Friday, October 9, 2015
Seeking His Kingdom
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Unhindered Worship
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Being You
He was never his self when he was with his friends, not really, not fully. They didn't completely get him. They were definitely his friends, you couldn't deny that. They got his intellectual side. They connected there deeply. It's just, he still wasn't comfortable, not completely, in their presence--in anyone's presence for that matter.
This was me for 18 years.
It's so difficult to be your self around other people. Pain teaches us that vulnerability is dangerous, and walls are safe. It's hard enough being your honest self when no one else is around, much less when there's an audience judging and ranking your every word. It's when you're not with judges that you don't have to worry how you score, those rare times when you don't even hear the judges in your own head. That's what happens when you're with people just love you and see the best in you. Those rare birds who dig up the gold buried in the depths of your soul and bring it to the surface for the sun to make it shine. Those are the people we crave to be around and in whose company we exult.
Most of the time though, we aren't around those people. Most of the time we feel a judge in the room. And who can really perform well when there's a judge presiding, gavel poised to declare your insufficiencies at any wrong turn? No one. That's the point. The key to being your self is getting the judges out of the room. That's one of most liberating things Jesus did for us, place us in good standing before God, the real Judge. He answered the judge question for us in the most profound way. He took away every judgement that can be made against us and wrapped us in a new, clean, perfect identity. We are God's sons and daughters. He is pleased with us--with you, with me.
The day I realized this, when it really sank from my mind through my mouth down into my heart, it changed me profoundly. I don't remember the verse I was reading, I think it was in Ephesians, and it hit me. There's really only one opinion that matters in the whole world and the person who holds that opinion loves, accepts, and cares about me! Before I realized this, I was generally considered a shy person by anyone who knew me. But when I realized the significance and state of God's opinion of me, I stopped worrying so much about what other people were thinking. I was loved by the one who's opinion matters most. When I entered conversations I suddenly wasn't worried so much about what that person thought of me. That freed up my mind to think about ways I could love and build them up. That's how we are designed to interact with each other, so full of God's love that it overflows on those around us. It's a process of daily coming to the river to take a dip and drink your fill. Daily, every moment, lavishing in the remembrance of His presence in your midst. He is with you and He says you are strong, wise, and good. Believe the words He speaks over you and know your place in Him is safe. Set. Secure.
I don't do this perfectly. I often forget all about who I truly am and drift into thinking the common thoughts that lie all around me. We are all works in process. It's a daily effort to fight those pervading ways of thinking which work sound like anything less than the truth God speaks about you. Surround your self with His words over you; with the truth of His Word; with people who see the New Creation you really are. Speak those perspectives over your friends and neighbors and Self. Let His light flood the crevices of your soul and make them new. You are a son of light, a daughter of the light. Fear no more.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Worthy
Growing up in the Church you hear people talk about the idea of worthiness quite a bit. Usually the message is something like, “We can’t earn God’s love (true), and we don’t deserve it (Nowhere in Scripture). But by his amazing grace, he died for us while we were still his enemies, living in sin (true). And now we are saved. Isn’t God so great?!” The underlying implication is that you are not worthy of God's love or sacrifice. And this is usually where we're left, with a guilt and a vague sense of unworthiness lingering in our chest.
This oversimplified understanding of our Heavenly Father’s plans, purposes, and character are a sad, weak representation of reality. It is true that we didn’t earn God’s love, he stepped out first and loved us while we were still warring and simpering against him. He first loved us. He decided we were worth saving. He sent his Son to pave the way for us to become his sons and daughters and extend the invitation to us. He made creatures worth loving and fighting for. Worth sailing off into a dark stormy night where immense loneliness, profound suffering, and imminent death awaited him; because we are worth it. He called us worthy when he stepped out of Heaven and took his great leap into our broken and bent reality. He did this to pick us up, piece by piece, if only we let him, to place us in the fire of his love and melt us down to be formed into something new and beautiful, more glorious than we can imagine. Creatures, as C.S. Lewis writes, so glorious that mere centuries from now lower creatures would be inclined to bow down and worship; though that would be to mis-take a great thing for the fountain and source of all that is good and great.
Worthy of his love? Yes, you are. Not because of your great efforts, accomplishments, or strivings. There is no room for pride to rightfully fill your chest. You did nothing. It was all given to you. We are worthy simply because our Maker, who is our Father, our Dad, made us worthy. So stop undervaluing God’s art. And stop taking credit what what was given to you. You are not giving him or your self “more glory” by speaking degradingly of what God has made, from either direction; too high or too low. That is to merely settle for a lie from the Devil. Speak against the lie and agree with the truth, you are worthy of God’s love.
He, made you: Worthy.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
The Speaking in Tongues Controversy
Saturday, May 2, 2015
God's Great Gift: His Spirit
Friday, February 27, 2015
Our New Painting
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Progressive Revelation
I was a child once. I waddled my way across short lengths of grass and trees and sawdust leaves. I marveled at the vast adventures, all waiting latent for my ‘strength’ to propel me up great tall trees lifting me closer to the impossibly distant blue roof beyond. But, to my dismay, my waddles didn’t get me very far. For that my Dad scooped me up in his firm arms and placed me in his blue striped pickup truck. Strapped into the back seat we flew down country roads past lakes and forests and deep dark mountains. In my Dad’s care I flew. I’m still flying today.
It’s in the bones of a Dad to grow his kids. To meet them where they are and take them higher. To stretch and strengthen their feet so they can stand firm and tall. Until they mature, kids misunderstand much about the world their parents inhabit. Complex issues are simplified when a Mom talks to her daughter. Gray and murky waters are laid out in clear black and white only to, later in life, give way to the full spectrum of color which reality inhabits. “Don’t pull out the daisies!” is replaced by “Trim and water the roses.” We can understand more, and we’re capable of doing more. So it is with our Heavenly Dad. And this is how I’ve come to see Him when history looks confusing.
There are so many times that God looks confusing and inconsistent in the Bible. He prohibits people from eating an array of items, but later says “all food is on the table." He tells Israel to go to war and yes, to kill, but then later says that if you hate anyone it’s as bad as murdering them. A little odd, don’t you think, God? All of this and so much more confused the pants off me until I heard one little phrase explained that helped me see God’s Dad-nature pop out amidst the confusion: Progressive Revelation.
This idea gives the best explanation of why God seems to be different at different times in Scripture, even though it says He doesn’t change. Progressive Revelation says that God works to meet people where they are in order to interact with and elevate them to a place where they can perceive Him and reality more fully. This stepping down to our level and meeting us where we are is beautifully exemplified in God’s sending of Jesus to earth as a human to teach, show, and bring us the abundant life He desires us to have. Jesus didn’t come in the fullness of His Godness (Phil. 2:5-11). If he did, we couldn’t comprehend Him or what He would want to convey to us. We simply wouldn’t be able to relate to or understand Him. There are countless ways He steps down to accommodate us. He spoke in Hebrew to Moses and Elijah. He gave Israel a religious and sacrificial system similar to other people groups around them. He allowed for divorce when society couldn’t comprehend the place God intended women and marriage to hold.
One of the most blatant ways we see this accommodation is when Jesus speaks to a crowd gathered around him on a mountain. He says that He has come to fill up the law, not to break it. He then goes on to give teachings that are much different than what was written in the Jewish Law. He says hating someone is equal to killing them; looking lustfully after a woman is as bad as sleeping with her; divorce is not His desire, and much much more. This can be confusing at first hearing because it seems like everything he says goes against what God originally said in the Old Testament. Wait God--you said an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth but now I’m supposed to turn my other cheek and pray good for them? These are very different statements. What’s happening here is God revealing more fully His character and desires. Jesus raises each of these earlier commands to its full stature.
He even goes on to say that God only allowed for divorce in the Law that Moses brought because the people were too blind and immature to hear God's true desire: that there would be no divorce (Matt 19:8-9).
Of course, this topic could (and does) take up entire books; the nature of God is not something that can be tidily explained away. But it is a comfort and a revelation to know that God is constantly fathering humanity toward life so full it spills over its edges. The larger our capacities grow to perceive Him and His ways, the more He pulls us up into new heights of life. He wants us to have more of Him, more of who we truly are, more of Life to the fullest.
We have this progressive revelation of God throughout Scripture which reaches its zenith in Jesus; He is the unveiled image of the invisible God (Col 1:15). In Him, the fullness of God dwells. When God looks confusing, think of this. Look at Jesus back then through Scripture and today through His Spirit and those whom He pours Himself through. And consider: how might you drink deeper of the life he continues to pour through His Word and Spirit today?
Friday, February 6, 2015
Identity: The Prisoner Set Free
Philippians 3:3
“For we are the people of God if we worship in The Spirit of God and have our confidence rooted in Christ Jesus, not our own strength and abilities (flesh).”
Contrary to popular belief, you are not merely the sum of your experiences, positive or negative. You are the sum of what your Maker speaks over you. You can choose to agree with what He says and live out your true identity, filling out the shoes He's given you more and more day after day, or you can put your trust in your own experiences and let them define you. Many times I find my own self a mix of incongruous ideas pilfered from both of these places, but here are the two laid out plain.
If we base our identity on our accomplishments, successes, failures, tastes, interests, desires or preferences then we build the foundation of our identity on unsettled, constantly shifting, specs of sand. This is referred to as having confidence in the “flesh" in the Bible. And this practice is the sole cause of two seeming opposites who happen to actually be siblings: pride and depression, the most potent destroyers of the overflow of life and joy God intends us to have (Jn 10:10).
See, Jesus died for every person in the world’s entire history. Past, present, and future. “He died for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2)." When that happened, God forgave every sin anyone had ever done or will ever do. He unlocked the prison door that kept us from living fully alive. He knew we could not escape to freedom without His aid. We were made to live united with God and grow ever increasingly full of life, and joy, and solid reality. But the only way to do that fully is with Him, in His power.
So, He shaped His Son in the form of the key for the lock of our prison. His death on our behalf unlocked the door to our freedom. There are many passageways in this prison, many doors we may walk through, but His is the one which leads outside the razor topped walls; most merely take us from one cell block to the next - one man might, in an attempt to flee the prison of self-loathing depression, simply run to the padded room of tolerance where all things are tolerable but nothing is solid or substantial. He is trapped by new walls, but the effect is the same. Many say this is all there is in life, an endless variety of prison walls. But the joy I taste in Christ sings a freer tune. This freedom is not mandatory though. God is a true Dad, full of love and eager to grow His little ones into mature Selves. We have a will. We have choice. Countless choices in fact, which shape the Self we see as us in everyday life.
So, we work with Him. He unlocks the steel barred door keeping me from my real self and I take one step, His strength in my bones; then another, and another, in Him. A voice whispers, “I have sent you The Great Helper. He will guide you through the prison, tell you every turn you need to take and teach you all you need to know. He will empower you to do everything I ask of you. He will supply your every need and lead you to understanding. Receive Him for who He is. Lean on Him, trust Him, turn to Him, and talk with Him. He is my Spirit. I am with you."
When we receive Jesus, we receive his rescue from prison. Not a prison of this world but the prison of our selves - where we are constantly fixated on our own status and pleasure and pain. He opens me up to serve with acts of love, Him, my neighbors, as well as my self, in a way most healthy and beneficial to each. When we receive His Spirit we are connected with God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. His Spirit leads us into all truth and one of the first and most foundational truths is that we are adopted by God; the Father of all creation becomes our Father. And to bring that to full effect we must receive Him as Dad. Speak to him and say, “ I am your Daughter/Son, You are my High Father.”
This is your True Identity. God has said you are His child. He knows True Reality. Receive His words over you. Trust what He says in His Word above what you’ve heard, said, and experienced. He sees all the past, present, and future as they really are. He sees you through Jesus' blood: blameless, pure, and righteous. Trust what He sees. Speak your agreement with His perspective--actual reality. Receive the identity He sees you as: a dearly loved child of God.
That’s who you are. Receive it. Trust it. study it. Meditate on it. And live it. Then, walk with God and set others free.