Specific Purposes?

Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz, Searching For God Knows What) has a blog:  http://donmilleris.com. A friend of mine has been sending me links to his posts and they've spurred good discussions. His most recent post is about God having a specific "plan" for your life and the previous about how to get confidence from God. I wrote this post in response to those posts.

A few thoughts. I've experienced first hand in many scenarios that God does not typically give people magical confidence. I do believe that his "supernatural" grace is bestowed on us to help us trust him to do the really scary stuff that helps develop these traits in us by way of experience and learning. There's no way to evade the scariness. I keep trying, but it doesn't work. We just have to trust Him, and jump in, even if we're peeing our pants while we do so. I think a lot of this directly applies to what being a man is all about. Doing crazy hard, confusing, "no formula" stuff where the failure rate looks pretty high from the outset. But once you get into it and through it, you're way stronger, and you can only point to the big strong awesome dad (God) that's helped you through it. Not having had much male influence and/or encouragement (but also understanding I've had far more than many others) through life really makes this stuff hard to do. Again, I've experienced this first hand.

Does God have a specific plan for my life? Yes and no. That's like me throwing down a huge piece of white paper on my kitchen table with the intent of having Elliott and Boaz (my two strapping sons - ages 3 1/2 years and 20 months) draw the Mona Lisa. Even if one of them was equipped with some amazing 'magical' talent to do this, the problem is that he'd have to contend with the other one messing up his picture the entire time. It'd be nice if we could just be on our own little piece of 8" by 11" and have nobody mess it up. Unfortunately, other people are constantly scribbling on our pages. We, too, are constantly scribbling out others' pages as well. It's called sin.

God, being the awesome God that He is, has this great talent (or, rather, intrinsic quality)of encouraging and teaching us. Instead of ripping up our papers since it looks like crap to most of us, He makes beauty out of our mess. He can even use our scribbles to make something pretty. He doesn't give us fresh paper...I think that would steal the beauty of it and allow us to forget too easily that we're flawed.

If any of us do have a specific purpose ordained by God, we definitely still make mistakes along the way.

On a final note, I've been fixated on the life of Joseph for the past few months. The interesting thing about him is that while God had a specific purpose and plan for his life, He didn't come up to Joseph and tell him flat out. It was only through weird, vague dreams that seemed to upset other people. [Boaz to Elliott: "I'm gonna draw the Mona Lisa cause God gave me natural talent and it's what He's chosen/ordained for me to do in life!" Elliott: scowl]. So it seems that the problem isn't necessarily whether or not God has a specific plan for our life, it's whether or not we know what it is, or how much detail we have about it. Furthermore, it's my experience and opinion that the more we know about what we'll be used for, the more likely we are to try to make it happen on our own terms and end up making a big mess. So I think that not having a specific purpose ordained for your life may be the 'easier' ticket in some forms.

St. Peter

I had a discussion a few weeks ago with a friend that involved St. Peter. Peter gets a lot of flack for denying Christ. I think there's a few valuable lessons we can learn from Peter. The first of which is that actions truly do speak louder than words...and this is true for both sides of the coin. It's easy to judge his betrayal as being spineless. How could he possibly flat out deny his association with Jesus? How cold is that? Some of us are quick to say we would not have acted the same. And, perhaps, this is true. However, we may be missing a lot. I'd like to point out that Peter's words probably held far more weight than ours would. And perhaps his actions carried a bit less. Peter's mind worked a bit differently. This is one fierce guy, quick to the draw, with zeal to back it up. Whether chasing Jesus out ON the water, or lopping off some guy's ear, he was passionate about Jesus and put his actions behind it. We might go so far to criticize how trigger-happy he was...jumping the gun before he was really ready. This explains him jumping off the boat without realizing (or probably just not caring) about his forthcoming failure. In one fell swoop he offs the soldier's ear in the garden. I think Peter would be that guy we went to kindergarten with that was 'special'. Perhaps it's not that he was necessarily any better than the other disciples. He just learned differently. After all, none of us are better people in and of ourselves. We only grow and become stronger and more pure by God's gracious work in our lives. And God, being the personal being that He is, works with us where we are. He created us and knows our personality. He knows what our learning style is better than anyone else. To be honest, I bet the other disciples were a bit irritated with him. He seems like a new testament version of Joseph...the "favorite". My point here is that Peter's expression of faith was just different from the others'. In Matthew 16, he professes Jesus as the Christ and a few verses later is telling Jesus how it's gonna be before Jesus rebukes him and calls him the devil. This doesn't phase Jesus. He gets Peter's personality and embraces him. I think that Peter's feelings are hurt and he is ultimately disappointed and afraid once Jesus willingly goes with the guards. His promises to stay loyal to Jesus are somehow tied to a guarantee of what Jesus would do and how Jesus would defeat all the Pharisees. Peter would be on the "winning side." I think that Peter's denial of Jesus has more to do with his disappointment with himself than it does with disappointment with Jesus. All throughout the night, he watches from the shadows, and suddenly the words Jesus spoke over the past few years begin to haunt him. He is filled with utter shame coupled with immense grief. As he focuses on these words Jesus spoke pertaining to his death, I think he forgets about Jesus' prediction of his betrayal. The third time, in Matthew 26:74, he calls down curses upon himself. My thinking is that this is due to his anger towards himself. He's overwhelmed with the gravity of it all. Everything is clear now, and he is now separated from Jesus as he goes to his predicted death. As the grief can't seem to get worse, he hears the eerie crow of the rooster. This is Peter's breaking point.

I don't think that Peter's betrayal / denial is purely cowardice. I think it has a lot more to do with his being broken in the only way that was possible...for him to recognize his immense shortcoming.

Redemption is beautiful, though. Peter's redemption is beautiful, indeed. The others failed Jesus just as well. They also claimed they wouldn't abandon him, but they did. I think Peter was just a bit more extreme than all the others.

I think that we all have breaking points. I believe that the the importance for us in these times is in how we respond/cope with our breaking. Christ does not abandon us during these times and He promises to always provide what is needed...comfort, healing, help, growth, etc. I am grateful for this.