I recently shared an article on Facebook called “The Problem With Our Holly Jolly Christmas.” I found the article nicely reflected what I’ve always felt about the holiday season. Unfortunately I wasn’t clear about what I was trying to say. Either that or people misunderstood.

I suppose when one has been a depressed, cynical, grouch for most of one’s life, when you try to say something that isn’t necessarily cynical or depressed, and yet isn’t flamboyantly jubilant, people tend to read into it all your old cynicism and depression. At least I assume that’s what happened. I’m not really sure what happened.

As a preface, if you are reading this, you probably know I’m not a fan of the Christmas season. I’m just thrilled to death with the birth of Christ, but the holiday is just plain annoying for me. It feels cheap, empty, anticlimactic, shallow, hollow, over commercialized (I don’t think anyone will debate me on that one), and all around not something I really want anything to do with.

But when I posted the article, as an attempt to explain, the response was in response to something I had not even said. People seemed to feel that I was telling them that their appreciation for Christmas or their enjoyment of the season was wrong. I emphatically state right now that this is not the case. People also seemed to think that I was arguing  that Christmas was a time for sadness. Perhaps my reminder that Christ was born to die helped to fuel this misconception.

In short, the following is what I truly want to say. Although, I’m not at all sure how it will be taken, because I was fairly certain that the article I shared summed it all up quite succinctly and with perfect clarity.

However, here goes.

The birth of Christ was a wonderful miraculous thing. It is something that I am forever grateful for, ever in awe of. I mean, that God could become man! What an impossible, incredibly, unthinkable thing. What a great sign of His love, that He would stoop to such a low estate as ours. That He would come to know us in full. To know in person our griefs and joys, our pains and pleasures. To understand our hardships, to feel the weight of our temptations, to walk this road with us, and to die, hanging upon our cross, bearing our sins. And then to rise again in resplendent majesty, with power and greatness and authority unthinkable. This surely is something to get excited about. This is surely the cause for joy in every believing heart.

When I think of the birth of Christ, the above paragraph is what I keep in mind. I’m not enamoured with the little baby in the trough. Rather, I’m insanely in love with the Man He became, the God He showed Himself to be, the Bridegroom He is. Our advocate, our saviour, our lover, our friend, our brother. My king.

Perhaps I might be getting ahead of myself, talking about the resurrection already, but it’s the whole weight and portent of the birth. It’s why the birth of Christ is such a wonderful thing- because it would lead to the cross, the grave, and the resurrection. I get chills just thinking about it. That’s why I have such a problem with Christmas. It misses all of that. It’s so stuck on the birth and the singing angels, that the person of Christ is lost. The epic saga of God’s love for us is only briefly mentioned, if at all.

I don’t go into things like holidays and stuff that everyone seems to like. If the masses are for it, I’m generally wary and can be found only on the fringes, if at all. So, part of me is just a loser humbug. And I’m happy with that. I like to see other people have a good time. I don’t have to be happy to be happy. I don’t think God is disappointed that I don’t like Christmas. I don’t think I’m special because I don’t.

But those are my reasons. If they offend you, I’m no longer bothered by it. You’ll have to deal with that on you’re own. If you don’t understand them, I’ve got nothin’ more. I hope this clears up any confusion. If not, I’ll just write a song about it.

 

So, the ecstatic joy I’ve felt since first hearing God has worn off. I don’t babble anymore when trying to tell people that God has spoken. I don’t feel giddy whenever I think about God. And I think that’s a good thing. People (including myself) must have thought I was loony.

I still struggle with many of the same issues I did before God spoke. Nothing is fixed. But I feel more confident, more hopeful, more at peace than I have in years.

That’s the beautiful thing about God- His presence is all sufficient. When I was lost in my sea of darkness, I had so many questions and fears. But now that I’ve heard God speak, and even though those questions remain, and many of the fears as well, I’ve discovered all I really need is God. My life isn’t suddenly better. I’m not the perfect happy Christian. I still struggle with my sin, my failures, and my brokeness on a daily basis. But I have heard God speak to me, I feel Him moving again. Like a firm but gentle breeze. And in all honesty, that is all I need.

In the book of Job, God never directly answers any of Job’s questions. And yet when He appears to Job, all the questions somehow fade.

“My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You,” He’s says. And then, “I place my hand over my mouth.”

Michael Card touches on this in His song Could It Be, when he says,

“Could it be You make Your presence known so often by Your absence?

Could it be that questions tell us more than answers ever do?

Could it be that You would really rather die than live without us?

Could it be the only answer that means anything is You?”

And again in his song, The Hidden Face of God when he says,

All I ever wanted, all I could ever need-

Not a single question answered, so now I can believe.

He pierced the holiest shadow, stepped from behind the façade.

Now I know the only answer is the hidden face of God.

With God, all is complete. We don’t need the answer to our “why?” The only answer we will ever need is the non-answer of God’s presence. Somehow in the glory and awe and love of His presence, all else falls away. The doubts, the questions, the fears- everything that held us down, every mountain that loomed in our way, every wall blocking our path- all of it becomes unimportant, meaningless, mere trifles not be bothered with when faced with the presence of God.

I clung to this hope in my fear and trembling. I held to this hope when nothing else made sense. I had heard of this and believed it. But now my eyes have seen it, and I know it to be true. We don’t need God’s provision, we need His presence. And in that presence, we find all the provision we will ever need.

~Joshua I. Crain

So my latest blog post was one of hope. One of revelation. This revelation has brought me so much hope, so much peace in the turmoil. After what seems an eternity of silence from God, I have heard His voice. And though it wasn’t in the supernatural, miraculous way I have been hoping for, I know He cares enough to speak, convict, and encourage. And though I have known this in a theological sense, He has turned this knowledge from something theological into something experientially relevant. God spoke to me. This I know. And from this I draw comfort. More comfort than I could ever find in my tears or my songs or my nearly hopeless worship.

But I am still faced with a dilemma. Just because God has spoken does not change me from the dark, brooding person I am. I almost expected it to. I wanted it to. I don’t want to be dark. I want to be like everyone else. I want to feel joy and happiness. And this is the first time I can say this with complete honesty. I do want to be happy.  I want to be like my friend Annika Sholander, or Dan Sidelecki, or any number of the wonderful people around me. They’re so full of life and joy. They fit in with people so well. They know how to talk with people. They know how to worship in a group setting. They know how to sing songs like David Crowder’s “Oh How He Loves” and mean it, making it more than just an old clichéd song. I don’t.

I’m at fall retreat with CRU at a place called Camp Henry. Tonight is the first night of the retreat. Brian “something or other” (I can’t remember his last name.) is the speaker. The sermon he gave this evening was on Romans 6: 1-14. I really felt encouraged by what he had to say. Unfortunately, while I was still trying to think over it all, and take it all in, the worship started up again, and I lost my train of thought. Fortunately, though, in a moment of rare inspiration, I took notes.

So now let me try to recreate what I gathered from the sermon.

Now, if you’ve read my old blog posts on my BlogSpot, You’ll know that I have trouble worshiping in your standard worship setting. Songs by people like Crowder, Hillsong, and Tomlin don’t cut it for me. They don’t do squat for me. I hear it and I’m like, “Yeah, ok. God is holy. I think we’ve said that only a thousand times. How ’bout we actually worship Him rather than continually reiterating His holiness.” I mean, that’s just me, and I know that many people really can worship God with that kinda music. But I don’t get it. I see other people totally engrossed in worship of our God, and I just can’t go there.

Because of this, I often feel like what Michael Card refers to as “A second class spiritual citizen.” I feel constantly out of place. I feel like music is used so much today as a way of connection with God. I don’t really feel close to God when I sing worship songs. I feel close when I pray. And since nearly all of my songs, and all of the songs I love, are prayers, I can feel close to God when singing them. Because I’m praying. I’m talking to God.

But it seems to me that no one else gets this. I feel like the odd man out. And now I remember why I created the false identity for myself that I spoke of in my previous blog post- I don’t want to be the odd guy out. I created a lone wolf, need-nobody, attitude. Or as Lacey Sturm puts it, “and orphan heart.”

So tonight, when Brian- drawing off of Romans 6:1-14- said, “In God’s eyes, you have been crucified, buried, and raised just as much as Christ was,” my response was, “If that’s the case, then why do I feel trapped somewhere between death and the grave?”

And I thought it would end there. I thought I would be stuck like I had been so many times before, trapped with the question, and having received no answer.

But he went on. And drawing off of the same set of verses, he said, in essence, the following:

     Death will change all of this. We will be free from the remnants of the old self- To live as a Christian means to live in constant remembrance of this fact. We live In Remembrance not only of what Christ has done for us, but also in remembrance of what that means for us.

Regardless of what you struggle with, you can live in confidence and hope. You can live in joy and peace, knowing that even though this sinful flesh will tempt you and you will fall and fail occasionally, you can still live as free. For when we die, this flesh will die and with it the temptations we face. We will be free of sin once and for all.

I had a blog post back on my Blogger account that spoke of how I find my hope in the fact that one day I will die. But when I wrote that, I wasn’t sure how to live my life in that hope. I feel like tonight has given me the first step. I hope it can encourage you.

And I feel like I butchered that explanation. Maybe I’ll be able to write a more eloquent blog post on the same topic later.

Hopefully more to come in the next couple days…

~Josh

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to accept what is true.” -Soren Kierkegaard

I am a member of the Lacey Sturm Facebook Fan group. Unlike most fan groups, this group is more like a social media family than a fan army. We ask for prayer requests, share Bible verses, encourage each other, and (of course) discuss the newest Lacey Sturm news. It’s a pretty tight nit group of people that I have come to love and trust.
A week or so ago, I was really having a rough day. I was melancholy, depressed, angry, confused, and just feeling overwhelmed and lost. (I know- this seems to be a common theme with me.) I was so empty, that I felt I couldn’t even confidently call on God. So in a sort of blind desperation, I got on Facebook and asked the group to pray for me.

I went to bed depressed, woke up numb, but with nothing better. No answer to the prayers as of yet.

At the same time, I am currently reading a book called The Mystery. It is, coincidentally (or perhaps not so much), by Lacey Sturm.

I had gotten eleven chapters in, riveted by the autobiographical story, before the message of the book began to hit home.

Chapter twelve of the book is entitled “The Mystery of Silence.” In this chapter, Lacey talks about the silence of God, and the choice we have to either continue to trust God in these times or to turn and trust our feelings and emotions. She explains a crossroads she came to where these two choices presented themselves and she was forced to choose:

“Would I choose to believe in a God I could no longer feel, understand, hear, make sense of, or in many ways, even remember? Or would I choose to make this decision based on the same thing I’d based every other decision I ever made in my life on: my feelings?”

And I realized reading this that this is where I was at. I was at a crossroads. And I had to choose. Again, I turned to the group from the fan page, and without asking for anything, shared my thoughts and convictions. This is what I said:

“I’m reading The Mystery. I just read Chapter 12, “The Mystery of Silence,” and It really spoke to me. Lacey’s struggle in this chapter is much akin to mine. I ache for the person of Jesus Christ. I break in the silence I’m faced with. I so easily follow my emotions rather than the God I know has saved my life, and has given me a new hope. She says she was faced with the question, “Would I choose to believe in a God I could no longer feel, understand, hear, make sense of, or, in many ways, even remember?”

That’s the question I’m faced with. I can hardly remember God’s presence. I can hardly remember what it is like to be a confident Christian. I can’t hear God. I can’t see Him at work in my life. I don’t feel Him near- Oh! It’s been so long since I’ve felt Him! And yet, I cannot deny Him. I know He exists. I know He’s alive. I know in my mind that He loves me. I know in my mind that He wants only what is best for me. But none of that has yet translated into something experientially relevant. It’s not tangable knowledge. I don’t think at this time that I can deny God. I’m stuck on the fence. I’m reaching pitifully for Him, but falling ever backwards. And I know if I do finally lose faith, I will be like Charles Templeton- always longing for His presence again.

But that Silence of God. It’s something I’ve struggled with all my life. He’s not a very talkative God. At least not to me.
Anyway, I’ve got this song in the works called “Incomplete Me.” And it’s about how God is breaking me down, incompleting me, ruining me- showing me how much I need Him. In my mind, I think I’ve kinda got the picture now, and I just want Him to show up. But the silence continues, and I keep on breaking. I keep on fading. I continue on, incomplete. Maybe I’ll never be complete ’til I die. Maybe I’ll always ache, ’til I meet Him face to face.”

Yet more people informed me that they were praying for me.

And then I got to chapter fourteen. And God began convict me like I have never been convicted before. He revealed how selfish, how hard, how dark, how empty I am. He used the entire chapter, but this section in particular to point out how foolish I am:

“The very way I though about “being healthy” exposed a false sense of identity. I’d learned it from Tim Burton movies, from metal music, from dark poetry and art. I reveled in honesty and brokenness and loved to celebrate the strange ideas and ways of life. I loved the rebellion of being different and the isolation that came from feeling superior because I seemed to see life in a different color than everyone else. This sense of being “different” was my fuel for wanting to create art. I wanted to sing a song no one was singing. I wanted to shock people with a different way of living and seeing things. But in doing this I had judged all the “healthy” people as enemies of art and change and beauty. I didn’t want peace. I wanted struggle, chaos. I wanted to embrace the sickness of life.”

Oh, how I hated reading that! It burned. It stung. It refused to let me go. I wanted to be able to erase those words from my memory. I didn’t want to think about them. I didn’t want to remember them. But they held me captive and would not let go. Because those words right there describe me exactly. Perfectly. Flawlessly. And I could not escape the truth in them. And I still can’t. It still hurts. It still burns.

There is something deep inside of me that desperately wants to rebel against the current social structure, the current status quo. I want to break all the rules and prove the world wrong. I want to make a statement and change the world. I have embraced pain and suffering as a point of connection. I have fought with everything I am to call out the hypocrisy of those around me while ignoring my own hypocrisy hidden in my heart. I have held that which is broken and twisted in my hands and called it beautiful. Not for the beauty of what it once was, nor for the beauty of what it could be if touched by God, but merely for the fact that it was broken and twisted.

And here was Lacey Sturm, by biggest hero, the person I had made my role model, calling out the very depths of my heart and telling me That I had understood the message she had been screaming into the microphone for all those years utterly backwards.

That night, I wrote the following letter to God. Part complaint, part confession, part plea:

“Dear God,

You’re hurting me again. You pick and tear and cut at my festering wounds. I don’t want You to touch me. I’m afraid of the light. I’m in love with my pain. I’m angry that you would touch me there. I feel violated. I am in a sort of comfortable agony here in the dark. It may be hurting me, but it’s familiar. So I continue to cower here in the shadows.

I’m afraid to change. I always have been afraid of change. I’m afraid it will hurt. I’ve become sort of numb to my hurt. So I’m ok with it. But Your surgeon’s knife will open up old wounds and create new ones. I’m afraid of that. I don’t want that. I’m so tired of pain that maybe I think it’s better to be at home with the pain I already know than to risk a new pain that could bring healing over time.

Besides, this dark pain of mine brings me attention. It brings me applause and, in some cases, attack. I relish attack. It gives me something to fight. Something to defend. This darkness gives me adventure. And I don’t know if I want to be whole anymore. Because to me, that means the death of who I think I am.

I remember a couple years ago, I was frustrated with my girlfriend of the time because she had created for herself this false identity of who she thought she was. I could see that she was so much more. So I tried to pull her out and show her all she could be. And I succeeded. A little bit. But she resisted and eventually dumped me because of it. And now I’m doing the exact same thing she is. I’ve created my own idea of who I think I should be rather than seeking Yours.

And I like who I think I am. I’m content with who I am. I’m desirous to maintain the façade of broken, degenerate, depressed, misunderstood rebel. I like being the outcast. I don’t wanna be part of the “in” crowd.

I don’t want to be whole, regardless of what my songs may say. And yet…

I want You. More than anything else, I want You, God.

And yes, I do want healing. I just don’t know if I’m willing to pay the price.

But I need You, and regardless of the price, I think I’m willing to take a step towards You. God. Help me. Really. I mean it this time. I’m so in love with You. Yet I’ve run so far away. Help me seek You again. Cut deep and cruel. Remove all the festering pain I’ve protected for so long. Not matter how much I love it. Even if it cuts most of me away. Because I want You more than I want me.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

And I prayed it with all my heart. And it hurt. And it still hurts. And I’m afraid. But I know now where I went wrong. I’m not quite sure yet how to begin again, but I know now that I must begin again. I know now that I can begin again. And by God’s grace I will find my way back. By God’s guidance, maybe I can meet Him in the way that I have been desiring for so long.

I want to thank all of you have been praying for me. And I would ask you to continue to do so. Because it’s working. God is working in my life in a manner unlike any I can remember in recent history. I feel He is drawing me once again to Himself. Please, keep praying for me. I’ve got a long way yet to go.

~Joshua Ivan Crain.