All I Need Is Jesus and a Good Pair of Jeans: The Tired Supergirl's Search for Grace (17 page)

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but in this world of political correctness, the gospel of Christ is totally offensive. It talks about sin and stuff. I was an all-star Sunday school student but was mute in the presence of people who didn’t believe what I did. And usually when I breached the chasm of faith, my conversations revolved around the dos and don’ts of my faith, like why my friends shouldn’t be doing what they were doing. I remember talking to one friend about why she shouldn’t live with a guy before they got married. And I think my response was something profound like, “You just shouldn’t.”

It’s hard to imagine, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t bring her around to my point of view.

After I got married and Scott and I were youth pastoring, my faith sharing hit an all-time low. By then, I had lived a bit longer, messed up a bit more myself, and knew that more than anything, what people needed was the story of God’s grace and forgiveness. He had changed me and moved me, and I wanted the people in my life to know that same grace and forgiveness. I was trying to hold up the light and all that, in the store I was working at. I had been talking to one friend about Jesus. A lot.

We were praying together. She was really interested in Jesus and what he was about. I was excited because I felt like this was a breakthrough for me too. I had always been so fearful, and here I was opening up and being real and Jesus was coming through. I thought any day she would say that she, too, wanted to be a Christ follower. And then one fateful day over lunch, she thanked me for all my prayer and helpfulness in finding a new path of faith for her as she was now studying Buddhism. I was crushed. I went home to Scott, who had been coaching me through my witnessing, and told him, “I’m not sure what I did or how it happened, but I was trying to lead her to Jesus and instead I led her to Buddha.”

Buddha.”

“Buddha?”

“Yes. Buddha.”

Scott just patted my back. He is a born evangelist who shares his faith regularly. He has led his friends to the Lord, not to other religions. And I felt like a failure. I had failed me, and worse, I had failed Jesus. The Great Commission seemed impossible. How could I go into all the world, making disciples of the nations, when apparently my giftings seem to lie elsewhere? Maybe some of us supergirls should go into all the world and maybe some of us should just stay at home and pray real hard for the other supergirls who know what they are doing.

Some of us supergirls are rock stars at sharing Jesus. Some of us grab our friends by the hand and walk them right through the four spiritual laws onto the path of righteousness and have felt the glory of the Lord shining ’round about us. And some of us supergirls feel like we are terrible at sharing because we don’t relate to people who don’t follow Christ. Maybe we grew up in the church and our story of faith isn’t exciting. Or we grew up outside of the church and our story of faith is too gory. Or we are introverts and speaking up about our faith feels like something akin to dying. Or tired supergirls that we are, even though we are following the Christ and would like to talk about him, we have messed up over and over and feel like we are the last ones who should be sharing anything. That maybe we could, quite by accident, lead someone to Buddha. (Who I’m sure was a nice guy and all but definitely not the creator of the universe and savior of the world.)

This is where Mr. Shut-Your-Mouth comes into play. He is the foul foe who mocks our faith and shames our souls and says, “Yes, of course, by all means, believe in Jesus. Just don’t talk about him. Because you really have no idea what you are talking about.”

Or, “It’s amazing how much you say you love Jesus, but you just can’t seem to get it right. You better keep quiet.

Praying for your friend is enough.”

Or, “It’s nice that you want to tell your friends about Jesus, but you’ve never had any training. Maybe you should go to Bible college first and then you can really know what you are talking about.”

All good arguments from a logical point of view, but not exactly what Jesus had in mind. He chose twelve people to get his message out. He chose to tell the world about himself at a time in history when there was no radio, television, or Internet. Writings were only available to the educated elite. How exactly did he expect his followers to tell the world about who he was and what he had done for them? By talking. By word of mouth. By sharing stories and speaking the words of Jesus. By discipling them . . . a scary Sunday school term that conjures up images of deciphering Scripture in some musty back room of a church.

Mr. Shut-Your-Mouth would like us supergirls to think that sharing our faith and all that God has done for us is absolutely beyond us. And he is going to try to stymie us at every turn. Because this is God’s grand plan. For us to tell people about him. That’s it. He wants us to be his disciples and to tell others how to be his disciples. And that is going to involve some chatting on our part. So if Mr. Shut-Your-Mouth can keep us from talking, then God’s grand plan will crash and burn. Jesus relayed this plan to the disciples in a portion of Scripture we call the Great Commission, which quite frankly sounds so daunting, Mr. Shut-Your-Mouth won’t have to work too hard to keep us from talking. I can’t tell you the last time I was commissioned to do anything or undertook something great. But this is not how Jesus puts it to his disciples. The story goes like this,

Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him—but some of them still doubted!

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given complete authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:16–20

Here are his followers. They have recently seen their friend tortured and crucified. They are probably still reeling from his resurrection. They have eaten fish with him on the beach, seen him pop in and out of rooms like Houdini, and visited with him off and on for forty days. They’ve come to worship him, but some of them still doubt. Which we can totally relate to because we supergirls can be great doubters. Even after living life with him for three years, they still don’t get it. And he breaks down his grand plan into terms they understand.

When Jesus told them to disciple the nations, I’m sure they were not thinking about poring over Scripture in the musty back room of a temple. As he talked to them about how they had lived together the last three years, he reminded them of what is most important.

“Look here, I’m completely in charge. So now that you get that, go and do what I have done with you for the past three years. Just like I came to you, you have to go to them. Go live life with them. Tell them about me. They are not going to get half of what you say, but keep at it. Go cook them fish on the beach and hang out under olive trees. Go to parties, celebrate, and enjoy life. When things get hard, stick by them. Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just like you were baptized after you repented and believed in me. Teach them all the things I taught you. And you have to know, you’re not in this alone, I am going to be with you forever.” (Tired Supergirl Paraphrase.)

This was something they could do. This was not beyond the realm of the possible. It was the passing of the torch, but he wasn’t deserting them. Now, he knew all their stuff. And they knew that he knew all their stuff. He knew some of them were shy, some were goof-offs, some of them were still struggling with their own faith.

And yet he said, “This is the plan, don’t worry, you guys can do this, I am always going to be with you.”

And they took him at his word because, after all, here we supergirls are. We know about Jesus because some other imperfect Christ follower took Jesus’s mountain talk to heart and told us about his love and grace and we listened. And as for Mr. Shut-Your-Mouth, well, he can just shut
his
mouth because there are a lot of other supergirls out there who need to hear about Jesus. And if there is a group of people who know how to celebrate life, hang out, talk about important stuff, and eat good food, it is we supergirls. Some of our friends may get it and some of them may not, but we’re going to keep on chatting because Jesus asked us to. And he promised he would never leave us. Even if you have accidentally led someone to Buddha.

22

I DON’T FEEL LOVABLE

I
have had a lot of days where I feel very bad about myself. I know things about myself that I would cringe to share. Now that may seem strange since I am laying out oh so many problems that I have here on the pages of this book. But there are things in my past and in my heart that feel too big for me to tell. Some days I feel utterly unlovable. I mess up. I hurt the people I love. I struggle with things that I have struggled with for years. My pants are too tight. I embarrass myself with my inadequacies or lack of knowledge. I yell at my kids. And suddenly I am picking myself apart, bit by unseemly bit. I think to myself,
Why can’t I be someone else?
Or more realistically,
Why can’t I be the person I want to be?
Why do I fail? Why do I sin? Why am I this person?
One thing I do fairly well is remind myself of all the ways I don’t stack up. There are days when I just don’t like myself. I feel small. I feel worthless. I feel pretty much good for nothing.

As someone who has grown up following Jesus, I know all the Christian jargon, all the verbiage acceptable to those who are trying to find their way on that narrow path, and “I hate myself” is not one of those sayings. You can say “I’m struggling” or “God is dealing with me about a certain issue.” Feel free to tell people that “I feel bad, but I am believing God is going to help me” or “I need a new revelation of who God is in my life.” But for goodness’ sake, if you want to see a brother or sister in the Lord keel over on command, just say, “I have been loathing myself in small increments today. If I could crawl out of my skin, I would. I wish I was anyone but myself. I’m not sure why God loves me, I can barely stand myself.” That type of honesty is a conversation stopper. Or a gossip starter, since whoever you shared it with may want to “share” your struggle and “pray” for you with others. So a lot of times, we supergirls keep those types of thoughts to ourselves.

That is in the best interests of the Un-courager. The Uncourager would absolutely love you to focus on your worst self. He skips about gleefully as you rip yourself apart and remind yourself of just how unlikable you are. If you can’t think of enough things you don’t like about yourself, he will join in the barrage.

“Don’t forget, you’re awkward in social settings. That is a terrible hindrance.”

Or, “You have sinned so much in the last week, I have lost count. Who knew you could be evil so regularly?”

Or, “Don’t forget your hair. For goodness’ sake, I thought it couldn’t get any more limp, but apparently it can!”

The myriad of things that we don’t like about ourselves is a real downer. You have never seen limper hair than mine on the fourth of July in Washington, DC. But some of the things we tell ourselves, about ourselves, are lies straight from the fiery pit of hell. We are lovable. We know this because God was kind enough to have it written down so that we wouldn’t forget. In John 3:16, it says in big red letters, “For God so loved the world.” Now I assume, since you are reading this book, that you are a part of the world. And I also checked,

We supergirls are often paralyzed by our own lack. Our lack of attributes. Our lack of talents. Our lack of good looks. Our lack of knowledge. Our lack of righteousness. We spend quite a few days of our lives feeling “less than.” Some of the things we don’t like about ourselves could very well be true. and the Scripture does not include the disclaimer “For God so loved the world
except for
. . .” with a list of names. So we are all good as far as that goes. But penetrating that thick skin around our hearts, the one that keeps us from believing rich morsels of truth like this one, is a hard thing. We tired supergirls have spent years defining who we think we should be, what we think we should look like and act like in order to be lovable. And never in all those years of trying to become the perfect lovable person have we actually succeeded. We look at ourselves and there are still so many areas that we wrestle with, so many idiosyncrasies that don’t lend themselves to worth, so many traces of sin and ungodliness, that we feel we have lost the fight. We just don’t deserve all that love.

All through the Gospels, we supergirls see Jesus loving the unlovables and touching the untouchables. He healed lepers and blind beggars. He cast demons out of tormented people and hung out with sinners and reprobates. But something even more amazing and more fantastic is that his heart was moved by women. Women like us. Women who made mistakes and dealt with sin and their pasts and lived messy lives. In a time and culture where women were low on the totem pole, he honored and valued them.