Have you had the chance to know someone who, just by being in their presence, makes it easier to sigh in relief? Or those people who have that strange habit of chuckling a bit when you wouldn’t expect them to? I have a friend and mentor I trust more than anyone with whom I share the deepest depths of my soul, and sometimes he laughs at me.
The kind of person I’m trying to describe is the lighthearted leader. The type of leader who isn’t flippant, clueless, sees evil for what it is and still isn’t bogged down by the world's weight. These are the kinds of people who help put Jesus and his saving gospel into perspective. These leaders help us remember that evil, sin, and death don’t have the last word; but rather, God’s grace far outweighs the evil we encounter in and around us. These are the kinds of people who help us learn to laugh again. One of the greatest signs of genuine godliness is the ability to keep a light heart. How do we get there? There is only one way that I’ve discovered. But the Lord has taken me down a journey to get there.
For the longest time, I assumed maturity and godliness meant acute awareness of sin and evil. And in part, it does. But the heart disposition I carried around with me was one of caution, anxiety, worry, and massive self-doubt. I didn’t trust myself, and I certainly didn’t trust you. There was a heaviness about me. There was a rule-keeping, lawish demeanor about me. Again, there is nothing wrong with the law of God or desiring to live in obedience. But something was missing. I would never have said this out loud, but if you were to take an x-ray of my deepest beliefs, you would see something like this, “I can contain the evil in my life, and I think I can contain it in yours, too. And Jesus will help me.”
One of my greatest regrets during that time was how I treated the people I loved the most. Unintentionally, and at a deeper and more subtle level than I even realized, I was controlling, demeaning, and heavy. My focus on sin management created an atmosphere of superiority, caution, and joylessness. The saddest part is that I thought I was the mature one. What changed? A few things.
First, I had a light-hearted friend and mentor in my life. He modeled for me what it looked like to give more than lip service to the abounding grace of Christ over sin (Rom. 5:20-21). He modeled for me what it looked like to face the sin and evil in his own life and the world around him and grieve and, at the same time, hope in Christ. He showed me that a leader's job wasn’t to be a sin manager but to walk with Jesus among God’s people and invite them into that same walk. He showed me that it’s awful to sin but so wonderful to run again to the forgiving grace of Jesus. He shared his story of loss, grief, joy, surprise, and sorrow with me, showing me how Jesus showed up repeatedly. His story and example gave me the living framework that our worst nightmares aren’t the end of the story that Jesus is writing and that our greatest losses are often the surprising ways Jesus gets deepest into our hearts. How did I begin to lighten up? I had a friend. A friend who celebrated with me, laughed with me (and at me!). I had a friend who wasn’t afraid to rebuke and correct me, but I knew he didn’t love doing it. He wasn’t trigger-happy in that way. He is the friend who knows I already have an accuser, so he didn’t need to play that role. But models only go so far. The lawish tendencies in my heart go deep, which means that Jesus had to go deeper than a good friend and mentor can go.
It’s surprising that in the letter where the apostle Paul talks most about joy, he also talks about deep loss. In Philippians 3, it’s mostly good but misplaced things that Paul put hope in that are actually in the way of his true joy in Christ. I’ve become convinced that one of the main ways that Jesus sets our hearts free from the oppressive heaviness we carry with us is by leading us into and walking us through significant loss. Some of the most terrifying seasons are when Jesus invades the good things in our lives that we have employed to cover up and compensate for our deepest insecurities and lingering shame.
I’m not sure about you, but I’ve spent years working hard to overcome insecurities and cover up stains of shame. Most of the ways I have done that is by doing good things. Those good things then become a source of my “okayness.” Here’s the problem with that. As long as I’m looking to those good things as my source of being ok, then I’ll have to continually live in such a way as to protect those good things. Hence, it is an effort to control evil, take the weight of the world upon me, feel potentially threatened regularly, etc. All this leads to a heavy heart where real joy is impossible.
Jesus loves us enough to invade those areas of our souls. And often, he doesn’t warn us. That’s how the Lord began to give me a lightheartedness. One day, I woke up, and those things I cherished and protected so dearly were taken away. Evil swept through my life and my loved ones' lives in a way that I couldn’t see coming. I felt utterly exposed and helpless. In a single day, I went from living my dream to a pit of hopelessness I had never known, and I couldn’t see a way back up.
Thankfully, Jesus isn’t the kind of Savior who simply cheers us on from above the pits we find ourselves in. He’s the kind of Savior who jumps in the pit with us. Amazingly, in the pit, Jesus isn’t in a hurry to get us out. He takes his time with us. He’s patient, and He’s present. He knows what we need and what we don’t need. What we need in the pit of broken dreams and loss of hope is not to regain our dreams that were blocking Him out. What we need is Him. We need to have our dreams ripped away long enough to fall in love with Him at a deeper level than we knew possible. We need all those good things that we used to cover our shame and insecurities to be taken away long enough to finally say with genuineness, “Knowing Christ and sharing in his sufferings is worth any loss I might face.”
Sometimes, we must confront evil, be broken to pieces, and be met with Jesus's patient, tender, wise, and strong love. When Jesus finds us in the pits of our worst nightmares, surprisingly, we’ll discover that we can laugh again. Maybe our hearts will be so set free that we lighten up.
In my journey towards genuine lightheartedness, there have been several key factors. One is in friendship with people who have lived with broken hearts and have been cared for by Jesus. These friendships give us paradigms and models for walking with Jesus. But even more than that, I needed to have my dreams broken, my hopes dashed, and my plans undone. I needed that because, in the deepest parts of my soul, all of those good things were in the place of the tender love of Jesus. He graciously stripped me of those things and met me in my pits of despair. What I have found through this journey is that Jesus truly is enough. By the grace of God, don’t we all want to say with the apostle Paul, “I counted everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Friends, you can let your grip on your dreams go and let Jesus love you into lightheartedness.