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...

A Picture Of Love

I saw this image today.  I couldn't help but think of Jesus.  

Isn't this the goal, to look like Him?

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

"Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight seconds without air, but only for one second without hope."

-James Matthew Barrie

 

I first heard this quote several years ago and I immediately loved it.  It's similar to the prophet Jeremiah's statement, "Without hope, the people perish."  There are songs of hope, stories of hope, reports of hope; hope is something that we humans seem to long for deep in our souls.  Hope pulls us from dark places, it gives us light at the end of long tunnels.

 

...but what is hope?

 

How many times have you heard "hope" in the following kinds of contexts:

• We just bought a new house, I hope the market starts to turn around now.
• We just took our car in again!  I hope they finally figure it out this time!
• I hope (insert sports team here) can hold it together this season.
• We're hoping the biopsy results come back negative.

When using the word "hope" like this, you could easily exchange it with "wish".

• I "wish" the market would start to turn around...
• I "wish" they would just figure out what's wrong with my car...
• I "wish" (insert sports team here) would hold it together...
• We're really "wishing" the biopsy will be negative...

...because really, you could follow every one of these statements with "...but I don't know if that will be the case or not."

 

I think we've lost something in the word "hope" when we have reduced it to a wish.  James Matthew Barrie's quote just doesn't have the same punch when you exchange "hope" with "wish"...

 

...so what is hope then?

 

I think the best definition I have heard yet is from my pastor, "Hope is to look forward with joyful anticipation to what is yet to come."  To hope, is to know, not wish, but know that something is going to happen, and that something is good and desirable.  Hope is something of substance, it is something that can be held, clung to even, sometimes desperately so.  It is to know that whatever my circumstances are right now, there is something good coming.  There is relief.  There is a light at the end of the dark and difficult tunnel. 

 

Hope is not a bet, it is the "sure thing". 

 

Hope overcomes the darkness.

 

Hope conquerors depression and anxiety and pain.

 

Hope is the anchor in the raging storm.

 

Hope is a "thing", not a thought, not an emotion, not a feeling.

 

You own hope.  You get to choose whether it is put away in a locked box of despair, or pulled out into the daylight and put to work.  You get to choose where your hope is placed.  You get to choose whether you use your hope as a wish in the great unknown, or as the sure thing that it is intended to be to light your path and give you direction when the way is unsure.

 

This is only possible though, if you place your hope carefully.

 

Think about it, what can be known?  What can be looked forward to with certainty...with joyful anticipation?

 

Your investments?

 

Your job?

 

Your retirement?

 

Your health?

 

Your relationships?

 

Your life?

 

What becomes evident fairly quickly is that "sure things" are hard to come by...

 

At the end of Jesus' time here physically among us, He is talking with His disciples and giving them some last thoughts before He returns to the Father.  In the course of the conversation He lays out some difficult expectations.  He tells them that if they stay true to what He has taught them, things will be difficult.  They will have trouble.  They will have conflict.  They may even face death directly because of Him.  Where is the hope here?  Why would anyone willingly choose that life?

 

Jesus' answer comes in a statement, "Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in Me."  Believe...trust...place your confidence in...  Do not let your hearts be troubled, place your hope in God and in Me. 

 

He is the sure thing.  God is the sure thing.  The only sure thing. 

 

He is from everlasting to everlasting.  He is the same yesterday today and forever.  He has no beginning and He has no end.  He was, and He is, and He is still yet to come.  He has brought all things into existence with a spoken word.  He is the starbreather, the life giver, and the One who holds all things together even as I am writing this. 

 

He is the only One who can handle the unique circumstances of your life.  He is the giver and sustainer of your life whether you know it or not.  He is the only One who can be trusted with your life...and He loves you.

 

So what hope does He bring?  What light does He shine at the end of your tunnel?

 

The hope that He and He alone can offer is that He isn't afraid or intimidated by your difficult and painful and troubling circumstances; He can handle them.  He can do better than handle them, He promises to turn them into something wonderful and beautiful and good...if you let Him.  Better yet, He promises to teach you to not to be troubled in this life, to not be overwhelmed, to not be crushed, to not be undone; He promises to teach you and develop in you the character necessary to face whatever may come in life with hope, with joyful anticipation of a good future.

 

...and what is the good future that He promises to bring about?

 

He promises justice, and righteousness, and peace, and joy, and unending good life, and purpose, and mission, and love. 

 

He doesn't tell us exactly what that will look like, I think in part because the best we can fathom will actually pale in comparison to what He actually has in mind.  I think we can expect a long and eternal future of being amazed at how much better it is than we could have ever imagined.

 

...but that is tomorrow, that is the joyful anticipation of what is yet to come, what about today? 

 

Today is Faith, today is the substance of my life formed by Whom I have chosen to place my hope.  Faith is how I choose to face today because of the future that I am looking forward to with great joy.

 

Faith is how I move toward the light.  More on that next time...

 

Hope, Faith, Love, Grace...

"Things have to get better someday though...right?"

In my last couple of blog posts I have been focusing on shifts in our thinking that need to take place now.  I've raised the questions:

• Can God be trusted?
• Can life be good outside of our present circumstances?
• Is Jesus' message really about looking forward to heaven when we die?

In response, I've heard back from a few who have said, yes...but...we do have something better to look forward to! ...right? 

So why have I taken this approach?  Why focus on the right now and not as much on the what is to come?  Do I, myself, look forward to heaven?  Am I concerned with all of our eternal destinies?  The quick answer is yes, the more involved answer is...well, it's more involved.

I was raised my entire life in a particular faith tradition.  Most of us have been raised in a particular faith tradition.  Those traditions may, and quite likely are, different and similar in many aspects, but we all have them from no or little focus on faith, to heavy adherence to a particular practice.

My particular faith tradition talked much about the love of God being manifested in Jesus coming to earth to die on a cross for our, and more specifically my own, sins, and if I believe that to be true and accept His free gift of salvation, I will go to be with Him when I die and I won't have to burn in the eternal torment of hell, even though that is very much what I deserve because of my wrong actions in this life.  I actually think this sums up the majority of the christian traditions, at least in the western world today.  Of course there are different focuses and specifics of how in fact this comes to be, but that is a good, but yes general, summation.

The affect that this thinking about faith and God and religion in general had on me, was to focus my attention on myself.  How do I manage the problem of sin, i.e. bad actions, in my life?  How do I make sure that I am living a life that is pleasing to God so that He won't have reason to reject me from His heaven when I die?  Does it matter if I live a life that is pleasing to God, because ultimately it comes down to His free gift of salvation that is accessed through a "sinner's prayer"?  How do I make it through the drudgery and even pain of this life while waiting for death so that I can be with Him in Heaven?  

Ultimately, my philosophy became "knowledge is power".  Power to keep my sins in check.  Power to know that I am on the correct path to heaven.  Power to convince others of their wrong track mindset so that they can get on the true path to heaven.  Power to push through the drudgery and pain of life as I wait for heaven when I die.  What I failed to recognize is the old adage "power corrupts", and my faith disintegrated into the "science" of what can be studied in the text of scripture, and my life disintegrated into the pride of being able to overcome others thoughts and arguments, both within and without the church, on the particulars of how one gets to heaven when they die. 

Sounds like fun right?  ...ask my wife about it sometime.

One day, I was shown a picture of this approach to faith and life though.  By God's mercy, it did not look appealing to me, in fact I was appalled by it.  I remember going home that day and telling Jess that if this is where I am headed, something is really broken with my thinking.  As I began to take inventory of my life, as I began to look at my relationships, as I began to look at my sin management; something became very clear, it's just not working.  Something is wrong.  Something has been wrong for a very long time.  I've missed something.

That day began my true repentance.  As I've written before, not repentance in the form of falling on my knees and beating my chest or whipping my back while crying out for forgiveness, although I felt like that at times, but repentance as Jesus called for in His very first public message, it's time to rethink everything.

The result today of beginning that journey roughly eight years ago, and might I add is certainly nowhere near finished, is recognizing the message of Jesus as being one of hope and mission for today while looking forward to that same hope and mission continuing forward in ever increasing intensity and goodness for all of eternity.  Another way of saying it is that I have learned to desire to be with God and an active part of what He is doing today, while trusting Him for an ever increasingly better tomorrow...forever.

My faith tradition growing up seemed to want to focus more on the better tomorrow while hanging on to get through today.  It made for a dreary life.  I think most christian faith traditions today are guilty of the same approach.  I prefer to discuss His hope for today right now, and trust that God has our eternal destiny well under hand.

...that being said, there is a glorious hope for tomorrow that fuels our hope for today...

In the next couple of weeks I want to spend some time talking about our hope for tomorrow and how it really should radically shape our hope and actions for today.

So, for the next few weeks I will focus on Hope, Faith, Love, and Grace.  

Join me?

Sometimes Life Just Sucks

Sometimes life just sucks.

In the past two weeks:

• After getting off of work one night my wife and I realized someone had decided to kick in the doors of both of our vehicles, and my best friends brand new car too...
• While leaving the mall parking lot, my wife accidentally backed into a concrete barricade and smashed up the back corner of my Expedition...
• I love to roast my own coffee, and while roasting, I completely ignored the directions and melted down my roaster...it was a big flaming, burning plastic-y mess...
• My mom, who is in advancing stages of liver failure, had a significant bleeding issue and was rushed by life flight to an ICU ward two hours from her home and seven from mine...
• While at work, I painfully rolled my ankle not once, but three times in one day at work...

Sometimes, life just sucks...

In the past couple of months I have heard of:

• A number of couples in which one spouse has just decided that they are done and they want someone else...
• A young girl who ran away from home with an arguably shady and older man, and now is in foster care away from her parents...
• A family who just had the funeral for their 18 year old daughter who was taken from them by a drunk driver...
• A lady who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer...
• A church youth worker who has made significant advances on at least two girls in the youth group he was volunteering in...

Sometimes...life...just...sucks...

In John 10, Jesus says that He came those that follow Him might have life in abundance.

In the book of Job, we are told of a man named Job.  He was good.  He loved God, he did right by others, he followed God's law, he was an upright man.  Disturbingly we read how the adversary, the accuser (directly translated in English as Satan) comes before God, and God, for some untold reason, sends him to Job to test him.  What happens next is horrific; Job loses everything.  Now, when I say everything, I mean everything.  If you can think of anything that Job had before:

• Family
• Children
• Livestock
• Land
• Wealth
• Homes
• Wife
• Health
• Friends
• The shirt on his back...

...he lost it.  He lost it all!  So what is the conclusion of all of this in the book of Job?  Basically it is summed up that God can do whatever He likes, and who are we to question Him.

Seriously?

Is this the abundant life that Jesus was talking about?  I mean it's one thing to say God is God.  He is all powerful and all knowing and all everything and He really can do whatever He likes and we have no right whatsoever to question Him...that I get, but it's another thing altogether to call that abundant life, right?

Unless, of course, there's more to it than me being comfortable and feeling taken care of.

Like I've said before, Jesus' message was about so much more than where I end up when I die, Jesus' message had everything to do with who I am becoming in Him.  Another way to say that might be to say, God is far more concerned with my character than my comfort, and He will go to unimaginable lengths to ensure me every opportunity to have my character shaped into His...no matter how painful it may be...He loves me enough to let it hurt.

Every good parent knows this pain with their own children, if I try and save my daughters from all pain and discomfort and disease and relational drama in life, I will only end up destroying them.  They will become shallow and narcissistic and unempathetic and miserable.

Every good parent also knows that to allow drama and conflict and pain in the life of their child and choose not to shield them from all of it, is not the same as causing that same drama and conflict and pain.  It is simply a matter of choosing not to rescue our children from every negative thing in life...and so it goes with God.  Our Father, whom Jesus spent much time and energy trying to get us to see in the right light, is not the author of any kind of evil; the world manufactures plenty of that on its own.  Our Father simply chooses not to always shield us from the broken world that we ourselves have all to readily partaken in too many times.

Might it be then, that Jesus' abundant life has far less to do with the ordering and fixing of our circumstances, and everything to do with developing within us the character to handle absolutely any kind of circumstance?

What then is that character?  

• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Patience
• Kindness
• Goodness
• Faithfulness
• Gentleness
• Self-Control

...otherwise known as the Fruit of the Spirit.  

This then is what it comes down to, would you rather have a genie-god who takes care of all of your problems in life, or would you rather follow Jesus into a life of reformed character where you can learn to have the Fruit of the Spirit in abundance no matter your circumstances?

Maybe then, life wouldn't have to suck after all...

Clearing Something Up

I feel the need to state something bluntly; whether or not you go to heaven when you die is not the point.

It's not what Jesus talked about.  His good news, the gospel, is not about how to get into heaven when you die.  It's not what those who wrote the various books of the bible talked about.  It simply is not the point.

For some reason, it is what many "christians" and "churches" have tried to make the point.  It's the infamous alter call, "If you were to die tonight, where would you go?"  Making getting to heaven and avoiding hell the point, is solely responsible for the salvation=free gift mentality that I wrote about in my last blog.  It is also responsible for the 77% of americans who claim to be christians (according to a December 2012 Gallup poll) while living in a decidedly un-christian nation.

How does that happen anyway?  How do so many claim to of the way of Jesus, and have the result be a nation that is marked by greed, and excess, and hate, and bigotry, and abuses of all varieties, and the list goes on?

In the 1960's, the number of americans claiming christianity was at 90%.  That's a fairly steep drop.  What is interesting is that of that nearly 40 million people, most of those have not abandoned religion in general, but instead have embraced the idea that all roads lead to heaven and it is shallow and small minded to claim that Jesus is the only way.

So let me state again, Jesus' point was never about how to get to heaven when you die.

But didn't Jesus say, "I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father accept through me."  

Yes, but notice what He did not say, "...No one gets into heaven accept through me."

When getting into heaven becomes the point, then I begin to look for the least exhaustive means of entry, the minimum requirement.  Jesus came to offer something different.  Jesus came to offer life; a certain kind of life that only the Father has to offer.  Jesus' good news is that God is eager to rescue all of humankind into this new kind of life.  Right now.  As we are.  Today.

So for Jesus to claim that He alone knows the Father but His desire is to make the introduction to all of humanity, then it is not exclusive, just a statement of what He alone has to offer.  He is offering God's kind of life.  If you want to know more about it, you've got to come to Him, on His terms, with the intent to learn.  He's the teacher.  He's the master.

His good news, His gospel, His message belongs to Him.  It's His.  He is the only one offering it.  You can look for life on your own, He won't stop you.  You can look to another teacher, another rabbi, another god, another master, He won't interfere, it just won't be His gospel.  

So the real question that should begin to form is not which of these roads, if not all of them, get us to heaven when we die; but instead, what kind of life today is Jesus offering that He is claiming no one else can?

Now this is where things begin to get exciting...

Why Salvation Is Not A Free Gift

Before we were married, my wife spent three months in Calcutta, India.  Located on the eastern side of the country at the northern point of the Bay of Bengal, it is a harsh and dirty and incredibly impoverished place.  Life expectancy is much lower than many places in the world and people live in a constant state of despair.  There is not much hope to be found in Calcutta.

This morning I was reading a news article on the large number of tourists who had traveled to Calangute, Goa, India to celebrate the Ganesh Chathurthi holidays.  Calangute, Goa is on the far western side of India on the Arabian Sea and is home to one of the most spectacular beaches in the world.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  The article was talking about how around a month ago, a large number of tourists, around 400, were swimming in a specified and well marked "no swim" zone.  The zone had been designated as such do to some very strong and dangerous rip tides.  The life guards on duty that day had been fighting the crowds, begging them to please come out of the zone.

400 people...well marked danger zone...what could possibly go wrong?

Sure enough, throughout the course of the day four different individuals began to shout for help as they were dragged out by the forceful rip tides.  The lifeguards immediately sprung into action and were able to rescue the four different individuals at great danger to themselves.

It was a day of extreme and ongoing stupidity, offset by strong and vigilant heroism.

The point the article failed to make, is that there was absolutely no mention of that due to stupidity of the large group, it would have served them right if the lifeguards had just allowed those four to drown.

It made no mention that the four did not deserve to be rescued from the rip tide, there was absolutely nothing they could do to earn the rescuing of the lifeguards, and it made no mention of the free gift of rescue that the lifeguards had given to those pathetically rebellious individuals.

It simply lauded them as heros, and I'm sure they were glad to have done it.  After all, it was why they were there on the beach that day, to rescue those who have no possible way of rescuing themselves.

Why then, when it comes to talking about God, do we go to places of extreme pain and poverty and abuse and even rampant death, like Calcutta, and share with them the "good news" that God is offering them the "free gift" of rescue, the "free gift" of salvation?

Why have we come to communicate to a lost and broken world that they are in dire need of rescuing, but they don't deserve it because they are horrible and terrible sinners and they have offended God.

No one ever asks the lifeguard if she was offended by the drowning person.

When you really think about it, it's kind of like asking the question, what does black taste like?

Or what does the moon think about the recent government shut down?

Or how deep is fire?

They don't have anything to do with one another.  One can analyze and philosophize and pontificate all they would like, and the two simply have nothing to do with one another.

When it comes to rescue, when it comes to salvation, the one who has the ability to rescue simply does not think about whether or not she should; she simply does.  

...unless, of course, that one who has the ability is not good.  Unless, of course, they cannot be trusted.

I offer to you that God is in fact good, that He can be trusted above all, that He is love.  I offer to you the picture that Jesus offered Jerusalem as He stood lamenting in sorrow over her:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

If ever there were a picture of an underserving city, this is it; and still Jesus' desire is to gather them to Himself like a hen gathers her chicks in protection, in safety, in rescue.

If we are to begin to trust, to have confidence in God with our very lives, this is the first thing that must begin to change in our thinking.  God's desire is to rescue you, even from the mess of a life you very well may have created for yourself, and certainly from the mess of a life that may have been thrust upon you.  

To think about God's desire to rescue you as a "free gift that you don't deserve" is like asking if paint is happy.

Do you deserve to be rescued?  Who cares!  That isn't the point!

His ability and desire to rescue are the point.

...we can worry about what went wrong later in order to avoid the rip tide again in the future.

Can God be trusted?

"Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it." - Winston Churchill

Over the last couple of years, Jess and I have been putting this quote to the test.  The wind blows a certain way in our little town, and gusts through our even littler churches (yes, pun intended).  Our intent wasn't to go against the wind, we simply were naive enough to believe that if you worked hard enough at it, you could actually redirect the wind.

Like I said, naive...

Nonetheless, we did rise.  Please don't misunderstand me here, I'm not talking about popularity or fame or wealth or status or power or any of these traditional measures; I am talking about rising in our understanding of who we are as children of God and active citizens of His Kingdom.  

We saw miracles, we saw relationships form and develop that we would have never imagined, we saw individuals draw together in passionate causes that I believe will never allow them to live "normal" lives again.  We saw God...we saw Him in His people.  

But we were blown around a bit too, and I suppose that it is simple common sense...for one who is not naive.

See, this is where we have risen against the wind as well.  Wind has a way of shaping the one's view of things who has the audacity to stand against it.

I am no longer naive.

Naivety is easily seen in the face of a child who leaps off of the edge of the dock into the waiting arms of her daddy.  Not a thought in the world as to whether or not those arms will actually catch her.  Whether those arms can actually catch her.  Simple trust radiating from the beaming smile as she just...leaps.

At some point in our growing up we begin to become aware of another thought, a foreign thought, a ridiculous thought to a 3 year old; what if daddy's arms aren't there?

This thought changes everything.  This thought opens up the realm of harm, of pain, of suffering, of fear, of motive, of intent, and so on.  It makes us long for the foregone days of naivety.  It makes us suffer because we know that once we have had this thought, we can never return.

Several months ago Jess and I chose to make another leap against the wind.  We packed up and moved away from our very busy, very involved, but very secure and meaningful life in our little town for a city.  We had many reasons, none of which made the move easy, but we knew that the wind had shifted and we could glide its currents indefinitely, or we could tack and rise again.

We chose to leap into the wind.  

It's amazing how powerful the wind can be.  It's amazing how it can seemingly buffet you from all directions at once.  It's amazing how painfully loud it can scream in your ears.

This leap has left us with a defining question, can God be trusted?

I have come to see this question as the single most defining question that any person must answer, whom will I trust?

I must trust someone, there is no other option.  There is no vacuum of faith as some would like to posit, the question is one of where you will place your faith, your confidence, your trust.  

Sadly, and naively, and sometimes rebelliously, many choose...me, myself, I.  "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."

We must trust someone, we must follow someone, we will have a god...

The problem I have is that most everything is outside of my control.  If I am to be my own god, I make a pretty shitty one indeed.  I can't even make my dog come back to me when she decides to run away.  How then am I to trust myself for things that actually matter.

Jesus' good news, His gospel is that He can handle my life.  God, whom He called Daddy, actually has the power to live life as it was intended to be lived, and He offers that power to me, fully dependent on Him.

The question remains, can He be trusted?

My answer...what other option, of the myriad that exist, is a better one?