It’s easy to be disappointed all the time when all the mirrors are angled at you. As much as you try to have it together, the spotlight of “Me” is harsh and your jeans are fitting a little too tight.

Maybe you have reason to be disappointed. Maybe life really is rolling over you. But you can’t change that. The only thing you can change is the way you respond to it.

Do you need some acknowledgement? Do you need a witness to your pain?
Okay.
Get it out.
Write it down.

What do you need?

No one else can fix you. This is personal.
No one can be enough for you. That’s not how we’re made.

Maybe your need is making them feel inadaquate, too.
Maybe everyone else is feeling the way you’re feeling right now.

We live in a world where people have lowered their standards enough to be okay with barely being okay. Maybe they don’t have any extra to spread around.

Did you write it down?
What do you need?
That’s your “to do” list. Do it for them. In some weird way, it comes back to you.

Watch.

“Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them.”- Matthew 7:12 MSG

The bigger issue is your wispy self-worth.

You have to get your worth from a Well that doesn’t dry up.

“… but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.” -Jesus in John 4:14 MSG

So 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 MSG

It’s hard for me to imagine trying to understand what the scriptures say without having experienced the revelation, or enlightenment. The words are there, but the meaning shifts dramatically, depending on your level of thinking. Once you have been enlightened, you cannot mentally walk away from what you’ve spiritually seen.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. -Hebrews 6:4-6 ESV

In conversations I’ve had, the best analogy, or tangible imagery, I can come up with is from the movie The Matrix. I haven’t seen that movie in several years, but the idea swirls around the question: “What is real?” Scripture refers to “the world” and “the truth.” In other words: mortal/immortal; fake/real; temporal/eternal; physical/metaphysical.

There is a separation between what is real and what is experienced. What is real is where life is. What is experienced is the fabric through which truth seeps. If you focus on the mesh of understanding or the method of exposure, then you will not see the message or the mystery. An eternal, spiritual Source of truth is pressing in on the spirit within and the only thing standing in the way is the layer of flesh, by which all experience is translated and filtered. Flesh is the problem. That’s why we are to “lean not on [our] own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).”

Temporal cannot understand what is eternal. However, what is eternal can understand what is temporal and knows enough to not spend any time or effort on it.

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective. -Colossians 3:1-2 MSG

Your experience is not the end all of understanding. It is the avenue by which what, or better: Who, is to be understood as truth makes its way into your spirit. Experience alters perspective and perspective is the goal, not the experience. You must be able to think abstractly and Jesus is the key to understanding. Once you have tasted the revelation, you are compelled to act within that realm, on that ground, from that perspective, to that lack of beginning and end (as opposed to “that end”).

You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ. -Colossians 3:9-11 MSG

All I am trying to do is appeal to the spiritual part of you that longs to hear something that matters. I am speaking to the part of you that is longing for a deeper walk, a spiritual awakening of which you can never grow tired. This exists.

We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it’s not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God’s wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don’t find it lying around on the surface. …The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along. -1 Corinthians 2:6-7; 10 MSG

If this has whet your appetite, read all of Colossians 3 and all of 1 Corinthians 2. Good luck stopping there. I had to force myself to not quote the whole thing here. 

“In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you.”-Isaiah 49:8 ESV

You speak like you’re in-between two lives: the old and the new. You refuse to enter the new because you’re still hanging on to the old. You think you can only enter the day with defeat because you’re still making yourself pay. Every hard thing that is thrown your way is viewed as a consequence to your sin.

You’re not going to move on from this place with your suitcase of truth only half packed. You can say all the right things, but you don’t believe a word of it.

You pull yourself up by the scruff of your neck and you make yourself go through the motions. You read that devotion, you listen to this podcast, you do that fast, you write those words. You do all of these things thinking that God will come and rescue you. You think He’ll restore what was before so that you can feel whole again. What if the end of an era is God’s answer to prayers you don’t even know how to pray yet? What if you have been rescued, but it doesn’t look like what you thought it would look like?

The rescue is past-tense. It’s waiting on you to have the revelation.

You can reject God by clinging more to your version of restoration than to your faith that God gets what He wants.

Does God get what He wants?

The only way you can move on to your new life is by believing that the consequences of your sin have a greater purpose. A purpose that has nothing to do with being a constant reminder of your sin.

What entity would want to constantly remind you of your sin?

What if God has you exactly where He wants you? Life is a journey and you are a pilgrim. You’re not at any destination forever. You are only where you are, and you’re only there for a moment. Discontentment blooms when you think you are forever paying for and suffering from your sins.

The faithless work the garden of Second Best.

They say: “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” -Isaiah 49:14 ESV

How can you know God and believe that you are a prisoner of your own Second Best? You are where you are for a reason. Reason can never be found by looking at your sin. There is no truth to be found in the damage of flesh and blood.

You have to look at everything as though God has a plan because God has a plan. It’s Jesus. You have to look at everything trying to find where it leads to Jesus. It’s your only compass. It’s the only way you’ll know what the truth is. He’s the Truth.

It’s all riddles until it’s not.

I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages, saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’ -Isaiah 49:8-9 ESV

God is cultivating your life. He is getting rid of the parts of you that keep you from being who you were called to be.

You were called to be something. You wouldn’t be here looking for Him if you weren’t.

He is positioning you in a posture that induces passion where there was once apathy. Sometimes the best way to induce passion is to insert a thorn. If you’re tugging at the thorn, then you are looking at this all wrong.

I know how bad it hurts.  I’ve been there. I’ve attended the funeral of my own potential. You’ll be in this spot until you can see God in it.

You’re a conduit.

When a pipe isn’t functioning, you dismantle it, flush it out, and rebuild it.

Are you dismantled?

There exists a consequence twist. It’s more than the suffering. It’s also the release. There are three consequences that will make your head spin. One, you can see more clearly. Number two, blind people avoid you. And, three, you have a new passion.

Do you understand this? Your life will be one that says “to the prisoners, ‘Come out’” and “to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’”

One of the consequences of your sin is the newborn passion for the failures. You now have an acute awareness of the difference between the voice of the flesh and the whisper of the Spirit. You know the difference between the light and the dark. Those who once had a voice in your life, the ones who would now torment you, are far from you.

Do you think that’s a coincidence?

“Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land—surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away.” -Isaiah 49:19 ESV

They think you are too far gone and they will not join you. They’re unable to handle the failure of others with patient grace and unending mercy. They are wrong. Why would you want them by you? God has positioned you, using your own consequences, to keep their lies from pinning you down with their doubt and holding you back from your purpose. “Those who swallowed you up” are “far away.”

Thank God for that.

What’s more? The twist that sends this whole thing spinning into reverent wonder is the fact that it’s because of your failure. You are removed from their influential doubt and enabled by grace to march into your purpose because they are too afraid of how dirty you got.

Because of your failure, you know how to find those who are buried.

Well played.

Everything will come together. It’ll all make sense at some point. Stop wishing your thorn away. Wear it like a crown.

“Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples, and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.” -Isaiah 49:22-23 ESV

His hand is poised, the signal is ready. Your children have been lifted, the march has begun. You will not be put to shame.

You can be the person they find.

Start looking for the reasons God has allowed you to fall in the first place. The answer is deeper than your free will. You’re starting to see them already.

Religious illusions have slipped. You can spot the fake now.

While you’re reeling from the loss of what you believed about yourself and God, there is so much more gain waiting to be found.

When you start looking for God’s sovereignty, you’ll find Him and it will blow your mind. You’re not near as powerful as you think you are.

That which has been found can serve to help that which is still lost.

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. -Revelation 2:2 ESV

When you first believed, the truth of the Gospel was fresh. It was easy to spot those who had no idea what they were talking about. It was like being lost and suddenly finding the way home. The embedded code, once a frustrating mystery, was now clicking and you never turned away because it was still speaking.

I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. -Revelation 2:3 ESV

But then others came along and started telling you that what was setting you free was not real. They said you were cherry picking your information and focusing only on what would give you life while ignoring what condemned you. They said you were out of balance and walking a thin line that teetered on heresy.

You began defending yourself and questioning everything just in case they were right. You backed down from the beatings and got caught up in the “better safe than sorry” doctrine. People pleasing got a little too important. It’s a hard road to travel and even harder with a target on your back. It feels like they’re all waiting for you to mess up, so you shrink to obscurity.

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. -Revelation 2:4 ESV

You have abandoned the love you had at first because people got in the way. You spoke out about grace and love, about Jesus and His finished work, but they opposed you and you backed down.

He’s calling you back to the front lines because this fight was never about being liked or approved. It’s about screaming the gift of Salvation through the incessant buzz of religion because there are people dying in their own skin. There are people who don’t know that they, too, can come to the cross.

It’s confusing and bizarre to see self-proclaimed believers guarding the cross of Christ as though it were a trophy for the worthy. It’s more confusing when they are the very people you thought you could trust.

You got sidetracked by the shiny facade of the spit-polished and veneered. You get more approval for looking cleaned up than you do for resting in the promise of justification and the gift of righteousness. Too many are calling out your flaws, making it harder for you to trust in your relationship with Jesus. It’s easier to trust in your relationship with them.

Who said this was going to be easy? Jesus was killed for the Message. What makes you different? They may not burn you at the stake, but they can make you wish you were if you care about what they think.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. -Revelation 2:5 ESV

Remember the mystery you were chasing before you started caring if you were approved. Repent: see the struggle as part of it, not evidence that you were crazy.

Come back or risk falling asleep like the others. Preachers can end up preaching about preaching. Writers can end up writing about writing. Artists stop creating and start talking about creating. You can get so caught up in what you’re doing that you abandon what you’re doing to focus more on the “what” and not on the “why”.

Your “first love” is the “why”.

If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. -Revelation 2:6 ESV

If you lose your light, then you’re just like everyone else who talks to hear themselves talk.

Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. -Revelation 2:6 ESV

The best I can understand about what this last verse refers to is that the term “Nicolaitans” refers to the hierarchy found within religion. I won’t say much about this because there are only two verses in the Bible that use the term. But, using the Greek meanings of the words, the essence is that people have a relationship with the church, but not with God. They believe what their religion tells them to believe without question. With this in mind, a hierarchy removes the need for a personal relationship with Jesus, risking the belief that salvation is granted to those who practice their religion correctly. This leaves a person vulnerable to believing a false doctrine. This is why God hates it.

It makes sense if you remember that God sent Jesus as a means to having a personal relationship with His people. If His people abandon their trust in Him for their trust in their religious leaders, they become exposed prey for the father of lies. He’s the accuser and the destroyer.

Repent: turn around. Go back to your first love. If your religious community is after Love, then you’ll all be there together anyway. You aren’t wrong if you abandon the hierarchy that watches over you with a critical eye. You’re clearly wrong if you abandon the truth that saved you in the first place.

Do you have a little fight left in you?

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’ -Revelation 2:7 ESV

Don’t be afraid. Put your shoes back on…

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” -John 14:1-7 ESV