Jess Boctor

Category: Christian Life

  • Losing Sight of the Crowd

    For the past few weeks, my church has been discussing the concept of core sins. The background behind core sins is that there are nine basic sin traits (think a negative Myers-briggs), from which most other sins or harmful behavior manifest themselves.

    My poison is Envy.

    I had known this for a few years now. Envy comes from a desire to be unique–or, termed another way, more special than anyone else. Of course, the only way to identify yourself as more or less unique than others is to compare yourselves to them.

    Is she prettier than me?

    Can he come up with better ideas than I can?

    I could be as financially disciplined as they are, but then I would be just as joyless…

    I am sometimes deluded into thinking that others can’t see my envy because it doesn’t show up in the way it might be expected to (I’m different, remember, I can’t sin the way you think I should). I don’t care much about material things, so if you have a nice car or own a great home, I can pretty easily congratulate you on your success. However, if you start sharing your plans to travel the world, or start a new creative business, or talk about your rock solid faith– you might as well stab me with kryptonite. If you really want me to turn into a green envy hulk, tell me about your new book deal. I dare you. The worst thing you can ever say to me is, “You’re just like me, her, him, it, blah blah blah”. Those words make my skin crawl every time.

    So over the last few weeks, I have been comforting myself with this thought: our sins are often times our strengths turned against us. I would tell people, “I wasn’t designed to follow the crowd, I’m never going to fit in, so I should just embrace my strangeness. Now I just have to learn to love others when they do cool things too!”

    There is one problem with this, it completely takes for granted the fact that no one was ever ‘made’ for the crowd. Each individual is a beautiful, unique, intentionally crafted piece of art which God placed on earth. God has given each of us unique perspectives, feelings, experiences, gifts and talents. This is a belief I hold to my core.

    Right up until it threatens how unique I am.

    The problem with the concept of ‘the crowd’ is that it inherently assumes some sort of ‘otherness’ or separation between myself and the mysterious and ominous ‘them’. ‘They’ are all followers, I strike my own path. ‘They’ all feel comfortable together, I am awkward. ‘They’ set up the rules, I break them. ‘They’ are different from me.

    But who are ‘they’? Are ‘they’ really different than me if you strip away all the fluff of humanity and get to the heart of each person? What am I if you take away the things which God has graciously bestowed on me? I am broken sinner with a streak of self hatred. Are ‘they’ any different?

    Today, at church, God confronted me with how deep my envy has rooted itself into my perception of myself and the world around me. My envy causes me to constantly compare myself to others, to a fantasy life which I think I want (but ultimately would probably be my undoing), and to an imagined group of people who seem determined to get me to conform to a standard which doesn’t exist anywhere outside of my own mind. My envy makes me hate myself for not being like the crowd, and hate myself for when I am like the crowd. Worst of all, my envy takes my eyes off of Jesus. This is sin at it’s definition, it is missing the mark of Jesus.

    Our pastor shared a verse today which I may consider having tattooed across my forehead, or I may at least put up on my bathroom mirror:

    “If you think you are better than others, when you really aren’t, you are wrong. Do your own work well, and then you will have something to be proud of. But don’t compare yourself with others” Galatians 6:3-4

    So this is my new goal: I want to start each new day by focusing my eyes on Jesus. I want a heart which is in tune with the Holy Spirit. I want a mind which is contemplating my own work, work which I am actively pursuing and doing. I want my words to be encouragement to others in their journeys. I want my prayers to be an intimate discussion between myself and a Father who loves me more passionately than any human heart could. I want my soul to be thankful, satisfied, and content in everything which I already have.

    I want Jesus to break Envy’s power over me, and the first step is to lose sight of the crowd and keep focused on Him.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

     

  • The Golden Rule of Preaching

    Recent conversations in my life have started me thinking on this question: what is the best way to preach the Gospel?

    After much pondering and struggling with this question for many years in my own Christian walk, the only answer I feel sure of is that there is no answer.

    There are so many theological and practical debates about how we should live out our lives as Christians and how to tell other people about Jesus. Do we drink? Do we dance? Do we sing at Sunday services? Do we have electric guitars? And did you know that drums are of the devil? The debate points are exhaustingly endless and I kinda don’t care anymore.

    What I do care about is if people come to know Jesus, they are reunited with their Heavenly Father and gain the counsel of the Holy Spirit. That’s all I care about. How they came to know Jesus doesn’t’ matter. Whether it was a tract, a fake $100 bill, a deep cultivated relationship, a preacher on TV, a pastor’s message on Sunday, or a crazy man preaching on the street corner, I don’t care. The reason I don’t care is because preaching the Gospel is about the Who and not the How. Who we are preaching about will always be more important than how we are doing it.

    Part of the reason I have come to believe this is because we are all going to fail. There will always be a time–whether from the pulpit or from a coffee shop–when we will try to share the Gospel and fall flat on our faces. However, I would rather try and fail a hundred times than never attempt because I’m not quite perfect yet. A hundred failures is a hundred opportunities for God’s grace and power to shine through my weaknesses.

    Beyond failure, I have come to learn that God reaches different people through very different avenues. Some people need to be walked, hand in hand with one person, to the feet of Jesus. Others may need to feel the security of a gathering. Still others need to be alone with Him to hear His voice. We are all different and I’ve learned to understand that our differences–when we’re not fighting about them–make us a more whole and complete picture of who God is. He is a God of diversity and creativity. He is a God who sometimes speaks in a cloud of fire, and sometimes speaks in a whisper. Jesus is a man who embraced children and cast money changers out of the temple with a whip. The trinity of God is complex and surprising. Jesus is the only way to God the Father, but I refuse to believe there is only one path to Jesus.

    So here is what I have determined for myself: I am going to follow the Golden Rule when it comes to preaching. I am going to preach the Gospel in a way which I would like to have it preached to me. I will invest in relationships over time, I will teach in settings appropriate to my strengths and gifting, but you won’t find me walking the street with a stack of tracts in my hand. It makes me uncomfortable when a stranger approaches me on the street, so I’m doubly uncomfortable when I am asked to approach others. I’ll leave the street preaching to someone else who loves to meet new people, who is comfortable in that space, and who God has gifted to do that.

    Most importantly, this is what I am going to stop doing: I’m going to stop shooting others down from the sidelines. I’m going to stop telling people they are ‘doing it wrong’ because it doesn’t’ make sense to me or it makes me uncomfortable. If I am asked for advice or direction, I will gladly give it. Otherwise, I’m going to KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT unless it is to give encouragement to people who are doing something I am not equipped to do.

    I recognize there is a lot of fear and doubt attached to how we go about preaching the Gospel and what it means to be associated with “those crazies”. However, if you really think about it, the Gospel is a Crazy Story. There is nothing sane about a sinless man giving up His life for the rest of us who can’t even love the people closest to us well, not to mention the rest of the world. There is nothing normal about a God who could wipe us all out with a thought, but chooses to be patient and sacrificing so we can be reunited with Him. We teach a crazy love story. Get over being crazy. Start asking yourselves the question of what’s the worst that could happen if the Gospel is preached differently than how you think it should be? If a group of believers  start doing strange bold crazy things for Jesus, what’s the worst that could happen? They might fail, so what? Hopefully, they will learn from the experience and do better next time. Maybe the worst thing which could happen is that they totally skew the message (hopefully unintentionally) and preach that Jesus is chicken. So what? Do we not trust that our God is bigger than  one mixed up message and that He is able to call anyone to Himself through any means? And what if someone never once speaks in front of a group of people, but spends time serving individuals and walking alongside them through the difficult parts of life? What’s the worst that could happen? They may not have as big ‘numbers’ of people they save, but since when is following Jesus about numbers?

    Here is the hard truth, there are people in the world who are choosing to live separated from God. In the end, this choice will lead them to Hell because God will not force himself on anyone, and Heaven is His domain. So we need every member of the body of Christ, doing whatever it is that they do best, to reach people and introduce them to Jesus. That’s it.

    If I touched a personal button, please know I am aware that this summary leaves out a lot of loopholes and past situations in which the message of Jesus has been twisted for personal gain. However, I would encourage you to examine if the stories about TV pastors embezzling money or the lazy Christian who never shares their faith are really the majority. I’m sure you’ll find they just aren’t. There are too many Christians going about their day trying to introduce people to Jesus through whatever means and talents they have for it to be true. So let’s stop policing one another about how we preach the Gospel and keep pointing people to who Jesus really is.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • Becoming A Student Again

    I just celebrated my 29th birthday.

    As a joke (though, only partially) I told a friend I needed to make this year the best year ever. Since I’m such a procrastinator, it would make sense to push as much as possible into the last year of my twenties. For some reason, I (like many people) feel that turning thirty is some sort of deadline. I have to have a list of things I accomplished while I was still a twenty-something in order to start out the next decade of my life on the right foot.

    Insane, I know, but this is my strange little world.

    The reality is though, I probably won’t accomplish most of the things on my imaginary list of ‘have-to-do-this-before-I’m-thirty’. I don’t say this because I doubt myself, but because I realize that I don’t want to live my life according to checklists any more. I don’t want to live under the cloak of proof or the shadow of external worth. It’s too exhausting.

    Rather, I decided that 29 is the year I will become a student again. I want to become Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. I want to study great storytellers. I want to form a study group. I want to listen more, practice more, and find out all the things I don’t know. I don’t want to pass the test, I want to digest the lesson.

    I think this is the next stage of my journey, and I am looking forward to walking into the unknown places it will take me.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • God’s Will for Loudness

    On Sunday, someone accidentally touched a raw emotional nerve for me.

    That evening, I spent some time asking why this particular nerve was so raw. I recognize my reaction was out of proportion to the other person’s actions. At first, I blamed the situation on my tendencies to spin out when my feelings get hurt. In the moment, I cursed my brain chemistry, took a few minutes by myself to recover, and tried to move on with my day.

    As I reflected on the earlier conversation, and how hurt I was, I wanted to know why. The issue surrounded one of my flaws, namely, that I tend to jump in volume when I become passionate about the topic of discussion. A few years ago, I would have taken the criticism and brought it before God, asking him to either change me into a more meek person (though I’m not really sure how it would be accomplished, since I’m pretty shy as it is), or to give me the strength to resist being a loud mouth.

    Sunday evening, I asked something different. I asked God what His will for my loudness is. Over the past few years, I have learned that sometimes the things we see in ourselves, and in others, as flaws are actually traits which God has instilled in us to use for His purpose. They may be traits which have not yet been refined, but it doesn’t mean they are any less intentional.

    I don’t know if the answers will come soon. I don’t have much of an inclination of what the answer will be. My goal is to be ready to move when the answer does come.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • Then there are times when he gets it right.

    Pastor Matt Brown, of Sandals Church, has recently gotten in trouble for saying some seriously stupid and very hurtful things. I’m not here to try and convince you what he said wasn’t stupid. He knows what he said was stupid. He feels it to his core and has expressed deep remorse.

    The reason I feel compelled to write is not to defend Sandals Church. It isn’t to ‘correct’ those who called Matt out for saying what he said. I feel compelled to write because I have known Matt for over a decade. I know that for every time he has gotten in trouble for saying stupid things from the pulpit, there are hundreds of times he has touched someone’s life with positive messages and conversations. My life included.

    The most recent conversation, I haven’t shared on this blog before. It happened in November. Paul and I had recently returned home from living in Germany for 10 months. We were wounded, exhausted, and pretty gun shy when it came to communities of faith. The reality of Christian life is no church is perfect. Paul and I had been wounded by certain events at Sandals, and wounded by certain things which happened in the community we were a part of in Germany. On top of everything, our homecoming was a really difficult transition, especially for me. I felt overwhelmed and frustrated with God. I was trying to process why it was so difficult to live out my faith within the context of community. So when Paul and I happened to run into Matt at Sports Authority and he invited us to lunch, I was terrified of what would transpire.

    What Matt didn’t know at the time, was that because of my own personal issues and some of the events which happened at various churches throughout my life, I was held captive by a lie. Within the context of church, I believed I was only loved if I was useful. This lie had suffocated me for a long time. It robbed me of joy. It tainted my relationships within the church because I was exhausted with trying to earn my place. So when Paul, Matt and I met for lunch, I was apprehensive of once again being asked to be useful or having my heart demanded of me.

    You can imagine my surprise when, through our entire conversation, Matt didn’t make a single request of me. Instead, he shared a message which God had put on his heart and was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. He shared about he had known Paul and I for a long time, and how much he missed seeing joy in our lives. He shared that most trips abroad were difficult and did not end well, so there was nothing we should have been ashamed of. Most importantly, he shared that he didn’t know which church we were attending at the time and he didn’t care. He wanted us to know he loved us and would be willing to walk alongside us if we needed him to.

    I liken the conversation to having a cancerous tumor removed. It was an intensely painful conversation. Quiet tears fell from my eyes through most of our time together. Yet, so much healing has come from that day. I finally felt freed from having to prove myself at church. That conversation, and the words which Matt spoke, are a marker for me in my journey to restoration. I would not be experiencing the jubilee which I now have if he had not reached out.

    I am not sharing this story to try and take away the impact of Matt’s words on the LGBT community. It was an offensive joke, and said unthinkingly. What I am trying to do, is to show you a different side of Matt. I hope to shift your perspective a little, because the truth is, my story is not unique. I know there are hundreds of lives which have been positively affected through Matt’s sermons and private conversations with him. This part of him isn’t captured in the edited three minute video which has been shown to the world as evidence of another hateful minister. If you would like to know what Matt is really about, I would encourage you to watch some of the other hundreds of videos of his preaching. I would also encourage you to remember that like the rest of us, one of Matt’s greatest gifts is also his greatest weakness.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • The Word “Christian”

    This weekend, my family and I are going to a Mumford & Sons concert. I have talked about my fandom for the British band multiple times on this blog. I think their music is reflective of a great insight into the human condition. More than one of their songs has struck a chord with my own struggles as I walk through the messiness of life.

    Recently, there was an interesting debate going on at RelevantMagazine.com. They published an article written about Marcus Mumford’s decision to sidestep the label of “Christian”. The author raised quite a few interesting points about whether or not you could really be a follower of Christ without calling yourself a Christian.

    The article is focused on a recent interview between Marcus Mumford and Rolling Stone Magazine. In the article Mumford shies away from calling himself a Christian, saying simply that he has his own ideas about who Christ is and that he wouldn’t call himself a Christian. The debate which was boiled up at Relevant concerns whether someone can choose to follow Christ without giving themselves over to this name.

    Some of the debaters say we need to hold onto this name in order to bring it back from the depths of craziness which it has fallen into. In many ways I agree with this. There needs to be a movement which separates followers of Christ from the crazies who burn Korans and preach a gospel of hate, which in reality is no gospel at all.

    However, I relate to Mumford’s desire to shy away from the labels of Christianity. He is right in saying there is a lot of baggage which comes with the term Christian. Nothing will shut a conversation down faster than spouting off the phrase “I’m a Christian”. Most often I experience this happening for two reasons. Either the person who I am having a conversation with immediately places me in the field of the ‘feeble’ minded who believes a fictional faith (even though Christ and His teachings are very factual). Or I am labeled a bigot who wouldn’t be open minded to their approach to life, so they refuse to go further in the conversation. Neither of which helps me in communicating or building a relationship.

    And that really is the most important thing, isn’t it? Building relationships and giving those who don’t know Jesus a glimpse of what life with Him looks like? A life filled with adventure, faith, growth, successes and failures. A life kinda like a Mumford & Sons song.

        Continuing the adventure,

        Jess

  • Jubilee is Coming.

    IMG_2592

    This picture is a great visual portrayal of how I often view my relationship with God. I sit in His light. I feel the warmth of His presence. I keep my face covered from Him.

    If hiding my face from Him came from a recognition of His glory or from a heart of humility, it would be a healthy perspective. However, the truth is I often hide my face out of shear disappointment. Not disappointment with God but with myself. I do not have the shy posture of someone who realizes they are in the presence of someone greater than themselves. It is the shameful posture of someone who isn’t ready to look up yet.

    Part of this comes from own obsession with my ‘failures.’ The long laundry list of falling on my face. When I look back over my journey through life, I see a road covered in the wreckage of ‘oops,’ ‘drat,’ and ‘what the hell’. Most people would look at the same things and see forces outside of my control, circumstances of life, and a process of refinement. The problem is since I keep my eyes down, it is hard for me to see things in the same light.

    So about a month ago God stepped in.

    He was once again reavealing a stronghold in my life. I was feeling particularly frustrated. To me, this seemed like just another place where I was a failure. Another place where I didn’t match up to what I should be. Another wreck on the road. I was whining to God about how lame I felt and He answered.

    He asked me to change my perspective from the places where I failed to the places where I have grown. He revealed to me the necessity of the  process which I have been through. He reminded that it was all helping me to be the person He created me to be. He showed me how through this journey He has been knocking off the rough parts of me, like my depression, and teaching me how to live in a healthy way. He has been removing burdens by revealing what my gifts are and what things are not mine to do. He has uprooted desires from my heart which do not honor Him. Now, He is questioning my motivations and asking me whose kingdom I really want to build–mine or His.

    He gave me this concept in a picture of an archers target. Each of these areas are a different ring. My depression is the furthest out. My motivations are the center. He showed me how over the years I have been getting closer and closer to the mark. Each year my aim is getting better.

    Here is the most encouraging part. After looking at each of these circles, He asked me to look at the timeline of this process. He asked me to consider when the refinement really began and how much time has past. The first steps of healing began in 2007 when I was at my lowest point. It was then I had to decide if I would follow God no matter where He led. I said yes. Today, I am nearing the completion of my sixth year in this journey.

    In the Hebrew tradition, every 7th year is to be a year of jubilee. It is to be a year of rest and celebration. I don’t know what this is going to look like for me, but, I am happy to say with confidence, my jubilee is coming.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess