I Want To Live

Religions are fantastical life killers.

The stuff of legend really.  

And complete and total enigmatic paradoxes to boot.

The very thing they all seem to be going for at their core, making sense out of our existence, is most often provided for in terms of simply surviving it...because meaning will come later.

For the most part, you name a religion, any religion, anywhere, believing in any god, or no god at all, with whatever outcome, and that is what it boils down to.  The question of what does this life really matter, is most often answered in some form of, it matters in getting us to the next.  That's it.  All will be revealed in the life to come.  ...just make sure you get to the next one.

The problem for the majority of human beings, and it is a real problem if you are one who has been influenced by any of our many world religions (here's a hint...you have), is that what we really want out of life, is to live.

I want to live.

I want to actually be alive.

I want to live a life that feels alive.

I want to be the kind of alive that actually sparks the desire to live real and alive lives in everyone else I come into contact with.  

So religion, I'm calling your bluff.  I'm not interested in simply surviving until the next, better existence comes along.  

...but I'm also not writing you off.  What you have become is not who you once were.  The walls you have built up, the moats you have dug deep, the blood on your hands and on your souls, and the lives that you hold locked deeply in your many and varied dungeons, are not who you once meant to be.  What you started out as was a way of making sense in the chaos.  Who you meant to be was a torch through the dark and cold spaces.  What you meant to establish was a place of refuge, of rest through the fog and storms.  

What you settled for was made up answers when you were at a loss for real ones.  What you settled for was insulation from this world rather than affecting it.  What you settled for was protecting your territories and safely shoring up your foundations rather than being a welcoming, embracing haven.  What you settled for was spilling the blood of those who opposed you rather than serving and feeding and caring and loving them.

...but that is not who you meant to be.  I do not even believe that that is who you really want to be.  I just don't know that you now know how to be anything else.

...but I want to live.  Because of this, I choose to follow the One who was raised above every religion, even the religions that claim to bare His name.  I will follow the One who claimed to know what life is really all about, the One who showed us all a new way to be fully alive, the One who proved that He was worth following when He stood up and walked out of His own grave on Easter morning.  No one else can claim this.  No one else has shown through many and convincing proofs that the only way to live, is to not be afraid of death.

So I will follow Him...stumbling, failing, sometimes rebelling, with all of my doubts, with all of my fears, with all of the baggage that you have laid on my back, the heavy burdens that I have so much difficulty shedding; I will follow Him...and I will learn to live.

I will also continue to engage with you in your many and varied forms.  I will look for that which you once meant to be.  I will dig for it, I will search for it, and when I find it I will hold it high in your midst and say, "See here!  This is what you were meant to be!  This is who you once sought to be!"  And I will show you that if one such as myself can be fully alive following after the One who is the giver of all life, then there is still much hope for you.

Because I don't want to be fully alive all on my own; I want to live in a fully alive world.  I am convinced this has already begun.

Wait, Who Are You Again?

I was reading in Exodus this morning, the passage about Moses and the burning bush.  Pretty interesting stuff.  Pretty fun story.  Also pretty much completely unbelievable.

Imagine with me the first Hebrews that Moses comes upon when he finally makes the journey back to Egypt.  He tells them his story, he tells them that God visited him in a bush that was on fire yet didn't burn up, he tells them that God has heard their cries and he has come to be their deliverer, and I imagine their response went something like this, "Wait, who are you again?"

The unbelievable part would not have been that God visited a man, history is full of stories of gods visiting mankind.  The unbelievable part would not have been this miraculous bush that was on fire but did not burn up, history is full of stories of all kinds of miraculous happenings.  The unbelievable part would not have been that God was sending a hero, a deliverer, history is full of stories of the gods choosing many different heros to do their bidding.

The unbelievable part would have been Moses.

Anyone who has grown up in church hears this story and just takes it for what it is.  We've been indoctrinated with the "facts" of this story in children's bible story books, flannel graph boards, Sunday school lessons and so on for so long that it's just a piece of bible history to get us to the really important stuff, the New Testament.

But let's think about a couple of points.

The Hebrews were not an established nation at this point.  They were a really large family.  They had moved to Egypt to escape a famine some 480 years prior, and had just never left.  For many of those years they had simply merged with Egyptian culture, it was only somewhat recently that the Pharaoh had begun to notice that they were multiplying like rabbits and started to grow concerned that they may take over, so he did the naturally expected thing, and enslaved them all.  When that didn't work, when that didn't slow down their procreation, he took the next logical step and started killing all of the male babies.  Which is where Moses' story first picks up.

He was hidden by his mother in a basket of reeds, another fantastic story, and was found by Pharaoh's wife.  She could not bare to end his infant life, and so adopted him as their own son, effectively making Moses a Hebrew born into slavery, adopted into Egyptian royalty.  We get from the rest of the story that he was given power and ruling authority, so we have no reason to imagine that he was anything less than a fully royal Egyptian prince.

Now we also read that Moses was nursed by his own natural mother until he was of the age to be weaned.  This is another great part of the story where we are introduced to his older sister Miriam.  Being nursed to a certain age by his Hebrew mother, I think it's completely ok to assume that she did her best to teach him of his family heritage, including their origin story beginning with their father Abraham and the God who claimed He would make his offspring, their people, into a great nation.

At this point, however, I think it would be wrong to assume that she was his greatest influence.  

Continuing on in the story we see that Moses grew into his forties in Pharaoh's household.  He grew to a position of authority and privilege.  He was every bit a son of the Pharaoh, a prince in Egypt.  

You don't maintain that position by siding with the slaves.  
You don't maintain that position by worshiping the slave God.  
You do maintain that position simply by being every bit an Egyptian.

Then the story shifts a bit.  Moses witnesses an injustice towards a Hebrew, and something is sparked in him.  He kills one of the Egyptian guards, one of his guards, and eventually this leads to him fleeing Egypt.  Where does he flee to?  To the wilderness, to the Midians where he marries the high priest of Midian's daughter.

The Midians were related to the Hebrews (same dad, different mom) but were believed to be worshipers of the Baals, who were a number of different pagan gods.

The story tells us that Moses lived in the wilderness for another forty years tending his father in law's flocks of sheep and goats.  By the time we get to the burning bush, Moses is in his eighties, and by his own admission he is old and weak and stutters in his speech and has difficulty communicating his thoughts.  

But you say, he must have had a strong faith right?  I mean all that time in the wilderness to reflect on his peoples plight, all that time to think of the injustice perpetrated by his adopted father, all that time to think of why he was completely justified in taking the life of that Egyptian guard who was beating his Hebrew brother, all that time to remember the stories told him by his real mom...

When we read of Moses' reaction when he sees the bush burning, he first bows low because he recognizes that he is in the presence of a deity, but then when he is told to return to Egypt again to free the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery, in essence he replies, "Wait, who are you again?"

I know You just said that You are the God of my fathers...but which one?

What's Your name again?

This is where the story becomes completely unbelievable.

God has just chosen the single most incompetent human being in existence to free His people and establish them as their own unique nation, completing the promise He made to Abraham almost 500 years earlier...

Not only is this guy in his eighties, old, tired, weak; but he can't even get a sentence out without stuttering all over the place; he's spent forty years in the desert with sheep and goats and completely removed from civilization; he doesn't recognize which god he's speaking to; and to top it all off, he doesn't want the job!  He doesn't care if the Hebrews are enslaved.  He's terrified to go back because he knows there is a strong likelihood that he will be imprisoned or even worse, killed!  

This is why this story is completely unbelievable, Moses is no hero.

...but this story is not about who Moses is, this story is very much about who God is and who He intends for Moses to become.

Two things then that are very basic takeaways for me in this story, obviously there are untold lessons that can be gleaned, but at the base there are two things I walk away with.

God can do anything He wants to with whomever He desires.  Me.  You.  Screwed up, chewed up, spit out, dead faith, don't know up from down, right from wrong, pagan, burned out, exhausted, unsure, scared, weak, incompetent, heretic, guilty, sinner...none of these labels concern God in the least when He is ready to act.

Second, how many Moses' are out there right now?  How many mouthpieces of the God of the universe are out there right now that I would ask, "Wait, who are you again?"  

Might there be a Moses living under a bridge?
Might there be a Moses who has a different belief system than me?
Might there be a Moses who is of diminished physical or mental capability?
Might there be a Moses from a different religious structure?
Might there be a Moses who doesn't know they are a Moses?
Might there be a Moses from a different political affiliation?
Might there be a Moses who rubs me the wrong way?
Might there be a Moses in my own home, one of my own children, or a close friend, or a co-worker, or an acquaintance?

I want to become the kind of person who believes that God can do anything He wants to with whomever He desires...even me...even you.

I want to become the kind of person who can recognize the words of the great I AM no matter the mouthpiece.

I want to become the kind of person who can respond to the whisper of the Almighty, "Wait...I know that voice."

Prodigal

I know who I am.
You may know me too.
I am of a royal blood line.
I am a prince, a child of power, the son of the King.
And I am a prodigal.

I have been loved,
I have known love,
I have lived in the very presence of love incarnate.
Yet, I am a prodigal.

I know my Father,
I speak of Him often,
yet, I have held Him at arm's length.
I am a prodigal.

He has given me everything;
I have only wanted more.
He has blessed me beyond measure;
still, I have wanted more.
He has loved me in spite of the pain I have caused;
I continue to want only more.
I am a prodigal.

I am impatient.
I am unsatisfied.
I am restless.
I am angry.
I am a prodigal.

I know I am loved;
I do not live as if this is true.
I know I am cared for;
I do not live as if this is true.
I know I am a son of the King of kings;
I do not live as if this is true.
I am a prodigal.

I am in debt to debtors.
I am lonely in the crowd.
I am unhealthy in a world of fitness.
My mind is cloudy,
my judgement weak.
I am filthy and clothed in rags.
I am a prodigal.

I know that my Father longs for my return.
I know that He would greet me with open arms.
I know that He would sprint down the drive to meet me at the road.
I am afraid to return.
I am a prodigal.

I am not afraid of my Father,
I am ashamed to look in His eyes.
I do not worry that He may reject me,
His embrace would painfully crush my hardened heart.
I have no concern that He may no longer love me,
hatred for myself leaves only a desire for pain, not mercy.
I am a prodigal.

I am filled with pride, 
a false sense of humbleness.
I will crawl home,
though it is not required.
I will bloody my knees,
though He will heal them with a touch.
It is all I can muster.
It will be enough.
He will lift me up.
He will heal my soul,
so that I may no longer be prodigal.

Burning Through Grace (part 2)

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." - Paul

"...in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong." - Paul

"And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work." - Paul

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday and we were talking about why we are here, and how God has created everything and even the way everything works.  And then we were talking about how He has, for some reason, given us a will and the ability to think and choose our own courses in life, and ultimately whether or not we even have anything at all to do with Him.  We both came to pretty much the same conclusion; if it were anyone other than God who came up with a system like that...you would have to be inclined to encourage them to go back to the drawing board.  After all, if my power were limitless, I could probably come up with a creative way of changing minds to do what I want, and in such a way that they wouldn't even realize that their mind have been tampered with at all...

...which of course is why I can't be trusted with limitless power.

So why this way then?  Why would God set things up the way that He did?  With all of His wisdom and insight and omniscience, why give us the reigns?  Why allow us the ability, and yes even the power, to make such colossal wrecks of our lives and the world all around us?  Especially when often times the choices and decisions I have the ability to make have the power to direct so much pain at others in my immediate vicinity.  I'll bet I'm not the only one who has ever wondered as to whether or not He has really thought this one all the way through...

We see people deal with this wondering in different kinds of ways:

• Obviously, there is no god.  How can there be with a system like this?  We are completely on our own.
• Maybe there is a god out there somewhere, but it's quite obvious that he or she or it has nothing, and wants nothing to do with us.
• For sure there is a god out there, probably lots of them, and we are nothing more than chess pieces to play with.
• Absolutely God is there, and here, and everywhere!  He has laid out His demands, and there is literal hell to pay for anyone who does not fall in line specifically and directly in this way (insert very specific religious belief here...).
• I'm sure God is out there...I'm just not convinced that He knows that I am right here...

After pin-balling all around this list during my life, I've come to two realizations as to why God has set things into motion in the way in which He has:

• Relationship
• Partnership

Look at these examples that we are given.

In the creation story we are told that God chose to create us in His image, in His likeness...only the text seems to quote God in the plural saying, "Let us create man in our own image, in our likeness."  Then the text goes on to say that God did just that, creating them male and female.  Later the text says that together "the two shall become one".  It's not a big leap to see what is being implied here, the one-ness, the being in His plural image, is in relationship.  The story is telling us that our beginning is formed in relationship and for relationship, much like my beginning 38 years ago was formed in the relationship of my mother and father out of their desire for relationship with each other, and ultimately their relationship with me.  And now I have carried this forward with my wife and two daughters.  The story then goes on immediately to give us mission in life, to partner with Him in caring for everything that He has just created.  Just as a family business might be handed from generation to generation, caring for each other and the world that He has created is the divine family business.

In another example we see God form a special relationship with Abraham and promise him offspring that will form an entirely new nation in the world.  God chooses to specifically bless Abraham through this relationship, and then tells Abraham that He wants him to partner with Him in being His conduit of blessing to the entire world.

Roughly 2,000 years later we see Jesus here on earth form a special, loving relationship with a very small group of disciples.  At the end of that period of time, He gives them the directive to partner with Him in continuing His work, "...as I have loved you, so you are to love each other...", and "...now you make your own disciples, teaching them all that I have taught you...".

In II Corinthians 5, Paul tells us that by the love of Christ and the work that He has done on our behalf, our relationship with God has been completely reconciled.  There is nothing still standing between us, all has been made new and set right.  Because of this, Paul tells us that we are to partner with God Himself, as His ambassadors, being ministers of God's reconciliation with all of mankind.

These are just a few of the many examples all through the bible.  God's desire for relationship and partnership with the ones He created, His children.

So what does any of this have to do with grace??

When we understand what it is that God has been looking for in us, then we begin to get a clear picture of how we like sheep have strayed from the Shepherd's care.  Not only have we struggled through, and sometimes outright rejected His many offers of relationship; but when we do acknowledge Him, we so many times find ourselves still carrying our own heavy burdens, we still struggle with trying to please Him and earn His favor, we still try to function in our own strength, or even just go about life as usual with no thought of seeing His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in the heavens.

What does this have to do with grace?  Grace is God's lovingkindness, His goodness, His favor which is poured out on us and fills us up to overflowing to actually live the good life of relationship and partnership that He has planned for us.  It is His ability to live our lives as He desires them to be lived.  It is His power to not have our lives dictated by the circumstances that pound from every side like gale force winds.  In the words of my pastor, grace is the fuel that we are intended to consume in order to live His life of goodness just like an 18 wheeler consumes diesel climbing a long, steep grade.

This grace, this favor, this divine ability to accomplish in us what we cannot accomplish on our own, is simply accessed by choosing to stop looking to others and inward for strength and ability and answers, and to begin to find our confidence for living in Him.  It's His life that He is offering to us after all, He is the author of it and it simply cannot be found anywhere else.  

This is how Jesus put it, "Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."  

So what then does this grace look like in our lives?  What is this fruit?  What is this something that we can only do if we are abiding in Him?  I'll look at that next time.

Burning Through Grace (part 1)

Years ago when I was in high school, I went to a youth conference with my church youth group.  The speaker was talking about God's free gift of salvation and how all we had to do was to accept it.  He talked about how we all deserved hell and eternal punishment because we have offended God.  He talked about when we receive God's free gift of salvation, that is His grace, and when we don't go to hell for eternity, that is His mercy.  The speaker explained that mercy and grace are similar, but different.  He explained that mercy is not getting the bad that I do deserve and grace is getting the good that I do not deserve.

That worked for me for a while.

Who wouldn't be very grateful that they are not getting the hell that they really deserve?  And I was very gratefully looking forward to the heaven that I did not deserve.  

In response, I began to devote myself to studying out how exactly this mercy and grace comes about.  I studied who does and who does not receive this mercy and grace and why.  I studied how GOD and GOD alone determines who receives His mercy and grace not taking into account anything I have done.  I learned how everything in the bible leads us to the point of Jesus giving His life on the cross and this is where God's perfect demand for justice and His desire for grace and mercy met, and this is proof of His divine love.  All of this kept me very busy and I filled many notebooks up with the notes I was accumulating on my studies...until I began seeing, and I mean really seeing passages like this:

• You are the light of the world...let your light shine so brightly before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in the heavens. (Matt. 5)
• Love your enemies...do good to those who hate you... (Matt. 5)
• ...a good tree bears good fruit... (Matt. 7)
• A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things...(Matt. 12)
• ...the hour is coming when those who have died and are in the grave will hear His voice and they will come out of their graves; those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (Jn. 5)
• This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (Jn. 15)
• ...Come...inherit the kingdom prepared for you...for when I was hungry, you fed me; when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, when I was a stranger, you took me in; when I was naked, you gave me clothes; when I was sick, you cared for me; when I was imprisoned, you visited me. (Matt. 25)
• Therefore, make disciples...teaching them to do all that I have commanded you to do... (Matt. 28)

Do you ever have those times when a light bulb clicks on and you become aware of something you've never been aware of before, and suddenly you begin to see that idea everywhere?  This was one of those times for me.  This is when another thought began to form in my thinking...maybe, just maybe, Jesus had something more for us than not getting the hell I do deserve and getting the heaven that I do not deserve...

Now, the very next thing my mind did was begin to fight this new thought.  This flew in the face of everything that I had been raised to believe through all my years of christian schooling, family devotionals, Sunday school, bible studies, and so on.  I had been raised to believe that grace is a free gift, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to earn it, therefore trying to earn it by doing good nullifies it.

...but I couldn't stop seeing Jesus and then the rest of the New Testament, and then the Old Testament too, talking about what we do with the lives that we have been granted...

If I'm honest, it was a bit of a scary time in my faith.  I knew things were changing in my thinking, I couldn't help it.  

I remember one time in particular when I was reading a book by an author that I was supposed to reject (I was reading the book to have appropriate ammunition to combat his thinking were anyone in our church to approach me about it), and I got up from my living room chair, stormed into the bedroom where Jess was making our bed, threw the book down and exclaimed, "I can't keep reading this!"  She calmly asked me why, and shaken to my core I replied, "Because I can't find what's wrong with it..."  

I knew at that moment that my faith was heading in a new direction, and if I were to halt that shift, I would have to outright reject these new thoughts and dismiss the words of Jesus in order to settle back into my old and comfortable and safe way of thinking again.

This is exactly what Jesus was and continues to be about though, right?  He is about taking us in entirely new directions from the safe paths that we have been plodding along on.  He is about challenging our thinking by opening our eyes and whispers of new ideas into our ears.  He was and is never ok with allowing us to continue down well beaten trails of comfortable and safe movements.  He never offers us "the kool-aid".  If there is a better way to think about He and the  Father and the Spirit and their desire for us to live their eternal kind of life, then He will relentlessly pursue us until we have to deal with that new kind of thought.

This is exactly where I found myself, do I hang on to the comfortable way of looking at grace as a gift that is given to me to avoid hell and my ticket into heaven, or is there something, and possibly much to be done right here and right now?  

This is when another new thought began to form, what if it's both?

What if it really is about escaping hell, what if it really is about life with Them in heaven...only what if that begins right now, and this...this is exactly what grace is for?

Thankful

Over the past ten years we have had the great privilege of being a part of another family's Thanksgiving day tradition, a family that has become very much like family to us as well as to the others who have attended.  In the last ten years we have only missed two Thanksgivings with this family, one of those was today.  In missing, however, we were privileged to join another family's Thanksgiving day tradition, another family who very much like the first, is like family to us.

Traditions run differently between different households, but one thing is very much the same, this is a day to give thanks by setting aside everything else and just focusing on what is good.  Of course, every Thanksgiving I have thoughts of wouldn't it be better to live every day like this, but today truly is a uniquely special day.  

So right now, in the spirit of thankfulness, I would like to share some things that I am thankful for.

I am thankful for my wife of almost 19 years.  We merged our life paths together very young, and at just the right time.  From that day on, our journey has been one adventure after another; God leading us, and sometimes even catching us as we have stumbled at times from the path that He has so wonderfully set before us.  We have learned to lean on each other through thick and through thin, and there has been plenty of both.  She is my partner, my love, and every bit my friend.  She is a blessing from God.

I am thankful for my two daughters.  We thought there would be many more, but God knew to grace us with these two wonderfully gifted and talented and beautiful young ladies.  They are a joy and a delight (when they aren't fighting!) and I love that I get to be a father to them.  I have much hope for them as they are continuing ever more independently on their own journeys of discovering who their Heavenly Father is and what this life of His is really all about.

I am thankful that I have had another year with my mother.  I am grateful that God has used this time to heal even more wounds and give us the relationship that I have always craved, but didn't always know how to give in return.

I am thankful for a father who dared to show me what it was to be a true man.  I am grateful that he did not give up on us and chose instead to become the man that I love and respect so much today.  

I am thankful for a loving little sister who has chosen to look past the mental and even some physical scars that a mean big brother can inflict.  I love the relationship I have with my lil-sis and niece.

I am thankful for a mother-in-law who is also my mother.  God has specially gifted and equipped her through so much adversity and pain.  She is amazing proof of what God can do with one who chooses Him above everything else in life.

I am thankful for my friends, friends who are more than acquaintances, friends who are like brothers and sisters to me.  You have stood with us, you have stood behind us in support, and you have gone ahead of us to lead when we were weak.  Each of you are blessings beyond words.

I am thankful for our pastors, Brian and Jeanine.  You are friends, family, spiritual leaders, you have discipled us, you have loved us, and you have taught us more than we can even remember.

I am thankful that God's mercies are new every morning.  I am thankful that He is faithful even when I am not.  I am thankful that God is not the God I once thought Him to be, but He was kind enough to challenge my thinking to begin to recognize Him for the loving Father that He truly is.  I am thankful that He continues to daily pour out His measures of grace that I might continue to follow Him even more into the abundant life that He has planned for me since the beginning.  I am thankful that He loves me.  I am thankful that He even likes me.

I am thankful that I am continuing to learn to be thankful in spite of my wildly fluctuating circumstances, emotions, fears, and feelings.  I am thankful that I look a little more like Him today than I did yesterday.  He is good.

Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable; if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things.  Philippians 4:8

Plopping In Hover Chairs

Let's just say that we're sitting here together today having coffee when the conversation begins to turn to something that I have been working on lately and excitedly I begin to tell you about my new invention, the hover chair!

Sounds amazing, doesn't it!  

Still, you remain skeptical, as you should; all of the chairs that you know of have legs firmly planted on the ground.  I begin to bore you with scientific details of gravitational pull and magnetic forces, bore you with engineering specs and diagrams (yes, if you know me at all, you have to do quite a bit of imagining at this point).  I do begin to peak your interest a bit, however, when I start to explain how you will never feel more comfortable in a chair, more supported, more secure, more in correct bodily alignment, than in the hover chair.  Can it be?  A chair that finally doesn't hurt that achy back you have been living with all this time?  Finally I go into my back room and bring it out, the hover chair!

It's amazing!  Here is an actual chair, hovering above the floor.  You get up out of your "chair from the past" with its "legs" and walk over to examine more closely.  You get down on your hands and knees and look underneath.  You move your arm back and forth, under and around and over the top of the hover chair; you find no hidden strings or attachments of any kind, and yet there it is, just hovering.  

I invite you to try it out; "go ahead, sit in it."  

Visions of walking in the front door after a long day at work or school, dropping your things by the door and plopping down into your favorite chair come to mind.  It hits you now that not once have you ever thought about that chair holding you up, it just always has, but this is different, this is new.

You may not be able to plop your full weight down in the hover chair without thinking about it, but you do push on it.  You start with one finger, you test the chair's ability to stand up under just a couple of pounds of downward pressure.  Then you try your whole hand, so far so good.  You lean on the chair, still it doesn't budge.  Now for the commitment.  You stand beside the chair and ever so slightly shift your balance towards it.  If anything goes wrong, you will still be able to catch yourself at this point.  You slowly begin to bend lower until, contact.  You are now in that very awkward and thigh burning position of a partial squat.  You won't be able to hold it for long, but you can still recover if everything goes crashing to the ground.  First it's just contact, then one cheek is solidly on the chair, your weight is beginning to shift past the point of no return; if this is a prank, you won't be able to save yourself now, and...nothing.  The chair is holding you.  It works!  It's actually quite comfortable.  Of course your muscles are still tense, you're ready to spring forward if anything gives way, but it's holding.  Now you begin to shift your weight back and forth, you bounce up and down, everything is good.  The hover chair works!

I offer to let you take it home with you, try it out for a while, see if you like it.

You get the hover chair home and you can't help but show it to your family and neighbors and friends.  They come and see it for themselves, test it out, slowly sit in it.  It's the talk of the neighborhood.

Over time you begin to notice that the anxious feeling, the tense muscles, the little surge of adrenalin that you feel every time you sit in the hover chair is beginning to dissipate.  You are beginning to trust that the hover chair is actually able to do what I claimed that it would.  You are also beginning to receive comments about how you seem to have a little more spring in your step; you look like you have more energy; you seem to be standing straighter, taller even.

One day, you arrive home after a particularly grueling time at work or school, you drop your things by the door, you plop down into the hover chair, you kick your feet up...wait a second...you realize you didn't even think about it this time!  No tight muscles, no surge of adrenaline, no thought whatsoever as to whether or not the hover chair would actually hold you, you just plopped down!  When did this shift happen?  What made you stop thinking about it?  When did you decide to stop wondering if the hover chair would actually hold?

When was your skepticism replaced by faith that the chair would actually do what I claimed that it would?

Who knows?  The facts are:

1. I claimed the chair would hold under you.
2. You chose to test out that claim to the best of your ability, and a little more so every day.
3. The chair did not once ever fail you.
4. Now you have developed a new pattern in life of just plopping into the hover chair without even thinking about it.

This is how faith works.

If hope is anticipating the future with joyful expectancy, then faith is living today as if what I claim to be true about the future actually is in fact true.  

This living by faith, this living today as if my claim of a good future is actually true may well happen slowly over time, a bit more every day.  This living by faith may, and actually most likely will, come with placing a finger on it to see if it will hold up...then one cheek...still with some muscle tension...still with a slight surge of adrenaline.  Over time as I begin to exercise that faith, as I begin to put it into practice and His claims hold up under weight, then I will begin to think about the process less and less and it will begin to become a fact in my life.  He can be trusted.  He will not allow me to fall.  He will in fact hold me.

It has to begin somewhere though.  It must begin with some effort on my part.  It must begin with me choosing the hover chair over the old chair.  It must begin with repentance, a rethinking of everything.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1

Faith is not blind.  Faith is not a leap off the edge into nothingness.  Faith is not a step in the dark.  Faith is having assurance and conviction that He will in fact do what He claims He will do.  Faith is not that there will be sure footing, faith is that He will hold me up even when the sure footing is gone.  Faith is not that I will be able to see the outcome, faith is that He will lead me to the best of all outcomes.  Faith is not that all of my problems and pains and difficulties will be resolved like a Disney fairytale, faith is that He will use troubles of all kinds to develop in me the character to handle the worst that life can offer and still have joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self control and gentleness and faithfulness and love and love and love...

Faith is where the rubber meets the road.  Faith is dirt under our fingernails.  Faith is sore muscles.  Faith is daily crucifying my TV and magazines and self help gurus with all of their velvety advertisements and vague promises of salvation found in money and toys and retirement packages and vacations and...and...and...

Faith is having the hope that God does in fact have a plan for all of His good creation and I want to live today joining with Him in His work to bring it about.  I don't just pray "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in the heavens" but I actually order my day to be a part of that happening in the very space that I occupy.

This is why James can claim that "faith without works is dead." (James 2)  Faith is simply the meat, the substance of hope.  If your claims of hope do not change the very course of your day; how you look at your circumstances, how you treat those around you, how you order your finances, how you do your business; then you don't have faith, you are simply posturing.  

Jesus called us to something more wonderful and more grand than we have settled for in most of our religions today.  He called us to be a part of something new and yet old.  He called us to join with Him in His Kingdom movement.  He called us to repent, to rethink our whole approach to our lives.  He called us to lay down our lives, to join Him on our own crosses as we crucify all of our wrong thinking and selfishness and self preservation and self-centered desires for something bold and powerful and new.  His promise, His guarantee by leading the way Himself on His own cross, is a new life.  A life beyond compare with these shallow shadows of lives that we so desperately cling to now.  He calls us to give up our chairs with legs for hover chairs that redefine "the way things should be".  He calls us to embrace a new normal.  He calls us to embrace a new reality.  He calls us to embrace that which is unknown that we might become a part of making it well known. 

This is faith, it's plopping in the hover chair and realizing that you didn't even think about it this time.  You weren't able to do it at first, but you were willing to try, and He was very ok with that effort.  After all, He is the one that gave you the strength to try in the first place...and that is grace.

We'll talk about that next...