Seven: the most surprising thing

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jen Hatmaker's book, Seven, has been the extent to which it has messed me up. It has wrecked me.

And frankly, I thought I was doing fine at this whole Christian thing. I mean, good grief: I'm in seminary; I intern at a Christ-exalting church; I support missionaries; I teach the gospel to four-year-olds every week; I serve the needy; I'm adopting kids out of foster care. I don't listen to Christian radio, but other than that, I thought I was doing rather well, truth be told.

And then the Holy Spirit used Seven to shine a giant spotlight on my soul and show me just how far from gospel-living I actually am. And let me tell you, it has utterly messed me up.

Because here's the confession: I thought I was doing enough. I saw the narrow road God was calling me to, and I stepped out boldly. Adopt the 'unadoptable;' help them heal; teach others to do the same. And I thought, that's my thing, the orphan crisis. Other Christians are called to the nations. Other Christians are called to help the poor. Other Christians are called to (fill in the blank).

Let me tell you, adopting out of foster care? That's major. It's massive. In the eyes of the world, it's enough. But in the eyes of God? It's a great start. But it's not enough.

Nicky Gumbel, the founder of the Alpha course (a video series that was instrumental in bringing me to faith) has an illustration that I think is brilliant. He says, look at that pillar (he's in a giant British cathedral). We all tend to rank our "goodness" on this earth by comparisons to other humans. So if Hitler is at the bottom of the pillar, and we are near the middlish-top, then we feel pretty good about ourselves. What we don't realize is that God's standard of holiness is out on Pluto, and we're measuring ourselves in inch increments on that pillar. Not one of our acts, even at our best, is even remotely holy. As Isaiah records in 64:6, "All our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment." And believe me, the Hebrew here means the grossest, most vile piece of fouled fabric they could think of.

The best we can do is trash. And yet--Christ's gift of grace, eternal life, sanctification, etc is so far beyond the most precious thing imaginable. In the face of that gift, how can we be selfish? How can we be distracted? How can we say, this is enough?

Seven reminded me that we can't. The thing about loving your neighbors more than yourself? You'll never run out of neighbors or out of things to do to show them the love of Christ. You're never done. And though that fact has wrecked me this week, it is also another part of that unfathomable gift Christ has given us. We are not done; we are never done, this side of eternity. We get our four-score or however many years to join in God's unimaginably fantastic mission in this world, and how dare we grudge Him a minute of our wholehearted participation (though of course I do daily).

Suffering, persecution, inconvenience, struggle, mockery, misunderstanding, difficulty, pain: these are gifts. We hate them when we're in them, but afterwards we praise God for the privilege of experiencing them. Paul is forever ranting about this; Peter celebrates it in his every word. Seven reminded me of it; my soul rebelled against it; the Spirit within me fought for it. I pray He will continue fighting.

This struggle we engage in half-willingly, this struggle to be holy as Christ is holy, it is violently uncomfortable. But it is sacred. It is joyful. It is our only proper response to the overwhelming sacrifice that Christ has made to claim us as His own.

Lord God, help us surrender fully to it.

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. --Philippians 3:7-14