Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others (22 page)

Peter had been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit. The pain and paralysis of what he did has been displaced by the constant memory of what Christ has done. And now he writes to refresh the memories of believers so
that they may be established in the truth and be set free from the chains of condemnation.

The philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
⁴
The gospel, however, says that those who do not
forget
the past are condemned to repeat it.

By looking to the Lord and beholding His love for us, we not only remember His benefits, mercies, and provision. We are also enabled to forget our shame, our sin, and our shortcomings.

It seems strange to say, but in order to complete the change, the same Spirit who labors to help us remember must also make us forget. Here are two of my favorite scriptures—one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament—that emphasize the biblical importance of forgetting.

I don’t interpret the call to Spirit-led forgetfulness to mean that it’s possible for me to no longer be
conscious
of the wrong things I’ve done. Rather, it means I will no longer be
controlled
by those wrongs.

It is the active memory of God’s faithfulness to me and Christ’s sacrifice for me that makes me able to forget.

My grandmother died of Alzheimer’s disease over a decade ago. At first the effects of her disease were subtle. “Steven, how’s school?” she’d ask, only to repeat the question a dozen more times over the course of a three-hour visit. But this was just the beginning of a deterioration that was agonizing to watch. I can’t imagine what it was like for her to go through it.

Toward the end of her life, after twelve years of suffering, the disease had pretty much erased the hard drive of her memory. She couldn’t remember who I was or who my mom—her daughter—was. She couldn’t even remember the name of her husband of more than fifty years, although he stayed at her side daily, combing her hair, telling her how beautiful she was, until the very end.

Most tragically of all, perhaps, I don’t think she remembered who
she
was as her life came to a close. Most of her waking hours were spent either in catatonic confusion or sheer terror. It was incomprehensible to me why, at the end of her life, the Lord allowed her to lose all the memories that had made her life so remarkable.

In spite of all this, there’s one thing she never forgot—and I’ll never forget this either. She never forgot how to sing the hymns she had hidden in her heart.

My grandfather had been a Methodist minister all his adult life. And his wife had been by his side, on the front row, at every church he ever served. She had been fully present, praying the prayers, hearing the sermons, and singing the hymns every Sunday, week after week, decade after decade.

So when we’d go sit with Grandma at the nursing home and try to start a conversation, nothing would happen. But when we’d start singing something like “Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,” she’d pick up the next line: “There is no shadow of turning with Thee.” And she’d continue on, singing verses I’d never even heard before, remembering almost every word.

It made an incredible impression on me. I was amazed how her weakened voice would recall the notes and the syllables that had shaped her throughout her whole life. And for a few moments during those visits, we almost forgot her sickness as we remembered God in worship together.

She had spent her life allowing the Spirit of God to fill her with eternal truth. And she never forgot it, even when she could remember nothing else.

I never did quiz her on
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
, though.

When Jesus served the first Communion meal to His disciples—in the same upper room where Peter’s failure was foreshadowed—it was a simple commemoration:

Obviously, this is an instruction for a specific ordinance of worship that Jesus instituted. For centuries, churches all over the world have been celebrating the Lord’s Supper in honor of Christ’s command.

But could it also be an invitation to constant communion with Christ? For each of us, everywhere, each day? And could it be that, in that communion, condemnation is silenced, due to the presence of a compassion that is infinitely greater?

What are the realities of righteousness that God is prompting you to remember right now?

What are the sins in your past that He is urging you to forget?

How long will you allow the rooster to remind you of the words you spoke and can’t take back? Or the opportunities you missed?

Instead of being reminded of your past by the Enemy, isn’t it time you were reminded of your future by the Lord?

Haven’t you spent enough time in the courtyard, dragging your feet to the slow shuffle of condemnation’s cadence?

Wouldn’t you rather run to the empty tomb and take your stand with the Savior, who has already been in your tomorrow and declared total victory over every area of your life?

Don’t you have a hymn in your heart to sing?

In which we overpower

the lies of discouragement

with the truth

God says I can
.

No matter how much we learn about the way chatter works, or how sincerely we commit to doing God’s will in spite of the chatter, there’s one thing we can count on: the chatter will keep coming. Every day of our lives, for the rest of our lives.

And there’s more. It actually gets worse.

The more you grow in Christ and the closer you get to fulfilling the things He put you on the earth to do, the more
intense
the battle with your chatter becomes.

I wish someone had explained this to me a long time ago.

Ever since I became a Christian, I’ve heard a lot of talk about going to new levels in our relationship with God. Given my competitive nature, that kind of language works for me. When we were naming our church, that was one of the reasons I liked the name Elevation. I loved the idea of helping people take their faith to the next level. I still do. Plus, Elevation was the name of the 2001 U2 world tour, and there is no more certain route to Christian relevance than mimicking whatever U2 did a few years earlier.

Back to what I was saying about levels … Here’s the part I didn’t get.

I thought going to the next level was mostly about gaining advantages and benefits. I thought, for example, when you got to the next level, you’d have infinite optimism. I thought you’d have total biblical insight. You’d never lack passion or focus or wisdom once you got to the next level.

I thought progressing in God meant you got upgraded equipment to fight the devil, like Link picked up better swords as he advanced through the Over-world in
The Legend of Zelda
.

And in many ways I was right. The more you walk with Christ and fill your mind and heart with His truth, the sharper you become spiritually—more skillful at spiritual warfare, more thoroughly trained in righteousness, more acutely aware of the Spirit’s voice.

But here’s what they often don’t tell you about going higher in God.

At the next level the bosses get bigger and the battles get more complicated. It can seem like the next level is actually designed to keep you out. That’s because the resistance is always fiercest on the borderline of a breakthrough.

What can you expect when you start resisting the chatter, pushing past insecurity and fear and condemnation, moving in the direction of the voice of the Lord? Louder chatter, increased resistance, and greater discouragement.

I know this sounds pessimistic and backward, but I can prove that it’s true.

Let’s try an experiment. I want you to think of the name of a Christian from the last hundred years who really demonstrated what it means to be like Christ. The person whose name, more than any other in the last century, serves as a household name for humility, love, and the compassion of Jesus.

Got it?

Is the person you thought of … Mother Teresa? And if it wasn’t, can we pretend that it was so as not to spoil the illusion of my mental powers or screw up my point?

Few people would argue that Mother Teresa was used by God like few others in the twentieth century. She began her missionary activity in India in 1929. Eventually she formed the organization known as the Missionaries of Charity, which by 2012 consisted of more than 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries. Although her legacy has been embattled by controversy, her life stands as an iconic example of the incarnate love and compassion of Christ. Her ministry was marked by acclaim and accomplishment, including a Nobel Peace Prize. And, later, beatification by the pope.

Of course, since she lived in the same horrendous destitution as those she served in Calcutta, her life was also one of intense suffering and poverty.

These are the best-known facts about Mother Teresa. Her highlight reel, you might say.

Who would know better what it means to hear from God and live on a
higher level
in Him than a beatified Nobel Peace Prize winner?

Recently I read some of the entries in
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light
, a collection of many of her letters, diary notes, and written devotions. A reading of this book makes it clear that she experienced suffering at many levels, not just physical ones. It wasn’t just the difficulty of her life in general but also her own doubts and spiritual travail that disheartened her.

You see, even the superior general of the order of the Sisters of Loreto had a behind-the-scenes where the chatter was, at certain points, so overpoweringly discouraging and dark that she doubted everything she had based her life on.

On September 3, 1959, she wrote a letter to Jesus that included the following confessions:

It wasn’t on just one occasion, or just in her prayer journals, that she spoke this way. In 1957 she wrote the following in a letter to Father Joseph Neuner: