You wouldn’t believe it, even if I told you.

This is one of my favorite verses in the bible. It occurs in Habakkuk 1:5 when God was going to do something and the people had a hard time wrapping their mind around it. “I don’t believe it,” has been my response for most of my ministry. It was one thing to believe in Jesus and make him my Lord at age thirteen. It’s quite another to be led by him into relationships and experiences I never dreamed I’d ever experience.

I’ve told people that ministry is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. The “up” side is we get to jump together—we do hard things together. John Dudich recently said, “Jen, I know, I just wish we didn’t have to do such hard things together.”  

I don’t know about you, but I feel like things have been really difficult this past year. The death of Grace Dudich a year ago, my own mother’s unexpected death a few weeks later, Wheatland challenges and the whole denomination situation has me praying diligently and throwing myself into the grace of God every day. I know that it’s during these difficulties that God is working and I can see how my faith has been strengthened. But, the pace of change and the intensity of the challenges has been relentless. So, I find myself wondering what God is up to in my personal life. If it is an erosion of my strength that He is after, I willingly surrender. So be it, Lord! I’m a pretty tough cookie but recently it’s been harder and harder to keep up the resilience campaign.

As I read Genesis, I discovered the Joseph story becomes more intense from chapter 42 onward. Just when I thought all of Joseph’s challenges and trials leading up to this point were perplexing and complicated, Joseph is confronted with his own demons as he comes face to face with his brothers. I can imagine Joseph running a multitude of scenarios through his mind about how he would confront his brothers. Joseph had some time to think while walking the dirt roads in route to Egypt, on quiet evenings alone after serving Potiphar’s family or while he was isolated from everything in prison. I can imagine him stretched to the extremes—loss, pain, anger, disappointment, depression, sadness, longing and possibly revenge. Joseph has become a friend to me. More than that, someone I can trust because he’s been to the arena.

The arena—what to look for.

I look for marks, scars, evidence of broken limbs, eyes gouged out or fingers missing when it comes to practicing Christianity. I sometimes wonder, what standards we hold ourselves to as Christ followers. We are commanded to first take responsibility for our own short-comings, failures and sins or what Jesus may call the ‘log in our eye.’ (Matthew 6:42) Confession is good for my soul. Self-mastery and self-discipline aren’t hot qualities by today’s cultural standards. However, they are essential for making any progress in our life with Christ.

President Theodore Roosevelt spoke at the Sorbonne in the Grand Amphitheater at the University of Paris, April 23, 1910. He went to Paris with his son Kermit, just days before—by way of the Orient Express. The speech emphasized his belief that the success of a republic rested not on the brilliance of its citizens but on disciplined work and character. Ultimately, the President believed the republic's success rested in the quality and integrity of its people. He told the audience: “Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution—these are the qualities which mark a masterful people.” And importantly, a democracy certainly needed leaders of the highest caliber in order to hold the average citizen to a high standard. 

Roosevelt firmly believed that one learned by doing. 

It is the best way to learn—by doing. It is better to stumble than to do nothing or to sit by and criticize those that are “in the arena” the President explained. “The poorest way to face life is with a sneer.” It is a sign of weakness. “To judge a man merely by success,” he said, “is an abhorrent wrong.” I included the famous paragraph from that famous speech below in which President Roosevelt expressed the standard by which he judged himself and others. It is also one of my favorite speech quotes of all time:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

The arena moment for Joseph

There are sacred moments within the Genesis text that give us an inside purview of our hero, Joseph. Let’s call them ‘arena moments.’ After an interaction with his brothers who came searching for food, Joseph overhears their confession of guilt and how they mistreated their brother. “They didn’t know Joseph was listening to them because they were using an interpreter. He (Joseph) stepped away from them and wept.” (Genesis 42:23) Joseph—my hero—needed to walk away and separate himself from his brothers. In my mind, I can imagine him walking out into the arena as a little boy all dressed up in metal armor that is way to big for him, carrying a sword that’s way too heavy for him…heartbroken.

Your arena moment for Joseph

You and I will have our arena moments too. I’m not one to sit in the audience. So, if someone is willing to go to that dirt floor, I will go too.  I will gallantly show Jesus my marks, scars, broken limbs, sightlessness and inability to hold a sword as tightly as I could before with a sense of holy pride. I’m not special. I am not better than the next fighter. But, I am willing to fight alongside you and go down together, if that’s what it means. None of it matters without Jesus leading us. I want to be where He is and I want to stand there right next to Him. Friends, I wouldn’t exchange one moment of being in the arena. My prayer is that neither will you. We share the blood, sweat and tears of all those who’ve truly worn the armor a disciple of Jesus Christ and fought battles of faith. When you look around you, you will notice like I have that we are shoulder to shoulder with a crowd—no! A multitude who are also willing to be there with you. And maybe with a laugh, we will all cross over to that next life with a story to tell. 

That story begins something like this…"you wouldn’t believe it, even if I told you."

Pastor Jen