The Body
.
Oh the Body. Probably to me one of the scariest parts was realizing I couldn’t do it myself, but more importantly I wouldn’t be allowed to do it by myself. I’m a creature of habit. For years I wanted to just go do my task and go home and be in my house by myself. You see it was easier to do a task and keep people at arm’s length, because I thought I was pleasing God and keeping myself safe. I remember back in the early days at move Jenn telling me “Adam, we don’t need your talent, we need you”. Congrats, core fear unlocked lol. I had found so much hurt in the body that I had learned that if I did all the things, if I worked and accomplished all the things, that for the most part people would just assume I had it together and leave me alone. I wouldn’t have to fear the rejection of being left out or forgotten. I wouldn’t have to be vulnerable and show weakness, I could Sit back and rest on my actions and accolades and stay insulated from pain and unmet expectations coupled with hurt experienced from unrealistic expectations and honestly over dramatic assumptions from my end that I was terrified to clear, and looking back I couldn’t have cleared them in a healthy way because there was no relationships, there was no equity to have conversations.
.
Our life with Christ is tied to a body. God is the one that wanted a family. Think about being born into a family with siblings. It didn’t matter if you wanted to be an only child, or if you end up not liking your brother or sister, that wasn’t your choice. God is the one that adds to his body. 1 Corinthians 12 has some great insight into the body, here is just a snippet:
.
“But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭12‬:‭18‬-‭20‬ ‭ESV‬‬
.
For the longest time I couldn’t grasp this concept. The church was a social club that people joined and then they were either in the popular crowd or the forgotten crowd. I worked my fingers to the bone to be in that popular crowd but it wasn’t me, it was what I did that got me there. At that time I didn’t care anything about people or encouraging anyone, I just didn’t want to be left out. But the truth of the matter is that God builds his body as He sees fit, but most of the time we think we know the body part we are and we try to go to work being that, instead of allowing God to settle and place us. For me it was my orphan heart that kickstarted my performance, not knowing that I’m a son and from that I live out of that. No I was always on the edge, afraid to mess up, afraid someone was going to leave, afraid I’d be forgotten. But the real truth is in psalm 68:6
.
“God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy. But he makes the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭68‬:‭6‬ ‭NLT‬‬
.
I was the lonely and He placed me in a family. I didn’t choose the family even though I thought I did. But oh has that journey been such a gift, rife with pain and hurt from my brokenness clashing with the brokenness of others. Oh how much grace, mercy, forgiveness, and space we need to live as one body. I distinctly remember Fox telling me one morning “If they really knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t do it” and I can even remember thinking “yeah they probably would” especially based off of how I viewed myself and lived as an orphan, who would never be wanted or loved. The problem was my desire to be wanted and loved was misplaced. I needed to settle my sonship to be a good brother. The long journey to settling that “this is the body that God has placed me in” and “allowing from that settled place to be built together” has taken a lot of time. Jerry Vaughn said “Relationships are spelled TIME”. So why does it matter that “you can’t mess this up” in relationships? Well, if you can’t mess this up, and I can’t mess this up, then we can’t mess this up. That means that you and I are joined for eternity because of the work of Christ, so the process that God is working out in you and I sometimes may clash and cause conflict. Sometimes it may mean that I’m “in my feels” and simply interpret something wrong, or overthink something and then I have to clear it by asking about it and being vulnerable enough to say what I felt with the full acceptance that I could have, and more than likely did just interpreted through the wrong lens. But this process that God worked out in me, it took some faithful people with a lot of love and grace to allow my brokenness to be on display and they didn’t tire out and leave. They told me things like “there’s no timetable for you to get this”, things like “I’m not going to leave” and they meant it. They loved me through that washing out process and they were so full of grace. I remember one instance where my performance mentality got rocked to its core. There had already been a lot of relational things going on in my life for a few years between my marriage and people leaving, but now something, that at the time, I didn’t know how to name, much less live out of, was to care for people. I thought being in a leadership position was what made that possible because in corporate America you have to be in a titled role to “lead people” or so I thought. And that title was taken, and rightfully so. The full story is for another day, but the fruit of worship that our body is living in now, it started that day and I wouldn’t change it, if anything I wish it had happened even quicker, but God is a master of His timing. I said a lot of hard things in that time, but they stayed. They let me vent, cry, be angry, they prayed with me, they pointed me to Jesus. The level of love and care that I have received from being apart of the body is incomparable. Coming into the realization of people don’t intentionally set out to hurt me, has helped me learn to live with grace, because I’d much rather be hurt in an instant, yet because of love and grace and mercy still be available, as opposed to just writing everyone off and living in isolation to get absolutely crushed by feelings, assumptions, and an enemy that wants nothing more than to make you question everyone and everything so that he can render you stuck, isolated and ineffective. There is no to do list or 5 steps to better relationships. The beauty of those relationships are found in time and they are gifts that one day you look back on and smile. You can’t mess this up. Go get some people, open your life up to them fully, and by fully I mean full vulnerability and access, let them love you, and be settled that it’s ok to let God love you and the body love you.
.