Taking a Knee
Click below to listen to the reach:
John 12:24: "Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."
Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
I live with a man who is gentle and kind, patient and steady. He has not always been what he is today. He’s always been good…but that goodness only went so far. I mean it when I say he has always been good. But good is a very subjective word isn’t it?
There are many good people among us. Perhaps you are one of them. You try and do good things. Be seen in good ways. Speak in good ways. You hope that when people think of you, they might say to themselves, “Now she is such a good person”, or “What a good man he is”. I have known and know so many “good” people.
Back to my husband :)
Anyone who knows him knows that he is a good man. I knew it even in high school. He was kind, funny, gentle in his interactions with people. He was well-liked and respectful. He was friends with everyone and enemy to no one. Now that’s a “good” person, right? Steady. Faithful. Reliable.
God has grown him. Reworked him. God has made him His own.
This writing is actually not about Steve, my husband. But instead it is about the strength and value that GOD grows in someone who is no longer defined by the standard of “good” in the eyes of the people around them.
We can usually recognize when someone is not a good person. They are harsh, cruel, dominating. When we have a Goliath-type-person in front of us, we know they are NOT good. When we encounter the yelling, hateful, cursing person, we know — they are NOT good.
But what about the smiling, pleasant, friendly person? Can we be certain of their goodness?
What of the person who in all ways appears to be accommodating and selfless; whose outside actions are stellar and their face seems kind, don’t they qualify as “good”?
Ahhh, but live long enough in honest ways, and you’ll learn that what is inside a person can in no way be known by what is showing on the outside of a person. Sadly, the person who appears kind and pleasant on the outside might very well be yelling and cursing on the inside.
And sometimes, the person who is yelling on the outside is actually a kind, but wounded person, on the inside.
In time — always in time — the trueness of every person begins to emerge.
The smile begins to fade and the darker heart begins to show. The smile can’t be trusted…in time the heart shows itself...and a faint snarl seems to appear hidden in the eye.
Likewise the yelling fades and the wounded heart begins to show. The angry person melts into a puddle of desperation as their pain brings them to their knees…if tears come, it will only be when they think no one can see.
Which of these is actually “good”?
Good, being good, earning the label “GOOD”, is a wildly subjective and unreliable thing in a world where deceit and manipulation is as common as grains of sand on the shoreline.
The world’s standard for what is good in no way compares to God’s standard. This dichotomy can leave us confused if we do not examine our own hearts closely, honestly. How can we ever discern another’s heart if we have not first examined our own.
Back to dear Steve. If you had lined him up with 100 other men and asked me to choose the one who was #1 in goodness… I would have chosen him. Hands down. Many others would have been good, but no young man i knew was at the level of consistent upright, moral, kindness as him. I wasn’t looking for wealth or prestige in a man. I wanted a good man who i knew would love God, me, and the babies i dreamed of. And by God’s grace, I got to marry him.
And then, God began to do a very unexpected thing — God began to work on him. We found that in marriage, the good, the bad and the ugly emerges. Not just for Steve, oh but for me as well. We found that God wanted to use Steve to expose my worst and God wanted to use me to expose Steve’s worst… and yet we were trying so hard to only show our best. Our efforts failed and God’s revealing was successful. You see, God wants us to see ourselves, the real me, the real you. God wants the worst of us to show up and be faced — but for a good purpose. God’s not interested in exposing us to ourselves just for kicks and giggles. Oh no, God wants us to see WHO WE REALLY ARE, hoping it will take us to our knees. God wants us to see our own selves, our real hearts, our worst side, so that we will call out to Him, run to Him, grab hold of His Word, and love the person beside us enough to want to become someone better for them and for Him. It’s a rawly devastating moment when we look in the mirror, figuratively or literally, and we see the ugly heart that’s been masked by our smile.
NOT ONE PERSON IS IMMUNE TO THIS.
Some avoid it.
None are immune to it.
In time, the heart, the real heart emerges.
And God is present, even if no one else is.
God is faithful, even when everyone else steps away.
God is good.
We find that all our efforts at being good are like a drop of water and HIS GOODNESS is the ocean.
The man I live with these days has become a whole different kind of good. And by God’s grace and goodness, the wife he lives with is also a whole different kind of good. We no longer pause when we see someone doing, looking, acting, speaking in good ways. We know. It’s never revealing of what is actually in their heart. How do we know this? Well because we know what it feels like to be the olive in the olive press. To have the stone roll over and crush us. To feel our insides exposed to God and each other…to be so thoroughly crushed that what we looked like before no longer even resembles what we have become. This is what is required.
To look in the mirror and know that all the work to “be good” is a drop compared to the ocean of “what is good”.
God is good.
It doesn’t always look good. His discipline is a frightful reality.
What He does — does not always feel good. We want our way, and He will not give it.
What He says — does not always sound good to our self-focused, self-centeredness.
What He exposes — does not let us feel good about ourselves. He wants us to be refined through and through, not just on the surface.
In marriage. In life. In relationships. God wants us to see ourselves for who we truly are.
We are not good.
Not one of us is born good.
Not one of us can be good enough.
Not in comparison to what we can be in His good hands.
We spend our lives “performing”. Trying to be good. But until we see ourselves for who we are, until we are exposed, until we let that exposure take us to our knees, until we choose to break up with ourselves and our tiny efforts at being good, until we stop the pretense and stand in the Light of His Truth — we will exhaust ourselves and still land in places of sorrow and disappointment.
Instead, the Good One invites us to kneel our hearts to Him, exposed, in the Light, and reach for Him. He will bring His goodness — and our surrender of self will be met by His healing, redeeming, transforming LOVE. He is that good.
I can vaguely remember the handsome young man I fell in love with so many years ago. He was gentle and kind, patient and steady. But what I know is that that man was crushed in the olive presses of life. He is not what he was back then. He surrendered himself to the crushing weight of the cornerstone, as the true heart of him was laid bear — and the man that has emerged is a reflection of the One who is good. The man he has become is a gentle warrior that has raised steady warriors, who trains patient warriors, who stands with kind, strong warriors — and all of these have died to themselves, put on their armor, and taken a knee before the King. The One Good King.
It’s the transforming of a life that finally reveals what it was created for.
Do you see yourself as good?
If yes, then is it because of what you do, or what you refrain from doing, or is it because of who you bow your life to?
It’s a life changing question.
