“I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”-God through Isaiah; Romans 10:20 ESV
A person does not have to hear a specific message, say a specific prayer or go to a specific church to find God. You don’t have to ask the right questions or look in the right places. Longevity doesn’t give you an edge. Your parents can’t nurse you in. You can’t be sorry enough, be selfless enough or want it bad enough. You don’t have to want it at all. You don’t have to know anything to know the truth. God busts through people, convention and manners to get to you. People will give you criteria, God will reveal it’s uselessness. People will doubt your sincerity, God doesn’t wait for your sincerity.
You can’t do enough. You can’t want enough. You can’t be sincere enough. You can’t ask enough. There is nothing you can do.
That’s why He does it for you.
‘…not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are…‘ -1 Corinthians 1:26-28 ESV
A friend of mine, Leonard Sweet, posted a facebook update yesterday. The question in it sharpened me. He was talking about a moment in his own life when someone asked him this and it was a ‘game changer’ for him.
“What is it in your life it takes Jesus to explain?”
You can answer this directly if you want, but that leaves too much room open to not think about it. If you don’t think about it, then you get answers like ‘everything.’ But, that’s not true. It sounds religious, but it’s void of depth. It makes my mind wander and I think about all the other things religion has copied and wonder if religion has copied emotion, too. But, that’s just a side note. Answers like ‘everything’ could very well be true, but if it really were the case, you would have specifics to choose from. ‘Everything’ or other equally ‘nothing’ responses are so distant and detached, it’s hard for me to believe that there’s anything there. Mainly because when there is something there, you aren’t blase about it.
I spend a lot of time listening to people tell me how they can’t forgive themselves for their mistakes. Most people are able to believe in forgiveness for others, but not themselves. What I have learned along the way is that the biggest obstacle in the way of forgiving yourself is the people around you. People are waiting for ‘permission’ from others before they can forgive themselves, accept God’s grace and move on into freedom.
There is a fear if they accept God’s grace and start to let go of their past, that there will be people who are not ready for their freedom or joy. They’re right. There are people who, no matter how much time has gone by or how much God has done in your life, will only see your mistakes when they look at you.
I have heard about someone in my own community who has a hard time seeing me ‘happy’. She says it’s not because she doesn’t want me to be happy, but it just makes her angry to think that I am. She can only see my sin and it’s been years since I’ve been free and happy. I won’t reserve my freedom until she or anyone else is on board. I won’t get self-righteous and indignant toward her either. There will always be those people and you can’t let them determine who you are.
You can’t limit your relationship with Jesus due to fear of what people will think. This sounds like a middle school youth group message where the ‘people’ referred to are the ‘cool kids’ or school bullies. However, I am talking about ‘big brother’ Christians who forgot that they’re not the Father and are bossing you around when they think He can’t hear.
If it really was your father and your brother really was bullying you and trying to get an edge on your dad’s acceptance, then you’d probably go talk to him to see how much of the nonsense was true. Do that with God.
“What is it in your life it takes Jesus to explain?”
You don’t have to worry about what people think of you. You don’t have to be held back by someone else’s unbelief. You don’t have to convince them, either. Does it help to know that God’s grace, forgiveness and acceptance come a lot sooner than anybody is ready for? It takes Jesus to explain that one.
And He will.
Just because Jesus is with you doesn’t mean He’s not with them, too. I’m talking to you, the one who fell. Spend your time answering to Jesus. Tap into the faith He’s given you so that you can experience the freedom that He died for. The freedom from yourself and your failures and the offer of another chance. Focus on that and believe that He’s with them, too. If He can change your selfish heart, He can change their hard heart. You have no right to be bitter toward people who can’t offer you grace. You’re doing the very thing to them that they’re doing to you.
We have to give one another the room to be wrong and to learn from it. Be for them, what they can’t currently be for you. Forgive the blindness. Show mercy to the deceived. Prepare your heart to be open to them when they turn from their own confusion and need your forgiveness. Do it before they ask. Isn’t that what God does for us?
When you hear that question,
what does it do for you?
what is your answer?
does it set you free knowing you don’t have to answer for yourself?
One of the biggest battles I faced while I was healing was in never being able to get away from the fact that I have left a very real trail of pain in my wake. Hurricane Serena. And I had no way of fixing it.
I felt toxic. I was detached from myself. The thinking part of me hated the rest of me. I wouldn’t let people befriend me.
Every once in a while I would feel a sense of ‘want’. I want to go back in time. I want to wake up. I want to be able to pay for it. I want to get away from myself. I want to be a good person.
I couldn’t do anything and I was tortured. I couldn’t make what I did go away. I would have done anything. But, there was nothing I could do. Every single bit of life was dimmed to a faint image and I lived inside a hell I can never adequately explain.
Clinically, I was experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My memory is very splotchy for that time frame. I can remember what was happening in my spirit, but I cannot remember anything about my physical life. Movies, birthdays, Christmas, my pregnancy, divorce… are lost in the peripheral. I couldn’t sleep. The invading thoughts were too powerful.
I don’t want to get weird, but if I’m being honest, I have to say that something very demonic was having a field day with me. There are a lot of things I can’t adequately explain and this is another one of them. It makes you forget about everything in the human experience. There is a part of you that is connected to Eternity and it’s very seldom that we tap into that. My eternal identity was under attack and there is no fear like that. Even a person in the face of a painful death can still find rest in the fact that the pain is over when death comes. A person whose eternal life is being threatened with painful death can find no comfort. An eternal scream of despair and regret.
You ebb between thoughts of an end only to remember that there is no end. Then there is despair. In order to survive the despair, you grasp for hope in thoughts of an end and the cycle continues. A rat running for her life on a wheel in a cage.
The only reason I am telling you what it was like is to show you the contrast of what may be happening inside someone you know versus what you may think based on the arrogance and selfishness in which they previously acted. I sinned shamelessly. I lied without hesitation. I was heartless, sneaky, reckless and unapologetic. My venomous vanity sunk deep into the heart of people I had legitimately cared about. And that makes it worse. I am not a victim. So don’t give me any excuse just because you’re detached enough to be able to.
People tend to think that those who choose sin are enjoying it. I’m writing to tell you just how ‘fun’ it is.
I believe that if God didn’t care about me, I would’t have been taken to the ‘threshing floor’. I wouldn’t have experienced the unspeakable or dragged into the unmapped. I believe that God let me smell the breath of hell because that’s the only way I would have gotten what He wanted me to get.
This was actually an answer to prayer. I wanted to be pure. For a solid year, long before this happened, I would pray the same prayer every day. “God, please remove anything from my life that is not put there by you.” In another period of my Christian life, I prayed for God to use me. I didn’t care what it was, I just wanted my entire life to be used by Him. I remember feeling the sense of Him asking me if I knew what I was asking for. I wrote in my journal: ‘God wants to know if I have limits to what I’m used for. What If I would never agree to be used in the way He chooses to use me had I been asked?’ I thought about this for a while. It was sobering. But, I agreed completely. I said yes. I wrote a little about it here. I just re-read it and I’m crying.
The fire came. The Builder tore down the poorly laid bricks. Every part of me was sent through the fire and very little was left when I came out.
Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely. -1 Corinthians 3:11-15
I emerged a weak, insecure, lonely, speck of a person with a very poignant message. A message that is so much bigger than I am that it hurts to carry it. I, as a person, am not much to speak of. I keep to myself and struggle with feeling over-exposed. But my sense of purpose is something entirely different. God used my sin to do what, possibly, nothing else could have done. I hate what I did, but it has been turned into something that I would never wish away.
Now, I’m waiting. I want to speak. I want to write. I want to share my eye witness account of Jesus, my ‘testimony’, because that’s how ‘the accuser’ is defeated. He’s defeated by the Blood of the Lamb and our eye witness account of Jesus. So, when you withhold grace from someone, you’re actually witnessing for the other side. You’re with ‘the accuser.’
“Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony…”-Revelation 12:10-11 ESV
It’s 5am and I’m making breakfast muffins for my kids. Today is the first day of school and everybody is nervous, including me. I think the older I get, the more sentimental I get. Or maybe the older they get, the more I feel like I’m losing them. I have a high schooler for the first time. So, I’m almost positive I’m a cliche.
I’m surprised 5am is being nice to me. I usually don’t get along with mornings. I get close to it at the other end, like staying up until 3am, but not this end. The sun isn’t even up.
My online friend, Jenni Clayville, is hosting an ‘Affair Week’ (actually two weeks). I don’t know if she did this on purpose, but she chose almost every ‘affair’ perspective. (click the names to read their stories) The first day was Justin Davis. He had an affair, hindsight showed him the hole in the accountability part of ‘community’ and is now creating something to fill the hole for others. The second was Trisha, his wife. She literally opens up her journal so you can see her pain and shares her hope. Sarah Markley shared her story of how she and her husband, Chad, had to divorce who they were before her affair. The good and the bad… Cindy Beall added her own story. Including how she was able to make room on her lap for an innocent little boy her husband fathered with another woman. She also made room in her heart for the little boy’s mother. Alece Ronzino opened herself up and told you why she chose to divorce her husband and is healing from the damage. Not an easy thing to do when you’re among ’survival stories.’ Yesterday, Brian Clayville, Jenni’s husband, shared what it was like for him to not try to sweep his wife’s affair under the rug so they could be ‘normal’ quicker. He waited to say he forgave her until he knew he had so as to not make their connection emotionally cheap and forever wounded.
So, today is my turn. I am the adulterous woman in the worst case scenario. The scenario everyone wants to avoid or survive. Like a disease.
If grace wasn’t real, if the hell wasn’t so aggressive, if the hopelessness wasn’t so terrifying, I would live my life with a buried secret and let everyone think good things about me. The only problem with that is, I know for a fact there are others, like me, out there who are screaming silently to be saved and given another chance. I can’t leave them. I can’t let them feel alone. It was too real for me. Forget about what you think of me, I’m going out there.
Jenni is letting me take up two days on her blog. (I get long winded, so she had to spread me out.) Then, she’ll write her thoughts on my book and host a giveaway. Go check it out and, please, let me know you were there. If you need or want my book, then enter her giveaway. I have it sitting on my desk, ready to put your name on it with my fancy pen.
God is sovereign and you cannot successfully build anything in your life that He does not intend to be there. We usually only acknowledge this when our effort is over. If we succeeded, we give credit to God. If we failed, we say it wasn’t God’s will. It’s while we’re trying that we worry about making the wrong choice or building the wrong thing.
Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.-Psalm 127:1 NIV
God has a plan and you can’t mess it up. Not even with bad choices. Your choices are more about you and your relationship with God than they are about the cosmos hinging on your perfect execution of the Creators plan. People make bad choices every single day. Lives are completely altered by, what looks like, horrible mistakes. Yet, given time, the Master Plan reveals itself and the darkness is found to be necessary.
I’ve said it, and I’ll most certainly do it. I’ve planned it, so it’s as good as done. -Isaiah 46:11
God’s purpose doesn’t depend on your obedience. Obedience has its reward, just like mistakes hurt. However, the fear of not measuring up is removed. The eternal sting is gone. We’re not made to sit on the sidelines. We’re made to take part. If you want to eat, you have to work. It’s not because it all goes to hell if you don’t do it right, it’s because you were made in His image and tapping into that is what makes you feel alive. It’s not about your salvation, it’s about the blood that runs through your veins.
What God did in this case made it perfectly plain that his purpose is not a hit-or-miss thing dependent on what we do or don’t do, but a sure thing determined by his decision, flowing steadily from his initiative.-Romans 9:12
He creates people with specific purpose and they’re not always noble. His purposes are noble, but the people and their choices aren’t. It’s not about what a person does or doesn’t do that determines His purpose. It’s so much to the point that if you’re getting this, you should be feeling like all of your effort to get ahead and do it right is for nothing. You should be wondering how it is that a ‘bad person’ can be no worse than a ‘good person.’ If you were getting this, you would be wondering what the point of anything is. You would be concerned about God and wondering if He’s fair at all.
He doesn’t follow our rules. In our world, the fastest wins, the richest get and the fittest survive. In His Kingdom, offenses are forgiven like they never happened and, the most confusing part: hearts are hardened if He has a reason for it.
When God reveals something to you, is it because of something you did? Faith is from God, vision is from God, compassion is from God. There is nothing a person can do to manufacture these things in their lives. You’ve seen them try and it’s awkward and embarrassing. So, you have to consider the fact that if someone’s eyes are shut, their faith is weak and their hearts are hard, God has a purpose for it.
What does that do to your feelings about that person? The ‘deceived’ one. We get angry and blame people as though our lives depended on them not making any mistakes. Since when are you at the mercy of flesh and blood?
I have hurt people as a result of my own deception. I have altered lives with my hard and selfish heart. I know what it’s like to be horrible and I know what it’s like to have a complete transformation when my eyes were opened and my heart changed. God can shut you down for a purpose and then open you back up to a place where faith in grace is the only thing keeping you from sinking into the abyss of self-loathing and despair.
A person can hurt you horribly, even in the name of God, and not have any idea how wrong they are. If they did, it would probably crush them.
God raises people for His own purposes. He determines how they’re used and what is used. And just to one-up that, He chooses these things before you’re born.
Is that grounds for complaining that God is unfair? Not so fast, please. God told Moses, “I’m in charge of mercy. I’m in charge of compassion.” Compassion doesn’t originate in our bleeding hearts or moral sweat, but in God’s mercy. The same point was made when God said to Pharaoh, “I picked you as a bit player in this drama of my salvation power.” All we’re saying is that God has the first word, initiating the action in which we play our part for good or ill. -Romans 9:14-18
Do you remember what part Pharaoh played? He was the jerk. God picked him, hardened his heart and then drowned him with his army in the sea. God’s purpose is for us to know Him and He goes to extremes to make that possible.
Are you going to object, “So how can God blame us for anything since he’s in charge of everything? If the big decisions are already made, what say do we have in it?” -Romans 9:19
David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) sings a song called ‘In Stitches’ and says, “When Job asked you a question, you responded ‘Who are you to challenge your Creator?’..it makes You sound defensive, like you had not thought it through.” Obviously David gets it and doesn’t like it. I’ve had a few conversations with him and I like him. I like him mainly because he is who he is. A church boy with questions that give him pause.
We all have a little god complex in us. It’s the nucleus of the sin nature. You’re the master of your own universe. So, do scriptures like this make you feel like a toddler with a toy gun and plastic spurs?
Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, “Why did you shape me like this?” Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? -Romans 9:20-23
The English Standard Version, same passage, says: ‘What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make knownthe riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…’
You don’t even have to know what God is doing in order to play your part. You’re not mindless robots, so don’t try to use that as a reason to object to the invasion on your ‘kingdom’. The closest example to a mindless robot I can think of is a person who credits their inhumane brutality as acting on God’s behalf and, of course, ‘in love’. No compassion, no mercy, no love. Just judgment. Even then, you can always trace that down to selfishness and vanity. When you try to fit the role, you miss it completely. People who are trying to attain righteousness don’t reach it. People who don’t seem to care, attain it. Smoke on that.
How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their “God projects” that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. -Romans 9:30-32
Posted: August 16th, 2010 |
Author:Serena Woods |
Filed under:life |
Comments Off
When you make a mistake, part of the healing process is in being able to articulate what you learned. You aren’t alone in your weakness that made you fail. People are out there traveling down the same road you took. Hind sight is 20/20 and they need your vision. You can see where they are clearer than most. You know what they need because you needed it, too. Instead of staying private and sweeping the shame of failure deep into your past, use the power of grace that you’ve experienced and help people. We all make mistakes and we need you who have been there to speak up so that these people don’t feel alone. The beauty of grace is when you realize you have a gift because of your fall. Your life isn’t your own. Your failure is not unique. People need you. You still have a purpose and it’s so like God to use your failure to give your purpose life.
Justin Davis is over at Jenni Calyville’s blog today talking about his affair, what he learned and what he’s doing with his lessons. Maybe his willingness to have his most painful failure’s used will help you. Or, maybe his transparency will inspire you to come out and be used.
There is an absolute truth and, according to scripture, there are depths and widths that we don’t understand. So, in all of my studying, experiencing and thinking, I may feel like I’ve got a good grip on this case, but there are always brick walls that my mind bangs up against. No one has it figured out, but we can dialogue about our perspectives, collaborate our eye witness accounts and grow from each other. In dialogue, your culture and experience are the glasses of your perspective.
My own experience has broadened my perspective. I have encountered something that has taken the assurance out of my understanding and introduced the overwhelming possibility that lies within the purposes of God. I’ve lived this truth:
Our God is in heaven doing whatever he wants to do. -Psalm 115:3
predestination
There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.-1 John 4:18
Scripture tells us that there is something wrong with our relationship with God if we fear death or punishment. Why? Is it because we fear the unknown?
The main source of unease during any conversation about predestination is our ‘free will’. Free will is a will entirely separate from God’s will. It’s usually accompanied by the belief that God does not know what will happen next and that a person can choose to give birth to something that is not in God’s plan.
My thought process with that is…
How can I not fear?
Am I supposed to trust God?
Trust Him to do and be what?
If there is no sovereign control, then He has no control. He can say a lot of things, but He cannot make things happen. There are too many ‘free wills’ out there that can trump God’s plan. If everybody isn’t obeying God, then there’s nothing He can do.
Is He only God when people obey?
Am I supposed to trust God because He’s in control?
Now there’s a contradiction to contend.
What does it mean to say that God is in control?
How is that even possible if He’s not?
Does He have limited control?
Is God limited?
The challenge is in understanding our free will.
Free will to do what?
What happens to our free will when we exert it and are stopped by circumstances beyond our control?
Is Someone else controlling them?
What does that say about free will?
What happens when we don’t want to do something?
Doesn’t the Holy Spirit work in such a way that you are restless without obeying?
Can you, personally, really disobey forever?
How small have you made God that you can take credit for your obedience?
At what point does your pride get in the way of understanding all of this? Pride, as in: I’m the boss of myself. I choose. You could say that if you choose to disobey, then you are the one who has to pay the penalty, so it does fall on your obedience. The only problem is, you don’t have to pay the penalty. The same person who is in control is the one who paid your penalty.
Who is in control when God closes up a perfectly capable womb in one woman and burst through the tied tubes of another? Who is in control when the man shot himself in his face should have died, but lived to drive himself to the hospital? What about the man who drove his golf cart under a tree and was struck by a falling branch and died?
What do people mean when they face failure with ‘I guess it wasn’t God’s will‘?
What about evil? The common question is ‘If God is good and in control, then why is there evil? Isn’t that evidence that He’s clearly not in control?‘
Is He not handling things to your liking?
Evil happens, yet God works evil out for good. Where does that fit in?
Is His work finished or not?
Meaning: Is He scrambling after the disobedient and righting their wrongs or has He finished, as He claims, and we’re living what is done?
If God is speaking from Eternity, where everything IS, then what does He not know?
If He’s omniscient (all knowing) how does it work to say that God does not know what we’ll do?
Are you bigger than eternity so that you can do things outside of what eternity knows?
Do you not exist in eternity?
When you consider predestination…
how does that make you feel?
Does is make you feel smaller and Him bigger?
Does it make scriptures about trust, faith, peace, rest and assurance come to life?
If you consider free will as the ultimate decisive nature…
where does that put God?
Doesn’t that make the holder of the ‘free will’ God or at least equals?
Isn’t that what the serpent told Eve?
‘Free will’ according to Webster’s is: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or divine intervention.
So, what about this:
In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORDdetermines his steps.-Proverbs 16:9
There are four verses in the KJV (olde trusty) that teach predestination in all of it’s annoying controversy and there are zero that talk about ‘free will’. However, just to be thorough, there are 17 that mention ‘freewill’ which means ‘voluntarily’, but all but one are talking about an offering and they’re all in the Old Testament (cuz that matters to some.) The exclusion was in a letter in Ezra from one man to another saying people should not be forced to go Jerusalem for a gathering, but only if they want to.
I’m giving a nod to Philip Yancey when I use this example from his book, ‘Rumors of Another World‘:
We have about as much ‘free will’ as a field of sheep. They choose the grass they eat, who they mate with and what tree they stand under. To every extent of their understanding, they are freely choosing what they want. But there is a farmer who sits in his house and plans what field to pen his sheep in. He is the one who built the fence. He chooses what females need to mate with what males and makes sure they’re together. He doesn’t take away their ability to choose when He orchestrates their environment. He makes sure they’re cared for and that his plan for their lives and purpose are carried out just as he set out. It’s one nature that is supernatural to another. The sheep to the farmer. The people to their God.
If He is able to still be God and give you freedom to make choices, doesn’t that make Him bigger? Doesn’t that kind of freak you out a little?
I’ve left a lot of space for conversation, so go for it. Just be nice about it or the farmer will come out and shave you.
I wrote this of my own free will, by the way…. or did I?
Relax, everything’s going to be all right; rest, everything’s coming together; open your hearts, love is on the way!-Jude 1:2
You are so afraid that your mistakes have ruined everything. You think you’ve somehow tripped up God’s plan for your life and are wondering how this can all be redeemed. How can you glorify God now?
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”-Revelation 21:5 ESV
“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.-Revelation 21:6
There is Someone who goes before us and then follows after us. He’s not scrambling to fix things. Things are fixed. It’s done. The best explanation I have for why bad things still happen is it’s because He uses these things to show us who He is. We start to see who He is when He shows us how He’s designed everything to come together.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.-Romans 8:28 ESV
You have been called because He has a purpose. To serve His purpose, He works everything out to be for your good. You can’t mess this up.
“You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. -John 15:16
The main reason you can’t mess this up is because since you didn’t choose Him, then it’s not about what you do. He chose you (before you were born), so it’s about what He does.
…he who had set me apart before I was born…-Galatians 1:15 ESV
…his purpose is not a hit-or-miss thing dependent on what we do or don’t do, but a sure thing determined by his decision, flowing steadily from his initiative.-Romans 9:10
He didn’t pick you out in your mother’s womb, He chose you before time began.
…who saved us and called us toa holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began…-2 Timothy 1:9 ESV
There are people who will remind you of your sin. They will try to convince you that your disobedience has rendered you useless and that you cannot be used by God if your life is scarred by sin. There are people who will try to convince you that the grace of God cannot wash you clean enough.
You need to read the scriptures for yourself, otherwise you’ll believe the condemnation and it will crush you. God not only chose you before time began, but He also knew you. He knew everything that you would do and you can’t let people convince you that you have shocked Him with your failure and rocked His purpose off course.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…-Romans 8:29 ESV
You are known and predestined to be exactly what He wants you to be. I don’t care what you think about the term ‘predestined’. I’m quoting scripture, not making junk up. If you’re ‘predestined’ then you are destined, fated, beforehand. If He already knew, then this is just part of your story. You are being formed into the image of Jesus. It’s active and ongoing. God doesn’t bail on you. People might, you might, but He never will.
And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.-Romans 8:30 ESV
You are approved. You are made righteous. You are adored.
That is the way God sees you. If any should attack you, it’s not from Him. There are people out there who do not understand grace. They don’t understand God’s purposes and why things happen the way they do. All they see are the rules that were broken and the person who broke them. You don’t have to worry about what people think. You’re not a victim because your salvation does not hinge on their approval. God knows how to deal with us individually. What is true for you, regarding undeserved grace, is also true for them. Don’t fall into the trap of feeling like a bitter victim of gracelessness. Forget about them. Either they come around or they don’t, but you have to dust that stuff off your feet and keep moving.
I have to write insisting—begging!—that you fight with everything you have in you for this faith entrusted to us as a gift to guard and cherish. What has happened is that some people have infiltrated our ranks (our Scriptures warned us this would happen), who beneath their pious skin are shameless scoundrels. Their design is to replace the sheer grace of our God with sheer license—which means doing away with Jesus Christ, our one and only Master. -Jude 1:3-4 (emphasis mine)
Jude is ‘begging’ us to fight for our faith. The faith He is referring to is the absolute power and authority over sin that Jesus won on the cross. Nothing can touch us. Not even us. People are in the mix who don’t get it and are trying to pick off anyone who doesn’t earn their way through adhering to the rules. They are called ’shameless scoundrels’ under ‘pious skin’. ‘Pious’ means ‘religious’. They try to shroud the simple truth and turn it into something unattainable except for perfect submission to the law. As though that has ever been possible. If it were, Jesus wouldn’t have had to come. They’re trying to replace Him with something you can never earn.
Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either. -Matthew 23:13
You were known before there was anything to know. You were predestined before He spoke creation into existence. You were called before you could answer. You, because of Jesus, are justified and glorified.
Your accuser won’t stand a chance in court because whatever happened works in your favor. No one can condemn you because Jesus already served your sentence. Every time someone stands against you in the presence of God, Jesus is standing there sticking up for you.
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.-Romans 8:33-34 ESV
I want to know where your brother is. I want to know what you think happens when you leave the fallen behind. Do you think that you can sit in your churches and worship when there is an empty space where your friend used to sit? How can you sing songs and hear sermons about grace and forgiveness, the essence of the Gospel, and not connect that to the one who fell behind? How can you tell the people on the outside that something is true when you can’t make it true for one of your own?
Where is your brother?
There is a very real enemy who preys on the weak places of our lives when we least expect it. People don’t make damaging choices just to make damaging choices. They’re fighting wounds that never healed as children. They’re deceived into thinking that their healing is just around the corner. They’re shown a substitute for reality and they take it because it’s the first opportunity to escape the hurt that is breaking in on them.
They get on the wrong bus. They take the wrong pill. They drink from the wrong well. When they’re falling, they still think they can make it. He drives fast because he doesn’t think the crash will kill him. She gives herself away because she thinks it will deepen their love. People make poor choices because they don’t grasp the reality. They’re cashing in before the bidding is done.
The fantasy of completion is intoxicating. The intoxicated are the drunk. The confused. They need a sober friend to help them find their way home. They need someone to share the bitter tears of a little girl who gave herself away to the wrong boy. They need someone to tell them it’s going to be alright while they wait for the ambulance to come.
Why did you leave them?
There is a thief who is here to steal, to kill and to destroy. There are people who get caught in his lies, are being drug off to be destroyed. But, those who are marked for ‘LIFE’ will not die in the hands of the thief, but they will be tormented and lied to. He’s effectively convincing them that they are destroyed. We are not the judge of who is ‘marked for Life’. What are you doing leaving them? Where are your prisoners of war? Where is your brother?
“How should I know? Am I his babysitter?”-Genesis 4:9
Yes! Yes, you are his babysitter and his blood is your blood.
“What have you done! The voice of your brother’s blood is calling to me from the ground.” -God, Genesis 4:10
We all do stupid things even though we know better. We all have our limits and those limits are set by our own mistakes. ‘I’ve done that, so I have grace for that.’ ‘I haven’t don’t that, so I have no tolerance for that.’ We set our own limits and then we mistakenly attribute those limits to God. As though we’re so close to Him, we can freely pound gavels and reject testimony based on our surefire understanding of the situation.
We’re one body. We are connected by one Source of Blood. When one falls, we all fall. It’s designed to hold us together.
Can you sit in your churches and ignore the empty spaces? Heartache and sentiment are your offering, but your offering is rejected.
Leave your gift at the altar and go. First make peace with your brother, and then come back and present your gift. -Matthew 5:24 AMP
If your relationships are incomplete, unreconciled and left for dead, then your offering is not fit. If you leave your brother behind, left for dead, then you will be called to questioning. You’re trying to offer worship, but where is your brother? You’re trying to feed the hungry, but where is your brother? You’re trying to share the Gospel, but where is your brother?
Where is your brother? The voice of his blood is calling from the ground.
What have you done?
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.-1 Corinthians 13:1-3
This isn’t the emotionalism of a detached greeting card religion. This is a message to those who are too busy feeding the call of the social gospel to stop all their religious projects and self-indulgent plans to stand by the drunk kid wrapped around the light post waiting for the ambulance to get there. This is the ‘good Samaritan’ who dropped his agenda to carry the wounded to safety. This is the church leader who cries with the girl in her youth group who just got a pink positive on her pregnancy test.
Love doesn’t give up on someone. Love doesn’t keep score of sins. Love isn’t happy when the person suffers as a result of their bad choices. Love doesn’t assume the worst. Love puts up with anything. Love doesn’t look backward, but keeps pushing forward.
Whatever you’re doing that doesn’t include going back and walking at the slow pace of a fallen brother is nothing but noise and distraction. It’s not fit as long as his blood is calling out from the ground. You are trapped in relationship of love. You need to serve as much as he needs to be served. Wash his dirty feet. Help him carry his mess.
‘Carry each other’s burdens….’-Galatians 6:2
Judgement says: You did this. Grace says: It could have been me. I did this.
“Love will hold us together
Make us a shelter to weather the storm
And I’ll be my brother’s keeper
So the whole world will know we’re not alone”
