I can’t be the only one who watched the first 2020 Presidential Debate last night and cringed. I’m sure there are supporters of each candidate that are so enamored by their man that they can’t admit what everyone else so clearly saw, but for the rest of us, what should have been educational and informative as nothing more than that wreck that you pass by slowly on the interstate.

What shook me the most – and I’m hoping shook most of those who watched it – was the realization that I wasn’t watching 2 men yelling at each other and interrupting each other; nope, I was watching our country in full display.

What those men did is what we’ve been doing to each other.

We yell thinking more volume will help the other side finally hear our point.

We bully thinking more force will finally build a better situation.

But the only thing that yelling and bullying accomplish is adding distance to what we could correctly call The Great Divide, one that is growing at an alarming rate in our country.

In all honesty, I found myself journaling this morning and telling God that it was hard to watch the debate last night and keep the faith that there are better days ahead for our country. But God’s response to me was clear:

“There is something greater than The Great Divide.”

If I believe for a second that this growing divide is too big for God to heal, then I have for that same second entertained the thought that the cross is not 100% able to reconcile men to each other as well as to God.

And I refuse to buy that lie. There is a Great Divide, but there is a Greater Bridge that can cross it. That is the message that followers of Jesus carry to a world full of screamers and interrupters.

[Tweet “There is a Great Divide, but there is a Greater Bridge that can cross it.”]

Which brings me to a final thought: is that debate also a picture of something else? Is it a picture of how the lost world sees the church?

Follow me here before you discount the thought. I have no doubt that at times both Trump and Biden said things that were true. But I have equally no doubt that whatever truth may have been shared wasn’t heard, at least by anyone who actually needed to hear it.

For all the yelling and interrupting, the only thing truly accomplished by the debate was solidifying the support that each candidate already had while frustrating the rest of the ones who may have needed to hear something of substance.

The end result is both sides feeling good about something that went so horribly wrong as if the win was simply saying the buzzwords that their supporters wanted to hear, not the keywords that the voters needed to hear.

[Tweet “Are we seen more like loud, obnoxious, bullies of the truth more than the gracious, loving, communicators of the truth that we’re called to be?”]

Which brings me back to the church and how we’re seen by the culture. Are we seen more like loud, obnoxious, bullies of the truth more than the gracious, loving, communicators of the truth that we’re called to be?

Father, teach us to carry the message of Jesus with more discernment than debate and more heart than hate.

It seems strange to think that it takes work in order to rest, and even stranger to realize that resting can initially feel like work. But this is exactly what I discovered over a 10 week period from the beginning of May until the middle of July when I made a decision to only run at a pace slow enough to keep my heart rate in my easy zone.

What I quickly learned was that keeping my heart rate in an easy zone was anything but easy. In fact, it really did feel a whole lot more like work. My easy runs were a struggle, not so much for my body, but for my mind.

The battle really is in the mind

The mind is brilliant, complicated, and often the most frustrating part of our bodies. It’s constantly thinking and processing, and when we really start to pay attention to what’s going on in there, it can be exhausting. When Paul told the Corinthians to “take captive” every thought that didn’t line up with the truth (my paraphrase, see 2 Corinthians 10:5 to read the whole thing), what he was telling them was to get busy doing the hard work of “minding the mind,” as Jennie Allen says it in her book, Get Out of Your Head.

Bear with me for a minute while I do some Greek geeking. The word used for captive only appears 3 other times in the Bible: 2 of them describe taking prisoners and the other describes gaining control.

Translation? It’s going to take work on our part to control our thoughts instead of allowing our thoughts to control us. That’s exactly what I experienced during those 10 weeks of intentionally slower running. My mind hated it.

Because I’ve run multiple marathons and ultra-marathons and numerous shorter races at fairly fast paces, when my heart rate monitor beeped to alert me that I was already out of my easy range, I got frustrated. Because it beeped a lot, I got frustrated a lot. In those times, my thoughts went something like, “What is wrong with you, Paul? You’ve run 50 miles in half a day and you can’t run a quarter of a mile without your heart rate getting too elevated?”

So I’d slow down. Walk. Whatever it took to get my heart back to that elusive easy place. Start running again, trying so hard to keep it under the limit that I’d set, and inevitably, I’d hear the beep again.

“God, you’re a loser!” I’d whisper to myself. “You might as well give up.”

But I didn’t. I fought through 10 of the longest weeks of running I’ve ever experienced and just the other day I typed these words on a running forum I frequent: “I’m starting to see my easy pace drop.”

The payoff is worth it

One of the reasons why I did the whole “only run easy” experiment was because I knew that I was going to head into a marathon training schedule for a fall marathon that I hoped wouldn’t be canceled due to COVID-19. When I found out it was being canceled, I decided to stick with the schedule and run on the days when I was supposed to and do the workouts (easy or hard) that it called for. It was during this time that I made that observation about my easy pace dropping. But that wasn’t the only thing I learned. Here are 2 more takeaways from my running that I think can help all of us (even the non-runners who are reading this) as we do the work of learning to rest.

Rhythms over rules

I know I’ve written a lot about running and so if you’re not into that kind of thing, you’re already hanging on by a thread. Please bear with me a little longer as I explain a typical training schedule so the takeaways will make more sense. A marathon training schedule is usually around 18 weeks long and mine called for 4 runs a week. The schedule tells you when to run and how far or fast to run. Monday might be an easy 3 miles and Wednesday may be a faster pace run of 5 miles. The weekend is always the longest run of the week.

I’m sure you can imagine that there are many times during those 18 weeks that you may not be able to complete the workout. Fatigue, injury, perhaps a global pandemic can all ruin the best plan. So I’ve learned how to embrace rhythms (how often to run) instead of rules (how far or fast to run). I’ve run 4 times a week since I started the plan but I haven’t stressed out on if I ran 5 instead of 7 or an easy instead of a tempo run. My body loves it – there is a rest that I am finding that I didn’t know before. Many followers of Jesus are more upset about broken rules than broken rhythms. But rhythms are inherent in and the lifeblood of relationships.

Guardrails over guilt

When we choose to live by rhythms instead of by rules, something pretty amazing happens: we start to be motivated by guardrails more than guilt. Guilt does weird things to us, doesn’t it? Guilt can make us feel bad for reading 10 minutes in the Bible because a reading plan told us to read for 30 minutes. We see the 20 minutes we didn’t read instead of the 10 we did. Live with guilt long enough and his cousin, legalism, will move in with you, too.

Guardrails, though, remind us that if we continue in the way we’re going, we’ll eventually be in trouble. Guardrails allow me to skip a workout and not feel bad about it while holding me accountable to the truth that if I miss weeks of them, I’ll find myself out of shape and in the ditch. Guilt drives us, but guardrails direct us. Guilt leaves no room for rest, but guardrails create room for the occasional bad driver to not become a dead driver.

The work of rest is relearning how to choose rhythms and guardrails over rules and guilt. We live in a rules and guilt culture that values results more than anything. But there is great reward in choosing the alternate path marked by rhythms and guardrails. I’m praying that you find the courage to take it.

For the last few weeks, I have felt an overwhelming sadness. A grief that has been hard to fully process, let alone explain to others. I understand that in a culture that is more aware of depression, anxiety, and mental health than previous generations, you could read those words and assume that I’m experiencing one or all of those. But I’m not. My soul, however, is beyond weary, and it has everything to do with the church.

Not my church or your church. THE church. The collective body of Christ known as the Bride of Christ. The people from every tribe and tongue; the mosaic of faces that reflect the face of One.

That church, and even more specifically, the American flavor of that church. And before I share what I finally realized that I was feeling, let me set the record straight: I love the church. I love the odd mix of people who come together with all of their differences and get blended into a beautiful expression of unity in diversity. I believe in the local church and see how the church does so many things well. She gives generously, she loves compassionately, she serves tirelessly.

But…

There are times when she seems to turn on herself, and in recent weeks, social media seems to be the bloody waters where we see it. As I said to someone recently, it hurts to watch the church eat herself.

I don’t say this because I hope others will jump on the “I HATE CHRISTIANS” bandwagon and comment about how done they are with church. I say this because sometimes we just need another person to shake us, wake us, and remind us of who we are.

So church, this is who you are:

You are worth the blood of Jesus. (Acts 20:28)

You are built on the rock and cannot be overcome, even by hell itself. (Matthew 16:18)

You are the dwelling place of God. (Ephesians 2:22)

You are chosen by God. (1 Peter 2:9)

You are the beloved of God. (Romans 1:7)

There’s an interesting passage in Ezekiel 33:10 that records the first words from God’s people when they realized how far below their identity they were living. They simply cried out, “How then shall we live?” I believe that the same question is rising from the remnant in the church today. We’re seeing people act more like the bully of Christ than the bride of Christ and we are beginning to cry out for God to do something.

[Tweet “We are seeing people act more like the bully of Christ than the bride of Christ. It’s time for God to do something. Guess what? He is.”]

Guess what? He is, and it was during a recent conversation with someone who had just been to a message therapist that I realized just exactly what God’s doing.

The therapist had used a lot of pressure to loosen the knots in the muscles which resulted in toxins being released in the body and that had left my friend feeling sore.

Wait, pressure on the body releases toxins into the body and causes soreness in the body? Is anyone else making the connection here? COVID, BLM, Social Media wars, elephants, donkeys. Lots of pressure points that God is using to work the knots out of His body.

[Tweet “God is using external pressure points to work out the knots in His body.”]

But it was what they said next that really grabbed my attention: they had been instructed to drink lots of water so that the water could flush the toxins out of the body.

Water is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. John 7:38-39:

“Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (emphasis mine)

If ever we’ve needed a move of the Holy Spirit, it’s now. We need rivers of living water to flush the impurities from the body that the pressures we’re facing are releasing. If we stop drinking deeply of the water of the Spirit, we’ll only continue to feel the raging soreness that ultimately results in bullying one another.

We won’t bully because we’re mean, but rather because we’re in pain. The remedy for that isn’t the perfect rebuttal on social media, but rather the perfect comforter from heaven.