Chapter 1: "The Underbelly of Service"

I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I sat in the passenger seat of my Toyota Camry shocked after I had just let a 14 year old young man crash into the back of my neighbors car, completely tearing off his rear bumper. I had been mentoring Tony for about a year. 

At this point we had been in Historic South Atlanta living out Christ’s work of reconciliation for three years and had developed a deep passion for the young men in the community after seeing all that was up against them. One young man in particular holds a special place in our hearts from our neighborhood. His name is Tony. We first met Tony when he was nine years old. He has a smile that lights up the room. He started to get involved with the gangs in our community and manifested itself with stolen cars, weapons and drugs. 

My reaction towards this was extremely codependent. I jumped in trying to save him. Internally I said, “Not on my watch. I have a Masters degree in Intercultural Ministries from Seminary and I will not let this happen.” There was also a mixture of being a white guy that needed to solve and fix his issues. This approach doesn’t work with my wife, not sure why I thought it would work with this young man. 

I was going to save this young man from the pits of despair. So, another young man in our community and I started a program called Thirkield University, specifically to save Tony and also be a support to the other young men in the community. It was a pretty basic youth program that met weekly. The guys in the neighborhood called it a brotherhood and this is quickly what it turned into. It became a support system for each other as our key concept was dignified interdependent relationships. By the grace of God we saw many young men dream larger than their context and also come to know Christ as their brother. A few of the guys went onto college and got permanent jobs. We also unfortunately saw a few young men make decisions to take up a more permanent residence. People always react to their environment. 

We emphasized Christ as a brother to these young men based on Hebrews 2, which the writer describes how God incarnated himself to become like one of us. These young men needed to understand that Christ was their brother walking with them in their struggles, not a God that was looking to judge, punish, and condemn them. Years later I would realize the significance of Christ as my brother as we would watch my mom and dad die in a span of six years. 

Tony would come regularly to our meetings and on one Thursday night he was helping me bring some materials up to the community center in our car. As we were about to hop in the car he said to me, “Can I drive up to the gym?” The person in me that wanted to rescue and save this young man said, “Sure, why not?” His older brother, who was seventeen, had just driven my car, so I thought this would work. So, Tony hopped in my car, backed out of the driveway safely and as he put the car into drive he slammed on the gas and before I could react, we had smashed into the back of my neighbor’s car. I sat there in disbelief not believing what had just happened. 

My neighbor whose car I had smashed heard the noise and came out and let me have it. I apologized profusely, and covered the cost of the damage that night. The amount of shame and embarrassment that I held in that moment was too much. I had royally messed up. Even though my intentions were good, I had made a rash and emotional decision based on an unmet emotional need in me. 

“Our wounds fuel our sin.” 

What I didn’t realize at the time was that there was a young thirteen year year old boy that needed to be healed inside of me. I was trying to provide Tony with everything I didn’t receive when I was his age. Things like; belonging, a sense that he is good, not a loser, and that he can do anything. 

As I began to process what happened and why I did this, God, through the power of the Holy Spirit in John 16, which promises that “he will guide you into all the truth”, began to reveal to me what was happening internally. I had done counseling for many years and I sensed the Spirit say; “You need to go back to your family of origin”. I had read Pete Scazzero’s book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and thought I got the main ideas. I had spent hours with Jesus, memorized whole segments of the Bible, read Howard Thurman, Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer and had spent many hours in counseling.

Yet, something was disconnected. There was an underbelly in my family of origin that I had never explored before, which led me to make such a rash and emotional decision. 

This experience led me back to counseling and the discovery that the core lie from my family of origin was that I was a failure and never good enough and that I needed other people to change to make myself feel better. I had a lot of experiences where I was shamed for misbehaving, and so I became a performer, believing that if I performed, this would cover up my dysfunction that I was a failure. This core lie was never dealt with and so ministry and helping others became a way of measuring myself, proving that I was no longer a failure. As my counselor says, “Ministry is such a great measurement tool. If you perform well, you are considered valuable.”

This was the wound that fueled my sin and God continues to heal me. We all have core lies we carry from our family of origin that need to be healed. And Abba Father was calling me to face this deep darkness of my own soul in order to heal. Brene Brown says it like this in Rising Strong; “You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness.” 

And here’s the reality. I’m not alone. There’s an underbelly of Christian ministry and service that needs to be addressed. This underbelly is that at times we are doing things for the wrong motives. We are helping people, running organizations, ministries, or churches because there is something disconnected internally. If we're honest with ourselves we are doing this work because there's something lacking in our family of origin and it manifests itself in the way we love our neighbors. Brennan Manning says it like this in Abba’s Child; “Negative voices from our family of origin (“You will never amount to anything”), moralizing from the church, and pressure to be successful transform expectant pilgrims en route to the heavenly Jerusalem into a dispirited traveling troup of brooding Hamlets and frightened Rullers.”

It’s an epidemic. Many of us are living disingenuous lives that are rooted in the false self, which the apostle Paul describes as the sinful or fleshly self. Like an iceberg, there’s some deep things lurking beneath the surface of our lives and if we’re honest, a deep sense of self-hatred.

This has been a struggle of mine ever since I have been in ministry and I can now name what I was struggling with; codependent relationships in ministry. Codependency is simply, “at its core it is a futile attempt to extract love from other people. And it is exhausting. What is often missing is the core belief you are already deserving of love yourself and that you already possess the love of God.’  I needed people to change or a ministry to be successful because if they didn’t or if my ministry wasn’t successful then I am a failure. It’s all rooted in my own selfishness, family of origin and sinful family patterns.

Ouch.

A question that a good friend of mine, Andrej asked a few years ago when talking about Christian ministry is, “What am I getting out of this? Am I getting a sense of being a hero, to be in control or seeking power?"

Those in leadership all struggle with it, in different capacities of course. Some of us are hugely codependent and crumble when someone speaks negatively about us. Some of us are narcissistic and think that the ministry world revolves around us. I have seen it with my own heart, but also in the most successful people. Lawyers, engineers, director of operations in large companies and mega church pastors. They hide and they do things because they are living out of the false self. They are doing it to prove something to themselves and to others that has hidden sin in their family of origin.

This is why a lot of people burn out in Christian ministry is because we have never gone backwards to go forwards. We have never visited our family of origin and wrestle with how the past continues to play out in the present and affects so much of our lives.

A good friend that has been very successful in life and is a president of a large company, which manages hundreds of people said, "IQ will get you the job, but EQ (emotional intelligence) will help you keep the job." I couldn't agree with him more. If we don't understand the false self that we all have we will all make decisions and live out of fear and this will plague every aspect of our lives.

Chapter 2

What’s the core of the problem? We’re living divided lives. (Work on this when I have the capacity to think about it)

I lament because we live divided lives internally and this manifests itself in a world that is divided externally. We live divided lives and do not face the shadows of our own soul and thus are not able to face what divides us in the world socially, racially, culturally and socio-economically. This divided life is called the false self. 

The false self. What is this and where does it come from? The Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 3 about the false self; “But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these; anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your olds self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” 

In his seminal book, The Deeper Journey; Robert Mulholland defines the false self in 8 categories: 

1. Fearful self; we fear that our lack of a true center for our identity will be revealed and that weakness exploited by others. 

2. Protective self; when we rely solely on our own resources for our identity, meaning, value, and purpose, our false, like Cain, constructs a “city” for itself. 

3. Possessive self; our false self sinks many of the tendrils of our identity and value into possessions. Possessions are seen as a means of protection against the loss of material security. 

4. Manipulative self; always seeking to leverage its world and all those in it in ways most advantageous to our own security, prestige and, especially, agenda. Biblical Example: Annanias and Sapphira

5. Destructive self; it’s indulging in the pleasures of life at the cost of our interior world. Others are valued largely for the benefit they can provide for us. 

6. Self-promoting; always promotes us and our agenda above all others. The best of our behaviors become stained with the need for approval; the ultimate goal of the action is not the purpose integral to the action itself but the promotion of our value. 

7. Indulgent self; our false self must find joy and pleasures elsewhere. They provide satisfaction and pleasure but to further authenticate our identity. The false self's primary purpose in life is the gratification of our desires. 

8. Distinction making self; it is characterized by a need to categorize others in ways that always give us the advantage. 

Like me when you first read these eight categorizations of the false self, you probably cringed. The false self is deeply entrenched in us. It is the “flesh”, which Paul also talks about. If we are in Christ, we know that a new self or new being has come inside of us because of the Holy Spirit’s power. But, at the same time, there’s another war happening inside of us called the false self. Paul describes this inner battle in detail in Romans 7. He has a desire to do good, but at the same time there’s another battle at war within him called the false self, which prohibits him from doing any good. 

Because theologically we live in between the Garden of Genesis 1 and 2 and the city in Revelation 21, we are live in duality of worlds. God’s kingdom is breaking in and at the same time we feel the depth of sin and brokenness. This is what we are living in right now and why the false self is so hard to overcome. 

The false self for me is like a heavy cloud that is at times covering me in a thick layer. Sometimes it feels very heavy and other times when I’m walking in the Spirit and my belovedness, it doesn’t feel like it exists. But it’s always there, lurking, and preying on me to do its thing. 

And this false self is why we live divided lives. I lament that this division exists in all of us. We all live divided lives. Jesus, in his first message with his disciples in Matthew 5, points out they are murderers and adulterers. The same is true of us if we’ve ever had enmity in our heart towards others or looked lustfully at another person. The reality is this, the reason the world is divided is because the division lies within ourselves. A wise person once said, “Ensure the patient continues to believe that the problem is “out there” in the “broken system” rather than recognizing there is a problem with himself.”

There’s a reason the church is stressed out, burned out, serving others from an emotional vacancy, There’s a reason our churches are divided along cultural, racial and economic lines. There’s a system in our country that created this. It’s a system that created white flight and it needs to be named and repented of. 

We all live lives that are fine. Fine being, “frustrated, insecure, neurotic and emotional.” We want to live with this allusion that everything’s fine. Ask people of color and you will quickly find out that everything’s not fine. If we close friends of color in our lives, you will quickly discover that there’s a huge problem racially. 

I lament that for me, my inner life is divided with my struggle with codependency. It’s my thorn in my flesh from unresolved family of origin issues that will be with me until Jesus comes again to restore all things. I lament that inside of me I still have a sinful false self that creates “otherness” in people. 

Our churches are becoming inept at inviting people into their brokenness and the brokenness in our culture. We live in a performance driven society and this has affected our churches in many ways.  We typically only show 10% of what is really going on in our lives. We always put our best faces on for people. The gospel invites us to invade every part of our brokenness, not just the top 10%. We must learn to be honest with God, others and ourselves about what is going on.

As Robert Mulholland writes in The Deeper Journey as he talks about the journey from the false self to the true self in Christ; “Repentance is not being sorry for the things you have done, but being sorry you are the kind of person that does such things. I began to realize that underneath the thin veneer of my religiosity lived a pervasive and deeply entrenched self-reference being which was driven by its own agendas, its own desires, its own purposes, and that no amount of superficial tinkering with the religious façade made any appreciable difference. Then I happened to read those familiar words: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just so that he might forgive us our sins and might cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). I realized for the first time that God’s purpose for us was not simply to forgive sins but to transform our false self—to cleanse all its unrighteousness, to make us righteous, to restore our true self in loving relationships with God and in being Christ like in the world.” 

Reflect on these words, “Repentance is not being sorry for the things you have done, but being sorry you are the kind of person that does such things.” It’s one thing to repent of the way our false selves control our lives at times, it’s an entirely other journey into the depths of our lives to understand why our false selves do such things. To journey into our divided lives takes courage, patience, and deep reliance upon the Holy Spirit.

What is this division that exists in our lives? 

We are not aware of what’s happening internally as we love and serve others and oftentimes serve from a place of emotional deficit, rather than as God’s beloved child.

We have a tendency to live a life different from our own. We present a mask to others of a person that we are not. 

We try to impress others and are driven with a need to constantly prove ourselves. 

We are not faithful to the true self that Christ has placed in us.

We are not honest about the pains of the past and how they play out in the present.

We live from other people’s expectations.

We have become so consumed with the American dream of comfort and control that it leads us to being overworked, stressed out, worried about everything and not resting in Christ.

We have bought into the lie that things, people and jobs will give us the peace our wicked hearts so long for.

We become convinced that “they” are the problem.

Loving Freely is committed to the work of Christ’s reconciliation internally and externally. We cannot live into Christ’s ministry of reconciliation externally if we are not willing to allow Christ to enter deeply internally into our divided lives.

In Redemptive Theology, Christ is in the process of reconciling all things to the Father. This includes humans to God, to each other, to creation and in this case, in the deep interior parts of our lives. 

Before we live into the ministry of Christ’s reconciliation externally, we must allow Christ to first reconcile us internally in this inward center. I believe this is why Jesus sums up the entire Jewish law of 613 commands with this: “Love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” We cannot truly love others freely until we’ve allowed God’s love to heal the broken parts of our inner world. 

Abba Father has called me to be a peacemaker in the church to heal from the past trauma of racism, and I regularly sense from the Holy Spirit, “Danny, I’ve called you to heal the church, but you can’t do it if there’s unhealed trauma in you.”

We cannot live into the ministry of reconciliation if you are not being reconciled internally. The reality is that we cannot truly love others well until we learn what it means for Christ’s love to be made true in our own inner world. We cannot love our spouses or children well if we have not learned to discover that God really loves and delights in us. Again, the reality is this, the reason the world is divided is because the division lies within ourselves.

Howard Thurman in Jesus and the Disinherited says, “His message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them. Jesus says this with almighty clarity. Again and again he came back to the inner life of the individual. With increasing insight and startling accuracy he placed his finger on the “inward center” as the crucial arena where the issues would determine the destiny of his people.”

Ghandi is famous for saying, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” This is extremely relevant for the Christian committed to the work of reconciliation and justice. Recently my wife said to me, “Go change the world for Jesus.” As I reflected on those words, I felt the Spirit whisper to me, “You must allow the change to happen in you internally before anything externally happens.” I must allow Christ to reconcile my divided life before I attempt to live into Christ’s ministry of reconciliation externally.

What is Loving Freely? 

Loving Freely is a discipleship tool committed to equipping the church to take the inward journey in order to truly learn what Jesus means to love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Loving Freely is based primarily on the way Jesus modeled loving others freely in the gospel of Mark, Howard Thurman’s phrase of developing an “Island of Peace” within one’s own soul, the writing and influence of Martin Luther King Jr., and the concept of a dignified interdependent relationship from Dignity Serves developed by Phil Hissom, while combining the thoughts of scholars like Henri Nouwen, Pete Scazzero, Parker Palmer, and Christina Cleveland. 

Loving Freely focuses on the spiritual formation that happens when we are in relationship with the “other”. The other are those that God has placed in our lives that are different from us. At times this is racial, cultural or socio-economic. Other times it will be our spouse, best friend or someone at work we don’t get along with. The hope is to focus on what Christ is doing in us as we love and serve others, as Carl Yung says, “What bothers us about others will lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.” 

I fully believe with all of my heart that something beautiful happens when we allow Christ to serve us and change us through those that are different than us. I am more like Jesus because I’ve had the privilege of being discipled and mentored by people who are not like me. It’s given me a different perspective on what it means to not worry, to fully trust on God’s provision, and a glimpse into the world of those with their “backs against the wall”, as Howard Thurman describes the marginalized.

 I’ve had a friend that’s lived on the street pray for me while we watched my mom die. I’ve also had young men in our neighborhood speak deeply into my life and show me what it’s like to really persevere in life and never give up despite the obstacle one faces.

As Christ is in the process of reconciling all things, Loving Freely is my attempt at reconciling the worlds of emotional health and justice. I’ve always been drawn to reading about the deeply spiritual formational worlds of Thurman, Palmer, Nouwen and King. I’ve also been drawn into educating myself about racial-reconciliation and asset based community development among our neighbors in distressed communities. Loving Freely comes out of trying to reconcile these two worlds. It’s an attempt to model the argument Paul is making in Ephesians 2 when Christ is reconciling the Jews and the Gentiles, thus creating the new humanity. The new humanity comes out of joining two very diverse parties. 

In order to break free from the sin and struggle of the now, we must be willing to face the sin and struggle of the past. Maya Angelou famously said about facing the sin of racism, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be un-lived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” This is true about the deep interior parts of our lives and the ways in which we’ve  been wounded in the past in our family of origin and it’s also true in the work of racial reconciliation. As Pete Scazzero in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality says, “we allow Jesus into the inner closets of old hurts, sealed-off infections, fear, and shame this new relational tension may touch inside us.” 

This is really how God began to heal me of my codependent false self, he opened up the wounds of my past and began to speak to me through friends and neighbors that were living on the margins. Some were friends that were experiencing homelessness, some were young black men from our neighborhood, Historic South Atlanta, and others were from voices that the church and society has pushed to the margins. The journey has been similar to Henri Nouwen’s journey into the L'Arche community towards the end of his life and ministry to live with mentally handicapped people, “God said, “Go and live among the poor in spirit, and they will heal you.” 

As a result of journeying through the process of Loving Freely I want you to be able to sit with a friend or neighbor that is experiencing homelessness, look into their eyes, and say “Can you pray for me?” This is what happened to me ten years ago and this experience changed me drastically. I want those that come from the majority culture to listen and enter into the deep pain of our friends in the minority community and seek to be changed by what God is doing in the work of racial-reconciliation. I also desire for us to be changed by those who rub us the wrong way and pay attention to that reality of, “What bothers us about others will lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.” 

I hope that Christ so deeply transforms you in the deep interior parts of your life that maybe for the first time in a while, you walk across the street and engage your neighbor as the beloved child of God. I hope you see the joy in receiving from those that are different from you racially, culturally and socio-economically. 

In its fulness, Loving Freely is a part of Christ reconciling all things back to what was lost in the garden of Eden. Welcome to the journey to Loving Freely. I hope you experience the joy of Christ serving you as His beloved as you discover the joy of loving others freely. This resource is a gift from God as He’s helped me discover my true self in him. 

May Christ be praised as you learn to love others freely as His beloved! 

Chapter 4

Wounded Healers

Can you pray for me? 

That single statement. That single question. It changed me. It opened me up to a whole new world. 

 I had just graduated from seminary with a Masters in Intercultural Ministries. I was ready to conquer the world and end poverty in Orlando, FL. Of course, as a white dude with his Masters degree and a bit of a chip on my shoulder, I thought I knew it all. 

Donald Miller once jokingly said, “Be careful of a white guy with a masters degree because he thinks he knows it all.”  In 2009 I had just graduated from seminary and we moved our young family to Orlando, Florida where I got connected to a ministry in the city and began to love people living on the margins of society. I enjoyed serving and thought I was making a difference.  There was just one problem; people weren’t changing based on my agenda and my timeline.

I had spent three years studying and understanding why people were poor, understanding systemic racism and had come to some conclusions about what needed to be done about it.  In hindsight I can now see that the main problem with my approach was that it was rooted in a deep sense of superiority, pride, arrogance and insecurity.  As Miller said, I truly felt like I knew it all.

Then, I learned the new language of dignified interdependent relationships from Serving with Dignity and dove deep into how Paul closes his letter in Philippians 4 through using the words, giving and receiving. 

Something changed almost immediately.  This new approach to loving our friends in marginalized places so deeply transformed me personally that I began to implement the principles into the way I was interacting with my neighbors that lived on the streets. No longer was I solely trying to convert them to Christ, but through dignified interdependent relationships I was discovering that many of my friends already knew Christ much better than I did because they had found a God that cared for them in their distress.

I remember one specific pivotal moment very clearly. It was April of 2010 and I had been serving at Compassion Corner in downtown Orlando for a couple of months. What happened that day left such an impact on me.

I had just finished facilitating a Bible study on Luke 15 on studying the two lost sons with the community and we were hanging out drinking coffee. I looked at a new friend and said these words, “I was wondering if you could pray for me?”

He just looked at me with a blank stare. Why would I need prayer? Wasn’t I the one with the power having just got done leading the Bible study? Wasn’t I the pastor, the one with the seminary degree that had all of the answers. This is what comes from being conditioned by the majority culture, we believe we have all of the answers and have to retain power and control.

The truth was that I had a lot of inner-turmoil going on in my life.

It was at that moment that I discovered that my approach to reaching a community for Jesus would have been radically different than it had been since I began to take evangelism seriously. No longer would I arrogantly march into a community to bring my genius and my pre-baked solutions.  On the contrary, I began to discover that God was already present and at work among people and that my refined role was to recognize and affirm God’s image in and grace towards those on the margins, and to allow the Holy Spirit to do the work as Christ draws people to himself.

The reality is that the false self is always seeking to stay in control of others and relationships, trying to manipulate it for its own agenda. As Robert Mulholland describes one manifestation of the false self in The Deeper Journey as the, “manipulative self”. He describes it as,  “Our false self is a master manipulator, always seeking to leverage its world and all those in it in ways most advantageous to our own security, prestige and, especially, agenda. Having lost the true ground of our identity in loving union with God, where our real purpose in life is found, our false self must generate its own purpose.”

Community Development expert Bob Lupton says,  “When my motivation is to change people, I inadvertently communicate: Something is wrong with you, but (quite subtly) I am okay. If our relationship is defined as healer/patient, then I must remain well and they must remain sick in order for our interaction to continue. Since one does not go to the doctor when he is well, curing, then, cannot long serve as the basis for any relationship that is life-enhancing for both participants. Little wonder that we, who have come to the city to “save” the poor, find it difficult to enter into true community with those we deem need.”

Our model of course is Jesus and this posture of receiving is what Jesus does in John 4 in interacting with the Samaritan woman. Jesus chooses to go through Samaria, walks up to the well and sits down, “being wearied with his journey” (4:6). The Greek word for “weary” is kopiao (from kopos, in secular Greek, a beating or weariness caused by it). Jesus, being tired, sees the Samaritan woman and then does something so brilliant; he asks her for help by saying, “Will you give me a drink?” 

Even the woman’s reaction in 4.9 says it all, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews does not associate with Samaritans.) (or even use dishes that they use). 

What’s so amazing in this story is that Jesus places himself in a posture of receiving by asking for help from the Samaritan woman. He fully immerses himself in her context in a non-threatening way. It is in this framework of honoring this woman’s dignity, value and worth that Jesus talks about the water that will never run out. 

If the goal for our relationships are based on, “giving and receiving”, from Philippians 4, then we learn to not only give, but to receive as well. If we are God’s beloved children, we don’t have to be in control of others or circumstances and can now receive from those we believe we should be giving too.

The beautiful thing about living into this is that the biblical text we were studying was Luke 15 and the two lost sons. After my time there I then realized that God was working through my friends living on the streets to realize I was no longer the younger son looking for acceptance in the distant country and I wasn’t the older brother who stayed at home trying to perform and prove his value to the father, I was the beloved of God. God was working through people that were homeless to help heal what was homeless in me. 

What was homeless in me is that I was incredibly depressed, not aware of the true self that Christ had placed in me, and was deeply insecure. When I came to Compassion Corner and began to serve weekly I realized that this was the first time in six years that I had consistently showed up to serve others. What had happened in Orlando was so deeply jarring that I was honestly scared to commit to any sort of Christian service. 

The year I spent with my new friends that were unhoused in downtown Orlando changed my life. These friends prayed over me, listened to me, and taught me the Bible. When it was time to move from there to Atlanta I was a different person. I had discovered my voice and gifting again. To my friends, Calvin, Eugene, Larry, and Dawn, thank you for allowing Christ to serve me through you!

Reconciliation of “all things”. The Theological Underpinnings of Loving Freely  (move to chapter 3: a lot if this stuff is repeated and can merge with other ideas)

God is in the world reconciling all things (Colossians 1:19-20) through his son, Jesus the Christ. But what are “all things” and what is he trying to reconcile back to himself? To understand this, we have to have a proper understanding of God’s original intent in Genesis 1-2 and the four connections that God established and why Christ reconciling our internal divided worlds is so important. In the beginning part of our story in the Garden of Eden we see God establishing a connection with humans, between the humans (Adam and Eve) who he created, between the humans and the world they were living in, and within themselves internally. 

At the fall, all four of those connections were broken. God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden, thus breaking fellowship between God and humans. Adam and Eve for the first time experienced enmity between each other and blamed one another for disobeying God. Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden and work became toil. 

And lastly, but for the purpose of Loving Freely, most importantly, Adam and Eve experienced a division in their interior worlds as they experienced shame and hid themselves with fig leaves after discovering they were naked. 

But, of course God does not leave his creation to save itself. God always intervenes and all through the story of scripture, he reconciles his people back to himself through his son, Jesus, thus initiating the New Covenant. 

Through Jesus, we can now have access back to God and know him personally. We are now being reconciled across color, class, culture, and each other whether it’s husband and wife, family units, friends, or a divided church body. We can now enjoy the fruit of our labors through work as we discover the joy of working. And, we can now experience Christ reconciling our divided lives as we discover the true self that he’s put in each of us. 

It is my belief that reconciliation must begin in the deep interior parts of our lives and move outwards. If we are not allowing Christ to reconcile the deep interior parts of our lives, it influences every other part of God’s restoration. 

If we don’t allow Christ deep into those hurts and wounds of our past, then we will only have a surface level relationship with the triune God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

If we are not honest about our own prejudices, biases, and how our false self divides, then we will not be able to fully live into Christ’s new humanity here and now. This is true in seeking to be reconciled with my own wife, but also across color, culture and class. If we are not honest about how the curse of sin and death has conditioned us, we won’t be able to live into the fullness of what God desires for us. 

If we are not honest about how God has created and wired us to be, we will be living someone else’s life and our work will become labor some and not joyful like God desires it to be. We will be overworked, not living within our limits, spending way too much money and just surviving. 

This is why emotional health, racial reconciliation and how we keep a budget are all connected. It’s all about how Christ is reconciling all things back to the Father with the original intent of Creation with the focus of what is to come when Christ comes to fully restore all things here and now. 

And this is why we lament about the divided lives we have inside of us. We live divided lives internally and this manifests itself in a world that is divided relationally, racially, culturally and socio-economically. I lament because the reason the world is divided is because the division lies in us. The division in our own lives does not allow us to face the brokenness of our past, that many times we are living someone else’s lives, and that we cannot be honest and name what’s happening inside of us or in the world. We are conditioned to avoid pain and it’s killing us. The reality is that the past is always playing out in the present, both in the deep interior parts of our lives and the isms plaguing the church. 

This is why what Paul highlights in Ephesians 2 is so important. It is because of Christ’s work and making us his handiwork that God is now reconciling the Jews and the Gentiles into One New Humanity!

We cannot love the other if God’s love has not been made true in the deep interior parts of our lives. We cannot be reconciled to each other if we are not first reconciled internally. 

God wants to reconcile all things back to himself. He longs for us to know his unconditional love. He longs for His bride to be made whole across color, class, culture, family units, and any other relational unit that’s divided. He longs for us to enjoy the fruit of our labor in long and healthy lives. And, he longs for us to face the division in our own lives in order to live into the fullness of what he desires. 

This is why God is about reconciliation, period. He wants to take what was divided and make it whole for his glory. And the person that modeled this the best was God’s son, Jesus the Christ. And one of the best models of this is from Mark’s gospel, which Jesus is portrayed as a servant. 

Jesus modeled all four of the restorative connections in Mark’s gospel. He was reconciling people back to God, to each other, to creation, and for the purpose of Loving Freely, within themselves. 

Reconciliation begins within ourselves with a significant moment that happens in Mark 1 In chapter 1 of Mark we see these three significant movements of the spiritual formation of Jesus, that I believe fuels his ministry and allows him to come to a place of loving others freely. 

In vs. 11, Jesus is declared the beloved by the Father. In vs. 12-13 he led to the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by Satan. And, then in vs. 35, he withdraws to a solitary place, where he prayed.

In Mark’s gospel, he portrays Christ as a servant, yet, before Jesus becomes a servant, He is first God’s beloved, he then spends time in the wilderness away from any sort of ministry, and then after calling his disciples, driving out evil spirits, healing many and healing a man with leprosy, Jesus withdraws to pray and be with the Father. 

The reality is that Jesus loved others because he was God's beloved, not to become the beloved. 

This changes everything. We love others because we are God's beloved children, not to become the beloved child! And, it's because God see Jesus as his child, whom he loves, and whom he is well pleased that he can become aware of what's happening all around him.

Working on my side of the bridge

As I said before early on in my journey. I was fresh out of seminary with a Masters of Intercultural Ministries degree. I had studied poverty and race. I had sat under leaders of color, read scholarly books and had lots of knowledge. I was in many ways the white guy with a master’s degree that thought he knew it all and I was going to solve and fix everyone’s issues, particularly the vulnerable.

Then I took Dignity Serves and read this at the end of the training;

“Most people who go through the Dignity Serves curriculum struggle with codependency in some measure. One way to describe codependence is the false belief that happiness in your life depends on certain changes in someone else’s life. This belief may persist in spite of consistent evidence to the contrary and heroic yet fruitless efforts to make the change you feel is so necessary. If you find yourself trapped in the role of caring for others or with a profound need to control situations and outcomes, you may be suffering from codependency. You may also tend to blame others for how you feel or are waiting for someone else to save you. Codependence has many faces, but at its core it is a futile attempt to extract love from other people. And it is exhausting. What is often missing is the core belief you are already deserving of love yourself and that you already possess the love of God. (Dignity Serves, v. 5; Phil Hissom)

Ouch. What does one do with that? It was like a punch in the gut. I then went back to school in my own soul and began the daily struggle of repenting of the underbelly that lives in my false self that can be extremely codependent.

This is why I think Jesus sums up the entire law by saying, “Love God will all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.” I think that the “as yourself” part is what the church loses focus of.

We cannot truly love others well until we learn what it means for Christ’s love to be made true in our own inner world. Many in the work of reconciliation are guilty of loving out of obligation, guilt or codependency. This is to love out of deficit and this is not what Christ has called us to. I know I am guilty of this.

Recently I was talking with a good friend, Demetrius that does ministry in the inner-city of Orlando and we were catching up on the things Christ is doing in our hearts and the projects we are giving life to. I told him I was working on a piece called Loving Freely on the importance of emotional health in the work of reconciliation. I asked Demetrius for his thoughts and he said that in the work of reconciliation we are called to be bridge builders and if we don’t do work on our side of the bridge, the bridge that we extend will be tainted with selfish desires, wants and needs. If we don’t work on our side of the bridge we will be serving out of deficiency rather than allowing “streams of living water” to come from our soul as Jesus puts it.

I think that perfectly describes the work of Loving Freely.. We must allow Christ to work on our side of the bridge before we extend any sort of love and grace towards the other. Demetrius went on to say; “Reconciliation is about trust building. You have to build bridges from both sides. In order to build trust, you have to do your own soul work first, wrestling with the question, why am I doing this?”

As Martin Luther King Jr. states in Strength to Love; “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.”  The point I believe Martin Luther King Jr. is making is that the work of reconciliation needs to happen in our hearts first in order for it to be worked out towards societal transformation. Martin Luther King Jr., who lived during the Jim Crow, Civil Rights era and segregation had a deep interior peace in  Christ and I believe we need to heed his words. We must be reconciled internally through Christ and let this reconciliation work outwards.

Jesus knew what he was doing by summing up the entire law with the great commands and ending with “as yourself”.

The Goal: Island of Peace

Jesus begins his earthly ministry in Mark 1 by hearing the Heavenly Father declare over these amazing words;

“This is my beloved child, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.”

Think about this statement for a moment. Before Jesus entered into any form of service to anyone, he is declared the beloved child, whom is loved, and the Father is well pleased with! It was this deep inner peace that Jesus held throughout his ministry, knowing that he was unconditionally loved by the Father. There was a place or reality that Jesus lived in all through his life here on earth.

This place is what the pastor and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman describes as an “Island of Peace” within our soul. It’s the place where we hear God’s voice in our life affirming us and speaking words of peace. It’s the place that no amount of stress, life’s challenges, or the criticism of others can get to.

In the gospel of Mark, Christ knew this Island of Peace in his soul, and thus was able to love others freely because of it. He knew that He was sent on a mission from God and that God’s voice in his life was all that mattered. Dr. Todd Hunter in Deep Peace says it like this, “Peace within is the overflow of being so loved by God that contentment is the natural state of our souls. From that place of provision, we are then free to love, forgive, and serve our neighbor.”

This is why we love others because we’re the beloved child of God, not to become the beloved child of God. This awareness changes everything! We can only love others freely when we freely receive the fact that we are God’s beloved child, whom He delights in!

The words in I John 4 captures this beautifully in v. 11, “Dear friends, since God so loves us, we also ought to love one another.” And in v. 19, “We love because he first loved us.” We love others as the beloved of God, because we have received the fact that we are God’s beloved. We cannot give away what we have not received ourselves.

The reality is that because of the fall, we all have voices rattling around in the back of our heads saying things like, “You’re a failure.” “You’re worthless.” “You’re in trouble.” “You’re no good.” These are the voices of my false self, and yours may be similar.

But these are not the voices of God! If we are in Christ, he no longer sees as enemies, but as the beloved. A friend said to me once; “If you hear a voice over your shoulder talking about your biggest failure and it isn’t calling you ‘beloved,’ it isn’t Jesus talking.”

A big problem in the church in this country is that we’ve been embracing the wrong belovedness. We’ve been trying to embrace the belovedness of the world through the love of culture, rather than of what the Heavenly Father says and speaks over us. Abba Father speaks the same words over us that He spoke over his son as the Spirit descended upon him in Mark 1 saying, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” 

The belovedness of the world will leave you constantly empty, never fully satisfying you, giving you an allusion that you are in control. But the belovedness of the Father is everlasting, never empty, fully satisfying, and releases our need for control. The Heavenly Father looks at us His beloved children with delight in his eyes and that is enough. 

This is why I love Rembrandt’s panting of the return of the prodigal son from Luke 15. In the picture we can see the gentle hands of the Father resting on the shoulders of the weary and beleaguered son.

There are many things from this text and picture we can meditate on, but two are what I want to highlight here. If you look closely at the hands resting on the younger son’s shoulders, the hand on the left is more feminine and the one on the right is more masculine. It is my belief that God Father rests his hand on our shoulder, and also that through the work of the Holy Spirit, God acts like a mother comforting us when we return home and receive our belatedness.

Henri Nouwen in his book, “The Return of the Prodigal Son” says it like this about being the beloved child;  “It is the place within me where God has chosen to dwell. It is the place where I am held safe in the embrace of an all-loving Father who calls me by name and says, “You are my beloved son, on you my favor rests.” It is the place where I can taste the joy and the peace that are not of this world.” 

Robert Mulholland says it like this in The Deeper Journey, “The source of a loving union with God lies in God’s unfathomable love for us. Think of it—Jesus says that God love you in the exactly the same way that God loves him! To respond to such love with the love of your total being draw you into that loving union with God for which Jesus prays.”

We can only love freely when we freely receive the love God as God’s beloved!

This is the deep awareness that Jesus lived with, that he was a part of the triune God and was deeply loved by the Father and filled with the Spirit. And God invites us into that same triune relationship of love.

The Triune God exists three in one, as God the Father, God the Christ, and God the Holy Spirit.

It’s within the Triune God that we get all of our emotional needs met, thus allowing us to love others freely. Our triggers are rooted in the false self’s desire for affirmation and approval, the need to control others, our longing for safety and security, and our need to be separate (be our own god).

When we have all of our emotional needs met by the Triune God, this is what it looks like;

• God the Father alone fills our need for affirmation and approval.

• God in Christ alone frees us from the need to control others and circumstances.

• God the Holy Spirit alone fills our longing for safety and security.

• It’s because we get all of our emotional needs met in the triune God that when we love others, God alone gets the glory, not us.

Pastor Paul Tripp says it like this; “Here’s what happens to us all – we seek horizontally for the personal rest that we are to find vertically, and it never works. Looking to others for your inner sense of well-being is pointless. First, you will never be good enough, consistently enough, to get the regular praise of others that you are seeking. You’re going to mess up. You’re bound to disappoint. You will have a bad day. You’ll lose your way. At some point, you’ll say or do things that you shouldn’t. Add to this the fact that the people around you aren’t typically interested in taking on the burden of being your personal messiah. They don’t want to live with the responsibility of having your identity in their hands. Looking to people for your inner self-worth never works.”

I regularly hear the voice of Abba Father saying, “Why are you looking externally for everything I’ve put in you internally?” It’s in those places where the Spirit leads me back to what Paul does in Ephesians 1 and the thirteen descriptions reminding me of who I am in Christ;

1. Blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

2. Chosen in him before the creation of the world.

3. To be made holy and blameless in his sight.

4. Predestined in love for adoption to son-ship through Jesus Christ.

5. Freely given us his glorious grace through Christ Jesus.

6. Redeemed through his blood.

7. Forgiven of our sins.

8. Been lavished with God’s grace.

9. Has made known to us the mystery of his will through Christ.

10. Also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything.

11. Included in Christ.

12. Marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,

13. Guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s procession.

Because of all of these things that Christ says we are, the Triune God meets all of our core needs for affirmation and approval, control, safety and security, and our need to be our own god.

No one can affirm you like the Heavenly Father does!

We realize that we control nothing in life and thus give it over to Christ and allow him to change people and circumstances.

The Holy Spirit alone makes us feel safe and secure through His indwelling presence.

And we then give all honor and glory to God for what He does to restore and renew all things.

The beautiful aspect of this triune God is that whatever emotional needs I have at any given moment, the triune God is there, ready and waiting to meet them. Whatever my heart longs for, the triune God fills!

And this is why learning to be obedient to the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives is so important. The same power that God resurrected Jesus from the grave is living in us resurrecting us from the grave of our false selves that are longing for all of these triggers of approval/affirmation, to be in control, safety/security and to be our own god. Paul says it like this in Romans 8; “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”

We can’t know the Heavenly Father’s affirmation and approval and experience his pure delight over us without the Holy Spirit opening the eyes of our hearts. We can’t understand that we control nothing as Jesus is King unless the Holy Spirit illuminates this. We can't experience the safety and security from the Holy Spirit until we experience his abiding presence in us and around us. And we will never understand that we are not the center of the universe until the Holy Spirit shows and reminds us that we not at the center, Jesus is.

I pray regularly a modification of what the Desert Father’s call, “Breath Prayers”;

“Holy Spirit, may I know the Father’s affirmation and approval over me and experience the delight in his eyes over me.”

“Holy Spirit, remind me that I control nothing and that Christ is my brother and is present with me in all things.”

“Holy Spirit, may I know that I am safe with you and that you will not leave me as an orphan.”

“Holy Spirit, remind me that my life is not about me, but about the Father’s glory and honor.”

All of the deep longings for approval and affirmation, to be in control, to feel safe and secure and to be our own god is all met by the triune God and this is why we love others freely, because we need nothing from anyone! It’s when we allow Christ to love us freely, that we can then love others freely. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. says it like this in Strength to Love; “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.”

It’s when Christ reconciles our divided lives, that we can then and only then move outwards towards the world to love others freely.

If God is enough, then God is enough!

Picture of a cow. 

(For those wondering, yes, this is me riding a cow in Bumpville, PA.)

“You were a bum in High School.” 

I could only nod in agreement and chuckle. The words were said by an older man who was the father of a girl I went to High School with after we ran into each other at a restaurant a few years after graduating from High School. He knew about me and in many ways I was a bum. 

I goofed off. I had terrible grades. I failed off the sports team a couple of times. I also did crazy things like ride our holstein dairy cows when I was bored after milking cows. I knew I had a brain, but never really applied myself. I falsely believed that I was a no good failure and developed a deep shame and self-hatred for myself. 

I was a failure in everything, except sports, particularly basketball. Basketball did something different for me. It felt really good during the game to shoot threes and watch them go in and to hear the crowd go wild and hear people say, “Way to go Danny-boy”. 

In those moments I wasn’t a failure. I wasn’t a bum. I was something. 

So I falsely accepted this lie, if I perform, I am good. If I do something meaningful, I am good. 

So I became a performer in life because of the voices in the back of my brain constantly telling me that I am no good. The unfortunate thing is that when I went to college and Jesus completely changed my life and led me into ministry, this core lie was never dealt with. 

Ministry did something for me. It became a way of covering up the fact that I was not a failure. I was no longer a bum. I was a college graduate that was a successful youth pastor, or so I thought. My motives were less than pure in ministry and paralleled those of the older brother in the fields working to gain his Father’s approval. As long as I performed, I was good. 

This all came crashing down after I burned out and spent the next seven years outside of vocational ministry trying to discover who I was apart from ministry. 

My false self is like the older brother in the fields working in Luke 15 trying to prove my worth by what I do. It’s driven by the need to constantly prove itself because of the false belief that I am not the Fathers child. This then makes ministry a tool by which to show that I am good and loved by the Father. Listen to the words Jesus uses for the older brother, “Look! All these years I’ve been serving you, and never disobeyed your orders.” His motivation was un-pure and driven by the need to prove himself because of his core lie that he was a bum.

In this paradigm of false belief, there was no understanding of original glory. There was no awareness of the deep love of God that He had chosen me before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. I wasn't operating from creation, but from the fall, with the false belief that if I worked hard enough, I could gain the acceptance and approval of the Father and be good. It’s what Pastor Sebastian Holley describes as a, “qualification based mindset”. It’s living in this fearful reality that you are not good enough and need to constantly qualify or compete to prove your goodness.

There are times when I live with the false belief that helping and serving others affirms my goodness. Henri Nouwen in “The Return of the Prodigal Son” says it like this; “But there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.” Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They are always there and, always, they reach into those inner places where I question my own goodness and doubt my self-worth. They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it through determined efforts and hard work. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift. I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved and follow the voices that offer a great variety of ways to win the love I so much desire.”

When ministry is driven out of the false self, it becomes a way of getting or proving something. Years ago my counselor said to me, “Ministry is such a great measurement tool. You stop doing and you’re no longer good.” In this place there is no concept of grace. No understanding of a gracious and loving Father that is just looking to give us good gifts despite the fact that we’ve never done anything to earn them. 

When I am living out of my false self I am like the older brother toiling away in the fields not aware that God’s already been at work in the field tilling the ground.

We don’t need to do anything to contribute to God’s work, only respond to what He’s already up to. We don’t need to prove ourselves, be right, sound right, solve or fix any of the world's issues, because that’s up to the One that is in the world reconciling all things. We only respond to His voice as His beloved children.

I am not made right because of anything I can do for others, I am made right only through the cross of Christ. That’s good news. How do we earn something that isn’t ours to earn? It’s something given to us freely. 

This is why silence and being with Christ in the scriptures are so important. It literally forces us to face the older brother in us that can’t stop working. It helps us process the emotions of the day and how we’ve been triggered off our Island of Peace in our souls. There have been many times when I am in silence with Abba Father that I will sense the Spirit say, “Danny, I am well pleased with you. You don’t have to keep working to please me, because I already am.”

So, my fellow reconcilers, rest in the knowledge that at this very moment, if you are in Christ, you are the beloved of God and don’t need to do anything to prove your worth or value by working in the fields like the older brother through serving others. You are fully loved and embraced by the glorious God of the universe. May you rest well this weekend knowing that God delights in you and everything He has is yours and you don’t have to work for it. In Christ, you are made good, so now go and do good. 

What are your addictions? 

There we were, at a Panera Bread patio drinking some coffee overlooking Lake Eola in downtown Orlando. Mark and I had just got down serving together at Compassion Corner, a ministry that existed for years welcoming the cities most vulnerable neighbors experiencing homelessness into community. Mark and I had known each other for only a few months and he was very open about his struggle with alcoholism and his recovery.

After we sat down and got into our conversation I asked Mark if he was willing to share his story with me? He shared in detail about his childhood, his struggle with alcoholism, how it didn’t define him, his path to recovery and how helping others seemed to ease the pain that was inside. 

After about ten minutes of sharing his story, Mark looked me right in the eye and said, “So, what are your addictions?” 

I reacted like a deer in the headlights. I wasn’t ready for this question. I mean, I was the pastor with a Masters degree from Seminary in Intercultural Ministries and had just got done facilitating the Bible study that Mark was a part of. Didn’t he hear the words of God though me that I had my stuff together? 

I then proceeded to share a bit about my story and the struggles I’ve had over the years with codependency. He then proceeded to calmly say, “Yeah, you’re a validation addict.”

Once again, deer in the headlights. It was the first time I had someone peg me as this. After journeying through this for years, the Holy Spirit has revealed that my false self does long for the validation and approval of others. My false self lives off of what others think of me and by the grace of God, He’s healing me of this. 

We all have addictions, whether we're willing to name them or not. Richard Rohr says it like this, "We are all addicts...Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality. The very fact we have to say this shows how much we are blinded inside of it. By definition, you can never see or handle what you are addicted to...You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge."

My addiction is rooted in the false self's longing for affirmation and approval. Sometimes it's very strong and other times, when I am in tune with Christ and who's created me to be, it's not there at all.

As Dr. Anthony Gordon from Desire Street Ministries says, “It doesn’t take long to realize two things in Christian service, one is that you are inadequate for the task and two, you need someone or something to persuade you that you are adequate. We need validation. We need people to like us, we need people to need us, and we need people to celebrate us. As servant leaders we have to shift the validation scope whereby the vertical validation is central and the horizontal validation is secondary.” 

The false self in us longs for one of four things that are constantly triggering us every single day, in every single hour and in every single moment. These triggers are rooted in our need for affirmation or approval, the need to be in control, our need for safety and security, and our desire to be our own god.

When we don’t feel affirmed and approved by God the Father who’s uniquely created us, we then go off our Island of Peace in our souls to try and find it in other things, namely people. As one that’s constantly recovering of my addiction for validation and approval, Christ has helped me discover that this will be my thorn in my flesh to keep me humble, dependent on him and vulnerable to others. Henri Nouwen in, “In the Name of Jesus” says, “that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love.” 

We all have addictions, whether we are aware of them or not and we are powerless to these addictions of the false self! We cannot save ourselves from them through human effort. Paul says it like this in Galatians 3; “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?” 

The good news of what Christ does through the work of His Spirit is that our fundamental identity is not in what the false self struggles with, it's in Christ. Or as Dr. Anthony Gordon adds; “The leader finds his affirmation foundationally in Christ. This validation holds up under any pressure. Because this validation was never rooted in our abilities, holiness or virtues. This validation is rooted in God’s sufficiency."

Our need for affirmation and validation is filled by the voice of the Heavenly Father, which spoke the words over his son Jesus in Mark 1 and speaks over us, "You are my child, whom I love, with you I am well pleased." We no longer need the validation and affirmation of others because God speaks the words that He is well pleased with us.

Are you aware of your addictions?

What addiction is the strongest?

What is the addiction rooted in from your family of origin?

What does it look like for you to confess your struggle to Christ and love freely?

It’s Working on You

Recently a friend said to me about the false self, “If you’re not working on it, it’s working on you.”

This phrase has been sticking with me ever since she said it. Robert Mulholland, a seminary professor that spent his entire life studying the difference between the false self and the true self in Christ says this in his book, The Deeper Journey; “The reality of this pervasive, deeply entrenched, self-reference structure of being as the primary context of our spiritual journey is one of the hardest things for us to acknowledge.”

Paul describes it in Romans 7 as, “another law at work in me,”.

Pete Scazzero says regularly; “Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa’s in your bones.”What does this pervasive, deeply entrenched, another law at work in me actually do?

It’s constantly looking to be affirmed and approved of.

It tries to control people and life.

It becomes attached to people, things and ministries falsely believing that those things will give it the peace it so greatly longs for.

It never slows down and takes breaks because it believes that it’s not worth being served or taking breaks.

It feeds off of the yes of ministry and needs people to change to feel better about itself.

It leaks out all the time with people, programs or anything God has allows me to have influence over.

In short, the false self in us is always looking for one of four things when we love poorly; the approval or affirmation of others, to be in control of others, looking for safety and security from others, or trying to be separate, which means to be our own god.

So much of the thing that is at work in me is rooted in the wounds I carry from my past. This other thing at work in me never believes I am good enough and a failure and constantly feels like I need to impress people. 

So, what do we do? How do we actually live into the true self in Christ that has already been established in us?

I used to always think that if I could just gain victory over my false self, or if I could just get to a point that I won’t struggle with this, then I will truly be free.

Then a few years ago I visited an AA meeting. The level of honesty and humility in this space is so refreshing. To be clear, I don’t have a narcotics issue, I have a codependent issue with my false self. I love the first step in the twelve steps of AA. “We admit we were powerless over our addiction—that our lives had become unmanageable.”

"I am finding as I continue the journey to being the beloved child of God and loving freely from the Island of Peace in my soul, that I must admit that I am powerless to this addiction of the false self. I cannot save myself and that I need Jesus daily and most of the time, moment by moment. In short, I need the alien righteousness that only comes from Christ and Christ alone."

In the Apostle Paul’s words he says it like this in I Corinthians 15; “I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.” Paul sees this false self and old man of sin so destructive and powerful in his life that he sees the need to die to it daily. We have to be honest about the daily struggle. Dr. Anthony Gordon of Desire Street Ministries says it like this, “It’s going to be a daily struggle as we claw inch by inch to gain victory over the false self to live into the freedom we have in Christ.”

This is why I love the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Daily Office resource in order to slow our lives down to be with Christ. It’s in this space of silence that I can hear from Christ and His word, examine why I do what I do, refocus and be the person God calls me to be. This silence with Christ allows me too, “check yourself, before you wreck yourself.” If I don’t force myself to be alone with Christ and be reminded of my belovedness, I become a wrecking ball that influences all of my relationships around me. 

It’s in the silence that I sense the Holy Spirit pointing me back to my family of origin and name what is driving me. Howard Thurman says this about silence in Meditations of the Heart, “There is very great virtue in the cultivation of silence, and strength to be found in using it as a door to God. Such a door opens within. When I have quieted down, I must spend some time in self-examination in the presence of God. It is at such moments that I may become literally overwhelmed by a profound sense of the love and the grace of God.”

I developed the Loving Freely Confession to equip us to become more aware of our triggers to ask questions like;

What is happening inside of me right now or what am I feeling?

What did my false self want in that moment when I was led to serve the other?

Was it longing for approval or affirmation from someone?

Was it longing to be in control?

Was I lashing out for safety or security?

Was I longing to be separate and be my own god?

Being able to name what “it” wants and bring it to Christ begins the process for us to be able to love others freely. I then allow Christ's Spirit to guide me back to the truth of the scripture that I am meditating on. Recently it's been the John 13-17 text of Jesus spending time with his disciples in the last supper. Sitting in the scripture of the fact that the Holy Spirit of God will comfort me and guide me into all truth of what I already have in Christ refreshes me and re-centers me, and allows me to then move outwards to the other.

What is “it” for you? If you’re not checking it, it will work on you and ultimately destroy you.

Washing Windows and the Illusion of Control

“When you feel internally out of control, you try to control the externals.”

These were the words of a friend who was a counselor spoken to me over ten years ago. Control is one of the four manifestations of the false self. 

 Those words were true of my false self back then and they were true of me as I sat on a Saturday morning in March of 2017 washing windows in our house. The night before on Friday our mom had to be rushed into the ICU at the hospital in update PA for an apparent stroke. We were in a panic not knowing what was going on. 

I didn’t know whether to fly home the next day. We decided to wait a couple days as I was supposed to present the Loving Freely content for Desire Street ministries the next week and mom was stable.

In that moment on a Saturday morning, I woke after not sleeping well and felt completely out of control and so I decided to do the next best thing, wash windows. As I began to wash the window, our sweet four your old Eden saw me doing something strange, approached her father and asked in her little voice, “Daddy, what are you doing?” 

I responded, “Controlling something.” 

Once again the words of a counselor rung true, “When you feel internally out of control, you try and control the externals.”

We are in a time during the Covid 19 pandemic that we are realizing we control nothing. It was all an illusion that we have any control anyhow, yet it’s being reinforced again and again and again with what’s happening in our world.

In an interview on the history of race in our country, Theologian Mark Charles said, “So much of western culture is based on the idea that we can control something and it’s all an allusion.” We are constantly being conditioned by our culture that we are in control. We know it’s a lie, but we like to live in the illusion of it.

Our responses externally to try and control something  only reveal what’s happening inside of us. When we feel internally out of control, what external things we do try and control? Many times it can be circumstances, people, or possessions.

Pete Scazzero said recently about the place we are in now; “We are now confronted with an extended, external reality over which we have no control, one we did not choose. This is a thin place pregnant with spiritual possibilities, a moment of significant transition in our journey with Jesus - if we listen and surrender.” Read the full article here.  

If we want to press deeper into how deceitful our human heart is, we have to be honest about those places from our past where we felt out control, exposed, vulnerable, and then learned a coping mechanism to stay in control. At least that’s the truth for me. I’ve had moments from my past where I have been exposed, shamed, and so I developed patterns of trying to control the externals in my life so that wouldn’t happen again. The past is always playing out in the present and why it’s so important to deal with the past and allow Christ to heal us.

The allusion of control is not the gospel of trusting God. The opposite of control is trust and trust is what God calls us to in places where we feel out of control. In those places of feeling out of control I will sense God leading me back to Proverbs 3: 5-6, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” 

It’s not that we ignore the places we feel out of control, it’s that we press deep into those places, be honest about them, embrace the truth of the scriptures and return back to the Island of Peace that God has created for us. A scripture I’ve been meditating on lately is Psalm 94:11, “The Lord knows all human plans; he knows that they are futile.”

Being stripped of our allusion of having control over anything is extremely hard, but yet very freeing. It’s what Abba Father chooses to do with his beloved children that he loves deeply. He wants us to deepen our trust in Him despite what’s happening all around us. 

He wants us to run to him to release control and not to the allusion of control in washing windows! 

Am I good? 

There’s a cookie epidemic in our culture. I have seen this cookie epidemic happen in many different contexts but I mostly see it in the ministry world, particularly in myself.

This cookie epidemic started between a joke my wife and I have with each other. After one of us will do something around the house whether it be cleaning a room, painting a wall, cooking food or something as simple as making cookies, we will ask the question;  what do you think of the cookies? Are they good?

But we really aren't asking if the cookies are good are we? We are really asking the question of each other, am I good? If the cookies that I made are good then that means I am good. But the reverse is true. What happens if the cookies are not good? Does that mean I am not good?

Unfortunately this can also be true about the ministries that we lead and have influence over. I see it in myself and have seen it many times in the largest of churches and the smallest of ministries; how our identity becomes wrapped up in the thing we are called to steward.

I first saw it when I was a youth pastor fifteen years ago. When we would have a good Wednesday night gathering of youth and eighty kids would show up I would be really excited, but when only fifty kids would shop up the next week, I would get really depressed and discouraged.

Why? Because my goodness was tied to what I could produce. Recently I was discussing this with my wife, Adrienne and she said, “The gifts that God has given were never meant to be a source of identity.”

At its core for me is codependency. Codependency is simply the idea that you need something external to make yourself internally feel at peace. We need people to say how good our cookies are so that we feel better about ourselves. We need people to affirm the thing that we are giving life to so that we feel better about ourselves.

This is why how we respond to criticism of our cookies is so key. Do we get defensive when someone offers critique or criticism? Do we crumble in shame believing the lies that we’re no good?

One of the greatest struggles in the helping field is trying to earn our goodness from helping and serving others. It’s really wrestling with this question, am I good? The false self turns our motives of helping others into  a way of earning goodness. It’s one of the things that Paul is calling out in the letter to the Galatians, the fact that they were trying to earn their sense of goodness through obedience to the law. He says as much in chapter 3, “Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?” Human effort tries to produce really good cookies so that we feel better about ourselves, thus proving our goodness.

Where do I derive my sense of goodness from? 

The real question we’re all asking is, “am I good?” 

Our culture says we’re good if we achieve something, if we gain a certain status, if we know the right people, 

But the gospel tells a different story. Our goodness doesn’t come from any of those things. It comes from the riches that we have in Christ Jesus. Paul lists out at least 13 of these in the beginning of his letter to the Ephesians. 

But the gospel offers a different reality when it comes to our works. They are like “filthy rags” as described in Isaiah 64; “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”

If our motive is rooted in trying to prove something or please someone, then we’ve missed the goodness of God and the beautiful gifts he’s given us. We are not our gifts. The gifts that Abba Father has given us are for his delight in us, and for for our false selves to get something from. Abba Father loves us a part from what we can do!

As Pete Scazzero says in Emotionally Health Spirituality; “Few of us know the experience of being loved for being just who we are.” 

In an interview recently, the golfer Rory Mclory said this about his need to take a small break from golf, “I am working on myself internally, to recognize, I am not my game, I am not my score.”  This is beautiful to recognize. As Christians, we are first and foremost God’s beloved children! We are not our jobs. We are not our roles in life. We are not….fill in the blank. We are God’s children!

It’s living in the reality that the cookies that we produce has nothing to do with our goodness. It’s literally becoming “detached” from what we produce. “It has rightly been said that those who are the most detached on the journey are best able to taste the purest joy in the beauty of created things. Detachment is the great secret of interior peace. Along the way, in this journey with Christ, we get attached to (literally “nailed to”) behaviors, habits, things, and people in an unhealthy way.” (Scazzero) We do the same things with our talents. With the things we can produce.

Certainly we are called to stewardship and to constantly review and be faithful to what Christ has called us to as we live our truth to the world, but our goodness is not wrapped up in what we do or can produce. As followers of Christ our goodness is wrapped up in Him. He is good, therefore we do good.

A brother in Christ that is giving his life to ending sex trafficking here in Atlanta said, “I used to think my purpose in life was my calling. I thought my purpose (my calling) was to help put an end to Commercial Sex Exploitation. But now I know my purpose in life is to be a son of the Most High King and to rest in that relationship. And from that I join my Father in the great adventure of raising awareness against Commercial Sex Exploitation. It is so much more freeing. I am not the hero of my story...but simply a son who loves his Father deeply and wants to tag along.”

Where are we deriving our goodness from? Our culture says we’re good if we achieve something, if we gain a certain status, if we know the right people, etc. But the gospel tells a different story. Our goodness doesn’t come from any of those things. It comes from the riches that we have in Christ Jesus and being the beloved of the Heavenly Father.

Rest in the finished work of Christ brothers and sisters, for we are the beloved children of God and we are good!

Losing the Capacity to Receive

In 2004 I went through a very bad experience with a church, and for the next few years I struggled through my insecurities about my broken ties with this church. I was an empty person who had found my sense of belonging and acceptance as a pastor. I thought I could solve my own issues through prayer and solitude with Jesus. 

In 2008 I was sitting with a counselor friend named Amy. In conversation, she asked, “How are you  doing?” Her question was an invitation to peer into my soul in a way that only a trained counselor could. 

I immediately began to sweat and shake. I had been caught. She knew  that something was not right with me, and I did not want to confess my need. 

I had lost the capacity to receive because I thought I could solve my own problems and this left me with the allusion that I was in control. I did not want to relinquish control of my own issues. I was always in the place of being a giver and now God was asking me to begin to receive by asking for help. It made me very uncomfortable. 

I observe this happening all the time with pastors and ministry leaders who are always considered “the answer people.” They are always in the position of helping, serving, giving. They give with little regard to themselves, and often find justification in such. I feel the tension in myself. 

This can lead to burnout when we lose the capacity to receive. 

Receiving is hard, very hard. In American culture, we are typically defined by what we do, accomplish and achieve. Receiving is the antithesis of this. Receiving means that I need to ask for help to get something done and most Americans don’t like to ask for help. 

As Americans, we work for everything we get, right? We’ve been shaped by the lie of meritocracy, that if you just work hard enough for something, you’ll get it. There’s nothing wrong with hard work, but the motive has to be checked all the time.

I would argue that we don’t want to ask for help because we honestly don’t believe that we are worth whatever someone wants to give us. Whenever someone pays us compliment or gives us something nice, we hide our faces in shame, saying  “If you only knew me and how bad I am.” When you ponder our typical response, you encounter the heart of the gospel. Christ wants to give us good things in the midst of our brokenness. 

This is one of the aspects of the parable of the Two Lost Sons in Luke 15 that I love. The younger son leaves home and destroys everything that the Father had given him. He ends up sleeping with prostitutes. He decides to return home, not to be the son, but to be the servant who works to earn his goodness back. 

The father, however, not only embraces his returning son, but cloaks him with a robe, puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And then the father throws a party. Can you imagine what the younger son thinks as a party is thrown in his honor? He is probably thinking to himself, “Dad, I just wasted all of your money by partying and sleeping with prostitutes. I am not worthy of what you are doing.” 

I can only imagine the father turning looking into his son’s eyes and saying, “Yes, you are. You are worth everything I am doing for you.” 

Christ wants us to receive help because we’re fundamentally worth whatever Christ wants to give us through other people. Christ is on our side. He is for us. He honestly believes in our goodness when we come to him in repentance.

My friend Amy and I met for two hours the next day, to begin to sort through some of my issues with God, church, and life.  For the first time, I began to experience Christ serve me as I began to learn what it means to receive. It was the beginning of a journey toward freedom that I am still on today.

Three thoughts of application:

1. Are you only giving and not receiving?

2. Who are you receiving from?

3. What’s happening in you internally that you need pay attention to when you ask for help?

Turning the Pastor Radar Off

It really was a perfect storm. I am a pastor that had just moved right smack dab in the middle of our neighborhood and yet co-dependency was a real struggle. I was ready to be the hero of every young man in the community. Some call it the white savior mentality.

I lasted a year and burned out. 

A good friend of mine that saw my codependent tendency manifesting itself in different ways said to me one day, “You have to turn that pastor mode off.”

He was right, but I couldn’t. Because of unresolved issues in my family of origin I was never good enough and so I needed to always be helping someone and trying to be their hero. I felt like I had an obligation to say yes to everyone and try and fix everyone’s issues. 

Reader’s Digest recently did research on leaders that are in ministry and said this; “A lot of us have trouble saying no to other people’s needs. As a result, we work too hard, rarely take vacations or anytime off, and can burn out really fast. Several health studies have found that we suffer from higher rates of obesity, hyper-tension, and arthritis than the average population does.” 

I had a choice then and it’s in front of all of us. Either I was going to face the deep pain that was down in my soul or I was going to burn out. Either Urban Ministry was going to burn me out God was going to use it to beat the codependent out of me. Thankfully, the kindness of God led me to repentance. 

I have come to realize that God actually has me in the work of reconciliation to save my own soul. Through this work of reconciliation Christ has forced me to face what is deep down in my soul in order to become more like Christ and the true self he’s placed in me. 

I was living with a core lie that if I am not needed then I am not valuable. Helping others, particularly my friends and neighbors on the margins, covered up the fact that I was a failure and that I constantly needed validation. Ministry gave me this. Upon digging deeper into my own soul, the Spirit revealed to me that there is an inherent need within myself to be affirmed, be in control, always feeling the need to be safe and secure. 

Christ used my burn out experience to make me realize that because of my codependency I had a lot of attachments to ministry. It began the process of Christ bringing me back to my favorite passage of scripture in Philippians 3; “I consider all things for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” I was not considering all things loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. Pete Scazzero says, “It has rightly been said that those who are the most detached on the journey are best able to taste the purest joy in the beauty of created things.” (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality)

Over the last few years Christ has been able to build up what Howard Thurman calls an; “Island of Peace within your soul.” I am finding that in the midst of intense moments, through this Island of Peace, I can sense the peace of Christ in and around me and respond to needs accordingly. 

God created us for glory to love freely with no strings attached. He does the work in us before he does the work through us. We are able to love freely because God’s love just pours out through us when we acknowledge that God delights in us. 

We will burn out if we are constantly trying to change the world around us without seeking to be changed in the work. My false self, as Paul describes in Colossians 3, needs people and things to change so that it feels better about itself. Compassion fatigue and burnout happens in ministry because we become so consumed with changing others or a particular thing and lose sight of God changing us. We forget that God is using what He’s called us into to form and shape us to be more like him. 

I feel deeply passionate about the work that Christ has called us to, but more than anything I am becoming more and more passionate about the person who called us to this work and through doing this As Dr. Anthony Gordon, a veteran in Urban Ministries is constantly reminding us, “God cares way more about who you are, than what you an do.” I have allowed the work of reconciliation to work in me and change me. God uses the work around us to do his sanctifying work in us. Christ is in the world reconciling all things, including the divided lives in our hearts. It’s His work in us that that manifests in the work in the world. 

And the reality is that if God is enough to reconcile our divided lives, then God is enough. May you rest knowing that the triune God is enough to meet all of our deep emotional needs for approval or affirmation, to control others, safety or security and to draw attention to ourselves. May you rest well knowing that God looks at you and speaks these words, “This is my beloved child, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.” May receiving these words from God, thus allowing you to love others freely.

God desires that His kingdom come here on earth as it is in heaven, and this means His kingdom comes in the deep interior parts of our being and from this place is where reconciliation and change happens. 

The False Self of “Ism’s”; 

I wanted to share a few thoughts from my heart on what’s happening now in the midst of the racial division happening in our country and church.

Someone once said, “The reason the world is divided, is because the division lies within us.” 

For years I have been wrestling with how emotional health and race intersect from a Biblical perspective. A couple of years ago as I was studying Colossians 3, I sensed from the Spirit to press deeply into this text, study it in the original context, and see the ways in which it applies to the journey from the false self to the true self in Christ. 

Verse 10 jumped off the page for me, “and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Here Paul is talking about how Christ has given us a true self through repentance of our sins and placing our faith in Christ. This is how he begins the third chapter, “Since then…”

But context is everything as we engage the Bible. What’s happening in this section of scripture? What happens as a result of the new self in Christ begins to live through us? Paul’s next words are HUGE, “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

Paul is making the argument that because of the new self in Christ it no longer categorizes or distinguishes people groups. 

But, what we fail to miss in this text and argument (and what Paul deals with a lot in his letters), is what the false or old self does to different people groups, it categorizes and makes distinctions in order to control, manipulate and have power over. 

One of the manifestations of the false self is that it is a distinction making self as Robert Mulholland unpacks in his book, The Deeper Journey. He describes the distinction making self as, “Our false self is characterized by a need to categorize others in ways that always gives us the advantage. Since our false is a way of being that positions us “over against” all others, others must be evaluated and labeled in such a way as to keep them either inferior to us or affirming and supportive “equals.” 

This is unfortunately true of me as I still struggle with the "false self" that likes to categorize and control people and drives me to my need for Christ's forgiveness. 

I’ve been on this journey for fifteen years of seeking Christ to live out the new humanity and when I am living out of the false self, the things that come out of me of that profiles, classifies, categorizes, or anything else blows me away. I’ve had so many conversations with pastors, ministry leaders, and people who genuinely love Jesus who struggle with the same thing. 

This is why the response, “I am not a racist”, misses the point when it comes to conversations of race and racism. A core doctrine to the Christian Church is the doctrine of original sin. We’re born into the doctrine of original sin in a country founded upon a thing called white supremacy, and so we’ve been conditioned from the start. 

We all have biases, prejudices, and racist tendencies, why? Because we are born into sin and have been shaped to see others in certain kinds of ways. Racism happens because the majority culture has power. 

A close friend that’s a Christian and Licensed Counselor who’s African-Ameircan put it like this; “From a mental health perspective, systemic racism and emotional health remains easier to not look at because when white evangelicals begin to truly look at the history and present issues, it will unearth so much wickedness and evil which then forces people to look at themselves individually and collectively. This also forces people to look at how they are currently contributing (whether they consciously know it or not) to the oppression of marginalized populations. Who wants to readily look at that!!! Hence you see the self-preservation and pie in the sky thought processes occurring in order to sooth the conscience.”

To that end, I have slowly been working on a series of blogs that integrates Loving Freely with race and I hope to release those this summer. 

In order for us to really heal as a country and church, we need surgery to remove this cancerous sin in us called “isms”. It’s in all of us. Let’s not ignore that. But, as Paul says in Romans 2, “not realizing that God’s kindness I intended to lead you to repentance.” It is God’s kindness that he allows us to look at this evil that’s been lurking beneath the surface for hundreds of years to face it. 

But, the good news is that because of the finished work of Christ on the cross and being saved by faith and becoming ‘God’s handiwork from Ephesians 2: 1-0, we can now live into New Humanity of Christ from vs. 11-22. 

We can only gain access to this new humanity when we choose to face the evils of our culture and the evil that’s inside each of us. 

May Christ continue to reconcile all things, including the division that lies within!

A holy interruption 

“The glory of God is man fully alive.” (Iranaeus)

It was a glorious weekend. Two days with your best friend from college hanging out with his family, eating good food, playing lots of video games, hiking, driving really fast in a Porsche, sitting in a hot tub with old college friends and having deep conversation about faith and what we’re giving our lives to. 

It had been ten years since we had hung out like this. We caught up on each other’s lives. I shared a lot about the journey Christ had led us on over the last ten years, where and why we live in the city, the experience of burning out and how God has redeemed. I talked about the counseling I’ve done, the deep inner healing that Christ has done in me and and how this has led me to develop Loving Freely. 

On our way to the airport to be dropped off, we were speaking our final words to each other. I said words of encouragement into his life and then it was his turn to speak into me.

He looked at me and said, “Dan, I just want to let you know that you’re not an idiot.” I said, “What do you mean”? He replied, “There were so many times this past weekend that you talked about your past and your struggles now and would always end with, I was such an idiot."

I had no response. As I have processed and prayed about this reflection, I realize how deeply entrenched my false self is. I feel like I am a Christian that’s done quite a bit of deep interior work. I’ve memorized huge chunks of scripture about the peace of Christ. I’ve done ten years of counseling. I’ve filled pages and pages in my journals as I’ve wrestled extensively with my false self. I feel like I’ve grown tremendously and past the shame of the false self.

Yet, there it is. That shame and deep self-hatred that's lurking below.

Robert Mulholland writes in The Deeper Journey about the false self, “I began to realize that underneath the thin veneer of my religiosity lived a pervasive and deeply entrenched self-referenced being which was driven by its own agendas, its own desires, its own purposes, and that no amount of superficial tinkering with the religious face made any appreciable difference.”

When I made the mistake of letting a young man drive my car in the neighborhood, the amount of shame I felt for what I had done was heavy. For weeks I could not forgive myself. I am the person that doesn’t need to be corrected, because I am typically in the corner shaming myself. I’ve always been my worst critic.

Shame is so powerful in our lives. A friend said to me recently; “Shame is a lie that the enemy uses to keep you thinking you are not good enough or worthy to be wholly loved by God and others.”

This is why I love what Jesus does in the telling of the two lost sons in Luke 15. To fast forward to the main point for the purpose of this blog; the younger son has just lost everything and has become so desperate that he’s now eating the pods that the pigs were eating. He comes to his senses and says these three things, 1) I have sinned against heaven and against earth. 2) I am no longer worthy to be called your son. 3) Make me like one of your servants.

And so the younger son returns home, not to become his Father’s son, (which he always was), but to become a servant, because his shame was so heavy at what he had done and become. He sees the Father as he comes over the hill and the Father runs to his son and embraces him.

This is where the good part is. The younger son then goes into his already prepared speech of shame, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and earth.” (part one) “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” (part two) Then, the next phrase in the text is from vs. 22, “But the Father said to his servants…”

Look at what happens there!

The Father interrupts his son in the midst of his shame and reminds him that he is not a servant, he is the beloved child.

I believe that the Father interrupts us all the time when we are in our shame. This is why stillness and silence with Christ meditating in the scriptures is so important. This is why having community around us reminding us that we are God’s beloved child is so important.

This is why it’s such good news that God begins our story in creation and through Christ’s redemption and His righteousness, He alone redeems us out of our shame and condemnation to love others freely. 

Living into the ministry of reconciliation is hard and we are going to mess up and make mistakes. It’s what happens when we do make mistakes that is the important thing. Do we heap blame upon ourselves for how badly we messed up? Do we shame ourselves for how bad we are?

When I make mistakes and do not love others freely, I quickly jump to shaming myself and become consumed with my false self for doing such things. I forget my original glory in Christ that God really delights in me and instead focus on how terribly corrupt I am and remain in my shame.

The shame that we carry has a history from the core lie we grew up believing about ourselves. For me, it was that I was a failure and not good enough and thus because of the fall my false self has a deep self-hatred. 

It is when I am in the midst of shame that the Spirit of God will remind me of Romans 8:1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Through Christ, I am reminded of  my original glory and that God delights in me, loves me, and is well pleased, and this allows me to love others freely. Regardless of the shame we carry, God the father delights in us as his beloved child. I rest in verses like this from Psalm 149; “For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.”

The reality is that shame is a part of the false self and the false self is not who God has designed us to be. In Christ, we are the beloved children of God. This is our fundamental identity. This is why the early church father, Iraneaeus said; “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

So, reconcilers, be free today, because Christ loves us freely. We are going to make a whole lot of mistakes in the ministry of reconciliation and justice, but God is a good Father and delights in you! Don’t take yourself so seriously because you're not the savior.

The Old Dog

I have been doing counseling since I was in seminary back in 2006 when I was dealing with high levels of anxiety and depression. For the first eight years of counseling the common theme was me shaming myself at how bad I was, the failures I had made that month and constantly talking about my struggles with codependency.

A joke that I would always make with my friend and counselor, David was talking about the “old dog”. The old dog for me was the old man, the flesh, the false self or all of the junk in me that I despised. It was the thing in me that I hated the most that would typically always destroy me. And I would dwell on it all the time.

So much of my journey has been focused on how bad I was as a result of the fall of humanity and thus shaming myself for how much of a failure I was. This manifested itself in loving others poorly and always thinking I needed to prove something in my service efforts or feel a sense of safety and security from others. My interactions with my friends on the margins was driven out of a lack in me and thus led to a lot of burn out. It was not motived by being the beloved of God.

I was so consumed with Romans 7 and Paul’s struggle with the flesh that I forget that he opens the next chapter with, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus." I am the kind of person that you don’t need to correct or chastise, because I am typically in the corner condemning myself in my head. When I do receive criticism it normally crushes me because I have always been my own worst critic.

There’s a stream in Christianity that glories in the fall and wants to bash us all the time by focusing on the fact that we are sinners and that no good thing dwells in us. A pastor one time called this “YS” theology, meaning “You suck.” Do we have sin that so easily besets us that needs to be named and confessed? Of course. It is sin that Christ came to set us free from.

A few years ago a friend made a comment during a church service that God was helping her to deal with this deep self-hatred she had for herself. Instantly something in me perked up. Upon further journeying into the depths of my soul, I realized I did have a deep self-hatred.

Because of the fall, it’s there. There’s a deep wickedness in my heart that loves to destroy the glory that God created me for. Only in Christ can I truly discover what it means to be fully alive in God and to be restored to the original glory that is pre-fall as a glimpse of what is to come when Christ comes to restore all things.

This deep self-hatred I had for myself was the core reason I would focus so much on “The old dog”. My friend, David would gently ask me during our sessions, what makes you come alive? What did you enjoy doing this past month? It was a slow process, but through the work of Christ’s Spirit I began to realize that I was created for God’s glory and as such God had given me something to do in this world.

I used to be so consumed with avoiding sin, that I was not aware that God had other plans for me. Mulholland in The Deeper Journey says it like this, “One of the greatest detriments to a growing and maturing life in loving union with God is focusing too much on avoiding the vices, on putting to death our false self.”

I began to discover that in Christ, God really delights in me and thus, began to delight in who God has made me to be. I wasn’t just identified by the old dog, there was glory in Dan Crain, that through Christ I have begun and continue to discover. I've sensed God's Spirit saying to me, "Stop asking me to change you." Instead, I ask God to forgive me of my false self and it's fleshly desires, which are a result of the fall, not original glory.

It’s really important to understand that our stories begin in creation and not the fall. Glory comes first and then the fall, then Christ comes to reconcile all things in him as a glimpse of what is to come and thus sets us free to love freely.

In Christ God views me as his beloved child and this is the journey believing in this truth in order to love freely. Galatians 5:1 states, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” We are called as followers of Jesus to live into the freedom that God has already accomplished on the cross. We love freely because right now at this moment, we are free. The victory has already been won, not by us, but by Him.

Paul later in the letter to the Galatians says in chapter 6, “If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.” Notice what Paul does here. After testing our own actions, understanding our own motives and aligning them with God’s, we can take pride in ourselves and the person that God has created pre-fall, which is being restored through Christ.

Watchman Nee says it like this when we discover this true self, "You will be restored to your true humanity--to be the human vehicle of the divine life. Your faith will open the windows of heaven, for God will move into to do the impossible, -- and this is the specialty of creative Deity. Your friends will be rattled, for in reality you will have become a new creature--old things will have passed away, all things will have become new (2 Cor. 5:17). Through peace with God you will have the found peace of God, which "passeth all understanding.”

Because of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, He has come to set us free from the curse of sin and death and as such begin to restore us to our original glory as a glimpse of what is to come. In Christ we become, “fully illuminated light bulbs.”

I am slowly learning to speak kindly to myself when I do sin and not to shame myself, because Abba is not shaming me. Because of what Christ has done for me, the Heavenly Father no longer sees a sinner, but a saint who is the beloved. 

So what does this have to do with loving freely? Everything. If we don’t believe in original glory of creation and whom we were originally designed for, the way I love will always be rooted in shame. I will constantly love out of guilt, co-dependency and coercion. Loving Freely means that in Christ, we are His Beloved, and we begin to discover that there are beautiful things in you that God has placed there for his glory to be used in his kingdom.

Our stories as followers of Christ begins in the garden and as such we all bear the image of God, regardless of how we shame ourselves thinking that we have nothing to offer. When we receive Christ’s love and grace, we come to a place of loving freely and dealing with those inner voices of shame.

Behold, the Old Dog has gone away and a new creation is being birthed in us through Christ everyday!

Get in the van!

“Get in the van if you want to change your life right now.” 

The woman could only stand there and look at the young man and the van loaded with well meaning church people. The church group had come down to Fulton Industrial BLVD (FIB) on the Westside of Atlanta, where the majority of sex workers are being trafficked and exploited. This group had come to serve the community for the day and then leave.

This was a story told to me by a close friend that walks with sex workers on FIB. His team embodies what it means to live out dignified interdependent relationship from Dignity Serves extremely well in this particular part of the city. As he shared this story, he talked about the frustration at how outsiders will come in his community and not understand the dynamics happening in the lives of the people he cares about and seek to rescue them. This particular group didn’t understand that this woman was working a couple different jobs so she could support her young family. To hop in the van right then and in that moment would mean leaving her kids behind and she wasn’t able to do this.

After discovering that the way the church in America was not serving the marginalized well, Phil Hissom wrote Dignity Serves in 2009 and said this in the training, "The current culture of service in the American church tends towards dysfunction mainly because we sacrifice relationship for the sake of efficiency.”

We sacrifice relationships because we want to get things done, and this is driven out of the false self. My false self wants control when loving and serving others. The false self want to serve others when it’s on my agenda, beneficial to me, and makes me look like the hero rather than Jesus.

Here’s oftentimes the reality; people that serve in this type of way want the control. They want the prestige. They want to do things on their own time and their own agenda. They will help, but only when it’s convenient for them. 

Dorothy Day says it like this, “Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward.”

Do we want people to be fully who God’s called them to be and get out of destructive patters? Of course. But, God also wants us to escape unhealthy patterns in our own lives, thus the importance of dignified interdependent relationships when we serve. 

Bob Lupton, a legend in community development says it like this, “There is blessedness in this kind of giving, to be sure. But there is also power in it—which can be dangerous. Giving allows me to retain control."

Control was not something the Good Samaritan had in Luke 10 as he finds the half-dead Jewish man laying in the ditch as he was traveling. He didn’t put together a special service project day to go and serve people in marginalized places. It was as he was living his life. He was called to serve when it was not convenient to him and when he had no control over the situation. 

Henri Nouwen says it like this, "It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life... Ever since the snake said, 'The day you eat of this tree your eyes will be open and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil' (Genesis 3:5), we have been tempted to replace love with power... The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led."

As believers in the resurrected Christ, this is the way Christ calls us to serve and love others. Because of what God has done in the deep interior parts of our lives, we are called to give up control to those we serve. This is the case Paul is making in Philippians 2 with the "if, then" statements. 

In this text Pauls says, “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, THEN……seek the interest of others. 

We want quick fixes when it comes to generational poverty, homelessness, racial-reconciliation or in this case, sex trafficking. But those that have immersed themselves in these worlds know that quick fixes don’t work. It’s long term, committed dignified interdependent relationships, with a full reliance on Christ’s Spirit where the most fruit happens, both in the lives of those we’re called to walk with and in our own lives. 

This is why Phil Hissom writes in Dignity Serves that, “Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He’s the hero. Which means we don’t get to be the hero. Ever. Our over zealous applications of the Good Samaritan parable have led the Church to embrace the role of hero. We have played God for others and encouraged a type of dependence on us that should be reserved for God alone. We have refused to receive help and learn from those in distress, trumping their skills and hopes with our resources and plans. Our efforts have led to a toxic codependence, which has resulted in tragic cases of burnout, resentment, and shame.”

When we engage others across race, culture and class, we come as learners! We come realizing that Jesus is the hero of the story, not us! We come having a posture of truly listening to the gifts of the community and doing what the people in the neighborhood think is best for their environment. Or, as Pastor Sebastian Holley stated, “If you’re going to offer aid, let it be in sync with the solutions that we already understand according to our dynamics.”

If we are the beloved children of God and have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, then, we are able to give up control, because we realize Christ has come to destroy the control tendencies in the deep interior parts of our lives. We are now able to give our lives away for the other, because Christ has given his life for us. We can now seek the interests of others, because Christ seeks our best interests. 

What if we asked different question when we love and serve others? 

What if we loved others with their best interests in mind and not our own? 

What if we discovered that God was already present and at work in every place and relationship and we simply listened to what Christ’s Spirit is saying? 

What if we checked our motives (because they matter), when we love and serve others, and are honest about what our false selves want? 

Are you from the church? 

“Are you from the church?” This question startled me as I had been in the trailer park for only a few hours. I knew a bit of the context to this question, so I answered the best I could: “Yes, but it depends on what you mean.” 

This question was asked by a resident, who soon became a friend at The Palms Trailer Park in downtown Orlando, FL. The trailer park had a lot going on in terms of “issues,” but it also had some of the most loving and faithful neighbors in the city. They took care of each other and after getting to know them, took care of me. I had recently started working for Polis Institute, a Christian non-profit, which wrote Dignity Serves and I was in the early stages of learning a new way of loving those in distress through what I have come to learn are called “dignified interdependent relationships.”

A few years before the woman asked this question, a large church in Orlando, FL sent more than three hundred volunteers into The Palms Trailer Park to clean up the trailer park. Many of the residents had their possessions thrown away because the volunteers deemed the neighbors goods to be not worth keeping around. It was painful for the owners of the trashed property and it hurt the reputation of the Church – and of Jesus.  It was a mistake.  A huge one.

Since that incident, the church has apologized, and they have been on a journey of learning to love their community well. We all begin somewhere and we learn through trial and error that, “Passion without knowledge is not good, how much more will hasty feet miss they way?” (Proverbs 19:2)

The residents of this particular community had built up so much resistance to the “church” that they didn’t want the church among them.  Their experience was that way too many churches had come into the community over the years to “fix” them. Those churches likely saw the visible needs and wanting to be like the Good Samaritan and as Jesus commands, they jumped in by playing the default roles of “hero” and “fixer.” Many pastors and Christian leaders tried unsuccessfully to “convert the pagans” living in this trailer park. 

One of the core problem of churches that want to serve the marginalized is that they still want the power in the relationship. Bob Lupton writes in Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life; “There is blessedness in this kind of giving, to be sure. But there is also power in it—which can be dangerous. Giving allows me to retain control. Retaining the helping position protects me from the humiliation of appearing to need help. And, even more sobering, I condemn those whom I would help to the permanent, pride less role of recipient.”

It’s easy to walk into a place of distress or see someone that’s vulnerable and take over. I had to fight the urge of my false self to constantly do this. I am a doer. I like to get things done. My friend and mentor, Phil, took a different approach. He waited and was patient as he began to build dignified interdependent relationships with our new friends in the Trailer Park. 

The false self loves to have control over others when serving, thus retaining power over those we deem need our help. Having control over others feeds the false self and gives us a sense of superiority that we are the hero of the relationship, allowing us to get the glory rather than Christ. Robert Mulholland in The Deeper Journey says, “my false self, like most false selves, is a control freak that manipulates people and situations to protect if rom disturbances to its status quo.”

Loving Freely is about giving up control to those that we serve, particularly our friends in marginalized places and listening to and following their input. A lot of interior work is needed to be done by the giver to come to this place of receiving. It means dealing with the need to be in control of relationships. My counselor said to me years ago, “When you feel internally out of control, you control the externals.” 

Pete Scazzero says in his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, “By failing to let others be themselves before God and move at their own pace, we inevitably project onto them our own discomfort with their choice to live life differently than we do.” The question then becomes, what is disconnected in me that I need to be in control? There’s probably something from our family of origin that’s happened where we feel the need to constantly be in control of relationships. 

This is the main idea behind the Asset Based Community Development concept from Dignity Serves is that you listen and given up power and control to the community we are called to serve. As I watched Phil live out interdependent relationships we saw the community completely transform from the inside out as the resident owned what needed to happen in the community. 

Daryl Ford, lead pastor from Ikon Community Church said in an article for The Repentance Project about gentrification and power and the need for collaboration among the giver and the receiver, “Gentrification doesn’t have to be a net loss for those who didn’t leave if newcomers move with a sense of obligation to learn and build relationships with existing residents. This means when moving into a neighborhood, identify stakeholders. Ask the question “what are these neighbors doing?” or “what do they need?” If you move into a gentrifying neighborhood, and your first desire is to see a Pilates studio and a coffee shop built, it may be time to subordinate your agenda to your neighbors’ more pressing concerns—possibly reducing police brutality and improving housing and education. This means that both the gentrifiers and the gentrified coalesce in communities where trust is engendered and alternatives can be created.”

When we allow Christ to a deep work in the interior parts of our lives, we no longer need to be in control when we love and serve others. As Paul says in Galatians 5, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Christ has set us free in the deep interior part of our lives so that we can now love freely. When we see a problem, we don’t need to jump in and fix it and feel the sense of being a hero. We can be patient, build relationships based on humility, listen to people, and then develop a plan of action together as the Holy Spirit guides the process. 

The Father’s Delight

“And a voice came form heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Mark 1.11

One of the greatest principles that I’ve learned since I’ve been on the journey of spiritual formation for over twenty years is learning to see myself the way Abba Father sees me. 

Abba Father delights in his children. I experienced this delight in many different ways, but one of the most sacred times happened recently on a trip to the beach with my bride. Through some good friends, we were recommended to stay at the beach for a week with a ministry called, Shepherds Care. 

A week at the beach with my bride. No kids. Enjoying great food. Relaxing at the beach. Yes, please. 

Adrienne and I had looked forward to this trip for almost a year after being notified we had been invited to come away and rest and enjoy many of the Father’s good gifts. After arriving at the beach, we visited with the founders of Shepherd’s Care, Joe and Patti. As Joe and Patti shared the heart of Shepherd’s Care, they both referenced how the heavenly Father loves to lavish his children with rest and good gifts and this was the heart behind shepherd’s care. They wanted to walk us to the beach, pray with us for the week of rest, and commission us to rest.

As we walked onto the beach I got a deep sense of the Father looking down at me with pure delight in his eyes saying to me, “Well done, Danny. I am deeply proud of you and fully delight in you for your faithfulness to the message of my work of reconciliation.” As we stood there looking at the beach, the waves, and the blue waters of the ocean, it was a sacred moment.

It was a sacred moment because embracing the Father’s delight over me has been a struggle my whole life. The core lie I carried from my family of origin was that I was a failure to my earthly father, and to any early father  that had authority over me. I always felt like I was letting them down by goofing off, getting terrible grades, not doing a chore well enough, etc.

I over compensated by becoming a performer, mostly in sports. I felt like if I worked hard enough, those father figures would be happy with me. That core lie was never healed until through lots of hours alone with the heavenly Father in the scriptures, many conversations with Adrienne, a lot of time in counseling, and working It out in community with some close friends. Don’t misunderstand me, that core lie is still there and will always be there until when Jesus comes again, but now I know what to do with those voices when they pop up.

But for many of this, this is not how we view ourselves. We view ourselves as failures, as not quite good enough.

There’s a deeply moving scene in NBC’s, This is Us on a Father’s delight over his children. In this scene, Jack, who’s the father is filming his daughter, Kate singing. Kate has a beautiful voice and has repeatedly asked her dad not to film her because she’s embarrassed by the way she looks. Kate’s character struggles with her weight throughout the show. 

Jack is constantly telling Kate how beautiful she is, which Kate replies with, “Dad, please stop. No one views me the way you do. It’s time that you accept this reality.” Later in the show Kate finds the video of her being filmed signing and the look of delight on Jack’s face. 

 Kate then approaches her dad and says, “Dad, please don’t stop reminding me of the way you see me.” And this is exactly how Abba Father views us! He delights in us and longs to give His children good gifts.

The reality is this. The Heavenly Father is deeply pleased and impressed with his children. We don’t have to do anything to get His attention, because His attention is already fixed on us with pure delight in his eyes. He looks down at us like Jack looked at Katie and says, “I love you so much and I fully delight in what I’ve created!”

The Heavenly Father speaks the exact same words over us that He spoke to his son in Mark 1 as Jesus was baptized and came out of the water, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” I find it fascinating that one of the first works of the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus was to remind him of his belatedness. Paul says the same thing in Galatians 4; “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”

Let this reality sink in for us. God the Father sent the Holy Spirit into our lives to remind us of our belatedness in order that we can now call God, “Abba, Father.”

Family of God, know that we have a Heavenly Father that looks down upon his children with pure delight in his eyes and is so impressed with what He’s created! We are not failures. We are his beloved children that He fully delights in.

Spilled Milk and Embracing Limits (Do cry over spilled milk)

There are really only two kinds of people in the world. 

The first are people who try and carry all of their groceries from their car to the kitchen in one swift trip, or those who take their time, know their limits and end up taking multiple trips ensuring that everything is put away safely. 

 A few years ago I was the former. 

Upon moving to Grand Rapids, MI from Orlando, FL, we were staying in an apartment only a quarter of a mile from Sams Club. The convenience to massive amounts of food was probably not the best thing for someone who had a hard time saying no to a good deal and really cheap whole gallons of milk. Cheap milk was extremely seductive for a farm boy that grow up drinking fresh cow milk every day in Bumpville.

Upon one particular trip to Sam’s Club I decided to load up on milk since it was such an amazing deal. I bought a few others things and made my way home. As I began to plan to carry the groceries up the three flight of stairs into our apartment, I had a tough decision to make. Do I take a couple of trips up and down the three flight of stairs, or am I a real man and carry it all in one trip? 

Well, as a real man (or so I thought), I decided to carry it all in one trip. I loaded up my arms with all of the groceries and the two gallons of milk in my right arm. Everything was going well until I came to our door, realizing that it was locked. Very carefully I pulled the keys out of my right pocket and then it happened. 

Both gallons of milk dropped out of the grip of my right arm and exploded on the floor. This wouldn’t had been terrible except we were on the third floor and the stairs were built with deck board with quarter inch gaps in between boards. As I stood and listened to the milk drizzle from one platform to the next, I couldn’t believe what I had just done. 

Thirty minutes later and about six towels soaked up by milk, I finally made it into the apartment. 

They say, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.” But what if that spilled milk is scattered over three flights of stairs? 

Lesson learned. I didn’t embrace my limits. I thought I could do it all.

And this is a huge problem in life and ministry. We don’t know and embrace our limits. We try and do it all. We take on stresses and responsibilities that the Spirit is not asking us to take on. This is how seductive the false self is. It will keep adding more and more to our plate and leave us staring down three floors of stairs with milk dripping everywhere. It will lead us to a place of rage where we do things that we can only stand there in embarrassment at what our false selves have done.

The real question is, what’s really going on underneath the surface of our lives where we feel like we need to do it all? For me, it’s a deep sense of narcissism or the longing to be separate (be my own god) that drives me to not embrace my limits. I falsely believe that I need to play the role of being a hero, and play Jesus in my own life and in the life of others.

The ironic thing is that Jesus, who is the savior of the world, wasn’t even trying to be the savior of everyone and every circumstance. Early on in Mark’s gospel it says in 1:35, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

Jesus embraced his limits and we are called to do the same. Embracing our limits allows us to then fully be the person God’s called us to be in the world, thus allowing us to love freely. This is the beauty of the Sabbath that God gives us. It slows us down for a whole day to breathe and to be reminded that redemption, ministry, life working is not up to us and our frantic activity. 

Embrace your limits on the weekends or whenever you take a Sabbath and be reminded that in Christ, you are  enough, you have nothing to prove to others or to the world, and this awareness allows us to then love others freely.