Raise your hand if you ever struggle in your walk of faith? Raise your hand if the word struggle is too cuddly of a word for your walk? Or maybe you can’t even say you are on a walk of faith because what you’ve seen and experienced has led you to a place where you have concluded that faith is just a foolish sentiment and now you’ve got the “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” mantra waving as a proud banner over your life.
Whatever camp you fall into, the most important thing to know is that you aren’t alone. Even when you’ve ran away as far as you could possibly go…Even when you’ve curled back into bed and hidden beneath your covers sobbing unintelligible words of pain, anger, fear, and shame…Even when you’ve drown yourself in a sea of alcohol, debt, reels, and all the other myriad of distractions in order to numb the pain…You aren’t alone. There is ALWAYS someone with you regardless if you believe that or not.
If you are reading this and you are in Camp Numb, you might be rolling your eyes now. Heck, I decided to check out of that camp years ago and there are many days I’m rolling my eyes too and packing my bags to head back to camp. Those are the days when my past comes back to haunt me. Days when all of life’s stresses and demands, coupled with current and past tragedies send me spiraling back to the sandbox of my childhood where I believed my first set of lies. “You are alone.” “You are unlovable.” “You have no purpose.” “You are a mistake.” “You are a burden.” Lies that as early as I can remember, I began to build my life on. These became my foundation and from there I continued to build. “You will only be loved if you are smart.” “You are only valuable when you make good grades and are part of the right groups.” “Your mom’s joy and your dad’s attention are dependent on your performance.” All this followed by more lies…. “Your mom still isn’t happy and your dad still doesn’t have the time, so you are worthless.” “Here’s a place to find worth…a boyfriend.” “He has the time and he brings you joy….so why not give yourself to him completely?”. “Boys aren’t that fulfilling anymore…this drink will help you.” “These leaves will help you.” “These pills will help you.” “Finding a husband will fix everything.” “Having kids will make everything perfect.” “Living in the perfect home with my husband and my kids will complete my story.” It’s an endless cycle being constructed of lies. Even thinking of it and writing it all out makes me dizzy.
If you wrote out the lies that are a part of your life, would it do the same? Would you be able to recognize them at all? It can be hard to recognize lies. The one whispering them has been labeled as crafty and we have been told that he disguises himself as an angel of light. However, his intention is to steal, kill, and destroy us and he does this through an incredible ability to cleverly twist the truth. He’s been at it for a long time and he uses whatever means available to trick us into feeding on his lies. This enemy knows we are created for infinitely abundant life and tricks us into trading it in for a mirage. We were infected with death through the original mirage and have been desperately seeking the cure ever since.
So what does this have to do with a Dustbuster? Well, let’s unpack what exactly a Dustbuster is…how it functions, what its purpose is. The Dustbuster was introduced in 1979 as the first cordless, handheld vacuum. This lightweight, easy-to-use invention is great. Instead of getting out the big, clunky vacuum or the inferior broom and dustpan, now we can conveniently clean up spills, dirt, and dust. I’m not on the marketing team for the Dustbuster, but I must admit that I’m a huge fan. With 4 people, 2 dogs, and 3 guinea pigs living in the house, ours gets used a lot. And this is where we get to see how a Dustbuster relates to living from a foundation of lies.
You see, one day while I was using the “old school” corded vacuum, I heard the still small voice of Holy Spirit whisper to me “You’re living like you are a Dustbuster but I designed you to be a Corded Vacuum”. I paused and whispered back “That’s odd…how am I a Dustbuster?” And then He unveiled this truth and the reality of this statement came flooding into my mind. I was living my life like I was a Dustbuster, but the reality was that I was a Corded Vacuum that just needed to be plugged into the Source of my greatest needs, deepest desires, and ultimate purpose.
Okay….I realize how incredibly corny this sounds. But I am going to attempt to break it down for you. As I said earlier, a Dustbuster is a tool that truly exemplifies all the characteristics we value in our modern culture. It’s quick, convenient, and requires minimal effort to use. The Corded Vacuum on the other hand is opposite of all of that. It’s big, heavy, inconvenient, and requires more effort to operate. So why would Holy Spirit say that He created me to be a Corded Vacuum? Big, heavy, inconvenient? That doesn’t sound like Jesus’ promise to give us rest and lighten our load. In fact, that sounds like the exact opposite. It was for one reason and one reason alone and it is all about the source of power.
You see while a Dustbuster most definitely possesses all of those great qualities our modern culture cherishes, it is powered by a battery. And what happens to machines with batteries? They inevitably lose power and won’t work until they are recharged. The Corded Vacuum on the other hand never loses power while in use because it is continually connected to the source of power. Sure, the Corded Vacuum needs maintenance in order for it to run properly. Things like cleaning the filter and emptying the dustbin, but the Dustbuster needs that kind of attention too. So in a side by side comparison of these two machines whose purpose it is to clean, the Corded Vacuum prevails simply by design of function. It is always connected to its source of power. And this is the reality that Holy Spirit was revealing to me. He designed me to be His “Corded Vacuum”, connected to Him as my Source at ALL times but I was living as a “Dustbuster”. I was going about life like I had been given a limited battery from which to live but that was a lie. I had been given an all-access pass to an unlimited source of power. But in order to be connected to this unlimited source of power, I would need to be willing to yield myself to that unlimited power and that unlimited power is Truth.
Ahhhh….the Truth. A word that has become quite controversial in the days we find ourselves living in. We hear things like “Live your truth.” or “That’s your truth but this is my truth”. But as a Roman governor once asked “What is truth?”, we must ask ourselves the same question. Truth must be defined.
The dictionary defines truth as “that which is in accordance with reality”. Personally, I really relate to philosopher Dallas Willard’s definition… “Truth is what we run into when we are wrong”. Perhaps it was the image of running into a brick wall that his definition conjured up that I could relate to so well. After spending years and years trying to prove that I was lovable, that I wasn’t a mistake and denying my needs to be seen, known and helped, I became more and more exhausted. My tower of lies was crumbling because it kept running into the truth. And what was the truth? The truth was that I believed that I had to be my own source. I believed in order to fulfill my deepest human desires of being loved, seen, known, and wanted, I would need to make that happen on my own. It was an endless cycle of living as if self realization was possible. If I just tried harder and accomplished more while also denying my pain and numbing my needs, then I would arrive where I wanted. I would become who I wanted to become.
And herein we discover the reality of self realization….it is a mirage because we live in finite bodies. We are enslaved to death. Our “batteries” run out, but unlike a Dustbuster, we can’t just plug our bodies back in when this happens. We spend our days building our lives, defining our identities to what end? All we have built and defined gets left behind and fades into the history that most of our youth couldn’t care less about. On our own, it is impossible for us to build and become anything that lasts. But as the most well known Jewish Rabbi to ever walk to face of the earth once said, “With humankind this is impossible, but with God all things are possible”.
So if our enslavement to death makes this impossible, how does God make it possible? Through the ingenious move of becoming a human and yielding Himself into the jaws of death! The father of lies and his followers, blinded by hubris, couldn’t see the big picture. They played right into God’s plan to conquer death through death. So enamored and enraptured with their own existence, they wouldn’t and perhaps couldn’t look beyond themselves to see reality. That by killing the Source of Life, they were unknowingly surrendering their only power to Him. So just as a dark cave must always yield to the light of a torch, so death had to yield to life.
And herein we find the kindness of God to show me that He wants me to stop living the lie that I’m a Dustbuster and rather live in the truth that I’m a Corded Vacuum with an all access pass to Him, the Source of Life. And the more I live in this truth, the more His power will be experienced and the more it is experienced the more others will gladly trade the enslaving lie that we are Dustbusters for the free and empowering gift of being a Corded Vacuum.
“He who knew no sin became sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ”
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved”.
“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, this is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”
“The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will lead your paths straight.”
“Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”
“And on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Sheol will not prevail against it”
“It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no help at all”
“None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory”