of nowhere the kid said he had to go to the bathroom REAL BAD. It was pretty clear he was just scared and didn’t want to go on the ride, but I admired his strategy. And in case you were wondering, his dad made him ride anyway.

But enough about my trip. The reason I’m writing today is because of something I heard at an attraction in Epcot. It’s called the American Adventure (pictured above) and it’s an animatronic show about the country’s history and vision. I can’t necessarily recommend it because I fell asleep though most of it, but I woke up at the very end to hear animatronic Mark Twain read the following quote from John Steinbeck:

“Now we face the danger which in the past has been the most destructive to the human: success–plenty, comfort, and ever-increasing leisure. No dynamic people has ever survived these dangers. If the anaesthetic of satisfaction were added to our hazards, we would not have a chance of survival–as Americans.”

Pretty deep for a Disney show, huh? Honestly, I think that Steinbeck’s words are borderline prophetic, not only for America but for the human condition. Our present economic crisis is just an example of how self-destructive we can become when we are comfortable in our extravagance.

Now I don’t think Steinbeck was suggesting that we sell our possessions and live a life of poverty. or that a broken community and country is to be preferred. But Steinbeck wrote a lot about the triumph of the human spirit in the midst of suffering and adversity–namely, the Great Depression–and he probably noticed a difference between the perseverance and fraternal spirit displayed during that era, contrasted with the hedonism and exorbitance of wealthy eras such as the height of the Roman Empire.

Ever since hearing Steinbeck’s words I’ve been reflecting on them a lot, so I offer this quote to you today for two reasons: First, consider the ways in which you have been successful thus far in your life. Perhaps you have a successful career, or maybe you’ve gotten married and had a family. However you define success in your life, consider it, and then consider how that success has harmed you. Are you more prideful? Are you more judgmental of those who are not at the same place in life? Or have you come to depend more on that success than on God?

Second, this quote is a great reminder that we need not fear suffering. As Steinbeck chronicled, the Great Depression is one of the most beautiful periods in our nation’s history in the sense that it brought out the best in us. There are countless stories of Americans helping one another in astoundingly sacrificial ways. When I hear them I feel as though we are a completely different people now. The Great Depression refined us as a nation, and suffering has that potential in every person’s life. We shouldn’t seek suffering, but we shouldn’t be terrified of it either. While it is not the suffering itself that changes us—many people have endured hardship only to be the same person they were before, if not worse–but it is an instrument that God can use as a bullhorn into our hearts. That is an encouraging reminder to me in an economic time like this.

Well that’s all for now. Ike and I are here one more day and then it’s back to the real world, so I’ll be writing again soon. Til then, we’ll be on Pirates of the Caribbean!