Posted: February 4th, 2010 |
Filed under: life |
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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 1-3
When scripture says that ‘the way is straight and narrow’, we make that to mean so many things. You might think that ‘straight and narrow’ is hard because you have to refrain from certain activities, but there are people who don’t struggle with the same things the way you do. Some people thoroughly enjoy their life of simplicity and rigorous standards. Maybe you picture ‘straight and narrow’ being hard because one false move on your part, one sin, can get you off the path.
Sin is inevitable and living in fear of it is living FOR it. Why live for something from which you’ve been set free?
If you fear something, then you focus all of your energy to keep your fears from becoming reality. Sin is destructive, no doubt, but it does not have the power to re-label you. Grace has the power keep you and God’s sovereignty has the power to use your failures to ultimately benefit you. Sin never wins. Sin is dead. What is dead cannot define you, therefore you are free from it.
Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. -Galatians 5:13
While you are not willfully choosing to disregard right and wrong, don’t live in fear of doing something wrong as though your salvation depended on you getting it right.
We are free to relax, free to be forgiven, free to learn from our stumbles and free to get back up.
Take the focus off of yourself and get a grip on God’s grace. It is aggressively defending us in spite of our obvious error. If you can grasp the magnitude of what Jesus did for you, you will have a lot more time on our hands. If you don’t have to focus on yourself or your behavior, then you can focus on something far more important:
Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. -Galatians 5:14
We admire others when they boast the lengths they go to be more ‘extreme in the faith’. Your life and limitations are your own choice based, hopefully, on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. You don’t get extra credit for being obedient and you aren’t elevated because you have more rules than someone else. This strange comparison religious people do is just a game to keep them distracted from the real requirement. Love.
Love is such and easy thing to command, but the hardest thing to do. Love is a choice. Its’ borders are hard for a person to fit through. The way of Love is straight and it is narrow. Not because it’s easy to get off the path or because you avoid a list of failures. It’s ‘straight and narrow’ because you can’t take your ‘self’ with you.
We are human beings and we need a set of rules to follow so that we can feel more secure. Mostly, that leads to a lack of faith. However, there is a guide in scripture so you don’t have to think very much. Some of them have to do with you and some of them have to do with how you treat people.
My challenge to you is to approach every decision and every relationship with this checklist. Tomorrow I’ll go through the list and bring it to life.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
-1 Corinthians 13:4-7
God is Love, so if your focus is this, then your focus is God. Don’t ever feel like you’re wasting yourself for someone who doesn’t receive it or change because of it. You’re not doing it for that person, you’re doing it because you’ve been asked to.
Posted: February 1st, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: purpose |
7 Comments »
“Stolen water is sweet,…” -Proverbs 9:17 ESV
If God cares about you at all, your secret will be found out. The storm-wet footprints of those who slip through the dark may dry by morning, but if you have to work with the lights off, you won’t see the other evidence you left behind. You’re careful not to leave scars, but those who love you can feel when your blood leaves your veins. You erase all the messages, but all it takes is getting your timing off one time and there’s nothing you can do about it. You clear your history, but your brain is missing that button. You can bury the bottle, but you renew your problem every time you empty a new one.
You can’t make yourself not want it and you can’t control how fast you need more. You have an addiction. The honeymoon period lasts a long time, but it’s not long before you realize you’re attached to a ball and chain.
“Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” -Proverbs 9:17 ESV
How many holes do you have to dig before you’ve dug up all your good and you’re nothing but a backyard of buried secrets? No green, no new life and you’re tripping on a rusty chain. Why would anyone take the time to wash a dog that keeps going back to his dingy holes? Maybe you’d prefer the backyard. You can be the paranoid guard of secret holes, always looking over your shoulder.
You think it would be better if nobody knew and you can get this under control by yourself. You may be able to make it to the shower before anybody sees what you brought home, but there are some things you can’t wash off. There are things you can’t fix by yourself.
These things burn images into your retina. They carve their messages into the lining of your skin. Nobody can see just how bad it is, but they watch you squirm like a worm on a hot sidewalk, like a princess with a rash, like a star athlete with a twisted ankle.
“Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel.” -Proverbs 20:17 ESV
Your digging has damaged roots. You’ve isolated yourself with burned bridges. You were giddy with the attention of seduction, but now you’re just alone. Now you have to face what you’ve become. A fence climber, a gravedigger, a child left behind after a funeral.
“Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” But he does not know that the dead are there. -Proverbs 9:17-18 ESV
You may describe what happened as ‘getting caught’, but you’ve got it wrong. You’ve been found. The backyard has been seized and you’re being questioned while you watch them dig up your secrets. The excruciating shame shocks your body as the cloak of darkness is ripped away. You see your naked form in the light of day and don’t recognize the emaciated mass of gray you’ve become. You’re not so sexy when everybody around you isn’t drunk on stolen water.
There will be gawkers who snap your image while you’re stripped down and squinting under the bright lights of reality. You will be let down by those who you used to respect because when the lights come on, you’ll see them for who they are, too: immature and blind. Don’t pay attention to them. You’ll see the backs of heads more than you will the kindness in eyes. It takes a team of fighters with a lot of faith and a few scars of their own to help you walk.
You’ve been found out because you have a purpose. You’ve gone through your ‘boot camp’ of sin recognition and utter helplessness so that you can be part of a team who help the fallen make the long walk home. We all have impurities in our making. A little pressure, a little heat, a little dance with the devil will make some of those dormant weeds bloom. If you can see it, you can follow it down to the source and root it out.
There are many things you may have built in your life, but if they’re not meant to be there, they’ll be destroyed.
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 9:13-15
If you have been caught in your sin, then your shackles have been cut. There is an upward climb through rocky woods before the open spaces of freedom. Sometimes slaves are afraid of the space between chains and freedom, but you don’t have to go this alone. There are others who have been there and there is One who has walked this before. No matter how many times you slip back and lose ground, you will never be left behind. He will never give up on you. When you can run, run. But, even if you have to crawl, keep moving.
The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does. -1 Peter 5:9
