Waking the dead: how can I discover Life?

Is Christianity only rules?

A lot of people think that Christians are people who don’t have any fun. They follow a list of rules and are frozen in fear of a distant God. In many cases, they’re right. I swallowed the “suffer for Christ” line for a long time and believed nothing else. Yet if we listen carefully to the call of the Lion, we will start waking up to the fullness of Life that He died to bring.

But first we have to want it.

The God-Pleasing Rodeo

By the time I was sixteen, I was tired of caring what people thought of me. The only solution I could think of was to close my heart off to other people and care only about God. Did I still care what people thought? Oh yes. Heaps. But I told myself that I didn’t until I believed it.

Meanwhile, I pulled out my best guns and showed them off at the God-pleasing rodeo. I sang for God, spoke for God, prayed for God—right up there with the best of them. At the same time, I was embarrassed by the basketful of talents God had dumped on me, so I decided that the best way to please Him was to act like they were nothing and that I was nothing. Oh boy, was I humble!

When I was eighteen, I did what every self-respecting rodeo God-pleaser does: I went to Bible school. At the beginning of the year, our teachers asked us what we wanted out of the year, so I whipped out a handy Bible verse and unfurled it as my motto:

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33)

Really, I wanted “all these things” more than I wanted the kingdom (which I didn’t understand), but I convinced myself that I wanted the kingdom and it sounded good.

A Note About Christian “Hypocrites”

Many people assume that Christians are hypocrites. They are often right, and my story so far seems to prove it. I have often looked back on my life and seriously considered, “Was I a hypocrite?” If I was, I assure you that I would not hesitate to admit it. I have many sins that I am open about, and I wouldn’t mind adding hypocrisy to the mix. Just one more weakness to boast about! 

However, upon careful consideration, I’ve concluded that I was not a hypocrite. Hypocrites say one thing and then do the opposite—knowingly. In all of my poor choices and faults, I always meant to do the right thing. Always. I messed up a lot, but that was because I was human and believed a lot of lies about myself and God.

If a fat person peers into a funhouse mirror and starts eating like a pig because they believe that they have a sickly toothpick figure, do we label them as a hypocrite for acting on this belief? 

No, we just say that they are deluded.

We are all trying to find our reflection

So cut Christians some slack. We are all equally messed up creatures trying to find our correct reflection in the House of Mirrors just like everybody else. And sometimes we fail.

Back to the story.

The devoted Bible student

I chose one of the smallest Bible schools in the world, averaging about 12 students a year. All the better to hide from people, my dear. However, as luck would have it, my first year of Bible school had one of the biggest classes in years: 24-26 students, and my class alone had 16.

Great.

Not dissuaded, I threw myself into seeking God. I rose earlier than most people to read my Bible. I forced myself to pray for five minutes every morning by my bed, my eyes straying to the clock to make sure I prayed long enough. I determined never to waste time like some students had. I would study hard and get good grades—which I did easily because I cared about nothing else and God had blessed me with a brain that memorized easily.

A voice starts knocking

Still, Truth from the Word started tapping at my calloused heart.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:3)

You are spiritually bankrupt, a voice said.

“He must increase, I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

You need to yield the spotlight.

“I am the bread of life.” (John 6:48)

Do you really love Me or do you love the blessings that I give? Do you love the blessing or the Blesser?

“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy . . . eye salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.” (Revelation 3:17-18)

You need eye salve. Ask Me for it.

(I didn’t even notice the first part of that last passage except the eye salve bit. How fitting.)

Each time this voice spoke, I listened and responded, convicted. And each time I listened, a hairline crack appeared in the outer casement that held my heart.

I started wanting to know this Blesser better. A tiny spark of genuine love grew in my heart.

But still, I continued my regular activities just like before, only now they held more meaning because I was starting to do them out of love rather than just duty.

The competing voices

Yet other voices drove me on.

•        You have to do this. You have to do this.

•        Why has God accepted you?

•        “God loves the stupid woman,” your teacher says. You’re a stupid woman.

•        You’re a loser, Kayla. You started your Bible reading at 7:10 instead of 7:00. You’re a loser. Do better tomorrow.

•         Do better tomorrow.

Blindly, I pressed on, believing every voice I heard and convinced that they all came from the God whose love I could never earn.

Nothing I did would ever be enough because I wasn't enough. 

This was the life of a “Christian”—the life every sinner would envy, the grave every dead person digs.

Life stirs

But one April weekend, my old friend Klara and I went on a little getaway. Klara is one of the few precious souls I didn’t shut out, perhaps because she is my mirror image in many ways and she accepted me with grace and understanding that had no rival. Also, she was one of the few people in the world who thought I was actually funny.

Klara and me in Gloucester that weekend

So Klara and I hopped into my parents’ red Subaru Forester and chugged down to Gloucester, MA. At that point in my life, I had never driven to an unknown place without my parents. I had never explored this little fishing town with all its narrow streets and coastal mansions, but I felt liberated winding through each street with a friend by my side and a stick shift in hand.

What was around the next bend? A lighthouse? A beach? 

The salty sunshine beckoned us onward. The ocean breeze pushed back our hair, and something stirred within us.

My heart sated with this small adventure, I sat on my bed that Sunday morning and opened my Bible to hear from God. I wasn’t very good at telling His voice apart from other voices then, but that morning, I heard—I mean really heard, these words for the first time:

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

What?

I opened a book we were assigned to read for class that day:

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

What?

Later that week, my brother had a chapel service with us students. Again, I heard…

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

After the third time, I decided that Jesus was trying to say something to me.

I looked at my own life: the unflinching self-discipline, the relentless pressure, the voices that repeated You’re a loser, Kayla. A loser. A loser.

Was this the life that Jesus died to bring?

Did eternal life only mean life in heaven, like I had always thought?

What about here? What about now?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

As I read John 10:10 and John Eldredge’s book, Waking the Dead, a realization slowly crept over me:

This voice that I have been listening to—the one the drives me to perform a certain way—isn’t actually the voice of the Holy Spirit.

There is a difference between conviction and condemnation. One brings hope and a way out. The other brings despair and tireless striving.

Coming Alive

I had been listening to the voice of my Enemy for a very long time, and I lay exhausted under its incessant criticism. It had beaten me down into a hard, cold grave. A grave I had been digging myself.

That spring, I decided to start listening more intently to the Voice of Truth.

It said, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."

The words sank into my heart like water and sunshine over parched ground. Jesus didn’t come so that we could live a miserable, suffering existence. He came so that we could live—really live—here and now.

A shudder ran through my lifeless body. I gasped. Pure, grace-filled air burst into my lungs for the first time.

I started to come alive.

The Voice of Truth

That very month, on April 17, I heard God’s voice on my own for one of the first times in my life. I had been running about with my classmates, getting ready to go on an outreach trip to Indianapolis the next morning when I received a phone call from somebody. The person said some things that really shook me up, then she felt bad about it and told me to forget the whole thing. But I couldn’t forget the whole thing.

My feet carried me to our church sanctuary, where I cried and asked one simple question: “Why?”

Let Me tell you that I love you.

The voice wasn’t audible, but the words permeated the darkness and fell like dew on my troubled spirit.

That was it! He had been trying to tell me that my whole life, and I had only just started listening.

"I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."

Out of the comfortable grave

That summer, God called me to leap far outside of my comfort zone by counseling at a camp for two weeks. I didn’t know a person there, but I discovered huge springs of joy from trusting Jesus in something that was way outside anything I would normally do. The natural me was content to shut myself away with only a stack of books for company, but I discovered that it was exciting to reach out to others and start sharing about Life—even though I was still learning to climb out of my grave.

Sure, a kid fell on me out of a ropes course and broke my nose with his elbow, but even that Life was exhilarating because I discovered that I could trust God in a minor crisis without my faith cracking with it. I could spit up mouthfuls of blood, blacking out with strangers hovering around me while I muttered a Bible verse under my breath. The Life was still there. 

And I felt pretty cool breaking my first bone in such an epic manner. I had been too tightly bound in my grave clothes to try anything very epic in my life. 

Waking to riches

Then, when I returned to Bible school that fall, the Holy Spirit pointed out another passage to me, along with a book called Changed Into His Likeness  by Watchman Nee.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even
when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)

Whoah. We were dead, yet God has made us alive?

I read further. Are we really fellow heirs with Christ?

I was stunned.

If this is true, that means that everything that Christ had, everything that Christ is—is
now at our disposal. We can tap into the riches of love, power, and absolute awesomeness that Jesus possesses.

We are RICH!!!

Rich with power. Rich with love. Rich with Life.

Who wants to wait for heaven when Jesus offers all of this to us today?

I remember the electric thrill that took over for weeks during that first semester in my second year of Bible school. Every day, I woke with a new excitement about Life that made me almost drunk with riches. Like the little boy in the old movie Little Lord Fauntleroy, I peered at the vast buttresses and castles that towered around me and cried, awestruck, to think that Jesus was giving it all to me.

I never knew that following Jesus could be so exciting! I never knew that we were already so incredibly rich! I never knew that Life in this life could be so abundant!

I know it now.

I hope you do too. 

If you're interested, you can  buy Waking the Dead, or read Changed Into His Likeness by Watchman Nee. 

Or you can watch Little Lord Fauntleroy and fast forward to the scene when he arrives in England and starts to take in the magnitude of his inheritance.