Pedal to the Metal

Her mom’s black patent leather shoes clicked over and over on the tile as she tip-toed around the kitchen. The quieter she tried to be, the more magnified the clicking was, reverberating through the house like a clanging cymbal. 

My mom, a teenager about to become a parent, sat in the living room clenching her teeth, mostly because of her mom’s annoying tip-toeing on blast, but also because of the contractions starting closer together.

Her official due date had come and gone. So, April 22nd became the day both anxiously dreaded and eagerly anticipated by the family. An unplanned pregnancy invites that kind of mixed emotion, I suppose.

Her parents had kicked her out of their house when they found out she was pregnant. Their own act of rebellion to match hers. They tried to ignore the life growing in her. But God was using my life to stir more life in them. A life he wanted them to live in love, not one lived meeting sin with sin, but one responding to sin with grace.

It was a lesson they fought. One rainy day my pregnant mom was walking the streets in Byesville. She saw a truck she recognized and knew it was her dad’s. Maybe he was coming for her! As he stopped at a red light, she ran up and pounded on the passenger window yelling, “Dad! Dad!,” trying to get him to look at her before the light turned green. But he didn’t budge. His foot pressed against the gas, thinking if he pulled away fast enough he could run from what God had him to learn, leaving her standing in the street, wet and cold, because of her expanding waistline.

But God always wins. Those he pursues can’t get away from him no matter how hard they press the pedal to the metal. 

In time, Mom was back at her parents, sitting with her dad, as he invited her to give me their last name since Mom would not be marrying my biological father. Most parents struggle over a first name for their baby, but Mom had to struggle over a last name for me. By grace, I would became a Neuhart, taking my maternal side's last name.

Maybe it was the aggravation of the clicking patent leather on the tile that accelerated the contractions, or just nature taking its course. Whatever it was, my mom got a seat in her parent's vehicle that day, April 22nd, no pounding on the window required, as they sped, pedal to the metal, to the hospital for my birth. 

My life certainly did awaken more life and grace in my grandparents' heart. They lovingly provided a roof over our heads. But even more, Grandma gave me, her originally unwanted granddaughter, a front row seat to the wonder of a life transformed by the power of the gospel. 

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For Reflection

How is someone else’s sin affecting your life right now?

How are you responding to this unwanted and/or unplanned trial, circumstance, or relationship? 

What would it look like for you to respond to sin with grace instead of meeting it with more sin?

Waiting for the Main Course

In those comfortless days, although at the time my eyes couldn’t see it, my hands couldn’t touch it, and my mouth couldn’t taste it, God was answering my prayer for “a sign of [his] goodness.” (Psalm 86:17)

1. He was teaching my heart to hunger. Learning anything is a lengthy process and takes time. Although I knew what it felt like to hunger for the Word, God was maturing me by helping me learn what it felt like to hunger for the Word even when I didn’t experience immediate relief from my hunger. In his wisdom, he was helping me to learn perseverance in hunger, to keep scavenging, searching, and desperately longing to have my growing hunger satiated. 
2. He was teaching my heart to hunger for what would really satisfy. Even though I tried to placate my hunger in many ways, and although God felt so far removed from my struggle, I would eventually learn he was actually drawing me closer, showing me that none of my striving for self-justification, self-righteous boasting in my good works, tears of grief over my sin, or even my self-loathing because of regrets and shame, were adequate to atone for my sin and give my soul rest. I came to him with a long list of attempts at satisfying my hunger and, although at the time it made me angry, he was kindly crossing off each one as failing. Not working. Insufficient. 
3. He was teaching my heart only Jesus would satisfy. As my angry despair was growing with each feeble try I made and he crossed off the list, he was narrowing my focus, fixing my soul on the only thing that would truly satisfy my hunger. Jesus and Jesus alone! And oh how good he looked against all of my sorry attempts at satisfaction. Yes, I knew Jesus. I knew Jesus had forgiven my sins in the past. But I believed the Christianized, moralistic lie that my joy and fellowship with him, moving forward, was based on my performance. How well I was keeping up with the expectations he had for me. If I was good at obeying all the “Christian rules” those around me were heralding as a measurement of spiritual growth. But finally, after I had tried it all, he showed me that what I was looking for had been there all along. Him! His perfect life of law-keeping for me. His perfect death on my behalf, satisfying the terror of God’s wrath against my sin from which I had been foolishly and unsuccessfully hiding and running. His perfectly secure standing before God held for me, immovable, regardless of my ongoing struggle with sin, and unchanged whether I felt like I was secure or not. His perfectly tight, inescapable grip on me, not because I had great faith, but because he is faithful and strong and will never lose one whom the Father gives him. I was in his hand and no one could pluck me out of it! Friends, I saw Jesus! He was my sign of God’s goodness; my assurance of God’s love for and acceptance of me! He was the Living Word for which the Written Word made me hunger. He was the Water for which my soul was panting. He was the Bread I craved. And I tasted of him and saw God’s goodness! My angry heart softened in the satisfaction of knowing that from his perfect fullness, I had been filled!

This sounds like such a happy ending and like my “hangry-ness” was dealt with once and for all, problem solved. But, sadly, that just isn’t the case. I am still in the fight.  God has allowed me to see, often, he is cycling through this same pattern, working in my heart through a variety of circumstances. He is making me to hunger. He is showing me all the ways I’m trying to satisfy my hunger apart from him.  And he is bringing me to full satisfaction in Jesus alone - who he is and what he has done - to relieve my hunger. My understanding of him and thankfulness for him increases every time. Even the process reminds me he is good and patient and loves me enough to grow me, all while holding me securely in his faithful grip, no matter what. 

But, praise God, one day when Jesus returns, the hungering will be over. He will finally assuage the craving he started in us. For now, we’re enjoying the appetizer, but the main course is coming! And we will never be "hangry" again!

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For Reflection

Isn’t it a wonderful truth that one day we will never spiritually hunger or thirst again? Until that time, we have to keep submitting to the process of finding our satisfaction in Jesus alone. 

1. What has the process, outlined above, of hungering and finding true satisfaction looked like in your life?

2. Where are you in the process now?

3. What have you learned and are you learning about Jesus that satisfies your "hangry-ness"?

Hangry: Hungering for God's Word When It Makes You Angry

There it was. The peace from the angst I’d been feeling. The solution to the weight of guilt I’d been carrying. If God would only answer! 

Psalm 86:17, “Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, LORD have helped me and comforted me.”

It became my constant plea, “Please, Lord! Show me a sign of your goodness!” 

Each day, I was desperately looking for his answer, eyes wide open, waiting for that sign.

Since I started following Jesus in high school, and began the lifelong process of working through some of the challenges of my past and how God fit into all of it, my relationship with the Bible was changing. 

My first Bible and what almost every page of it looked like!

At first, I couldn’t get enough of it, underlining almost every word on every page, hungering for it even more than my physical food. I was having “Wow!” and “Aha!” moments with every encounter. But increasingly, I wasn’t always seeing the Bible as a source of comfort and a place to find hope. At times, it actually made me feel more condemned and further from God and that made me angry.

Slowly, the initial joy and amazement at my salvation had worn off and I was seemingly left alone to reconcile where I had been spiritually and where I was going. Sins, those I had and was committing and those committed against me, were always before me and I couldn’t rejoice in forgiveness because I didn’t feel forgiven. 

Weeks went by and then months. I was still reading my Bible and waiting for God to do something and show me that sign, but my joy was gone. At night I was dreading waking up in the morning, having to live another day burdened by guilt. 

My spiritual struggles were affecting me physically. I was gaining weight, I had no energy, I withdrew from others, and I was slipping into depression. I wondered if this really was what the Christian life was supposed to be like and if so I hated it. It was not what I expected it to be. Initially I had experienced such thankfulness that I was no longer living in a way that opposed God. But now it seemed God was opposing me by not answering my prayer and keeping his word.

Why wasn’t he? And how was I supposed to move forward?

Sadly, I didn’t receive any specific counsel on this. At least not good counsel. Most spiritual leaders in my life at that point were very man-centered, telling me to focus on all the wrongs I had done and making them right with God and others and finding confidence in my obedient actions. And while the fact of my responsibility to personally deal with my sin was right, it was incomplete and even harmful.

What I needed most no one gave me. But God was listening and he was working, ironically enough, through the Bible, the very book that had made me hungry and angry at the same time. 

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For Reflection

Can you relate to my struggle with the Bible? I am eager to share next week how God answered my prayer for a “sign of goodness” and finally brought me comfort.

1. How did you view the Bible before you came to Jesus? 

2. How has your relationship with the Bible changed since then?

3. Are you reading it now and finding joy or are your reading it and feeling anger, guilt, confusion or something else?