(For those wondering, yes, this is me riding a cow in Bumpville, PA.)
“You were a bum in High School.”
I could only nod in agreement and chuckle. The words were spoken by an older man who was the father of a girl I went to High School with. We had just seen each other at Mario’s Pizza and Wings in Owego, NY. I was still in college and given my life to Jesus and was working on my Biblical Studies degree. He knew and had personal experiences of me being a bum in grade school.
I goofed off. I had terrible grades. I failed off the sports team a couple of times. I also did crazy things like ride our holstein dairy cows when I was bored after milking cows. I knew I had a brain, but never really applied myself. I falsely believed that I was a no good failure and developed a deep shame and self-hatred for myself.
I was a failure in everything, except sports, particularly basketball. Basketball did something different for me. It felt really good during the game to shoot threes and watch them go in and to hear the crowd go wild and hear people say, “Way to go Danny-boy”.
In those moments I wasn’t a failure. I wasn’t a bum. I was something.
So I falsely accepted this lie, if I perform, I am good. If I do something meaningful, I am good.
So I became a performer in life because of the voices in the back of my brain constantly telling me that I am no good. We live in a culture that is very performance based and so I fed into the lie that if I perform, I’m loved. The unfortunate thing is that when I went to college and Jesus completely changed my life and led me into ministry, this core lie was never dealt with.
Ministry did something for me. It became a way of covering up the fact that I was not a failure. I was no longer a bum. I was a college graduate that was a successful youth pastor, or so I thought. My motives were less than pure in ministry and paralleled those of the older brother in the fields working to gain his Father’s approval. As long as I performed, I was good.
This all came crashing down after I burned out and spent the next seven years outside of vocational ministry trying to discover who I was apart from ministry. It was in those seven years in the desert that I began to uncover a false self in me that wasn’t healed. One of the main scriptures that Abba led me to during this period was Luke 15’s story of the two lost sons and reading Henri Nouwen’s Return of the Prodigal Son.
I began to realize that my false self was very much like the motives of the older son in the story who was working in the fields trying to gain his Father’s approval by what he could do. This false self in me is driven by the need to constantly prove itself because of the false belief that I am not the Fathers child. This then makes ministry a tool by which to show that I am good and loved by the Father. Listen to the words Jesus uses for the older brother, “Look! All these years I’ve been serving you, and never disobeyed your orders.” The older brother may have lived with the core lie that he was a bum, like me, and needed to prove himself.
In this paradigm of false belief, there was no understanding of original glory. There was no awareness of the deep love of God that He had chosen me before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. I wasn't operating from creation, but from the fall, with the false belief that if I worked hard enough, I could gain the acceptance and approval of the Father and be good. It’s what Pastor Sebastian Holley describes as a, “qualification based mindset”. It’s living in this fearful reality that you are not good enough and need to constantly qualify or compete to prove your goodness. Brene Brown says it like this in Rising Strong; “You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness.”
There are times when I live with the false belief that helping and serving others affirms my goodness. Henri Nouwen in “The Return of the Prodigal Son” says it like this; “But there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.” Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They are always there and, always, they reach into those inner places where I question my own goodness and doubt my self-worth. They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it through determined efforts and hard work. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift. I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved and follow the voices that offer a great variety of ways to win the love I so much desire.”
When ministry is driven out of the false self, it becomes a way of getting or proving something. Years ago my counselor said to me, “Ministry is such a great measurement tool. You stop doing and you’re no longer good.” In this place there is no concept of grace. No understanding of a gracious and loving Father that is just looking to give us good gifts despite the fact that we’ve never done anything to earn them.
When I am living out of my false self I am like the older brother toiling away in the fields not aware that God’s already been at work in the field tilling the ground.
We don’t need to do anything to contribute to God’s work, only respond to what He’s already up to. We don’t need to prove ourselves, be right, sound right, solve or fix any of the worlds issues, because that’s up to the One that is in the world reconciling all things. We only respond to His voice as His beloved children.
I am not made right because of anything I can do for others, I am made right only through the cross of Christ. That’s good news. How do we earn something that isn’t ours to earn? It’s something given to us freely.
This is why silence and being with Christ in the scriptures are so important. It literally forces us to face the older brother in us that can’t stop working. It helps us process the emotions of the day and how we’ve been triggered off our Island of Peace in our souls. It’s in these moments of silence when I ask the question, what does my 13 year old self need to hear? This is the 13 year old self that was deeply shamed for not being good enough and so he grew up with the core lie that he was a failure. It’s in deep tiem of prayer and intimacy with Abba Father that I invite the Holy Spirit to speak to him and tell him,
That you’re okay. Don’t condemn him. Don’t shame him.
That I believe in you and I affirm and approve of you.
That you’re a really good kid and you’re not the voices rattling in the back of your head.
That you’re loved despite what you do or don’t do.
That you’re not a bum, you are the beloved of God!
There have been many times when I am in silence with Abba Father that I will sense the Spirit say, “Danny, I am well pleased with you. You don’t have to keep working to please me, because I already am.” There is so much comfort living in the presence of a God that delights in me and is always calling me home from being out in the fields working to prove my goodness. It’s the voice of Abba constantly calling me to rest, to lean into his chest when I come home, and to feel his hands on my shoulders and whispering into my ear, “welcome home Danny. You are such a delight to me.”
So, my fellow reconcilers, rest in the knowledge that at this very moment, if you are in Christ, you are the beloved of God and don’t need to do anything to prove your worth or value by working in the fields like the older brother through serving others. You are fully loved and embraced by the glorious God of the universe. May you rest well this weekend knowing that God delights in you and everything He has is yours and you don’t have to work for it. In Christ, you are made good, so now go and do good.