Proverbs 31:10

Proverbs 31:10
“An excellent wife who can find? For her worth is far above jewels.” (NASB)
I have been married for about 5 years now, so I think that my impressive tenure earns me the opportunity to weigh in on the subject of marriage. Prior to my vows, I would've had something insightful to share about unconditional love and mutual submission, but now all I know is that I don't know anything. But hey, I know I don’t know anything so that puts me ahead of the game, right? Maybe. I don’t know.
What I’ve actually learned in my first 5 years of marriage is, “I don’t know why my wife said yes.” Look at me…I’m a mess. I leave clothes everywhere, rarely put the lid down, stink in a whole host of places, and I am still addicted to video games and sports shows. My wife on the other hand is refined. She always knows where everything is, has hangers (and uses them), doesn’t yell at me when she falls in the toilet late at night, and always smells delightful even when she gets done working out. So my question then is this, “Why is an excellent wife so hard to find?” Proverbs 31:10 says, “An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth’s is far above jewels.” (NASB) This makes absolutely no since to me. There must obviously be a surplus if there were enough of them available for me to get one. Excellent wives should be growing on trees somewhere magical, or falling our of rainbows like gorgeous skittles. Seriously.
There are some exceptions to the rule, I’m sure. Somewhere in America right now, there is a guy sitting in front of his TV pounding back a brewsky, trying not to burn himself with his freshly nuked “Hungry Man” dinner stunned that his wife is the star of the latest episode of “COPS”. And if you’ve ever watched mid-afternoon talk shows, you are familiar with the, “I brought you all this way, and put you on national television to tell you a secret speech.” “the results are in (cue crowd gasp) and you are NOT the father!” “BOO BOO HISS HISS.” We have seen it millions of times; dysfunctional dramas played out for everyone to see on dozens of different stages all inching back the curtain on the truth a little bit further. And that truth is that we have long forgotten what it means to be an “excellent wife” and it has terribly handicapped the American Church.
It’s hardest for men to identify with the paradigm of being a wife because we weren’t designed to fill that role in the natural since of the word. But spiritually it is a responsibility that falls to all of us that call ourselves Christians. Male and female alike have been charged with the task of becoming the “Bride of Christ.” Even the phrase seems a little weird. Like one of those cheesy late 60’s horror movies, “She came from the swamp!” “Who?” “THE BRIDE OF CHRIST!” This, of course, is followed by a blood curdling scram and an invitation to the lobby by an animated hotdog for a two dollar candy in an eight dollar box. But it only sounds that way because we as “the Church” rarely discuss the topic.
In conservative sects of our body, we talk about our churches as organizations full of responsibility to do social works, which, I’ve noticed, never actually happen because of our inept hierarchies of leadership. Jason Upton, a modern worship artist, categorizes them clearly, “Powerful weaklings that practice their politics, stealing from Jesus’ beautiful Bride.” In charismatic circles we use phrases like “kingdom dynamics” and “authority mandates” and then build our own kingdoms where we exercise despot authority. Through out the body it goes, on and on like a cancer that we don’t know we have until we get weak in the shower one morning, or that nose bleed on the bus ride to work wont stop gushing. We seek help but it’s too late. We are eaten up with disease. It has been choking us from within, starving our organs from lifeblood. Not even the crack team of “experts” in white can figure it out. They poke and the prod at us but to no avail. They do, however, write books about us, impressive weighty books with charts and graphs and projections about the spread of the disease. They quarantine us off from the general population and tell their children not to go near us. We have become the unloved and outcast. Where once we were respected and honored, we are feared and barred from entry. “Where did it go so terribly wrong?”, we ask ourselves, while walking along empty, poorly lit corridors towing our IV behind us. Can anyone help us?
The hyper-spiritual answer is of course, “JEEEEEESUSSSS can heal us! Hallelujah! Jesus can fix our cancer!” You can almost hear the tambourine rattle. But, sadly, it’s not the answer. Not this time. The answer to the question, “What has gone so terribly wrong with the church?” isn’t, Jesus needs to fix it. The answer is a simple one. The church is no longer the church. We look like the church and we act like the church but really at the core of who we are we are no longer the Bride of Christ. We have become his secretaries, his envoys, his ambassadors, and his dignitaries, but not his Bride. It all sounds very impressive and self important, but it is very far from the heart of God. We have replaced intimacy with business and a relationship with Christ with church affiliations and titles. We no longer “remain in him.” We have separated ourselves from the vine and have become dry branches, good for kindling and not much more. So you see, the answer isn’t Jesus heal us from this cancer. This cancer is self-imposed. When you separate yourself from things like, oh, I don’t know, air… for example, life gets harder and harder to sustain until eventually, well, you get the point
Could it be that an “excellent wife” is hard for Christ to find because we are busy pretending to be lots of other things that we think are important to him? Could it be that we all have this chronic death sentence because we have forgotten how to be close to Jesus? We generally think of hard to find things in the context that they are hidden but rarely do we think that they may be disguised. Maybe I found my excellent wife because she was just there…out in the open for all to see, busy being excellent. Who she is was as obvious as my pile of dirty laundry in our closet. Maybe we see ourselves in these descriptions of the modern American church. Wandering aimlessly through or local congregations with the rest of the walking wounded. I’d like to take my blog and aim it directly at Proverbs 31 for a while. Verse by verse examining an excellent wife and supposing what that might mean for the church. If your reading this, weak, nose bleeding, white knuckle death grip on your tambourine, go ahead and unplug the IV. I promise it wasn’t helping anyway.

Currency exchange.

I’m kind of a learner. I have been accused of being hard headed, and resistant to instruction in the past, stop laughing mom, but in the last few years I can honestly say the thing I have desired the most is to learn. Specifically, to learn to “be a man”, and “grow up”, to be a leader and to earn the following of the people God’s called me to serve. So I have tried to surround myself with people who will help me do just that. I have a great group of friends and mentors. Last week I was in need of both. I was fired from a job I really loved, serving a group of students that I really love and was a little on the fence about how I felt about all of that. So out went the text messages and phone calls and emails and carrier pigeons and …wait, scratch that last one. It was a pretty diverse group of people ranging from former pastors I had worked under to this one guy, that honestly, I barely know but has a ton of experience and wisdom. It would be easy for me to fill a blog post about all the good advice they gave. But the thing that I think I’m going to take away from this week is the lesson I learned when I backed up and looked at it from a distance; the currency of the Kingdom of God is not measured in dollars but in minutes.
Everything in the world operates on this principle. Each day is equal to the last and the next and the success or failure of each day is hinged entirely on how you spend each second. Your paycheck is an exchange of your seconds for pennies. Your passing grade in physics is relative to the time you studied. The depth of your marriage swings on the balance of time spent engaging your spouse. The obedience of your children is reliant on the time you have spent disciplining them. Everything you could ever amass traced back to its procurement happened because of an exchange of time for goods.
This week has been tough, no doubt, but it has been profitable beyond description. God has allowed me to be a repository of his grace and many people have made huge deposits. Great men, titans of ministry, have passed along to me wisdom and war stories, shown me battle scars and been vulnerable, shared their experiences and hopefully purchased for me with their lives things I hope I never have to experience for myself. A good mentor is someone who has purchased with their time experience, refined that experience into wisdom, and now has put it on loan for others.
Friends on the other hand walk with you through the experience. Like women going to the bathroom together at restaurants, whether they need to go or not, you’re in it together. They take you out to do dumb guys stuff so you don’t have to think about what your missing the first week that you’re not teaching your students. They sit on your floor and fill your house with laughter even when you don’t really want to laugh. They call to check in on what they can be praying for you about, and they actually pray. They trade their lives and their agendas for your life and make you the agenda because they love you.
It is true you know. Your treasure really is where you heart is. We have just done a poor job measuring treasure on a calculator instead of a watch.

The little blinking cursor thing is scary. It kinda repeatedly taunts you, daring you to push the buttons laid out in front of you in their typical QWERTY fashion, form words that make sentences that in turn complete thoughts, that hopefully change lives. At the very least, it is constant reminder that there is nothing where something (words) should be. I don't think that I could adequately describe to you the level of animosity that I harbor toward my cursor.

I know it's not rational to be angry with an inanimate object. After all it's not the cursor's fault. It didn't wake up this morning and look at his agenda to make sure his 1:00 PM meeting with me was still a go. He didn't barge into my office demanding that I begin typing and nag me until I was finished. Nor did he get to decide what his purpose on my screen would be. He just stands there politely blinking his steady reminder; -blink> "You haven't written anything in a while" -blink> "You need more than a paragraph" -blink> "Stop staring at the screen and move your fingers" -blink>-blink>-blink>

This week in our ministry there has been AMAZING success and Kingdom growth. In the last week alone we have seen 20 first time visitors and 10 students come to know the Lord (go ahead and clap, I'll wait). In the middle of all of that exciting news there is still this little something in my heart blinking. -blink> "10 isn't 50" -blink> "There is so much work to do" -blink> "and you're only one person" -blink> "Are your goals even attainable" -blink> "Is ministry getting in the way of your family" -blink>-blink>-blink>...

The problem with the cursor is this: It is telling the truth and the truth ,as always, demands a course of action. You can choose to ignore the cursor (action), close down the web page (action), move on to something less daunting (action), forget that the blog even exist (action). Or you can begin to type (action), commit to seeing the next sentence finished (action). Then move on to the next (action). Push publish and let others hear your heart (action).

The problem with my soul is the same: It is telling the truth and the truth ,as always, demands a course of action. I can choose to ignore my soul (action). Coast on yesterday's successes (action). Move on to other projects that distract me with movement but don't provide direction (action). Or, I can remember that it is Jesus that controls the cursor (action). And its Jesus that is talking to me through it (action). I can push harder than ever before (action). Bring along leaders that share my vision (action). Stand in truth and go after the hearts and minds of young people (ACTION).

The cursor is not my enemy. It is a call to action. What's your cursor calling you to?

DEBT.

Debt.  This is a word I understand.  I'm am all to familiar with the concept of owing someone or some company money.  I shouldn't be or rather I wish I wasn't; but here it is 2009 and two car payments, 3 credit cards, and one child birth later... ta daaa, I have become an expert on finance charges and revolving interest rates and credit scores and the list goes on and on.  It's a fairly simple principle.  You don't have what you want.  You haven't prepared to get it.  So you let someone else give you what you want with the promise of giving it back with the bonus of interest.  

Grace.  This is a word I only pretend to understand.  Because unlike debt it doesn't come with the same responsibility.  There are no chains that bind us to grace.  No weekend phone calls from "grace collectors" if you fail to make an extension of grace to others.  No mandated higher  payments because you forsake grace one month and no need to play the grace shell game (I'm putting all my grace here because I don't have to pay it back for a year, unless someone with a higher level of grace comes along then I'll transfer my relationship there).  But like debt, I didn't have what I wanted (life).  I wasn't prepared to get it (perfection).  So someone else (Jesus) had to give me what I needed (salvation).  There was no interest.  No penalties.  And I didn't have to clean up my debt record to qualify.

Debt's impact on our life is measured by what we do to meet our RESPONSIBILITY.  You work two jobs, or three, or four to keep the cars and houses and flat screen t.v.. Debt fences in our lives so that we live up to our commitment.  

Grace's impact on our life is measured by what we do meet RESPOND-ABILITY.  And yes I know those all caps words are supposed to mean the same thing but they don't.  Grace motivates us to do crazy things like work extra hours not so that we can keep our possessions but so that we can have more to give away.  It becomes about how do I respond to such an amazing gift rather than what must I do to pay back what you have given.

Today I've been thinking a lot about my attitude toward Christ and about how often I approach the throne with a debtor's mindset.  I know that I go for days living like I need to pay back my grace that he gave me on the cross rather than living to make much of Jesus as I respond to that grace being revealed to me everyday.

I am not in DEBT to the cross of Christ.  To say that cheapens the grace of the cross.  I, instead, gleefully, and whole heartedly bind myself to the cross out of gratitude for his tremendous GRACE.

Control

Once, in a town very very far from here, lived a young man.  This particular young man was an idiot.  It took Jesus a very long time to convince him of this truth and during that time he did many stupid things.  Not very much seems to have changed except that now he realizes he's an idiot.  He still tries to run his own world, order his own steps, and control his own destiny.  What a silly little man he is.  

Im talking about me incase you're not smelling what I'm stepping in.  

I was listening to Matt Chandler again this morning and one phrase stuck out of his message and jabbed me right in the ribs.  "I didn't take all the power from you, you never had any to begin with.  That's an illusion"  Kinda makes me a little angry that the whole time I was trying to make everything work out, balancing this over here and throwing that up in the air over there and trying to get some magical perspective that would allow me to see all that needed to happen so that in every situation where my life was falling apart I could magically bring it all together and work it out, I couldn't have been successful anyway.  

(all you grammar nerds out there start sending me email about the run on sentence)

It actually makes me a lot angry and it is directed squarely at the being most responsible for the mess...ME.  What takes me so long to just be secure in God instead of my abilities (faulty as they are) and my resources (limited as they are) and my understanding (finite as it is)?  It is beyond me how every night I go to bed giving it all to the Lord and wake up the next morning taking it all back.  GEEEESH...(word from the 80's)  

I really am at a point of personal frustration at how much control I imagine that I have and how little direction I yield to.  Thanks for reading my rant!  What a way to kick of a blog.