Posted: April 29th, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: purpose |
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cont…
Peter’s feet found the sea bottom. His water logged pants made it hard to walk and he wanted to run.
There is a place far beyond human connection and if you can reach it, the games of social positioning and play acting are gone. There is mutual vulnerability and comfort. You can explore every facet of the human condition, the tricks and triggers of the mind and flesh, but you’re exploring these things from a distance and without fear. The differences and details of others are appreciated, not envied or looked down on. Life is understood and learned from. Silence is pregnant with thought. Thought is fresh and full of life that is otherwise completely missed.
When you spend most of your time in this place then the ‘regular’ life–the going to the mall life, the small talk life, the ‘be seen’ life–is an energy zapper, thought suppressor, …little fire ants nipping at your intellect. Jesus was a beckoning index finger through a heavy curtain between the layers. In all the pockets of thought and philosophy, Jesus added a much freer possibility. Freer because the potential for life entered the realm of eternity or infinity. Jesus was someone who didn’t have as much trouble forgetting the possibilities. Conversations with him send you hiking with backpacks and lanterns through territories your brain isn’t used to traveling. He can keep going, dying to show you more, but you need to rest. Bonfires crackle, bodies sleep on a bed of earth and minds continue to spin through the mysteries of life while you dream.
That’s what being His friend is like. Inspiring is too translucent a word, but He stirs something deep within, yet far, far outside. He uncovers buried treasure in your spirit, but takes you away from your natural self and lets you escape the heavy shoes of naturalism, the shoulder shrugging of agnosticism and the back patting of conformism.
People who live on that level are hard to find. There’s an immediate connection and bond when you do find one. Jesus was the ultimate find. He opened eyes people didn’t know they had. He’s yoga for the brain. If you could follow him in a conversation, his excitement grew until he brought you to your barrier of understanding, then he got quiet, went off on his own and thought by himself.
Seeing Him on the beach, tending a fire, grinning from knowing, was a brand new territory for Peter. Jesus brought thought into physical and acted like nothing while the men gathered around. Speechless.
Peter pulled his drooping pants up and pushed his soaked hair away from his eyes. Jesus was poking the fire with a stick while flames danced in His eyes. It’s almost like He thinks He’s funny, transcending levels of consciousness like this. Effortlessly moving from eternity to time, from time to eternity. This was the third time He’d done it so far. What would today be? Peter was so lost in life without Him. Being here seemed pointless after all he had learned and he didn’t know what to do with his life now that Jesus was gone. He just wanted to go with Him, wherever He was now, he wanted to go…now.
But, Jesus wanted to eat.
“Bring some of the fish you’ve just caught.” -John 21:10
Peter wanted to talk to him. His heart was on fire while he forced himself to wait until the right time. He didn’t feel like eating. He didn’t feel like talking. He didn’t feel like sitting there. He wanted out of this world. He wanted to eat the meal with Jesus wherever Jesus was eating these days. He wanted to sleep on a bed of dirt with a pillow of rock and talk about the mysteries again. He wanted to be able to shut both his eyes when Jesus was around, not afraid that He would slip away when he fell asleep. Then he could relax, then he could eat and sleep and feel secure. Peter was fidgety. Agitated. His spirit was on fire while his eyebrows furrowed.
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” -John 21:15
Simon, son of John… Peter’s heart ached. The phrase ‘son of John’ tied him to earth. An uncut umbilical cord tying him down like a grounded kite.
Peter’s heart ached. Here he was with precious few moments with his friend and he couldn’t get himself together. Jesus must have noticed his distance and had to ask the most horrible question ever. ‘Do you love me?’
“Yes, Master, you know I love you.” -John 21:15
Take me with you. Please, get me out of here. That’s what he wanted to say, but he didn’t.
“Feed my lambs.” -John 21:15
No, don’t give me something to do here! Peter’s eyes stung. He swallowed hard. He didn’t speak because his heart was quaking and his voice would have shaken. He looked down and focused on Jesus’ feet. Feet he’s watched kick up dust on a road in the middle of nowhere. Feet he’s watched climb steps to houses He never should have been in. Feet he’s seen the bottom of when Jesus was kneeling across the room washing the feet of everyone else.
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?” -John 21:16
Peter drew in a long breath that shuddered in his chest. He blinked the tears away and looked Jesus square in the eye.
“Yes, Master, you know I love you.” -John 21:16
Peter knew that Jesus knew. What is this? Why is He doing this?
“Shepherd my sheep.” -John 21:16
Peter clenched his jaw and felt his abdomen tighten.
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
“Master, you know everything there is to know. You’ve got to know that I love you.”
“Feed my sheep.” -John 21:17
Peter brought his fist to his mouth to pinch his lips between his thumb and teeth, trying to squeeze the pain from watering his eyes. He raised his eyebrows, took a deep breath and nodded.
Jesus started something that Peter had to maintain. Jesus taught him how to live on that other level and sent His Spirit to draw him even further. Peter had to keep camping out, keep building fires, keep kicking up dust because that’s the way Jesus said he could show his love.
“I’m telling you the very truth now: When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you’ll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don’t want to go.” -John 21:18
Following Jesus, really following, is the hardest thing to do. You have to learn to despise your own name. You have to trust while you go through the things that make it possible to despise your own name. You have to walk down paths you would never walk had you been given the choice.
We’re still travelers on the train and He’s gone to ‘prepare a place’ for us. We can sit and ache or we can try to find the others. Some of them don’t know who they are yet and they need to be found.
If you’re out there, do you get it? Are you found?
You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. -John 14:2-3
Posted: April 28th, 2010 |
Filed under: life |
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The sun peeked over the liquid horizon and reminded Peter that he had to go on with life. After all he’s seen and heard, he knew he’d never be the same. The rhythm of the sea pulsed through his boat and they all stood in silence while they headed back to the shore.
The sun was an ill fit for this morning. So heartless the way it pierces your senses with life, when you feel nothing but death.
His best friend was dead. An out of place murder, yet the perfect contrast between the etherial aura of his friend and the overbearing grunt of the people around him.
The morning glimmered like liquid fire across the water. His muscles hurt from fishing all night. He reached across his chest, burying his face in the crook of his arm as he massaged his upper back. Exhaustion played movie clips of his friend’s life and the fight against burning tears was getting harder.
His friend operated on a different level than everybody else. He could see through the thick and distracting surface and always find them on that spiritual level. It was unnerving and comforting at the same time. There was something peaceful and knowing about him. He sparked the consciousness of life on a level that was entirely untouchable by everything we knew and called ‘life’ before him. It was inspiring to the point of bursting at the seems of natural reality.
Thinking about them dragging his body along the rocks of the superficial layer of life was a horrible insult to everything he represented. They killed him on a level where he never lived.
The boat was getting closer to shore. His thoughts were tearing him to pieces and he wanted to hit something…someone. He needed a release and crying was not an option.
There was a sun-drenched silhouette on the shore ahead of them. The silhouette was saying something.
‘Good morning!’ -John 21:5
They ignored him.
‘Did you catch anything for breakfast?’ -John 21:5
We’re not in the mood, dude.
Someone from the boat indulged the silhouette.
“No.” -John 21:5
They had been fishing all night and caught nothing. They weren’t fishing to fish, but it would have been nice to catch something. For something to go right. But,…nothing.
“Throw the net off the right side of the boat and see what happens.” -John 21:6
Who is this guy?
Maybe it was the need to throw something, maybe it was something else. They threw the net over and it immediately filled with fish. And more fish. The men were laughing and panicking at the same time. They were going to go down with the biggest catch of their lives.
All of this activity of yelling, splashing, rocking and Peter just stood there and stared at the silhouette. Something was whispering into his depths. Something was welling up inside him. Something shoved his legs into his pants and propelled him over the side of his boat. His heart was pounding, arms were aching, legs were dragging, as he made his way through the water to the sun drenched silhouette on shore.
It’s Him.
inspired by John 21. continued tomorrow….
Posted: April 23rd, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: grace |
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“Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?”
Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.” -Matthew 22:36-40
Everything in God’s law hangs from the command to ‘love others as you love yourself’ and ‘love God’ with everything in you. You have to consider how you ‘love yourself’ and how your view of yourself is affected by your view of God.
I’ve heard people say that they have no problem believing in grace for someone else, but are unable believe it for themselves. You either believe it or you don’t. I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. It appears to say that they hold themselves to a different standard than they do others. Self-contempt may appear to look submissive, however, it’s anything but. They can quote the scriptures about grace and God’s unrelenting love, but their inability to believe it for themselves has a well shrouded root of pride. They require a better performance, a higher standard, than their Creator.
It is impossible to carry out the most important commandment, the Love Law, for others when you can’t do it for yourself. You’re just detached enough from the others to not have any of yourself invested in them, and therefore can offer an aloof and meaningless statement of grace and love.
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? -James 2:14
I can tell people all day long that it’s possible to flap your wings and fly. I can write books on the technique, attend seminars and quote the mantra’s but, unless my words are put in to action, they’re meaningless.
If you believed it, you would do it. God pours Himself in to you and that’s the only way you have anything to pour out. If it’s not in you, then you’ve just learned language and are calling it faith.
Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense? -James 2:17
No one can believe for you just like you can’t believe for someone else. It’s fundamental hot air. A dirty exhaust pipe polluting the air with meaningless smoke. It’s lukewarm God spit.
You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. -James 2:18
You cannot love others if you do not love yourself. You cannot offer grace to others if you don’t accept it for yourself. You cannot love God with everything in you when you’re holding back because of your failures. You are a walking corpse who cannot do anything unless you believe in what God has done for you. You can say that you believe, but if you can’t take the action to accept it, then you’re still dead.
Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands? -James 2:19-20
I realize that, if this hits close to home, it may feel uncomfortable. I won’t apologize for the way it makes you feel when there is the chance that the truth in these scriptures can cattle prod you into the life you so desperately want. You, in and of yourself, may be right about you. Maybe you’re a mess of unlovable. Thank God your worth is not up to you. If you’re here, you have a purpose. You have to understand the way God sees you. You were made with intent. The gift of grace is Jesus’ way of making sure you are not ruined by you. Learn lessons from your failures, not self-hate.
When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. -Romans 5:20
“Here is a test to find whether your mission in life is finished: if you are alive, it isn’t.” -Richard Bach
“To put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully.” -James Allen
“Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.’”-William Cowper
Posted: April 22nd, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: purpose |
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Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. -Psalm 127:1 ESV
You can do nothing on your own. Well thought plans fail. Well run races are lost. Sometimes doing your best isn’t good enough. God is sovereign and sometimes His sovereignty infringes. Like wheels stuck in the mud, like a car wanting to drive up hill on a sheet of ice, like a builder with rickety wood and jello nails, we’re helpless to the will of God.
Does this put you at ease or does this frustrate you?
Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. -Psalm 127:1 ESV
You can guard your treasure day and night and still lose it. You can take care, use caution and still watch it slip through your fingers. You can set up the best fail safe system and yet it collapses. God is sovereign and sometimes you and He have different plans.
Do you want your plan or do you want His?
There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth. -Ecclesiastes 3:1
But, what the heck is He doing? He’s operating outside of time and conducting the orchestra of a life that we measure by time. We see what seems senseless and feel helpless to bring it to order. Blame, guilt, shame and frustration season our voices and sing our songs.
What song are you singing? If there is a right time for everything, then what time is it in your world?
A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace. -Ecclesiastes 3:2-8
A poetic homage to a sovereign God and we usually hear it at funerals to give us peace. Peace that what was taken from us was God’s timing. We use God’s sovereignty when it makes us feel better and we reject it when it makes us feel controlled. God does not contradict Himself. We do.
Things and people are given life and then life is taken. We know we can’t control that. You don’t get to choose when, where, to whom or how. You are powerless to God’s timing. This is an indisputable truth that everybody knows. You don’t get to pick and choose when what is true, true, and when what is true, a lie.
True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he’s left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he’s coming or going. -Ecclesiastes 3:11
You can’t mend a garden that God intends to rip up. You can’t find what God purposed for you to lose. You can’t hold on to something that God wants you to release.
In the same way, you can’t rip up what God has planted. You can’t lose what God has given you to find. You can’t release what God has given you to hold.
You can’t do anything that God hasn’t already declared ‘done’.
I’ve also concluded that whatever God does, that’s the way it’s going to be, always. No addition, no subtraction. God’s done it and that’s it. That’s so we’ll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear. Whatever was, is. Whatever will be, is. That’s how it always is with God. -Ecclesiastes 3:14-15
The sharp blade of truth cuts all the way to the bone and leaves you with a choice: Do you want to serve a God you can’t control? But, then, is it really a choice outside of ‘time’ or just at this ‘time’? We measure by the rising and setting of the sun, but God created the sun, so what does He use to make His measurements?
Unlike us, you’re not working against a deadline. You have all eternity to work things out. -Job to God; Job 10:5
Things might look bad for a time, you may have to stand and watch all your good memories go up in flames. I know that things seem senseless and the pain robs your sleep on nights that never end. I’ve been there, but I’m here to tell you that those nights do end. The sun does rise.
I create the blacksmith who fires up his forge and makes a weapon designed to kill. I also create the destroyer— but no weapon that can hurt you has ever been forged. Any accuser who takes you to court will be dismissed as a liar. This is what God’s servants can expect. I’ll see to it that everything works out for the best.” God’s Decree. -Isaiah 54:16-17
Maybe it’s time to ‘worship in holy fear.’ Holy fear because you’re worshipping a God you can’t control and resting in the fact that if it’s happening, then God has a purpose for it.
Last night I had a dream that all the mending I want so desperately to happen was already happening and I just didn’t know it yet. By the time I was made aware, it was done. It’s as involuntary as the sun rising. We can pray through the long hours of night and beg the sun to rise, but the sun rises in it’s own time and it does it without any help from us. We can rest and get a good nights sleep knowing that the night won’t last forever and enjoy the gift of the sun when it’s the sun’s time to rise.
Posted: April 20th, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: purpose |
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In everything she does, she can feel this aching knowing that there has to be something more. All of the things that she’s put in place to give her a sense of purpose only seem to echo off the walls of empty rooms. For her, it’s not about going to church or finding God. She does that. She is that. But there’s still something missing.
The ‘kingdom of God’ is a completely ‘other’ existence. We all have to start out in one ‘reality’ before we enter the other.
We are born into the first one and are fully equipped to navigate it. There is an order to things there. First birth and then death. Work hard, learn everything you can, achieve, succeed, give back, stay fit… A long life of possibility and a systematic way to get the most out of it.
We’re spiritual beings, so we tap into whatever speaks to us. When it fails to reach the depths of our spirit, we get more aggressive, more militant. There are always ways to fill up our time with physical actions we hope will deepen a spiritual experience. If you’re busy enough, you don’t have to think about the hollow echo. If you can hear it, you add another noise, another trinket, another sound absorbing layer.
People turn to extremes to numb their emptiness. The workaholic, socialholic, chemiholic or churchaholic, it’s all the same.
Churches are great at loading your life’s truck bed up with as much as you can handle. It’s as if to keep you too busy to sin. You may be empty, you may have questions, but if you’re not sinning then who cares?
I do.
So why are you now trying to out-god God, loading these new believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too? Don’t we believe that we are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us… -Acts 15:10-11
There is a completely ‘other’ existence and it doesn’t need anything from the ‘birth to death’ reality to sustain it. The actuality is, hanging on to any part of the ‘birth to death’ way of life keeps you plugged into it and, as long as you are plugged in to it, you cannot ‘see’ the ‘other’ existence.
It’s more likely for a person who doesn’t know the religious song and dance to catch the subtle breeze of ‘something else’ long before the church-going trust fund babies do. It seems that God likes to whisper His secrets into the ears of those the rest of the steeple-topped world don’t even notice. There is a point where you think you know so much that you start to take over and rewrite the book. Trying to ‘out-god God.’
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 [those], 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
I’m trying to use these scriptures from ‘the Rock’ to challenge your thinking, to send your rock solid assurance in yourself sprawling. It’s not simply to be a punk trying to knock out windows to no end. I want to knock down walls so you can finally see this ‘other’ existence.
Paul had to be struck blind for a while. Jonah had to be swallowed by a (metaphorical?) fish. The Israelites had to walk through hell on Earth. Job had to suffer immeasurably. The prodigal son had to squander his inheritance. Hosea had to marry a prostitute. Jacob got his hip dislocated in the wrestle. Eli had to lose his sons. Moses conversed with a burning bush. Lazarus spent four days rotting in tomb. Peter had to deny the man he said he’d never betray. I had to be knocked flat on my face in the mud. We all have to experience what it is to have everything we know about life and faith be ruined by the wrecking ball of God in order to see the Truth of this ‘other’ existence. If it hurts, so be it. If it leaves you limping for the rest of your natural life, what of it? Let it all be counted as loss when you gain real life in the end.
The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness. -Phillipians 3:7-9
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Posted: April 19th, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: grace |
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My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. -1 John 3:18-20
If you are caught in the trap of self-critisism, then you are incapable of carrying out the command to love. You are focused completely on yourself when you focus on your failures and when you fight to rebuild your reputation. You’re waiting for men to see you and validate you before you walk out of your pit of self-loathing.
Men may never see your suffering and will, therefore, never tell you you’ve had enough. You may always be ‘that guy‘ to them and as long as you give them the power over your restitution, you will never be free.
There are some sins that humans can handle better than others, so the scale is never balanced. When you are a person who has made mistakes that rocked the foundations of lives and repulsed their imaginations, you may never be able to undo that damage by your ‘good works’ and self-imposed sentence. As long as you are trying to pay your penance, you are willfully staying ‘lost’.
The grace of Jesus does not wait for the dust to settle. It doesn’t wait for you to wash off the blood spatter or for the gun to stop smoking. Grace doesn’t wait for you to sober up. It doesn’t wait for the apology. The immediacy of grace makes everyone uncomfortable. The all-encompassing nature of grace infringes on the sensibilities of human justice. There is always a point of contention in the personal stories of God’s grace that leave people with the sense that somebody got away with something. It seems that something is left unanswered.
Self-critisism has the underlying root of disbelief. Your faith is what saves you and the lack of faith leaves you feeling like you still have to pay. When you consider the price that Jesus paid for sin, you have to decide if what He did was enough. Is your sin bigger than that sacrifice?
It’s common for you to see your willful disobedience and complete disregard for decency to deem you unworthy. We are all unworthy, remember, but who receives the free gift is not up to you. Get over it and get on with the life that He died to give you. Your sin was not ‘spitting on the cross’, but believing your sin is more powerful is.
You stay ‘willfully lost’ when you refuse to accept the fact that Jesus paid your penance.
Jesus was sent for you because God knows your heart better than you do. The fact that you even care about your failures is evidence that you are one of His. If you are one of His, then there is no escape from His grasp. Use your sin as an opportunity to sever your relationship with your ‘self’ and let it die the death it’s headed for anyway. Practice the Love Law, that is by it’s very nature ‘self-less’, it’s the only way to stop the endless cycle of self-condemnation.
In this context, the way to ‘practice the Love Law’ is by laying your life down and stepping away from it. They don’t have to see you as ‘clean’ or ‘forgiven’. When they doubt you, shrug it off. When they whisper about you, let them. When they attack you, take it.
They’re not in charge of compassion and mercy.
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. -Romans 9:15-16
They don’t get a say in who God forgives or in how He uses a life the ‘builders have thrown out.’
The stone the masons discarded as flawed is now the capstone! This is God’s work. -Psalm 118:22
This is your way to walk down the same road Jesus traveled when He was here. People got it’s start hating Him, so what if they hate you, too?
If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me. If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you. -John 15:18-19
The ‘godless world’ is not limited to the realm beyond the church doors. The ‘godless world’ has been inside the church for a long time. ‘Godlessness’ is life against ‘God’s terms’. ‘God’s terms’ is referring to the life of grace and peace that Jesus sacrifice provided.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. -Galatians 1:3-5
Posted: April 13th, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: grace |
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‘We are men of action, lies do not become us.’ -Westley, The Princess Bride
I watched gossip rip through a man’s life and roadblock ninety-nine percent of God’s compassion from traveling through the hearts of those who heard and believed. It started from the loose tongue of an unthinking man who was trying to validate his point and strengthen his side of an argument. He used the failure of his old friend and twisted it enough to help his cause, but still be believable.
Gossip always takes liberties with the truth. You can’t take pieces of the truth and fill the holes with your own common sense. God never set you loose with a tool belt of ‘pride fueled agenda’ and a ‘forked tongue’ to start hammering away at guess work. Taking liberties with the truth is lying. Lies have a father and it’s not your Father.
When [Satan] lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. -John 8:44 NIV
The man made a thoughtless comment to another man with a loose tongue and the corruption spread like wildfire across the country. There is no way to rope it in and make it right. There is no undoing the damage that has been done.
It would be easy for me to let self-righteous indignation get in the way of what God tells me to do:
Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you. -Ephesians 4:1
Just because a person did not do this, themselves, does not remove God’s instruction to me or to you. This is not an eye for and eye existence. Not since Jesus, anyway. This man has, since, confessed and asked for forgiveness.
I know what it’s like to do something self-serving and thoughtless. I’ve watched my mistakes rip through the fabric of lives I’ll never be able to face. My own mistakes have sent pain, like wildfire, that has spread across the country and I’ll never be able to, on my own, make it right. Self-righteous indignation, on my part, would be a complete disregard to the grace that Jesus poured into me. I can never repay my own debt, so I can’t expect others to repay theirs.
This is not, so much, a post about gossip as it is a post about the opportunity to pour out grace. It’s real. It’s powerful and it creates life.
That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country. -Romans 6:3-5
There is a sin nature within me that wants to level the playing field using sin as the weight on the scales.Tit for tat. However, according to this life I have entered, sin is not the sovereign ruler, grace is. If you use grace as the weight on the scales, then God wins. This is me, waving the flag of my home country. A country with open arms, not clenched fists. A country with tender hearts, not protective ones. A country where I do not need to win, because if I win, then one of God’s children loses and then we all lose.
Tit for tat only deepens the life of sin that we’ve been set free from.
Forgiveness is the ultimate middle finger to the very entity of evil. – ‘Grace Is For Sinners’
And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously. -Matthew 5:42
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. -Colossians 3:12-14
This man may never know the full effect of his sin, but to the one’s it matters to the most, he is more than forgiven. That’s grace in real life. It’s the attitude that turns directly to God and says, ‘Thank you.’
Posted: April 12th, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: purpose |
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Twenty three years ago today, I was adopted by two people with the biggest hearts I’ve ever met. I want to pay homage to them, lovers who lost their world so it could be given it to those who didn’t have one.
He was a good ol’ boy with an outlaw temper and a heart bent toward Jesus. He was raised on a dairy farm with horses, calloused hands and the kind of muscles a country girl dreams about. His dark wavy hair and dark eyes were fixed on her from the start.
She was the opposite of him. A cheerleader in short skirts and long hair that matched her golden heart. Not even summers riding horses with a boy who later became Don Johnson could steal her heart away from him. When a girl loves a boy, she’ll do some crazy things. She never went to church until she went with him.
Horseback rides in the Ozark Mountains and basketball games were the terrain of high school sweethearts with hearts as big as their dreams.
Anyone who knew them back then would tell you they wanted six kids to raise between the farm and church. And there was no reason why this all American love affair couldn’t do just that.
They were married barely out of high school and started their family. It would have been a walk into the sunset if their babies had been healthy.
But they weren’t.
• • • • • •
I was born to a fifteen year old, mentally ill girl. All she knew was the streets and how a beautiful girl could survive on them. I was brought up in the trenches and no stranger to the decaying leftovers of existance. I was the oldest of four. My mom took the brass knuckles of life and the hollow haunting in her eyes told so much more than her busted open lips could. Me, my two brothers and sister moved around in separate foster homes for years. My siblings were too young to fend for themselves, but for whatever reason, I was born with two clenched fists and a set jaw. I took care of them the best I could, but evil men are more malicious than a smart mouthed kid from the city streets could maneuver.
We were tossed around like soiled clothes. The pain and abuse we endured raged an unpaid debt all the way into who we would become. My mom could take the beatings herself, but she couldn’t take watching them ripping into my body, too. She tried her best to make sure we were fed, but existing is a monster to those who can’t pay the price. We were the kids out the window who laughed with sunken eyes and hugged with jutting ribs.
I was nine when she put her signature to a piece of paper that said she couldn’t protect us anymore.
• • • • • •
Rowland and Donna started their lives with a plan, but then God stepped in with His plan. Their children were born with a disease that killed them. Donna tried to console her husband while she tried to console her aching womb. Her third pregnancy ended when she was twenty-two years old and seven months along. The baby was taken from her along with her ability to conceive again.
They had more love than they could give and when their two living babies started dying from a disease that only existed for them, they began looking outward for babies with no home. They’re simple people. When the city workers stuck a catalogue of broken hearts in front of them, they said yes to the first set of eyes they saw.
They never intended to adopt four kids at once, but couldn’t stomach the thought of siblings being torn away from each other. They knew they had enough love even when the rest of their family thought they were crazy for adopting a ten year old (me), a seven year old, a five year old and a four year old. They were thirty and thirty-one years old and had just buried their second baby. Seven years later, they had to bury their third. ‘To think that God would take a child from his mother while she prayed…’
I asked her, once, why she thought that God would allow her to suffer so much and take her babies from her. Her answer has shaped me and sings in harmony with the message of my life. She said that she believes God didn’t allow her to keep her own children because He knew that I needed a Mommy.
I remember taking a needle and poking holes in our fingers so we could put our blood together and make it official. A kid’s ritual to let her know I adopted her back.
Even after the hell I put them through (some street strays can’t be tamed), they never backed away from being my ‘blood.’ They never changed their minds, no matter how many times we’ve broken their heart.
They gave God their lives and He used them. They walked through things that destroy people.
And now I’m about to show him what he’s in for—the hard suffering that goes with this job. -Acts 9:15
Giving your life to God should not come with a sense of entitlement. He never promised an easy road. He warns the opposite. But, somehow still, He manages to turn loss around and fuse it together into something that sweeps a lot wider than you could have reached had everything gone according to your plan.
I wanted a family, but was born to a woman who couldn’t take care of me. They wanted children, but weren’t able to make them healthy. The two little boys they adopted after us never asked to be born to a mother who loved drugs more than she loved them. God used the open arms of two high school sweethearts to gather the lost treasures of two broken families.
If you’re paying attention to this story and you’re counting, God was paying attention to the details because they got their six kids. We’re not all grown up yet, but we’ve already started filling their house with more. They’re only fifty-three and already have nine grandkids who come running into their arms when they come around.
I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. -Jeremiah 29:11
Here’s to adding to your future out of the future you gave to me.
Posted: April 9th, 2010 |
Filed under: life | Tags: grace |
8 Comments »
When you witness the devastation of another person’s sin, it’s hard to believe that they can come back from that with any kind of new life or anything of value to offer.
One of the hardest things for people to accept is grace. Sin is a death to something.
We say that we believe the story of Jesus. However, we weren’t there to witness the dust on the roads or breeze in the air that surrounded him. We can grasp it in the same way we can grasp a fairy tale. We can be dreamy and hopeful enough to say we believe in it, but what would it be like to actually be there to witness it?
I think you can find at least a hint of an answer in the way you think about sin and grace. Equate it with death and life. Watch a person hang from the noose of their own sin and then try to believe in the resurrection of grace. It’s hard to accept it, especially if you witnessed the death yourself.
The cross was still there. The grave was occupied. There is no doubt about that.
The pain of sin is still there. You saw them fall to their death. There is no doubt about that.
The women went to the tomb armed to tend to the stench of a decaying body. It doesn’t matter how devoted they were to Jesus, they still went through the motions of death.
Christians are very good at damage control. They carry their satchel of spices intended to mask the stench of death, sealing the fallen in a tomb meant for the dead. It doesn’t matter how well they know the Gospel, they still go through the motions of death.
If those women found a body in that tomb, then the story would be over. He’d be chalked up as just another ego-maniac claiming to be God’s gift to the world.
If you go to the cemetery of fallen Christians and are able to find anyone there, then something has gone horribly wrong.
“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” -Luke 24:5 ESV
The women were afraid and confused. Those who saw Jesus pulled away from him like he was a ghost.
Seeing someone, whose sin you witnessed, stirs up confusing emotions.
We can believe a lot of things. But life after something like this…it’s too much. We’re trying to make sense of it all, but we’re looking at an empty grave to give us answers and ignoring the new life that is walking, talking and eating right in front of us.
It would be so much simpler if the dead stayed dead. But Jesus woke up and He walked out.
Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them kept telling these things to the apostles, but the apostles didn’t believe a word of it, thought they were making it all up. -Luke 24:9-11
Any time you tell a story of sin and grace, there are people who can’t get past the sin and don’t believe a word of the grace. When a person gets up and walks out of their tomb, there are a lot of people who think they’re just making up their remorse.
The resurrection of Jesus makes grace possible. He walked out of His tomb so that all of us sinners can walk out of ours.
When you have a hard time trusting in the ability of grace to transform a person instead of leaving them to rot, then you have to come to terms with your inability to trust that Jesus really is who he says he is.
“So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?” -Luke 24:25-26
There is an order to this Kingdom life. It starts with death and ends with life.
If you’re in the middle of sorting ghosts and gory memories, it’s okay. It’s part of the process. The disciples didn’t believe the man was Jesus until they spent time ‘breaking bread’ with him.
Here is what happened: He sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed, they recognized him. -Luke 24:29-31
They went to tell some of their friends and those friends brought up a storm of doubts and questions. Jesus met with those people, too.
“Don’t be upset, and don’t let all these doubting questions take over. Look at my hands; look at my feet—it’s really me. Touch me. Look me over from head to toe.” -Luke 24:38-39
They stood back in disbelief while they watched him eat a piece of leftover fish. Did they look through their eyebrows when they watched him? Could he feel their doubt burn into his scars? Grace, life after death, seems too good to be true. Humans pride themselves on their wisdom and you know what they say about something that seems too good to be true.
Jesus was patient with their doubt because he knew the truth. If you’re experiencing the doubt of others about you, be patient while you wait for restoration.
If you are having trouble trusting, forgiving, or believing the resurrected life of someone you watched ‘die’, then maybe you should spend time with them like the disciples did with Jesus. Maybe it’s time for you, too, to ‘break some bread’ so you can leave the graveyard behind.
Here are the practical things you can take away from Luke 24:
- You know you have issues with faith when you have a hard time believing someone can be restored after one of the ‘big sins.’ With this in mind, you hardly have time to pick them apart when you realize you don’t even believe Jesus was raised from the dead.
- A blow to your faith that, (as far as you knew) was intact prior to this experience, is normal and Jesus has an absurd amount of patience while you catch up.
- Doubt about another person’s healing in the aftermath of sin can be addressed over a meal (or seven). Spend time with them. Listen to them. Doubting is not the problem, writing them off as frauds is. Get over yourself and call that person you watched die. (or their ghost will haunt you.
)
- It’s time to break bread.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” -Matthew 11:19
Posted: April 8th, 2010 |
Filed under: God, life | Tags: purpose |
3 Comments »
We all want to know what God’s plan is. We want to know what He’s doing so we can do it, too. God spoke through Isaiah and laid that plan out. He says that He’s had a plan since the beginning. It’s the same plan now as it was before Day One.
Isaiah 53 starts out by foretelling the agony that His Son will suffer for the sake of humanity. The first nine verses illustrate His rejection, grief, bruises, torn flesh, oppression and judgement. All horrific prophesy given by God and verse ten says it has always been His plan:
Still, it’s what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. -Isaiah 53:10
Do you ever wonder why God made the human race knowing that they would turn on Him? We have a free will, but God gave us that free will, therefore, it’s secondary to His will. He has a plan and we play our part in it. Free will and all.
God is not limited by sin, He uses it. You can get a better understanding of this when you consider how you came to a place where you knew you needed a savior. It was when you knew your sin. Need grew in the courtyard of knowledge and the thirsty plant of ‘need’ drank the rain it never noticed when it fell on the empty courtyard many times before. What good is ‘Living Water’ when there is no ‘thirst’?
God uses sin as a doorway to Him. His plan rigged the system to fail proof your life. You might consider that we are set up to fail. There is scriptural evidence to that effect:
In one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in. -Romans 11:32
We think about God’s standards, make those His will and His plan goes completely over our heads. He has standards and He’s never backed away from them. His will is that you know Him and His plan works it out so that you have no way out of His way in.
He makes sure that you feel what it’s like to be on the wrong side of right because the only way you can get to Him is through Jesus. Jesus didn’t come to square dance with saints, He came to rescue sinners. He fulfills His purpose when He tells His Father that you’re righteous when we all know you’re not. The more the contrast, the more honor. God honors Jesus when He takes the failures under His wing. The less they are, the greater He is. In this way, the least become the greatest.
God uses sin to display His sovereignty. If sin is a certainty all by itself, then there is nothing new set loose by acknowledging the Truth about what God does through it. There is only freedom to be set free. If sin is free to terrorize, then God made it His slave. He made the worst become His biggest tool. He didn’t eliminate it, He put it to work.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life. And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him. -Isaiah 53:10
God is honored when the worst of men experience His life changing grace. The bigger the debt, the greater the gift and it’s all about the gift. You are not measured by how much you’ve achieved, you’re measured by how much you’ve received. God is not looking for your sin, He’s looking for His son.
I’ll reward him extravagantly— the best of everything, the highest honors—Because he looked death in the face and didn’t flinch, because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many, he took up the cause of all the black sheep. -Isaiah 53:11-12
It’s not about you, it’s about Jesus. Jesus is rewarded ‘extravagantly’ when He embraces ‘the company of the lowest’ and takes ‘up the cause of all the black sheep.’
In light of that scripture, it doesn’t take much to figure out how to be like Jesus. Stick your neck out for those who the rest have washed their hands of. You might be rejected by your ‘brothers’, but you’ll be honoring God who honors Jesus who passes His honor on to you only to receive more honor for what He’s done for you. And they cycle continues to ‘life, life and more life.’
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. -Romans 8:31-34
Take up the cause of Jesus and embrace the worst, the lowest, the least, for Him. He’s in front of the Father ‘sticking up for them (us),’ so you stand in front of everyone else and stick up for them, too. Not because the person is innocent, but because the work of Jesus is ‘finished’. When you carry the weight of another person, you’re not doing it for them, you’re doing it to Him.
I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me. -Matthew 25:40
