I have a new friend — a new partner in the way Richard Rohr describes heaven-made partners: “Suffering people can love and trust a suffering God, Only a suffering God can save suffering people, those who have passed across this chasm can and will save one another.”
Terry called me recently to tell me he’d just read The Last Addiction: Why Self-Help is Not Enough, and he resonated with the stories and thoughts in the book. In fact, he passionately told me that he loved this book. I didn’t have a minute to pat myself on the back for what I had written, before Terry told me why he loved the book. It seems he loves a group of about 100 people who meet in his church in weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and he so longs to connect the powerful path of Recovery with the powerful Recoverer for these honored “members” of his church.
Terry Rush pastors the Memorial Drive Church of Christ in Tulsa, OK. On a page marked by baseball cards (baseball is apparently another passion of this man), Terry describes himself:
I like how Jesus fits into every scheme and scenario of life.
And….I’ve learned from him to like life “right now” whenever and wherever “right now” might be!
It seems to me that too many have concluded they aren’t good enough, aren’t smart enough,or aren’t skilled enough. Not so!
It seems as if this modest man, whose been in ministry a lot longer than me, has also impacted “celebrities.”
I have no doubt he speaks any less passionately about The Life-Giving God to a celebrity wearing 18-karat gold cuff links and talking about his latest Hollywood project, than he does to an alcoholic/addict wearing the stink of booze and talking about his latest time served in jail.
What a privilege to get to be friends with this man who is living something that God has whispered to me a hundred different times in a hundred different places, “Sharon will you just get out of the way?”
GET OUT OF THE WAY
Of course the kingdom needs more workers. Jesus is about the grand life-walk. We are to follow such a course. But recall his statement that apart from the Father he could do nothing?
The secret to Jesus’ effectiveness (and ours) is to realize we are powerless and He owns the power. Yes, we need more workers to let go….to let go of our weak-armed, slow-footed, try-harder dispositions and lean into the glory of this wonderful gift we each posses labeled powerlessness.
When we at Memorial quit plotting, planning, and controlling (when we got out of the way), it seems the church began to breathe deeper than we had ever seen. Works and results keep sprouting at a rate that we can neither track nor take credit.
We don’t understand it; but getting out of the way has become a source of leadership among us that, to many, could appear weak and silly. Yet, He seems to be willing to work this terrain.
Our job?
To give God the glory…and we do.
It took me a bit to grab the parallel truth in Romans 9:16; yet it surely fits. So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.