![\"Hand](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/689\/2016\/07\/Hand-of-hope-300x200.jpg\")
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Change is difficult even for those who do it often.<\/p>\n
When change involves your faith traditions and convictions, the hope you find can be crushed by the weight of disappointment\u00a0and rejection.<\/p>\n
Anyone who has walked this road understands this and I know that many who read this post do understand, but I know my readers well enough to know many of you will not. This post belongs to those walking the road of deepening\u00a0gospel convictions that have left you with joy and hope, but simultaneously stranded, misunderstood, frustrated, rejected, and a host of other emotions and realities. I also write to those who do not understand or agree in the hopes that maybe you want to.<\/p>\n
Regardless of your perspective, I pray what you find here is\u00a0my attempt to be authentic about what it means to find Jesus truly in places you never expected.<\/p>\n
I grew up believing in Christ, but I cannot honestly say that Christ had any real importance to me beyond the weight of not wanting to go to hell. I genuinely believed that Christ was real, but he didn\u2019t\u00a0functionally matter outside of a quid pro quo reality that kept me safe from the fear of flames.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t\u00a0fit in, I believed I was not acceptable to God, and\u00a0the entirety\u00a0of my cultural context encouraged me to hate myself for numerous inward reasons, and I did!<\/p>\n
I tried to correct self-hate with numerous attempts to be \u201cright with God,\u201d to fit in with God. When acceptance becomes your goal with God, you often miss out on God himself. I did not realize or believe that God loved me. I could not fathom that God\u2019s love for me had nothing to do with me being the right kid and everything to do with him being the\u00a0right God! He is the God that sets his love upon us\u2026grace upon grace.<\/p>\n
Somewhere in a very long and interesting story Jesus found me and awakened me to find him!<\/p>\n
My walk with Christ is 17 years old this September and to say it has been interesting would undermine the greatness of each and every detail Jesus is a part of.<\/p>\n
I am a changed man!<\/p>\n
The process of changing and being conformed into his image is part of the beautiful and difficult process of sanctification. I have seen great things, been a part of great things, walked deep tragedy, and gifted with incredible joys. I have sacrificed much\u00a0but probably given far too little. I have deepened in so many ways, but most likely I am still far too superficial. At each and every turning point in my walk, Christ has demonstrated, his goodness, his faithfulness, and his presence.<\/p>\n
Somewhere in this story, I sacrificed the freedom of faith on the altar of acceptance\u2026 again.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to put into words, but somehow my identity stopped being in Christ and started being evangelical, Southern Baptist, conservative, and Republican. Not only did each become my identity, but they also became\u00a0a synonym for Christian.<\/p>\n
Christ, in his goodness and faithfulness, is refining me and rescuing me from this error. I have come to see all of his refining and rescuing as part of my great sanctification. As a result, I am not better or bigger, but his is better and much, oh so much bigger!<\/p>\n
This part of sanctification caught me by surprise. I believed that the more I fell in love with Jesus and the more committed I became to the Gospel and all of its implications for life, the more I would find a home, a kinship, love from fellow Christ followers.<\/p>\n
In reality, the more at home I feel with Christ and all that he is, the more homelessness I feel from a large portion of my circle of believers. It is a strange and lonely feeling to have all the labels that you once hoped in stripped away.<\/p>\n
As I have shed the labels that either no longer seemed to fit or are so misunderstood they are useless to try and maintain, I have experienced rejection, judgment, stinging rebuke, all from people I know and love.<\/p>\n
The great sins in my circle of Christianity are not getting authorization for your change, stepping out of line, saying something rather than nothing, being transparent instead of keeping up appearances, evolving politically, and most of all daring to\u00a0let your theology be more nuanced than liberal and conservative and more effective and practical than ideological.<\/p>\n
Nothing in my Christian walk prepared me for this! Nothing!<\/p>\n
However, in the past I was the one who once rebuked, judged, and rejected others who were not like me.<\/p>\n
I rejected those who did not share my convictions or theological nuances. I pushed away my\u00a0family because I considered them sinful. \u00a0I watched family rejected and discarded for not sharing political and religious beliefs. I said nothing. I relaxed in the privilege of acceptance while others withered around me from the pain of rejection and being considered unworthy, unholy, odd, unfaithful, disloyal and worst of all, un-Christian.<\/p>\n
In the midst of all the stripping away I am finding a unique joy in God. There is an air of authenticity in my heart (Christ, not me), a new hope and love for his church, and a keen awareness of my inconsistencies, far and above anyone else.<\/p>\n
I am still angry, hurt, and many days irritable toward this process and those who are a part of the pain. I am still in the process but I am emerging on the other side. Jesus is showing himself to be better than I ever imagined. Our church is more of a refuge than ever before and we are finding so many there just like us. On our better days, we dive into this body and these people. On our more difficult days, sadly, we remain suspicious of getting too close.<\/p>\n
I also know I am on a journey, many are. I am not certain about many things, outside of Christ and his love for me. I am willing to listen, learn, and grow. I am not always right (perhaps that will come as a shock to many who know me) and I do not always have to be right. Those things die hard when that is the reality you are steeped in, but step by step, Christ is making it happen.<\/p>\n
Friend, If you are walking through this, all I can tell you to do is cling to Jesus, dive into his word, and let his presence and teachings metabolize into your life! He will never leave you nor forsake you. Even if we or others are unfaithful, he will remain faithful, because he can not deny himself, which was woven into you, when you first believed.<\/p>\n
Do not leave your First Love for broken politics, political parties, ideologies, theologies, Christian celebrities, sub-cultures, denominations, and a host of other inauthentic god\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Lay it all on the line to love Christ and what he loves!<\/p>\n
Your greatest fight will be to love those who malign you, hurt you, reject you, question you, and cause you to walk the difficult road, but I think Jesus said something about this!<\/p>\n
Loving Christ means to love him, his presence, his name, his Gospel, and his kingdom. Love redemption and the redeeming of all things, love mercy, care for orphans, breathe life into the lost and least of these, fight for the marginalized, bring the kingdom to systems and institutions, speak! Up!,\u00a0fight for justice rooted in the kingdom and Jesus\u2019 name, and never be the one who pushes away from the table!<\/p>\n
Friend, maybe you are not walking through this, maybe you are a part of it. Maybe you just don\u2019t understand or don\u2019t see; maybe you do not want to see. Seeing is uncomfortable and requires change. Change is a risky thing, and we are taught to avoid risk. I can pray for you and ask you to pray for me, but I also ask you to try and see, try and change.<\/p>\n
I am begging you to run hard and deep into Jesus and his word and let those voices reign over the countless voices that make up the noise we often accept as God\u2019s voice. At the very least resist being part of the noise and consider what it means to be the family of God and to be a neighbor who pushes in rather than away!<\/p>\n
Father, \u201cYour kingdom come\u00a0your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Change is difficult even for those who do it often. When change involves your faith traditions and convictions, the hope you find can be crushed by the weight of disappointment\u00a0and rejection. Anyone who has walked this road understands this and I know that many who read this post do understand, but I know my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2772,"featured_media":500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n