cast out, out cast

“This man received sinners but he repulses none. We come to Him in weakness and sin, with trembling faith and slender hope; but He does not cast us out. We come by prayer, and that prayer broken, with confession and that confession faulty, with praise, and that praise far short of His merits, but yet He receives us. We come diseased, polluted, worn out and worthless, but He doth, in no wise, cast us out. Let us come again, today, to Him who never casts us out.” -Charles Spurgeon

who called whom

It’s so important for you to study the scripture for yourself. There are people within the Christian faith who claim to be leaders and masses of people listen to them. They regurgitate whatever they’re told to believe. How will you know if you’re being lied to or mislead of you don’t know the truth? No man is perfect and everyone will get it wrong in some form or another. What they get wrong maybe you can get right. Maybe you can take what you hear that is right and add it to your own scriptural insight to get a better panoramic view of God and His ‘Kingdom life.’

Scripture is controversial, but mostly in the religious culture. If you can’t believe the Bible, then what can you believe? Sometimes we have to choose to trust the scripture in spite of our doctrinal upbringing. That’s not an easy thing to do, but your ‘real life’ depends on it.

Is it true that some people will not ‘choose Christ’?

Yes, it’s true. The whole thing, at best, sounds irrelevant to them. There is nothing you can do to make people see a need for Jesus in their lives. Any attempt that you make ends up making you sound like a self-righteous butt. If they don’t see a need, you try to poke holes in their existence while comparing their lives to yours. It doesn’t take them long to not want anything to do with you because of your ‘Christianity’.

The only way you were able to ‘come’ was by answering a ‘call.’

‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.’ -John 6:44 ESV

If you made the decision to become a Christian because of a lifestyle change, the desire to be a ‘better person’, then your decision originated with yourself. It’s not a conversion it’s a modification. You can decorate every aspect of your lives with His name, work in His name and pray in His name, yet still not have a clue who He actually is. Worse, He doesn’t know who you are.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…-Matthew 7:21 ESV

How do you ‘choose Christ’?

You don’t. Nobody can come unless they are called. People can and do respond to the ’seed’ scattered by ‘the farmer’, but when the time passes, they will return to what they believe. (Matt13:18-23) The people who belong to Jesus leave a particular flavor to life that some are receptive to and some are oblivious to. Even reception is a gift from God. You are ’saved by faith’, faith is a gift and that gift is irrevocable.

“This is why I told you earlier that no one is capable of coming to me on his own. You get to me only as a gift from the Father.” -John 6:65

You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you…-John 15:16

You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them. -Matthew 13:11 ESV

…by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. -Ephesians 2:8

..the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. -Romans 11:29 ESV

We respond to a call, we don’t initiate it. We are given faith, we can’t summons it. We are given insight, we can’t learn it.

But, can we say no if we’re called? Can we believe the truth but still walk away from it? That’s what I’ll write about tomorrow.

fiber optic god

Who is God to you?

We limit our awareness of God’s control by dividing that control among people and circumstances. We credit others with control and pray that God takes it back. God’s sovereignty has become a sentiment. Emotionalism that makes us feel better but still something that we hold out at arms length.

We cannot understand anything written in the scriptures if we don’t understand who God is.

What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. -Romans 1:21-22

Are you faithful to God or to your idea of God?

When was the last time your idea of God was transformed? If we cannot comprehend the reality of eternity, then how can you comprehend the reality of God? How can you be in a position to lock in on an idea if you, at the same time, are aware that He is beyond understanding? We are creatures of habit, seekers of comfort and security. We all reach a point where we are unwilling to change, simply because we’ve gotten good at navigating ‘the way it’s always been.’

He is in control of our circumstances and we reject Him and what He is doing when we are in circumstances that don’t feel good. Our idea is that if God is good, then a perfect union with Him feels good. Jesus was in perfect union with God and He suffered immeasurably. Sparkly masks of peace and happiness are donned while the spirit underneath remains in the dark.

God makes no sense to our natural understanding, yet we still look for Him there. We dismiss ideas that contradict the trinket we’ve put our faith in. If your idea of God is not continually being transformed in to something less and less understandable, then you have latched on to a pacifier.

They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand. -Romans 1:23

Can you stomach God?

God is eternal. Eternity does not only stretch backward, but also forward. Time is something that humans use to make measurements, but we serve a God who is not bound by the rising and setting if the sun. God knows everything, uses everything, is in everything and has everything in His hand. God goes before you and follows behind you.

You are never off His radar and nothing takes you out of your path. Where you are is where you’re supposed to be. Where you are is crucial to who you are becoming. It’s not an accident. There was no big boom from which consequences and evolution ensued. In all of our theories and the beauty of science, we still cannot find any scientific explanation for how initial life began. It was a very specific purpose and set of events set into motion by the only hand that can create and sustain life.

He pays attention to every minute detail. Consider the the power of a single atom and all of the ways in which they come together to form the matter you take for granted. Are you, a unique code written on a strand of DNA, so faithless that you refuse to know your author simply because it makes you smaller than He? Would you prefer a Jesus who bounced on your dashboard?

Has the floor in your life fallen out? Where do you look to find meaning? We trace our steps and look for someone to carry the responsibility. You chose this, she chose that. Stupidity, selfishness, sin and evil. Where is God?

“God may cause our circumstances to suddenly fall apart, which may bring the realization of our unfaithfulness to Him for not recognizing that He ordained the situation.” -Oswald Chambers

Is your faith in a god of easy times and fiber optic blessing? Can you stomach a God who would allow your world to cave in because He had a reason for it? Can you submit to a God who doesn’t explain Himself? Holding God responsible for the happenings around you is your act of worship. You release yourself and others from the position of control and focus your helpless dependance on an eternal force who has set something in motion and will stick around to see it through.

Do you see God through yourself or do you see yourself through God?

He says, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ But, how can you not be afraid? He says, ‘Don’t worry.’ But, everything around you tells you to worry. If your own actions or the actions of another have the power to knock God’s purpose off its hinges, then you are worshipping self and/or others. You have rendered the Creator of the Universe incompetent, slow to act and trumped. How often do we do this? We become this frazzled mess while the rest of the world watches us completely contradict the things we say about God when all is well.

‘Our Lord is dethroned more deliberately by Christian workers than by the world. We treat God as if He were a machine designed only to bless us…’ -Oswald Chambers

It takes faith.

We are saved by faith. That’s why our faith is under attack. We are bombarded with a drugstore Jesus. We wobble on the stilts of an answer holder while secretly lost in a fog of confusion. We’re afraid and uncertain which results in us doubting our Christianity.

It takes faith, but faith is dead without action. The action is in the assurance. Assurance makes us behave a certain way. The behavior is not what is typically sought. There are a lot of behaviors in the religious community that can be faked, but this is something you can’t counterfeit. The behavior is the ability to sleep on the stern of a boat when a storm is taking it down (Mark4:35).

‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.’ -Job; Job 13:15 KJV

what do rocks know?

They arrived at the place to which God had directed him. Abraham built an altar. He laid out the wood. Then he tied up Isaac and laid him on the wood. Abraham reached out and took the knife to kill his son. -Genesis 22:9-10

If I could have a conversation with Abraham, I would want to hear him talk about what he knew about God that gave his legs move.

For now, I can only guess. Abraham had seen a lot by this time. His wife had a baby, he saw fire destroy a pair of cities, a woman turn into salt, God appear as three men, the debacle with calling his wife his sister. Maybe that was it? Maybe because of what he learned when he lied about his wife, God showed him who was in control?

Abraham comes from new blood. He’s not far down the line from Adam. What kind of stories about God were passed down from Adam? Or Noah. Noah had to have some crazy stories. What did he talk about when he had too much wine from his vineyard?

Abraham’s great-grandfather never died, he was just taken up with God …long before Elijah. Whatever Abraham knew, it gave him the release to not worry about what that day looked like and just keep walking.

“Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we’ll come back to you.” -Abraham, Genesis 22:5

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A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! -Mark 4:37-38

What did Jesus know that eased him enough to sleep when everyone else was sure they were going to die?

He moved about with ease. I don’t remember reading anywhere that said He was worried. He had emotions, but he had no fear. He cried with Mary and Martha when Lazarus died. He got angry at the corruption happening within the church and he was blunt and unapologetic to those who thought they were religious superiors. He even broke down in the the garden of Gethsemane because He knew they were about to murder Him, but He never panicked and never forgot…what? What did He know that made it seem, to others, that He didn’t even care?

They roused him, saying, “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?” -Mark 4:38

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“I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” -Luke 19:40 NAS

What do the rocks know? What is creation aching to scream?

“BLESSED IS THE KING WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!” -Luke 19:38

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I don’t know what Abraham thought was going to happen when he brought the knife down on his son. But, he knew that God was bigger than whatever came from that day and he trusted God more than he trusted what made sense.

There is something bigger going on right now. It has deep roots and a purpose that goes way beyond your physical existence. You are a part of something. Nothing more.

The place where Abraham was to sacrifice his son is said to be the same place where God dug his fingers in the dirt to create Adam. That it was used as Araunah’s threshing floor…where chaff was separated from wheat. It’s said that David built an alter there. It’s the same place where Solomon built his temple. The same place where the temple Jesus turned tables over in was located. The same place where the temple split when Jesus died.

Abraham was asked to honor God in a place that was much bigger than he was. If that were us, we wouldn’t do it. We have learned how to make God fit into our lives and make our little worlds run the way we want. You’re a bead on a string. You’re a mist before dawn. You have a purpose, but that purpose is not you.

Abraham knew something we need to learn. He didn’t say, ‘What about me?’ because the testimony of creation would answer back, ‘What about you?’ God can do whatever He wants to do and if He asks you to be a part of it, then jump at that opportunity. Who cares what role you play…you get to play a role!

Do you know the thing you need to know that lets you sleep in peace when everything around you tells you it’s time to panic? God can do whatever He wants to do and no amount of panic will stop the storm unless He calls for it to stop. If you knew that you had a specific date assigned for your death and you could not die until then, what risks would you take and goals would you accomplish in the interim? Forget ‘live like you were dying.’ Live like you weren’t. Abraham won a battle where he was ridiculously outnumbered just because he fought it. Is it possible that he knew he wouldn’t die until his wife bore a son and so, until then, he wouldn’t live in fear?

They say that a person with no common sense and no capacity for intelligence is ‘dumb as a rock.’ But the rocks have been a witness to the timelessness of God stringing beads of stories and lives of purpose together for centuries. Rocks have seen the miracle of our Creator at work and has seen this masterpiece come together. The rocks bear witness (Josh24:27) and if you don’t get it and if it doesn’t rip through your body in an outburst of praise, the rocks will cry out in your place.

“Surely the stone will cry out from the wall and the rafter will answer it from the framework.” -Habakkuk 2:11 NAS

be holy

‘You shall be holy because I am holy.’ -1 Peter 1:16

As far as I could count, the command for a person to be holy is found six times in the Old Testament (KJV) and twice in the New Testament (KJV).

Purity and sanctification are goals because we believe it’s God’s will for His followers. As a group of people who want to offer our best and keep ourselves from immorality, we use precaution. We’re told to safeguard our lives in order to keep us in ‘right relationship’ with God.

The foundation of the Christian is belief in Jesus and the label ‘Christian’ carries the weight of responsibility. A responsibility to be pure. To live a sanctified and holy life. Anything that falls short is a piercing alarm. It’s either a cause for concern or a ground for excommunication. Either way, your connection to the body of Christ is questioned.

The problem is in how to fight the fear of failure that permeates the culture. If you think ‘the fear of God’ pertains to divine expectation and the wrath of discipline, then a fear of failure is a dominant and inevitable force.

Fear is the knuckle cracking step-dad wearing a beer stained wife-beater.

There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed lovebanishes 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

Fear is the opposite of love. Fear marks the sign on the street corner: ‘The party ends in Hell.’ Fear sits on the shoulders of the kid who watches his ‘non-church’ friends play from his window. Fear is the pivot of the heel as the friend distances himself from the fall.

The fear is warranted. When you are living with the kind of religious responsibility required to be holy, the opportunity for stumbles and spills is overwhelming. You’re on a minefield of morality bombs and you’ve seen far too many comrades get blown to pieces right in front of you.

Fear is the knowing that in safeguarding yourself, there must be something that you’re missing. And they’re right. “Now if a person sins and does any of the things which the LORD has commanded not to be done, though he was unaware, still he is guilty and shall bear his punishment.” (Lev5:17NAS)

You can’t pick and choose in these things, specializing in keeping one or two things in God’s law and ignoring others. -James 2:8

No wonder people are afraid. Murdering is found in the same law as picking up a dead fly (Lev5:2NAS).

So, where does Jesus come in? He’s claimed when the man notices that he can’t reach the mark. The assumption is that he’s sufficient until he’s not, but at least there is a length of self-sufficiency and that length is the measuring tape for which he judges everyone else.

You’re either sufficient or you’re not. Jesus is not an extension cord. He’s not your safety net. He’s not your back up plan.

Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. -Romans 3:21-22

You cannot make yourself holy. You cannot expect others to be holy. Sin is not evidence of a missing relationship with Jesus. Sin is evidence of a continual need for Jesus.

An inside track to God is not found in your good reputation. Jesus is the only way and you find your way to Jesus through awareness of sin. Your sin calls for grace and grace makes you sufficient. Your insufficiency is His specialty.

Grace is a supernatural gift that changes the recipient from unclean to spotless. The fear of the disillusioned self-sufficient is that forgiveness of sins opens the door to more sin. If a punishment doesn’t ensue, then the criminal has no reason not to offend again.

Grace is not a new suit, grace is a new identity. By the supernatural character of the gift of grace, the recipient is transformed and made innocent, not just by decree, but by nature. There is an innocence that was missing from them before. There is a desire to maintain the innocence and the lesson that only the guilty could have learned.

Grace makes you a better person because you have the wisdom of guilt and the heart of innocence.

You can’t do this for yourself. Soap can’t get all the sin off. ‘Being’ something you’re deeply not is no different than putting on another man’s suit.

‘You shall be holy because I am holy.’ -1 Peter 1:16

‘You shall’ is not just a command, it’s a proclamation. If God can speak four words and the sun appears in the sky, then He can speak four words and create His light in you. He commands it and it happens.

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

Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ So, it is finished.

the hard road

‘…come on, let’s leave the preschool fingerpainting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on “salvation by self-help” and turning in trust toward God…’ -Hebrews 6:1-2

We have this innate belief that we have to earn our way. That we are responsible for our purity, our salvation. This is evident in those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but cannot forgive themselves for their sins.

We have this unfounded belief that we have the ability to not sin. We try to be good, cutting out things that may cause us to sin. Yet, we still sin.

Why is it that you think you can carry out what you could not begin? When you first became a Christian, you knew the truth. You knew that you could not make yourself pure, so you accepted the gift of salvation because you believed the truth about Jesus. What gave you the notion that your salvation made you your own savior?

I believe that, because of the changes within yourself, you got cocky. You were proud of the things you were able to get under control and you got comfortable in your new identity. It started out as your identity in Christ, but somewhere along the way, it became your identity by achievement. Jesus was enough to get you started, but then you drifted away from the Source when you found your own footing.

How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up! -Galatians 3:2-3

Human effort always runs out.

Scripture tells us who we are. We are ’saints’, ‘children of God’, ‘one with Jesus.’ Churches build this up and up and we own it to the point of excess. Your true identity is the internal Eternal. It’s true what the scripture says. It’s great what our churches teach. It’s faith and assurance to own it. But, it’s talking about the eternal you. The inner you. Have you forgotten that the outer you, the mortal you….the flesh and blood you is still in the picture? I believe you have.

You are not made one with your flesh and bones. You are to ‘die’ to that. You do not take the body with you. You are not that body. You are not that ‘human nature.’ You are not that! If you forget that, then you will be confined to the limits of it and its finger-painting faith.

It’s a hard road to for the believer because we forget who we really are.

You will sin until you physically die. You will choose yourself over God, often. You will always need Jesus. You can never do this on your own. If you are unable to forgive yourself, it’s because you have stepped away from that truth. Somewhere along the way, you started relying on yourself.

You have two choices, either you maintain your salvation or you trust that Jesus does it for you. You can’t have it both ways. If you believe you are responsible to keep yourself presentable to God, then it’s impossible for you to trust Jesus.

Once people have seen the light, gotten a taste of heaven and been part of the work of the Holy Spirit, once they’ve personally experienced the sheer goodness of God’s Word and the powers breaking in on us—if then they turn their backs on it, washing their hands of the whole thing, well, they can’t start over as if nothing happened. That’s impossible. Why, they’ve re-crucified Jesus! They’ve repudiated him in public! -Hebrews 6:4-6

Washing your hands of the way of salvation is when you turn to an alternate way of salvation. It’s thinking that you could do what only He could. It’s not forgiving yourself for your failures because something deep within you believes you had the ability to not do whatever it is you did.

If you had the ability to not sin, then He did not need to die. Jesus came to do what you could not do. If you believe you can avoid sinning, you are rejecting Him.

You can always look back with a new pair of eyes and see where you should have turned. It’s not hard to see why you can, now, think you have the ability to make different choices. It may be because ‘now’ you do. For that particular space in natural history, you have learned a lesson you feel you should have already known, and you ‘now’ have the vision needed to equip yourself to not repeat that exact mistake. Don’t use that amazing knowledge to condemn yourself for your past behavior, use it to avoid the same pitfall in the future.

What’s done is done. Mourn it until the mourning process is over. Make it right if it’s in your power to do so. Then, let it go.

You are not your mistakes.

Self-condemnation is evidence of pride. I’m not trying to add to your load, but think about it. You thought you were better than that, right? You were above that level of failure. Are you walking around with your wounded heart, trying to earn the forgiveness of others?

There is no set time limit for the aftermath of sin. Sorrow is good because it’s the mother of repentance. It’s not the same as feeling remorse for the one’s you’ve hurt. I’m talking about a sorrow that goes deeper than that. You can’t rush the introduction of that kind of sorrow. But, when it comes, then it’s almost over… repentance isn’t even swallowed before deliverance sweeps sin off the table.

With no sin, there is no longer a place for sorrow. Sorrow stayed for the night. Rejoicing comes in the morning. Don’t fake this, the judgement of others doesn’t affect you, but if you’re still dragging the old behind you, then you have not experienced Godly sorrow.

If you have come to the realization that there is nothing that you can do to make this right and you trust in the finished work of Jesus, then let it go. Do you believe or not? Are you in or are you out?

‘There is, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ -Romans 8:1 NIV

stay together

You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness. -Ephesians 4:4-6

There is so much friction and division among believers, you would think we all serve different God’s. Maybe some think they do. I’ve heard professed believers communicate with each other using the phrases, ‘My God…’ or ‘Your God…’ It’s usually in defense of a particular brand of scriptural understanding and it’s never with the goal of ‘staying together.’ It’s with the goal of ‘being right.’

What if two offended brothers had to stay outcasts until they could get along? What if they had to be locked in a room together, forced to hear each other out? You may never agree, but you have to find a way to get along. To live together…

I believe that we’re not supposed to give up on each other. We’re not allowed to write one another off. You can’t scratch out a name on God’s invite list. It’s not your party. So, with that in mind, how do you propose you get along?

We all have those people who see our worst when they look at us. They twist our words and hear what they want to hear. They try to put us in the mold they’ve made for us. It’s so tempting to want to lash out, to defend ourselves, but that is not our job. We can be firm, speak plainly, practice self control, but sometimes we lose our patience and want to bite their ears off. The temptation is to belittle them.

We serve one God. We’re all on the same path and will, one day, eat at the same table, worship side by side and be eternal neighbors.

You cannot get away from your family because of the Blood that ties you together.

But that doesn’t mean you should all look and speak and act the same. Out of the generosity of Christ, each of us is given his own gift. -Ephesians 4:7

We’re a multi-dimensional, multi-cultural, extremely diverse family, we’re not supposed to be a freaky group of clones. With so many differences, it’s no surprise that disputes occur. In a ‘church’ of actual people, there are going to be mistakes, hurt feelings and flattened toes.

The best way to do your part to stay together is to approach one another with humility. Be slow to speak, slow to anger and be patient. There is nothing more antagonizing than when you’re trying to have a conversation with someone who thinks they are spiritually or intellectually superior. The pretension is nauseating and impenetrable. The best way to deal with that is to hold your tongue. Time will tell the truth.

It’s an act of submission. Choose to be last. Be the least important, the least ‘right’, the least…

“So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.” -Jesus, Mark 9:35

You’re not submitting to ‘man’, you’re submitting to the under current of the way God works. He lets those, who like to talk, talk themselves into their own trap with no help from you. Soon enough, the truth will be known and there will be no words needed to explain.

It’s an act of worship. We trust Him to defend us when we’re lied about and correct us when we’re wrong. When you hold your tongue, you get to learn the lessons in private rather than out in the public arena. We’re all being taught. Don’t draw attention to yourself with your relational drama and incessant need to be agreed with. Maturity helps you get along with others.

Maturity knows that God can take care of you better than you can take care of yourself.

May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir—not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus! Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.-Romans 15:5-7

It is utterly inhuman to not want to get your own way. It may be the hardest thing to do, but forgiving others and restoring relationships is the a blatant act of selfless God worship. Your dignity does not come from being the least guilty. Your worth does not come from the perception of the crowd you’ve drawn. Your honor is not in winning the debate. Your grandeur is in forgiving and forgetting.

Smart people know how to hold their tongue; their grandeur is to forgive and forget. -Proverbs 19:11

new glasses

Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. -Ephesians 1:4-5

God planned for Jesus to die for our sins before He created the world. If the scripture is true, then that means God planned to save us from sin before the first sin was committed. If he planned for our rescue before the object of rescue breathed the first breath, then He knew about our sin before He created us. Not only did He know about it, He wrote it down.

Even before I was born, you had written in your book everything I would do. -Psalm 139:16

If He wrote our stories out, then He wrote about our failures, too.

One of the biggest mistakes we make when trying to understand the mysteries of God and the way He works is when we don’t look at the information with Jesus as our vantage point. We tend to look at things from the view point of sin. When sin is your filter, then you ask the wrong questions.

The difference between asking, ‘Did God, then, plan for sin?’ and ‘Did God plan for Jesus?’ is perspective. Nothing makes sense when you are using sin as your glasses. You have to start with Jesus and let the rest fall in line behind Him. Jesus falls behind no one and no thing.

Jesus was not an afterthought.

God does not respond to what we do. God does not learn, if He did, then who is He learning from and why are we not worshipping that entity?

God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does. -Romans 3:28

We have to study the scripture for ourselves. We like to listen to others teach and then decide whether or not we agree based on our existing beliefs. We go to church, read the Bible, have religious conversations with what we want to hear already in mind. We’re so busy defending our beliefs that we don’t leave room for learning.

If God planned for Jesus, then He did plan for sin: Jesus. It starts with the Son, the rest follows behind. If you can’t grasp that, then you can’t grasp what Ephesians 1 says next. It’s a  collision of finite understanding colliding with infinite wisdom. We cannot understand the supernatural with natural reasoning. It’s a mistrust of scripture that leaves you like an incomplete puzzle.

…we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! -Ephesians 1:7

If God planned for Jesus, then the truth goes so much deeper than Him knowing about your failure before you fell. It goes beyond your birth, the birth of your parents or your parents’ parents. The truth about who you are to Him goes beyond you and there is nothing you can do about it. He chose you long before he formed the dirt under your feet. The truth of Jesus deflates the pretentious power of sin completely.

With this in mind, how can you not be free? Sin doesn’t have a say because it’s not new or unknown. When you find out that you have been ‘chosen from the foundation of the Earth’ to be ‘adopted’ through Jesus, then how can you think that what you do and don’t do plays any role whatsoever? If the decision was made before DNA was created, then how do you think you can change a bit of that?

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. -Ephesians 1:11

Creation does not move the hand of the Creator. We do not ‘look back at the fingers that mold us‘ and question Him (Rom9:20). You cannot understand the truth if you are trying to understand through sin.

That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. -Romans 6:11

When you or another sins, do not base your decision for action on the sin.

Base your response on Jesus. It’s all about Him and we get to live in that gift.

What happens inside of you when you hear the truth? If you believe it, then you experience crazy freedom. The truth setting you free….

It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. -Ephesians 1:13

the twist to spin

You decide according to what you can see and touch. -Jesus, John 8:15

Humans are naturally egocentric. We base our response to life on our experience. When opposing ideas are introduced, our first inclination is to reject them. The only time we entertain the notion that we have something yet to learn is when what we know collides with what we know and we have to reexamine what we know. This doesn’t happen unless you’re in a state of brokenness. If a firm internal belief is shattered by an external fact, then we are no longer solid and have to find a new position of solidarity before we experience what it is to be whole again.

The first response to hearing the Truth is fear. As you watch the fabric of life as you know it…faith as you know it…become loose and transparent, it makes you feel small and powerless.

We can hear that we are in an ‘alien’ state of existence. We’re travelers, lost children on foreign soil who wait for a horn, a light in the East, a Savior on a cloud. How is it that we can believe the most amazing stories not witnessed, but not the Truth right in front of us? You believe that Jesus was conceived in a virgin, but not that God’s plan shatters through the fabric of yours. You know that Paul was accosted on a road to Damascus, yet you still spend yourself on your bedroom floor begging God to let His will prevail. You believe that the Son of God offered Himself as a sacrifice for sin, died, rose and lifted off the earth to disappear into clouds on His way to Heaven, but you cannot believe that the person who hurt you can be transformed by that miracle.

Jesus said, “You’re tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing God in all this. You’re at a dead end. -John 8:23

Jesus, the human, kept His eye on the Truth as He travelled through the facade. Life is an obstacle course. A process, not a purpose. A journey, not a destination. You cannot look at a member of your own traveling tribe and bind them to the lies of the land on which they walk. Failure is inevitable, if there is breath, there is hope. Don’t determine the prognosis of the fallen based on your understanding and personal confines of acceptability. Unless they’re dead, they’re still in the game. If for no other reason than to epitomize your unbelief in the finality of Grace. The pebble in your shoe.

You are brought through experiences and are formed as a result of the squeezing and stretching. If you look at the here and now, what you can see and touch, you completely miss God in the process. You see yourself as a victim. You scramble to keep your grasp on what you deem yours, you wait on others to do the right thing because you see their faults clearer than you see your own. We should be scrambling in a race to be the first to reconcile. Loose ends are cancer to your freedom and if you do your part to prepare them for reattachment, you can be free while you wait for the healing.

You can focus on the sin that divided, but why would you ‘think on those things?’ If you use sin as the glasses, then you will never be free. You have many reasons to maintain the separation, but how many times do you have to revisit the overgrown battlefield of mistakes and selfishness to give you the power to maintain your defiant stance of righteous indignation? Contempt is not in your nature, you want to show kindness and have to suppress the love that wants to seep from the depths of you. Yet, you have to honor the scarred with the resolve to ‘never forget’.

Forgiveness is freedom, whether your target deserves it or not. The freedom is for you, not them. The forgiveness is reciprocal, not from them, but from God. He wants you to forgive the unworthy so you can identify with Him as He forgives you….also unworthy. This isn’t about them…this is about you. You have been brought to this place because there is a part of you that needs to be placed on an altar and burned. You are not a victim of your circumstances. An accident has not overtaken you. Nothing in your existence gets altered without instigation from the ‘Sovereign Strong’.

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 9:18

Did someone ‘play a part for ill‘ and you are stuck with the bruises? Are you grooming your concept of God while you punish the bad teammate? What if God instigated the action for a purpose you’re not privy to? What if it’s obedience to self-abandonment that gives purpose to your plight and it’s not about ‘here and now’ at all? Are you missing God because of your short sightedness, narrow mindedness, experiential determination? When you question your circumstances, you question God.

Look up to keep yourself from looking down. Look around only with the vision of what is up. Spin in the twist. Dance in the Truth.

fall from grace

I’ve always been turned off by the idea of a denomination making their employees, church members or college students sign a contract of rules they will obey in order to be in their position. So many of the people who sign it knowing that they don’t see anything wrong with some of the prohibited actions and they don’t necessarily plan on following the rules. Only, later they feel guilted into obeying the contract that they put their signature to.

They’ve been harnessed like animals to rules that were designed to benefit them. Instead of religious organizations trusting the individual relationship with God, they create pockets of entrapment for the people who made their mark by the ‘x’.

When anyone complies with any rule-keeping system, they throw away the gift of freedom that Jesus earned for them.

I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. -Galatians 5:2

The only reason to submit to a set of rules for moral conduct is because you don’t believe that what Jesus did was enough. That is the small print on the bottom line. You believe that your sin is more powerful than His crucifixion. He’s not enough for you. We are supposed to take a stand against fear driven religious legalism because of our faith in the finished work of Jesus.

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. -Galatians 5:1

This should alarm you. If you submit to a set of rules, the rules become your master. You can’t serve two masters. These religious organizations, in trying to do a good thing, are causing you to choose between your job, your church, your education, or Jesus.

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. -Matthew 6:24 NIV

It’s a wolf who looks like a sheep. It’s a trap.

Choose who you will serve. If choosing Jesus and freedom are not options because you want to work for your denomination, be a member of your church or go to a Christian University, then choose your religion. Choose who your predecessors chose. Choose what tradition tells you to choose…‘but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ (Josh24:15) A signed contract trades ownership from Jesus to the rules.

Most people believe that ‘falling from grace’ means ‘to sin.’ However, grace is forgiveness of sins. If you don’t sin, then you don’t need grace. Falling from grace is following a set of rules to keep yourself from sin.

I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. -Galatians 5:4

Ignoring religion and devoting yourself to it are both dead ends. God has set things up to where you can’t win within yourself. You are bound to your need for Jesus.

So, what do we do with our freedom? Obviously we can’t win by doing whatever we want and we can’t win by obeying all the rules. The only way to keep your freedom is to live selflessly. Whatever that means to you. The root of sin is self, so if you live selfless, then you are not looking for your own gain and your not focusing on your rule abiding abilities.

For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. -Galatians 5:17

Selfless people are free to love. That’s why we were set free. To love.

Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. -Galatians 5:23

When you actually know what this whole thing is all about, you don’t worry about yourself anymore and you don’t worry about the way others perceive you and your relationship with God. You are not like anyone else, you have your own flavor. As long as you’re not trying to get your own way or trying to keep yourself clean, then you can just be.

When you hear this stuff, you have to let it move beyond sentiment. Feel it change you. Feel the truth set you free.

Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original. -Galatians 5:25-26

inspired by Galatians 5