Sometimes I hear God’s voice in unexpected places. Popular music is one of them. I wrote about it here. (Hearing God’s Voice Through Music). This morning I woke with a song in my head. It’s not one that’s on any of my play lists, but it was insistent, so I paid attention.
Recently I’ve been asking myself why it is sometimes so easy to set a God-given dream aside to collect dust for years. I could say that I’ve been distracted by the cares of life or that I chose to support another person’s dream because I believed it was a worthy and lofty dream. But I think, to be honest, after listening to the song, the Lord is telling me something. I have set the dream aside because taking steps to walk with God toward the dream he put in my heart takes courage. And I have been afraid –afraid of success, afraid of failure, afraid of what critics will think, afraid of letting friends down, afraid of letting God down, afraid of standing alone in the no man’s land in the middle of the social and political and factioned church battles we find ourselves in.
Mariah Carey’s song is called “Hero.” One of the most profound questions we can ask God is “Who do you see when you look at me?” For many years, I assumed the answer to that question was “a sinner saved by grace.” I was wrong.
It can be rather shocking when we hear his answer. It’s easy to dismiss it as a figment of an over-zealous ego. When he approached the cowardly Gideon hiding down in a winepress to thresh grain, the angel of the Lord called the guy who thought he held the lowest status in the country, “Mighty Warrior.” Gideon’s response was the equivalent of looking around and saying, “You talkin’ to me?” The way God sees us is much better than the way we see ourselves. Frankly, I discovered, the hard way, that talking about it to friends who don’t understand how God sees them can bring about a jealous response the way Joseph discovered what jealous people can do when he told his brothers about his dream of sheaves of wheat bowing to him. Candour is risky business. Very risky. But maybe it’s step one in trusting God.
As we grow in grace, God reveals more of how he sees us. I’ve been praying about an updated version of what I call an identity statement (similar to an artist’s statement). When I heard “hero” I felt like Gideon must have felt. I feel like the last person on earth that term could apply to. Then I remember that years ago the Lord spoke to me through the book of Hosea: “‘It will come about in that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘That you will call Me Ishi and will no longer call Me Baali.'” (Hosea 2:16) Ishi means hero/savior/husband. Baali means master.
It’s about relationship. Through his kindness, his gentle alluring, he has replaced the harsh image of himself as an impossible taskmaster with the image of my hero, my saviour, and the lover of my soul.
We become what we focus on. If my focus is on other humans who have merely a piece of the picture, I can, at best, become a faint copy of their traits, both good and bad. If I focus on the one who is my hero, getting to know him in a deeper sense, I will eventually become more heroic like him.
Jesus’ road to hero status involved laying down his right to respect in the ultimate demonstration of humility, but he never let go of the dream to save us and re-connect us with the Father who created us. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
I am very well aware of my tendency to back away when intimidated, to withdraw when stressed, and to try to change who the Lord created me to be to fit in with other people in a desire to belong (what Brené Brown calls the opposite of belonging). On my own, I can’t pursue this dream, but Jesus stood up to injustice. He’s the shepherd who goes after the lost lamb. He pulled me from a pit of guilt and shame and sang a song of grace over me. He invited me –fearful, shame-ridden, voiceless me– to partner with him to set the prisoners of spiritual abuse free. He lives in me. In a world of disappointing would-be heroes, he is my only hope.
This whole thought is too much for me, but I choose to trust him.
And then a hero comes along with the strength to carry on and you cast your fears aside…