Just today, I was talking about cultural trends in light of Scripture with a dear Christian mentor. I was asking for a practical solution to handling religious conflict with a close friend of mine. Surely, there was something hands-on I could do to change the tide of the spiritual tension that this close friend and I were experiencing between the awkward conversations dodged at coffee and each other’s conflicting Instagram memes no one was willing to address.
“I feel like I’m stuck in the weeds with ______, but it’s like I’m the only one who sees that we’re in the weeds and need to get out of them,” I explained to my mentor.
“I think you have more of an open door to speak than you think you do... I would pray about just opening your mouth with humility.”
BAM! There it was again—my lack of prayer induced by the constant belief of “Hey, God. Just so you know, I prefer to fix this one on my own. Like, I need your guidance, but I prefer to put in the grunt work myself. In all honesty, it’s kinda easier than praying anyway.”
Oftentimes, we are fixers rather than disciples, not because we want to contort the Golden Rule to fit our standard of check boxes and achievements, but because our view of us, them, and God shifts in the wrong direction.
Here are two signs that you’re operating more as a fixer instead of a disciple:
Photo Credit: © Getty Images/oatawa
1. Praying isn’t your first instinct.
Like I said, I prefer the grunt work over the prayer life. Peyton fixing the situation is the default, because if Peyton decides to approach the situation with prayer, she has to do two big, scary things:
1. Surrender control of the situation to God, not knowing what the outcome will be.
2. Face the conviction that might come from the prayer.
Most of us like control because we believe that we can manipulate the outcome of a situation in our favor. Fair, I’ll admit. But it’s only fair when we forget our finite perception, our inability to know the hearts of others, and the lack of patience and grace we aren’t so willing to exhibit through the process.
Meanwhile, a true prayer for me often feels like getting beat up by the Holy Spirit. It feels a lot like that verse in Genesis when Jacob tells the Holy Spirit (in a paraphrased, southern-style manner), “I won’t let go until You bless me... But while I won’t let go, You do know You’re beating the tar out of my hip, right?” Real conversations with God can leave us limping away because we get called out, and getting called out hurts.
Surrendering control, facing conviction head-on... not fun. Ever. But both of these action items require us to see God through a sovereign lens, which also requires us to come face-to-face with our humanity. When we see God as He truly is, and us as we truly are, going to Him in prayer and letting Him take the lead allows us to stop “fixing” things all the time and allows Him to heal things instead.
Photo Credit: © iStock/Getty Images Plus/palidachan
2. Performance often pops up as an idol.
I cringe writing this—because nothing says Peyton like “performance” and “perfection.” Growing up in a legalistic church, I was taught to be scared of God rather than to fear God in a holy manner. The result? An obsession with (or an idol of) performing well to hopefully please Him so He wouldn’t be mad at me.
It’s taken years—14 to be exact—for me to fully step into the belief that God’s goodness doesn’t hinge on my performance, but on His very nature. What this looks like in the day to day is accepting grace for self and extending grace to others, so when a situation arises that makes your mind go, “We gotta fix this! We gotta fix this!” grace steps in and whispers, “Take a breath and show some love. You’re in my hands. They are in my hands. This situation is in my hands. We’re good.”
In Hannah Brencher’s third Christian memoir, Fighting Forward, she dedicates an entire chapter to the beauty that comes when you’re willing to simply tell someone, “You’re okay.” There’s so much power in those two small words, and I think that’s the same simple avenue the Holy Spirit walks us down when we lay down our idol of performance, let ourselves panic for just a second, and then, instead of looking for quick ways to showcase our Christian checklist of Ways I Can One-Up the Golden Rule, we just let the Spirit whisper, “You’re okay.”
If you’re like me, you operate as a fixer 80% of the time, not necessarily as a disciple, but I think Jesus chose 12 apostles to follow Him so we could relate to their humanity. They all messed up in some pretty big ways—Matthew was originally a tax collector who robbed Jews of their earnings, Peter couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and Judas, well, we know how his story ends. And while Judas isn’t the poster child for apostles we should mirror, the other eleven help us realize that being a modern-day disciple for Jesus means we will be fully in the Spirit while fully living inside a human body that sins.
We will be both right and wrong, obsessive fixers and grace-filled disciples on this side of heaven. But while we’re here, it’s crucial to recognize that fixing things isn’t in our hands. Rather, it’s in the hands of a God who’s never lost His grip, never dropped the ball, never left the earth or any of its people spinning out of control alone.
Let’s be disciples. (It's much easier in the long run.)
Photo Credit: © GettyImages/Natali Mis
Originally published Monday, 28 June 2021.
