fear

Don’t Let Him Shake Your Tree.

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

My husband Sam loves the word addled. Truly, it’s a pretty good word with great synonyms like muzzy, woozy and befuddled.

He doesn’t apply it to me very often, because I’m usually steady. But in preparing to spend all this week serving the urban poor at the LA Dream Center, I was shilly-shallying and futzing around so badly, I thought I might have dementia. I even threw my wallet in the kitchen garbage and walked away with a soggy paper towel in hand. I worried about it to Sam.

“It’s because you’re going to LA to do something you’ve never done and you’re scared,” he said.

He’s right. I’ve never wandered under a bridge to hand out hot food to a homeless person. I’ve never played with neglected kids in a gang-infested urban neighborhood. What am I doing?

I’ll tell you what I’m doing, I’m climbing out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is, and when you’re a new climber, like me, it’s good to follow the professional climbers. The LA Dream Center, which is the single largest food bank in LA County and serves 40,000 people every month in its 273 ministries, not only climbs to the best fruit, but they pick it and toss it down to everyone else.

The Apostle Paul said, the promises of God all find their yes in Jesus, and I’ve decided there are too many people (Bob Goff, Katie Davis, Matthew Barnett) doing impossible, God-promised things to doubt Jesus’ extravagant yes.

But I don’t want to just pig out on the grace of God until I’m bloated from hoarding it. It’s designed for sharing. Jesus wants me on my feet, darting nimbly through the world as his little cracked-pot, ambassador. As Katie Davis says in her lovely memoir from Uganda, where by age 19 she’d adopted the first six of her 14 orphans, we don’t have to be talented, we just have to be available.

The problem with shouting this manifesto is, the enemy hears it. And when you get halfway out your limb, he starts shaking your tree, hoping you’ll turn back. The devil doesn’t want me learning to serve people like Jesus did, and he sure doesn’t want me telling you how to do it. So he opposes me using the only things he has, anxiety, fear, confusion, rejection etc. The Apostle Paul explains it like this:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph 6:12.

Yes, it’s tempting to bail out when I’m anxious and shaky, and can’t hold a coherent thought or keep my wallet out of the trash, but then I think, “bail out to where?” Jesus blew up all the bridges behind me. The only way left is forward.

And in this case, it goes through LA.

Increase Your Joy In One Easy Step.

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

*If you’re in a hurry for joy, skip to the challenge at the bottom.

Orange Tree

Photo Credit: Creative Commons amycgx

Yesterday, I prayed with an elderly, black woman in the foyer of busy Goodwill store, out loud.

I’m still shaking my head about it because I am not the woman who prays in public with strangers, because it looks Christiany and weird. But that’s what happens when you let Jesus have his way with you. He messes with who you think you are.

Ever since I posted about Susie Davie giving her Coach purse away, I’ve been thinking about actively bearing fruit. As I walked into Goodwill, I noticed a woman slumping in a plastic chair and leaning on her cane.

“You should talk to her,” popped into my head, but I ignored it because I mind my own business, especially when I have something more important to do – like scour Goodwill for bargains. Plus, I could tell, she’s the kind that would hold me up. So I ignored her sad face and went in the store. Forty five minutes later, I walked out and she was still sitting there.

“Are you waiting for a ride?” I asked.

“No, I’m just resting. I think I’m a little stressed out,” she said launching into a story about her son and the girlfriend, and the drinking and the fight and the baby and the long walk after she kicked him out of the car.

“Mmmm…family,” I said, listening and deciding what to do next. Offering to pray for her occurred to me but I was afraid to.

“I just trust Jesus about it,” she said giving me the permission I was clearly looking for.

“Would you like me to pray with you?”

“Oh yes I would.”

So I sat down next to her holding my Goodwill bag and prayed. I was nervous that Sam would pull up just then and ask what I was doing, but for the most part I spoke in the same way, to the same God I talk to every day in the quiet privacy of my office.

The thing is, Jesus has no interest in staying in the quiet privacy of my office. He said the world is in sick, sad shape and he’s the answer, so go tell people about it, help them, encourage them and not just in places where it won’t look weird.

Why am I so afraid of that? Why am I so afraid people will think I am a Jesus Freak? I am.

Jesus helped me with depression. He helped me with anxiety. He helped me write a book. He helped me not worry about money when we had no jobs in Texas. He helped me believe that I am here for a reason that’s bigger than I can imagine.

Why would I hide loving a man like that?

In case you’re wondering, I am not one bit holier today than I was yesterday in Goodwill, I’m just a little less selfish and a tiny bit braver. Because of that, I am demonstrably more joyful today.

*So here’s the challenge: Sometime this weekend, do something selfless for a stranger, something that interrupts you for a minute or two and surprises them with its kindness. Report back, I’d love to hear what happens.

On Scorpions and Worry

/ Erin Kirk / 1 Comment

I know better than to worry, but that rarely keeps me from doing it. I keep catching myself ten minutes into a preemptive, imaginary argument wherein I defend myself against something that shows no sign of actually happening.

Before I began my Bible-reading experiment, two years ago, I spent most days in that jungle. Now, at least I notice it and start beating back the vines before they take over my fields.

Years ago, I was in Indonesia, sitting on the porch of a beach hut, next to a stack of firewood. My friend Allison walked onto the porch to put her shoes on. Resting her hand on the woodpile for balance, she erupted into a howling explosion of screams. Another friend came running out and gleaned enough information to shine a flashlight on the woodpile.

Allison had laid her hand on a scorpion and in return it laid hands on her.

I narrowly missed the same experience this week at my home in Texas. Standing at the fridge, filling a glass of water, I stood with my big toe resting on a scorpion. Oddly, it did not sting me, but instead provided a clear object lesson, directly from Jesus, on the topic of worry.

All week I have worried that the book I’ve spent two years writing is not nearly __________ enough – you can fill in any number of modifiers. I’ve also nursed the concern that the still, small voice upon which I’ve relied to write it, has softened so much as to become inaudible.

Here’s how I know God thinks I shouldn’t sweat that:

On Sunday, Isaiah 54 fell out of my bible, literally the page came loose and fluttered to the floor. It’s not a famous passage like John 3:16, but it’s famous to me, so it gave me pause. Verse 1 says, “Sing o barren one, you who did not bear: break forth into singing and cry aloud you who did not travail with child! For the (spiritual) children of the desolate one will be more than the children of the married wife, says the Lord”

Isaiah was talking about the redemption of Zion, but it speaks to me because I have tried to have children and cannot. I turn 40 in a week and it seems that horse has left the barn. So either I have just broken the spine on my bible there or the God I think I can’t hear anymore is telling me to quit worrying about legacy and sing.

Secondly, Joseph Prince a Singaporean pastor I like, is the third person I’ve heard this week discussing rest and freedom from worry; and coming to know God like I have, has made me skeptical of coincidence.

Considering all that while filling my water glass, I looked down and saw that little lobster-shaped insect under my toe. I screamed and jumped backward and he skittered under the fridge.

Then this scripture whistled through my mind like a bottle rocket: Behold! I (Jesus) give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and (physical and mental strength and ability) over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Luke 10:19

Whoa, do I have literal power and authority to trample on scorpions? Evidently, but that’s not the point and I don’t intend to test it. The point is, after several tries, the light came on. Jesus said, “fret not” “fear not” “don’t worry” “stop worrying” “trust me, don’t be afraid” because he knew that faith and fear are mutually exclusive and for humans, fear is the default position. Before I read the Bible, I didn’t know I had a choice. I didn’t know that the Bible is an arsenal, ready to help me do battle with fear and anxiety, but I have to enter it every day and gather what I need for dealing with a scary, messed-up world.

So if Jesus gave me power over the enemy and nothing will in any way harm me, why am I worrying about anything; much less the outcome of a book I wrote about the power of God. Now, each time I catch myself worrying, I recall standing un-stung on a scorpion and I say, “so what am I worried about?”

Incidentally, the scorpion was a different story. Despite my appeals for clemency on account of his good behavior, he was dispatched by my husband Sam, a man with a far less spiritual view of poisonous insects in the kitchen.