We live in a world that values strength and belittles weakness. We idolize characters such as Rambo, John Wayne, and Jason Bourne. It is so easy to feel that there is no way to advance in life if people see our weaknesses, our personal struggles. So we tend to be drawn toward hiding these things about ourselves. We want to put them in the dark where no one can see them. Yet, if we can’t even acknowledge we have struggles, how can we ever hope to overcome them? Understanding what is darkness and what is light puts a huge tool in our hands for growth.

Blatant sin, of course, is darkness; however, there can be smaller, less noticeable ways where we might be living in the dark. 1 John 1:6 says,”… if we say we have fellowship with God, but we continue living in darkness, we lie and do not follow the truth.” So what exactly does this “living in darkness” mean? Simply put, anything that is hidden and not exposed. To paraphrase Andrew Murray’s definition of humility, darkness is not being willing to be known for who we really are.

If we are humble – being known for who we really are – then we find no reason to hide our past, our present struggles, or our future dreams. But being open and transparent like this involves risk. If we were to divulge certain things about ourselves, people may reject us or make fun of us, or even worse, they may not love and accept us. And it’s possible they may abandon us.

It’s much easier to stay in the dark than to take the chance of living in openness and transparency, but unfortunately, there are “friends” that tend to hang around us there. Fear, worry, anxiety, shame, guilt – all of these can be our ‘best friends’ when we’re in darkness. And there’s no peace or rest there. Only by embracing light do we position ourselves to experience growth.

We can be free from our past and live emotionally present in all our relationships today! By facing the hidden darkness in our lives, we can find freedom to be who we really are, unashamedly. Light is the place where we have the actual experience of feeling secure in our Father’s arms and live open-hearted to the world.

On Dancing with the Stars this week, Hope Solo’s dance partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, called judge Len Goodman out on his harshness. Len said, “This is your worst dance of the whole season.” The audience booed, and Len pulled out the “I’ve been in this business for 50 years” line. The tabloids claim Maksim “slammed” Len but he did not. There was not anger on his face nor in his tone of voice. He was simply saying, “Come on, that’s too harsh, these people are working hard.”

http://abc.go.com/watch/dancing-with-the-stars/SH559050/VD55149760/week-6 (at 1:00:5)

Standing up for yourself, without putting the other down
It’s not easy to stand up for yourself in a calm, non-attacking way. It doesn’t necessarily come with age. Len Goodman at 67 years old doesn’t know how to do this.

This is an essential skill in marriage. The marriage partners who receive respect and cooperation by their spouses are the ones who respond in ways which continue to foster that atmosphere in the home. They can state their side without resorting to criticism. They give respect, even in the face of stress or apparent bad behavior on the part of the other, yet they don’t back down.

This skill applies to not being run over on our jobs as well, and receiving respect from our peers.

It’s so easy to focus on how bad our boss is or controlling and abusive our spouse is, yet others can’t really control how we feel unless we let them.

God wants to develop this skill in all of us. The church has so often been either attacking or a door mat. This comes out in how we respond to the world, our spouses, difficult people in our churches, etc. We reject or quietly distance ourselves from the “problem person.”

What would happen if the hurting of the world started running into true spiritual fathers and mothers who were not threatened by the hurt-based behavior of others and could love them anyway and call them up higher?

Stillness. Stillness in mind, body and spirit. Got it? I don’t always. Many times my mind is racing with ideas or replaying events over and over again. My body usually wants to be moving, remaining active with chores or exercise when possible. And my spirit…well, I don’t always check in to see how my spirit’s doing. My spirit is typically the one who wants to be still. It’s deeper and it’s hearing the voice of my Beloved calling from the deep, yearning to connect with Him.

I find myself most of the time staying “on the surface” of life, like the stereotypical news, sports and weather persona. I’m too busy to connect emotionally with God or anyone else. I have things to do, people to see, places to go, a long list in front of me to get accomplished. And where does this get me? Well, sometimes I get a lot done, but my spirit is undernourished. You see, Father God made us to be relational beings, and if I’m not being relational, then what’s the point of being?

We were meant to have emotional connections every day. Connecting with our own emotions, those of our spouse, our children, our friends and co-workers, and of course, the Lord. Some people naturally tend to link emotionally with others, sharing their dreams and desires as well as being a good listener to those who, in turn, disclose their   bundles of feelings. And emotional awareness is needed to unite with God too.

King David constantly was pouring his emotions out to the Lord. As you read through the Psalms, there are numerous examples of him sharing his fears, his anxieties, his joys, his sorrows. And God didn’t complain about it. I think we think that showing our emotions is a sign of weakness or a lesser, negative quality; but the Bible is full of people, including Jesus, who were keenly aware of their emotional state and brought it before the Lord. Their deep calling to His deep, spirit to spirit. They chose to stay connected to the One who could understand, console, and help them.

But to connect with God this way I have to know what’s going on in myself first. I have to still my mind and body enough to know how my spirit is doing. Brother Lawrence and Madam Guyon have shown us that it’s possible to continue working while communing with God, yet it’s more than just offering prayers and petitions to Him. It’s a relational linking, a joining of emotions, my heart to His, a deep to deep in the stillness of my spirit.

Everyone feels fearful or hurt from time to time; conflicts and misunderstandings are a part of life. There are basically two ways people respond: shame and condemnation, or guilt and accountability.

Challenges
Ron had a terrible day at work. His boss accused him of a mistake on a major project and he feels his job might be in jeopardy. He comes home wired, tense, longing for the refuge of his Lazy Boy/TV cave. His wife immediately hits him with, “the car won’t start” and “by the way, Jr. is failing math.” Then Ron loses it; he gets bitterly sarcastic with his wife and down right caustic with his son, “What’s the matter with you boy, are you an idiot? I told you to lay off those video games and study more.”

Shame and Condemnation
In a shame-based family system individuals respond to conflicts in shame perpetuating ways. There is a constant underlying message of devalue, not just communicating you did wrong but that you are wrong. These individuals have lived with the pain of shame instead of dignity and so spend their time protecting themselves from this pain by never allowing anything to be their fault. Since it is impossible to never be wrong, everything must be subject to judgment and charged accordingly. This ‘moral monitoring’ means that the littlest mistakes like, forgetting to floss, not rinsing off a dish, not taking your shoes off at the door, can get you “a look” that communicates, “What’s wrong with you?” The Pharisees lived here. Their hearts were never open to mercy and the smallest infractions were subject to their censure.

Shame is a hidden belief about self that “I am flawed.” This belief is triggered anytime something goes wrong. Therefore, life’s challenges can’t be seen on their own merits and viewed simply as a problem to be solved, but instead someone must always be to blame. I can’t allow it to be me, so it must be you. So Jr. doesn’t just need more study time or perhaps a tutor, Jr. needs to suffer for his insolence.

Personhood and Abuse
Personhood is the quality of being an individual person and so worthy of dignity. The origin of shame is abuse that violates and diminishes personhood. This is done through crossing mental, emotional, and physical boundaries by attacking another persons’ right to choose what they think or what action they’ll take. This plays out in statements like, “What’s the matter with you?” “What were you thinking?” or it could be a backhand across the face.

These attacks are in two categories: fight or flight. “Fight” is anything from a sarcastic remark, to a demeaning statement, to physical harm. “Flight” can be anything from the silent treatment, to not being willing to discuss certain issues, or even to full on abandonment.

Healthy Guilt and Accountability
All of us make mistakes sometimes. The provision for that is healthy guilt and accountability. If I have made a mistake, guilt is appropriate. Guilt is a painful feeling that I have violated one of my values. It is a remorseful awareness of having done something wrong. Healthy guilt leads me to take responsibility, walk in accountability, and make repair. If someone has acted inappropriately toward me, accountability has to do with honoring the other as a person yet not covering the consequences they face for their actions.

Unconditional love and healthy guilt allows people to make mistakes. When there’s a base of unconditional love and healthy guilt to resolve conflict rather than shaming behaviors to handle what bothers us, people can live in healthy community and growth takes place.

Growing in God’s love should move us toward treating others with dignity, even those we very much disagree with. The question of another person’s worth or dignity should never come into play. This has a huge affect on our walk with God. If I treat others with condemnation, I will not be able to escape feeling like God treats me that way. This is a milestone that must be crossed if we are to learn to walk in a depth of obedience to the Lord.

Into middle age now, I tend to look back on my life at times and reflect. In going through healing journeys of past wounding and processing pain these last few years, as well as seeing into the lives of those I counsel, I have come to an astounding conclusion. I believe accepting and grieving losses is one of the hardest parts of this passage called life.

As I walk through resolving life’s hurts and I find healing and wholeness, one of the final stages of each path is accepting a loss. It may be a physical loss of someone or something, it may be an emotional loss, or it may be a financial loss. There are many types of losses, but they all are painful.

We can never go back and change the past, we can only process it and resolve it in our hearts and minds. If our children are older, we can’t change how we raised them when they were younger. If we are parents have died, we can’t change what we said to them or they said to us. So many things we can look back on and want to change, but we can’t. Time only moves forward. But what we can do is move forward with it.

I remember walking along our downtown riverfront one day, looking at all the boats and remembering all the times my family used to sail in the river. We were highly involved in the local sailing community and my father was on race committees and many projects having to do with the St. Johns River. As a teenager, I loved sailing and it became a large part of my life. But that day, as I walked the riverfront, I realized it was all only memories now; I no longer have my dad to share those memories with anymore, much less make any “new” ones. He died 17 years ago. It’s a real loss and it hurts.

It’s not something that can be changed; it is what it is. So I took that loss and gave it to the Lord. Isaiah 53:4 tells us that Jesus came to bear our sorrows and carry our griefs. We just have to let Him. Let go and let God, as the saying goes. Cry, weep, shout, whatever it takes, but give it to Him. Then move on. This can be extremely hard, yet when you come through it, there will be peace.

Equanimity is a fancy word for the Biblical rest spoken of in Hebrews 4. It means I am neither striving to make things happen nor avoiding what God would use to cause growth in our lives.

Striving – everyone faces fears and insecurities sometimes, usually daily.
When we feel insecure we often strive. We try and make things happen, try and jimmy a door open. We become controlling in some way, becoming more aggressive with others or giving them the silent treatment. We may make lots of vows to work harder or lose weight or avoid that bad habit at all costs.

Avoiding – we also have many ways we put walls around our hearts. A person cuts us off in traffic, our spouse is insensitive to our needs, our boss yells at us – “That jerk,” we think. The minute we label someone we are blocking him from our heart.

Acceptance – when we can walk in acceptance, acknowledging God in all our ways, giving Him thanks in all things, there’s a rest. From this place of rest grows the fruit of the Spirit. We honor all men, we honor ourselves, we get things done.

Contemplative prayer – the discipline of contemplative prayer fosters rest. I say some words of love to God and I wait in His presence. Sometimes I sense His presence, sometimes my mind wanders like crazy. Learning to accept whatever happens as exactly what God has for me at that moment, with no sense of frustration. This fosters equanimity, rest. This begins to spill over into other parts of our lives. When I’m not worked up to make things happen nor frustrated at things I don’t like, life flows.

As I was praying the other day, I was taking some time to be thankful. I was going through a list of things that God has done in my life, all the changes I’ve come through lately – those kinds of things. And then as I continued to pray, I realized that I started to put in a few “buts.” Ever done that?  You know, “Lord, thank You for _________, but….” Prayers like, “Thank You so much for the overtime, Lord, but…now I have to work all weekend and miss the big game.” There are those tinges of complaints within the gratefulness.

Another perfect opportunity when this happens to me is when I look at myself in the mirror. I pray, “Lord, thank You for my good health and the ability to run, and surf, and workout, but…I sure wish I could loose about five more pounds.”  Or “Lord, I know You love me, but…I’m not sure You really like me.” What’s up with all the “buts”?

Now the day I was praying and God brought this to my attention I heard Him say two words very clearly: “no buts.” That one little conjunction reveals a heart of dissatisfaction, He told me. I’m may be grateful to a point, but those three letters tend to find fault or put blame somewhere. It’s a word of exception or a circumstantial scenario.

Matt. 5:45 says He causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. It rains on good people and on bad. “Hello, welcome to life!” My level of acceptance of all things working for good is a bit low at times (Rom 8:28), and I know I need growth there.

So I’ve made a decision based on my prayer time: no more buts. I’m going to just state the first part of the sentence and leave it simple. I don’t want to “compound” the problem (a little English grammar joke there). “Lord, thank You for _________.” Period. No “buts.” Lord, forgive me for my murmuring and complaining and for adding that tiny word in my prayers. Thank You for Your grace and mercy as I grow in Your love. Period. End of prayer and article. No buts.

If you saw a penny on the ground, would you pick it up? I usually do, except the other day I couldn’t. I was riding my bike and saw one on the ground, but it was in the middle of a busy road I was crossing. I cringed a little and rode past it.

What’s the worth of a penny anyway, I thought. A lot of people don’t pick them up. There are millions of them and their value is only one cent. And then that little voice of the Spirit came to reveal something to me about this: “Many people feel like they are only worth a penny; like they’re not worth picking up either.” Another God-thought-provoking sentence from the Lord, indeed. Then He began showing me how some of us tend to see ourselves as lacking value and of no significance to the world, just like pennies on the ground.

I could feel His heart breaking for those “penny-thinking” people, and pictured Him walking the parking lots, streets, and gas stations with His head down searching for pennies on the ground. I saw Him actually looking for them, not haphazardly finding them randomly at times, but deliberately seeking them and picking them up. Father’s heart grieves for those who are downtrodden; who see themselves as “poor miserable worms” who don’t deserve a thing. Father’s heart yearns to gather them in His arms and comfort their fears and doubts, providing safety and security in His presence. Father’s heart delights to pour out blessings and “little kisses” of favor to His sons and daughters, purely for the joy it brings Him.

And Father’s heart sees the pennies on the ground and reaches down and picks each one up to put securely in His warm pocket of love. Their value is immeasurable. His value system is different from ours, so each of us cannot be compared to another. Each of us have our own path, our own journey that we’re going through. And sometimes we fall on the ground, out of strength, out of energy, out of everything. But Father’s love is towards all the pennies on the ground. Father’s love is always there to pick them up and keep them with Him. We are valuable to Him. I’ll try to remember that the next time I pick up a penny off the ground.

What do you think of when you think of peace? My thoughts go to descriptions like quietness, calmness, lack of strife and contention. It is a non-warring condition. It is a place of silence and stillness, whether that be in physical surroundings or internally in my spirit. Peace is more than a symbol, more than a “hip” greeting to others. It is a state of being.

Many of us are living in conditions of turmoil and stress everyday, much like the sea on which the disciples found themselves in the middle of in Mark 4. As the great storm was upon them and the waves were crashing on the sides of the ship, Jesus remained asleep on a pillow through it all. He was at peace. He stayed at peace. He was peace. When He was awakened by His frantic friends who were fear-stricken to death, He simply brought His peace to His surroundings and calmed the sea. The wind and the waves ceased and there was calm.

Isn’t it wonderful to be in that kind of a calm? That hush where there’s no stirring or movement? Jesus can bring this. He is the Prince of Peace. This is where I need to go when my mind won’t stop running. This is Who I need to turn to when my circumstances won’t change but stay churning all around me. This is the place of comfort I need to be enveloped in when my present situations do nothing but remind me of my past.

Is this possible? With God, all things are possible. “But how do I get there?” you may ask. Sometimes we have to labour to enter into the rest. We have to work at it, be willing to face the pain, the conflict, the discomfort and let God deal with it. As we discover what is behind the chaos, His truth will set us free, and we can rest in His loving arms.

Yes, peace is more than a symbol. It’s a person, and His name is Jesus. Sometimes He’s hard to find in the whirlwind. So stop. Quiet yourself and look for Him in the still small voice.

As many of us have experienced, I went through some painful times of rejection growing up: the fight I not only lost, I didn’t even see coming; my best friend deciding to un-friend me; Dad not showing up to watch me compete in the skateboard contest. And there are the smaller things. Getting yelled at when you didn’t even realize you were in error, getting disciplined in a demeaning way. These experiences caused me to wear a mask, to put forth an image of myself that seemed more acceptable than simply being me. It was not unlike when Adam suddenly had the need to cover his newly self-conscious nakedness with fig leaves and hide when God showed up because he was afraid.

There are many masks we can adopt. In grade school I was the class cut-up. In high school there were many manifestations of the mask: you had the nerd crowd, the jocks, the heavy-metal kids, and some country. I was a preppy druggy. I made fun of the goody-two-shoes nerds, the spastic jocks, and the loser heavy-metal crowd. Don’t even get me started on the rednecks. Then I got saved and became Bible man. No one could know the Bible better than me. I became a spaz for God. But in all of these examples I was hiding, wearing a mask. It didn’t feel okay to simply be me.

We all have ways we hide, things we don’t ever want others to see about us, things we don’t even want to know about ourselves. Nobody is completely exempt from dealing with issues of shame. However, the idea is to be ever moving toward intimacy (“into-me-see”). This is were we can be transparent, genuine, and vulnerable. This is where we can find connection with God and others and come out of loneliness.

God wants us all to be His transparent bride, who looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, awesome as an army with banners (Song 6).