Fix Me

Ministry is a funny thing. How do you reach out to those with the love of the gospel, when tenderly and firmly the Lord continually shows you you're the one who needs Him the most?

Paul, even Paul! Apostle, Damascus-road-saved writer of half the New Testament, admitted he was the worst of all sinners.

I get it...

I've been serving for only a few weeks at a ministry that reaches those in recovery of addictions. On one hand, every week I have to fight the enemy who taunts, "What are you doing here? This isn't what you had in mind when you signed up for this. These aren't your people. You have no idea about any of this." Then on the other, what strikes me every week is how like them I am. Though I do not have a testimony of addiction, we all crave the same things. Though we may - because of upbringing and circumstance - go about filling those holes in different ways, what is one person's needle is another person's need for applause. What is one person's bottle is another person's workaholism.

We all have God-sized holes we crave to fill.

I look out over the crowd that gathers every week, with their cigarette smoke and smiles, their recovery papers and honesty, and I think, I wish I could be so bold. I wish I could live with no pretense. It's refreshing to see a people who can't hide the fact they've messed up and are having the courage to own it and cling to Jesus to help them fix it.

And here's the secret: we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

I just wish we all lived like we had. I wish I did. What being a part of this ministry has done is burn in me a desire to life like one changed. To come face to face with my empty need and declare along with them: "I've been set free too! He alone satisfies!"

I've been in the middle of a spiritual fasting season, and like with any season of this kind, the Lord has been showing me my idols. Mine may not be alcohol or meth, but it's deadly just the same.

And yet how beautiful that my Savior, Jesus, came for the thieves and the fakes among us.

I've been reading a book by Dane Ortlund entitled "Gentle and Lowly" about the heart of God. I can not recommend it highly enough! In it, he writes:

"...we can vent our fleshly passions by breaking all the rules, or we can vent our fleshly passions by keeping all the rules, but both ways of venting the flesh still need resurrection. We can be immoral dead people, or we can be moral dead people. Either way, we're dead. The mercy of God reaches down and rinses clean not only obviously bad people but fraudulently good people, both of whom equally stand in need of resurrection." (pp. 176-177)

I, too, - you, too - stand in need of His mercy and resurrection power. Whether we've messed up bad for all to see and made a shambles of our life, or we're successful in the world's eyes but still sin in secret, both 'equally stand in need of resurrection.'

Fix me, God, from the brokenness in me.

Jesus told me recently that the fields are white for harvest. And I'm so grateful to be planting, watering, gleaning, harvesting among them... In whatever field He calls me to.

Fix Me

Brokenness smells like cigarette smoke,

appears like faded black tattoos

covering arms, neck, face;

gages and piercings,

blood shot eyes, hollow and sunken.

Like one too many needles,

a lifetime - started way too young -

of not knowing

where it was safe.

Brokenness is manicured nails,

dressed to the nines,

heels so high she could finally stand tall.

But reaching the heights often means

being slashed by shards from the broken glass ceiling,

that she thought would let the light in.

So with red-wine lips, and mascara-stained pillows,

what does it all mean?

Fix us both, Jesus.

Let the cigarette smoke that billows

in the front of the church door

be an incense to You,

worship of a contrite heart.

Fix us, Jesus,

as we let the masks fall

enough to say,

"Me too."

Fix me, Jesus.

I need You most of all.