Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others (6 page)

But this is the starting point, or—more likely—the starting-over point. You can’t go any further until you realize that the worth of your activity for Christ cannot rise above your understanding of your identity in Him. And there is unlimited power in the Word of God. Power to overcome the warped ways we see ourselves. And power to reassemble the image of God that we haven’t always reflected but have already received.

God spoke to my heart recently in a season when insecurity was getting the best of me. Here’s the essence of what I felt like He said:
You’re spending too much energy assessing other people’s assessment of you. I want you to reinvest that energy into aligning your life with My acceptance of you
.

This was a breakthrough moment of clarity for me.

Accepting God’s acceptance of me doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. It means I’m going to stop
trying out
. And I am intentionally redirecting my obsession.

When the neurotic nag of insecurity gives way to a passionate discovery of the promises of God, the peace that follows is supernatural.

The chatterbox cannot control the thoughts and trajectory of the child of God who faces each day with this attitude:
I have nothing to prove, because I am already approved
.

When my son Elijah started playing T-ball a few years ago, he didn’t care much about the actual sport of baseball. But he was ecstatic about the opportunity to compete. One of the traits my older boy inherited from me is an irrational, unbalanced, borderline psychotic, insatiable passion for competition.

So imagine his chagrin (and my slight trace of paternal disappointment) when they explained that they don’t keep score in T-ball. This, to me, is a harrowing and scandalous development in modern culture. You might say it is an affront to the game of T-ball I grew up loving on the Moncks Corner, South Carolina, rec fields. A game where there were winners and losers. Not winners and pretend winners. What a sham!

Well, as you might expect, my five-year-old shared my disillusionment. On the way home from the first game (which according to my unofficial score, we,
the Mudcats, won
convincingly
), Elijah asked, “Daddy, if they don’t keep score, how do I know if I win?”

It was a reasonable question. He had been frustrated throughout the game because he didn’t really even understand the rules yet. And his batting skills left a lot to be desired. As did his fielding skills. And his basic hand-eye coordination. And general attention span.

But the biggest question, clearly, was this: Without a final score to consult, what’s the point?

How will I know if I’m doing well?

I realized in that moment, as I looked at him in the rearview mirror of my Maxima, that we were going to have to make up our own system for keeping score. Just between me and my boy.

I explained the new plan to him. “Elijah, from now on I’m going to always be where you can see me, whether you’re on the field or at bat, whatever. And anytime you do something—catch the ball, miss the ball, hit the ball, swing at the ball seven times and knock the tee over, get on base, don’t get on base, dig a rock out of the dirt while you’re waiting in left field and throw it at the center fielder—look at me. You’ll know where to find me. And if I give you the thumbs-up, that’s the sign you did a good job. That means you’re winning. And when I give you the thumbs-up, give me thumbs-up back.”

This system was the highlight of the season for me. And I think it was for him as well. It reduced the whole game to one ambition, one goal—the thumbs-up—from one person, his father.

All these people around. All these rules he doesn’t understand. All these kids who are bigger, better, faster, and probably jacked up on hGH.

Isn’t this a microcosm of how our lives feel sometimes? I don’t completely understand the rules, and I’m surrounded by others who are smarter. Fitter. Funnier. Better.

But when we narrow our focus and know where to look for the approval of our Father, life takes on a glorious simplicity.

The burning question is no longer “What did
they
think of that?” Or even “What did
I
think of that?”

Now it’s only “God, were You good with that? Thumbs-up? If You’re good, I’m good.”

His acceptance becomes my guidance. And my reward.

In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that I may have bribed Elijah before every T-ball game with bonus video-game time to ensure that the thumbs-up was sufficient motivation to discourage rock throwing, temper tantrums, and meltdowns.

Therefore, Elijah’s motivation was completely different from that of the rest of the team. He was coming from a place of childlike confidence:
It doesn’t matter what the other kids think. Doesn’t matter what the other parents think. Doesn’t even matter what the coach thinks, really, because my father holds the reward. And whether I catch the ball or miss it, if I look over and see a thumbs-up from Dad, I’m playing Mario Kart tonight
.

When you realize that God is the only One who really has any lasting reward to give, He becomes the only One whose approval you desperately need. You can rest in the fact that you have it—in full measure—because the work of God’s perfect Son, Jesus, secured your acceptance the moment you placed your faith in Him.

Before you ever win or lose, God has turned His face toward you. He has chosen you. And He is pleased.

I have a digital picture frame in my office, and I smile like an orangutan every time a certain picture comes across the screen. It’s a five-year-old standing on first base in a Mudcats jersey with a smirk on his face, stretching his thumb toward a designated spot behind the first base line …

Probably thinking about Mario Kart.

When I was in first grade, my mom sent me to school every day with a dollar for lunch money. She would send it in this little change purse, and don’t you dare act like you never carried one. A step below the fanny pack, this particular rubber change purse was yellow and imprinted with a black smiley face on the front. Beneath the smiley face, a simple message: “Smile, God Loves You.”

I’m sure the inspirational message was the reason my mom (God love her) selected that change purse over all the other ones. Or maybe it was on sale at Big Lots.

Either way, isn’t it funny how vividly I remember that change purse and its message? “Smile, God Loves You.” It’s twenty-six years later, I’m a grown man with a first grader of my own, and I can still describe it in detail.

Obviously, I’m not the first person to remember something random from his childhood. But it’s not just the object I remember. I can still recall how I
felt
seeing the smiley face reminding me every day to smile because God loves me. It made me feel happy. I believed what it said. I thought it was the coolest thing. I didn’t know at that point in my life that this was not only a biblical sentiment but also a Christian cliché that had spawned a mini-industry. At that point I thought of it as a personal message just to me. Also, I didn’t know that carrying a yellow smiley-face change purse much past the first grade would get
you made fun of by Harry Walker, which would be the end of the yellow change purse.

Beyond all this, I had no idea at the time how hard it would be to maintain my first-grade sense of confidence in God’s love throughout my teenage years, much less through my adult life. First-grade me understood innately what grown-up, screwed-up me strains to believe: God loves
me
.

I do get it on one level. God loves me. Yeah, yeah, because He
has
to. Because I prayed and asked Jesus to be my Savior. I did the deal. And God promised that anyone who would believe would be saved. Consequently, God loves me.

What I struggle with is believing that God loves me, not just because He has to, but also because He
wants
to. His love sometimes seems more like a universally accessible one-size-fits-all commodity than a personal expression of His desire to have a relationship with me. I just happened to get in on the group policy.

I wonder if you’ve ever used this other classic Christian cliché when dealing with someone who gets on your last nerve: “The Bible says I have to love everybody, but it doesn’t say I have to like everybody.”

I’ve said this, or something like it, on many occasions. There’s a lot of truth in it. It’s a way of acknowledging that, while believers have clear biblical obligations to be good to others, we can’t always be expected to
feel
good about them. We can love them without liking them.

It’s like a love loophole.

That’s the way the chatterbox wants you to feel about the way God feels about you.

The message of God’s love for us is visibly and tangibly pronounced in all of creation and in God’s involvement in every detail of our lives. So if the Enemy can’t
conceal
that message, he’ll do his best to
corrupt
it:
Sure, God loves you. Jesus died for you, just like He died for everyone else. That doesn’t make you special. And it certainly doesn’t mean He has to like you. Come on, you will admit, you’re pretty hard to like. You don’t even much like yourself. How could God like you?

As strange as this sounds, many of us need to graduate to a first-grade understanding of the love of God. In the last chapter we saw how God accepts us unconditionally, based on our faith in His Son, not on any works we’ve accomplished. But the problem with a word like
acceptance
is that it can carry a connotation of tolerance. It doesn’t necessarily communicate delight. Sometimes we use the word
acceptance
to describe a reluctant resolution: “Well, I don’t like it, but I guess I’m just gonna have to
accept
it.”

And here goes the chatterbox, cranking away again. Even something as beautiful and transformative as the love and acceptance of God can be taken out of context.

The Enemy can’t downgrade the truth of love and acceptance that God has spoken over you. So, instead, he’ll do everything in his power to misrepresent the tone of God’s voice. That way, while you might believe that God’s Word has declared forgiveness and redemption over your life, you silently feel as if God is giving it begrudgingly:
Oh, all right. I’ll forgive you again. I’ll help you again. I’ll answer your prayer this time. But it doesn’t mean I’m gonna like it
.

Why do we interpret God’s motives this way? Or, as one of my friends likes to put it, why are we so
suspicious
of God’s love for us?

One culprit that contributes to this type of chatterboxing is the whacked-out, though often well-intentioned, religious teaching many of us have encountered. When I first became serious about God, I frequently heard church people talk about how careful we must be that sin doesn’t “break our fellowship with the Lord.”

This terrified me. As a teenager, all I could think about was how, on Friday, when the cheerleaders wore their uniforms to school, I was going to end up looking lustfully at one of them, and—
crack!
—my fellowship with the Lord would be broken! I thought,
He won’t be able to stand to look at me until Sunday, when I can get back to church. I’ll borrow a paisley tie from my dad and get him to tie it so I can wear it, and I’ll iron my khakis the night before or beg my mom to. I’ll show up early for Miss Jo’s Sunday school class and read the entire lesson ahead of time
.

Then maybe God will like me again. Perhaps then our fellowship will be unbroken or at least only slightly fractured
.

It was exhausting trying to rightly relate to a God I saw this way.

I have a friend who works for a leader who is known for being remarkably driven and unusually intense. I asked my friend, “Isn’t it hard to work for someone so demanding? How do you deal with it?”