"He lived securely in his Father's acceptance... Jesus' inner life was centered in God. His communion with his Abba transformed his vision of reality... His single-minded orientation towards his Father freed him from self-consciousness..."
So I'm reposting these thoughts from Manning on humility and honesty and how Jesus modeled it because it has taken on new meaning today. I'm finding Jesus is constantly providing opportunities for us to shed our false selves we like to interact with one another with and bring healing through humble and honest relationships. I experienced this twice today. I felt loved and accepted in my brokenness by two peers.
The most profound came with one of my guy friends. I almost canceled on him. I knew I couldn't not be honest about what happened today. But I didn't want to go there with a guy. He's someone I really cherish so I took the risk and went. I was met with nothing more than acceptance, thereby bringing healing into my life. I can just be me. I love our times together. We can be really serious one moment, then laughing our heads off the next.
Real is hard to come by.
Somehow in the world we live with now, genuine, open and honest relationships are becoming more of a rare entity. Especially in the technological age we're in, (that makes me sound really old but it's true) where people can present their false selves online or in text messages or im's or emails anytime. We get so used to the false selves it creates another mask. We get to used to the mask that we are fooled into think that is the real us. But the thing I struggle to accept with online, especially facebook, is that it is not reality. It's what you choose to present as your own reality.
Look at your facebook photo. You chose it for a reason. It communicates to the world the self you want them to say. You haven't changed it for a while. Why. Because you don't have a better one to put up. What is with that? Why are we so messed up.
This is where I'm finding more and more value in face to face relationships and even phone conversations. I started a "rule" a few years ago when I started blogging that I would not write about things I did not already tell someone or planned on talking with someone about within the next couple of days. Why. If I am not sharing the deepest parts of me with the people around me, I'm hiding. Online doesn't do anything.
Nothing compares to Monday meeting with my pastor and sharing with him story after story about how I've been burned in relationships. To seeing his reaction. In telling him some of the other obstacles I'm facing right now and having him empathize. Nothing will compare. When you're really hurting, you need a human, live body there who knows, understands and cares. Sometimes that's all you need.
Writing, in my written journal and then on here, gives me a chance to untangle my thoughts and perceive the events in my life in context of the larger reality that is the story of God. It helps me move past myself so I can take my place in this Story. But they always have to be voiced to a human face to face if it is something significant. I was especially blessed tonight. My friend gave me hope again that I do need guys in my life and that there are those that can be trusted. I need my guy friends just as much as I need my girls. It was so freeing to be heard, accepted, and loved.
More from Ruthless Trust:
"Through the smokescreen of rationalization, projection, and insulation, we remain on the merry-go-round of denial and dishonesty. Unable to accept our brokenness, we wear a thousand masks to disguise the face of fear…
Franciscan Richard Rohr writes, "Humility and honesty are really the same thing. A humble person is simply a brutally honest person about the whole truth. You and I came along a few years ago, and we're going to be gone in a few years. The only honest response to life is a humble one."
Alcoholic anonymous offers a classical definition of humility: "stark, raving honesty."
...Humble people are small in their own eyes, honest about their struggles, and open to constructive criticism. Following the counsel of Jesus to take the last place, they are not shocked or offended when others put them there. They trust that they are loved, accepted, forgiven, and redeemed just as they are. Aware of their innate poverty, the throw themselves son the mercy of God with carefree abandon.
Jesus said, "Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart" (Matt. 11:29). In what did the humility of Jesus consist? Low self-esteem, feelings of unworthiness, disappointment with his spiritual progress? Absurd! He was enthralled with his Father. In utter self-forgetfulness, he lived for God.
The central theme in his personal life was the growing intimacy with, trust in, and love of his Abba. He lived securely in his Father's acceptance. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you" (John 15:9), he reassures us. Jesus' inner life was centered in God. His communion with his Abba transformed his vision of reality, enabling him to perceive divine love toward sinners and scalawags. Jesus did not live from himself or for himself but from the graciousness of the Other, who is incomprehensibly caring. He understood his Father's compassionate heart.… Why was Jesus attracted to the unattractive, why did he desire the undesirable and love those deemed unlovely by human standards? Because his father does… His single-minded orientation towards his Father freed him from self-consciousness…Following Jesus, the humble in heart waste little time in introspection, navel-gazing, looking the mirror and being anxious about their spiritual growth. Their self-acceptance without self-concern is anchored in the acceptance of Jesus in their struggle to be faithful.
They fasten their attention on God……
Steeped in the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus identified the mystical tradition of the Anawin (the humble remnant who compounded a sense of personal powerlessness with unfailing confidence in the love of God and total surrender to the guidance of his will) with himself ("I am gentle and humble in heart") and gave that tradition pride of place in his preaching. In his inaugural address, the Sermon on the Mount, he began, "Blessed are those who know they are poor, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs" (Matt. 5:3)...Again and again he returned to this theme: "For he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 8:14); the way of humility is "the narrow gate and the hard road that leads to life and only a few find it" (Matt. 7:14).
A careful reading of the gospel message suggests that Jesus needs nothing but our humility and confidence to work miracles in us."
- Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust
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