Who Do You Believe I Am?

This week challenges us to consider what we really believe about God.  Is He the one who lived long ago, died, was buried, and whose memory we uphold in worship and trying to live by the age old foundations He laid out for us?  Is He a scam?  Is He a good man who we can think well of along with a lengthy list of other notable humans?  Or is He a resurrected God who is truly alive and still is at work to bring new life and restoration to the earth, who is active, loving, moving, still building on those ancient solid truths, and whom we will seek, listen for, and follow?  Is He a good long-ago story or One whose most dramatic chapter is yet to come, who will set all things right once and for all, and for which we should be making ourselves ready? 

Borrowed Language

"What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, Dearest Friend?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO2d0AD5wBg

Communion Shared Here

How would you have responded to the offer of a job where the assignment was to deliver a message to a group whose eyes were blind, whose ears were plugged, whose hearts were armor-clad, and whose spirits barely had a pulse?  You were asked to get their attention and rebuild them from the ground up by asking them to die with the promise that they would live again.  To do it, of course, they would have to trust you. 

It is a miracle that 2000 years later, this tiny kingdom work is still alive.  For all that we still don’t see, hear, and understand, after all the bad chapters of abuse of many kinds within its walls and ranks, with eons of twisted teaching, and hearts that still so often resist Him, He has not abandoned the mission.  The church is still here, hobbling often, but always with a thread of authenticity remaining somewhere in the fiber in each chapter of history. 

What were the chances that this could work?  Well, it wouldn’t be because we were so smart and cooperative, but because of a God who was able and willing, who loved immensely, and was authentically and thoroughly good.  He was the only ingredient that could make this possible.

His presence could transform the atmosphere and set our hearts on fire.  He could reach us and lift us up and place us on firm ground, teach us how to walk, then open the books and reveal the adventures of big and small events of work and play and love that could penetrate earth with heaven.  We have to let Him pierce us first by getting deep into our hearts, which often feels like surgery, but it is the way that we are made alive and by which our friendship with Him spills the cup of blessing into the world.

The drops of blood that fell onto earth that long-ago stormy Friday were the first splashes of Heaven’s communion reaching us.  The wine that Father, Son, and Spirit had shared had been translated into the missing element of sacrificial love so full that it overflowed in that culminating morning where a new day truly began. Earth had now literally received it, and even though most still didn’t recognize what was occurring, the planet had seen it, had heard it, had been touched with its power.  It held more hope than we could imagine.  It was all the provision we could possibly need.  

Remember today that it is still here. 

Beautiful Invitation

The week leading to the cross revealed mankind’s worst—fickle minds and hearts, astoundingly bad decisions, fear and hate driven actions.  All of us have been prone to these maladies in some degree or the other as we knee-jerk in self-preservation.  We’ve all been infected by it. 

It is a mind-boggling thing to consider that we killed the God of the universe in response to our position being threatened, our dignity and authority being challenged by One who could have struck us lame, mute, or dead, but came instead to show us the true identity of both God and man.  It would have been impossible without His willingness to enter our flesh and live our dilemmas, showing mankind another way to do the business of life. 

After the preparation time of Him learning obedience, the teaching officially began, occurring in fewer years than most of us spend in high school.  It was a crash course in the most significant school the world has ever seen.  Done on hillsides and around dinner tables and walking through fields, He taught us.  But we were neither gracious hosts or quick learners.  The few who seemed able to see Him accurately and understand were those who were so low on the societal scale that there was no place to look but up.  And recognize Him some of them did.  His heavenly background was evident from their point of view.

He chose to respond to our mistreatment by carving through the immense wall of our sin and coming out on the other side, leaving a huge hole as a souvenir, a tomb as it was, from where death was expected, but astonishingly, life could begin anew.  Wombs are usually the birthing places, not tombs.  But when has God written the story as we would predict? 

That week we delivered Him the worst of us and then He turned around and delivered us from ourselves.  It is our hope.  He is our hope.  In the week where the worst of who we are was publicly and violently demonstrated, He ends it by swallowing it as the lethal poison it was, and offering us a cup of living water and an invitation to walk out of the tomb.  We can leave our death behind. 

He still offers us a new beginning.  Any moment can be your door forward if you choose to step through it.  He is right there, ready to help you and celebrate the courage that it took for you to take Him up on it.  It may look and feel like your death to give up all that is familiar and step into the unknown of what He will do with you.  But He states it is your life.  And I’m banking on the fact of Who speaks those words and Who has the power to back them up. 

Come.  Live. Take the joy that is yours to have.    

Come and See

“Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”  John 12:21

Oh that my heart and mind and spirit would be speaking that in every moment.  He is continually at work all around me.  Can I recognize Him in others?  Can I see where He is moving?  Can I hear the invitation to come and join in the activity of freedom-bringing, and to lay down my burdens, to believe His word, to do my part as He invites me to reconciliation of many kinds? 

If we are listening we will, like Jesus, at one moment truthfully say, “My time has not yet come,” and soon afterward, get that nudge of the Spirit’s moving that has us too, doing our own version of water jars being filled.   (see John 2:1-11) 

If I desire Him, I will seek Him.

If I seek Him I will meet Him.

If I meet Him, I can get to know Him.

As I know Him, I can increasingly hear Him.

If I follow that voice, I will most certainly see Him.  

How Will Your Story Read?

“Integrity is one of those words that many people keep in that desk drawer labeled ‘too hard.’ ”  Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale

Think about how you want to live, what effort and legacy you want to be remembered for, what is important enough to fight for and sacrifice for, what is worth giving yourself to.  No matter what any of us has messed up (and we certainly all do), there is a new day to start, and forgiveness to be received when we turn and try to make things right as best we can. 

I’d rather be worn out, beat up, and scarred at the end, but to have lived as best I could accomplish, than to have given half an effort.

Impressed?

We’ve gotten so used to the idea that we often fail to be stunned by it, but consider for a moment that God chose to come to us, to walk on the earth with us, to let us see glimpse after glimpse of what was going on in the chest of His dad. 

It is an astounding thing that the weight of a man with the heart, spirit, and passion of heaven left an impression in the soil of earth.  He was here, and He has left us with much to examine of what He said and did.  But He isn’t an artifact that is only ancient; He lives still and continues to let us in on the story.  

Good Things Formed

When busyness has consumed us again—and it may be the mental schedule that is full even if the actual schedule is not—we are wise to pause.  Remember that the bottom line is not us.  Though we certainly have a part in what unfolds, and choices to make, He is the one who reigns. 

“Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations.”  Psalm 145:13

Lay down the burden that is weighing on you.  But don’t just shed it in some random place where it is so easy to hunt it back down  to pick it up again if worry about it stirs.  When we lay it down, it is by placing it into His hands, giving Him possession of our care.  He may ask something of us in responding to the need or concern, but the point is that we’ve acknowledged that it is in His care and attention, that we see Him as having charge over it.  We become as one who is not Director of it, but directed in it by the words of the Master Director. 

 See what good thing will be formed as you place the need into His hands.  

Waiting with Perseverance

Yesterday morning as I passed the pond on my way to church, there stood on the ice that still covered over half of the pond, a Canada Goose looking somewhat puzzled, it’s head turning from side to side as if looking for an answer. 

It seemed apparent that either the ice needed to melt or the barrier needed to break.  The goose needed to be in the water.  The ice stood in the way. 

In the natural, the temperatures will warm and by later today, it is likely that the surface of the whole pond will be water again.  In the spiritual, it seems that things sometimes are locked down far longer than when it seems that something should have shifted.  “Lord, this has been a very long journey…”

This I know, looking back over many times when things seemed stuck:  God is active.  We are to both wait for His timing and pray it forth.  I have gained much by trying to listen for the Spirit’s leading in how to pray.  Often He gives me prayers that I know I did not conceive, but it has been my privilege to pray them, being aware that He had given oil for the rusty hinges so doors could open. 

My prayer for myself and for you today is this:  “God, let our hearts and ears hear Your divine guidance to pray forward the circumstances in our lives that we and you care deeply about.  You are not absent or unmindful or inactive in regard to them.  Let our hearts swell with confidence in Your best work. and in Your timing, and may we press on to not be discouraged, but to keep listening for how to pray.  Help us, Lord, to wait for breakthroughs and victory with joy and perseverance, that none of what concerns us has been forgotten by You.”  

Meet Ken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSgW6Vku0oo

I "met" Ken this week through some videos and writings and music of what has been birthed through his heart and life.  There is a sweetness and openness that is beautiful and I couldn't think of anything better to share with you on this Sabbath morning.

Song of Solomon 2

It's about to happen.  Many of you are going to witness a miracle.  It will be a big one and everyone will be talking about it. 

The land that has been covered by layers of snow and frozen in cold is going to warm up and turn green and sprout the most amazing blooms.  Color will burst forth and be draped everywhere.  Barren trees will be dressed up in garments that move beautifully in the breeze.  The birds will arrive and sing the celebration songs and nest within the safety of them like a child in the folds of her mother’s skirts.  Daylight hours will lengthen so you can to be out there to watch it all unfurl and breathe it deeply in. 

Of course this happens every year, and if you live in an area within the temperate climate latitudes you experience it annually.  Still, this spring, don’t take for granted the amazing change you are about to witness as life bursts from what had seemed dead for months.

Take some time to really appreciate it.  Let this rapid transformation fill you with hope in the God of resurrection and restoration as you watch life come forth from the tomb of winter’s white robes before your very eyes. 

It’s one of the best revelations of God’s intent and plan and power.

 

Freedom By Connection

The Brazilian worship leader was lying on the floor. “Respond to the Lord!  Respond to the Lord!” she moaned.  My first thought was to step it up a notch so she could calm down, but I knew this moment was about more than the awkwardness of a different style of worship.  I knew little about this woman, but enough to understand that God was probably speaking to us through her open heart.  And so my prayer began. 

“God, I feel like I came in pretty good shape with You this weekend.  If there’s somewhere You want me to go, I don’t know how to get there.  Will You show me?” 

Immediately a vision began.  Jesus was on one side of the street; I was on the other.  He looked at me and said, “Come to me.”  As I began to cross the street He held out His hands and said, “Come play with me.”  And at that moment, standing in the midst of a bunch of women at a weekend conference, my life changed forever.  The vision went briefly.  Jesus and I were running to the outskirts of the small western town setting.  We played in creeks, splashing in water, walking over stones.  We ended up in a meadow, and the simple dance He did with a now four-year-old version of me, looking in the eye with such delight that I have never forgotten it. 

The vision ended.  Christy continued into the song she was singing on the platform.  The women around me stood there, having no idea that a life had just been transformed. 

Although I had been a Christian at that point for 26 years, I finally understood that the God of heaven so deeply and simply just wants a relationship with us.  I saw it in His eyes.  For all the foundations we sort out and stand on, for all the programs we organize and try to implement, for all the good things we can do, for all the practices we develop and try to maintain (all of which are part of what He calls us into), let’s not miss the heart of the matter. 

The God of the universe loves us to levels we cannot imagine.  He thought up each of us.  He created us.  He set us in a time and place and put gifts in us that would take our simple lives to places of His wildest dreams.  We’ve gotten derailed, but He sent His Son to do everything in Heaven’s power to make the way so we could function and be free to love and follow Him, to live out the possibilities of all He imagined.  But we too easily reduce it to rules and formats and forget that it cannot occur at all unless we are in love with this Son of His and sense His love for us. 

“Come play with me.”  If your perspective is that time with Him is another pressure of your endless to-do list, maybe you too can just tell Him, “I don’t know how to get there; will You show me?”  And then give Him a little listening time to see what He might have to say to you. 

I love order.  I have expectations.  I can be a stick in the mud.  I believe that He has ways of us doing life that are for our good, and warns us about things that will harm us.  I try to live well.  AND, I know how easily I can shift the good things He’s set to something more rigid and less life-filled than He desired.  The only hope I have is to get to know Him, to be influenced moment by moment by the Spirit He’s sent to live in me to keep me company and to guide me.  To hang out with the amazing Trinity and see what they do when they get their plan in motion and the life they are breaking forth in and for and through us. 

“Come play with me.”  Young birds, the door of the cage is open now.  You are free to fly. You are free to come out and see what happens as you explore where He wants to lead you.  “Come play WITH me.”  We don’t get the freedom when we grab it and run.  It is freedom when it is connected to His glorious life. 

 

Surrounded and Helped

For the unsettled things, the difficult situations, the heartache, the wounds, the questions that seem to have no answers in this moment, and all the “not yets,” we have a God who is near, and who will guide.  Follow Him as best you know how.  Keep asking for wisdom.  Walk courageously where He calls you, and know that for all you don’t know how to do, He holds this world and all the details of your life close, in tenderness and strength, and will be faithful and sovereign over and through it as you offer it to Him.  We have so much to learn in living out this call to love.  Don’t give up the quest to figure out how to flesh it out.   It isn’t easy.  Good things rarely are. 

We desperately need help.  We have a Helper.

My Song

We have the inevitable challenge of DNA that pulls us to selfishness, opinions that we thrust into the soil as stakes, inclinations and preferences that tug us one way or another.  And, we have the potential of mind and spirit and heart to do heroic things and give ourselves to the well-being of others.  Which will be the prominent feature lived out today?  What kind of song will come from my life?  I get to choose.

The Reach

I am grateful for the biblical account of the hemorrhaging woman who reached through the crowd to touch the edge of Jesus’ robe.   This ungraspable God whom she went for, even though the news hadn’t been good elsewhere, her money was spent, and so was her body.  But something in her spirit wasn’t ready to give up.  Maybe it had waffled in hopelessness over the last twelve years, but something flickered alive again as news came that He was nearing the town.  She’d go take a look.  And when she did, somewhere inside her that bit of hope flamed up into courage and she’d pressed in.  She’d reach for Him.  And oh, dear Lord, she’d touched God. 

Whatever your limitations and need are today, He is the God who comes near.  Keep reaching.    

The Un-god-like for the Ungodly

How many of the garden variety gods that you could pick up at your neighborhood establishments would tolerate our most horrendous moments?  The god of “keeping up with the Jones’s” always asks that we step it up a notch, look good, buy more in-style products, and wear them or drive them well. The gods of perfectionism certainly don’t put up with nonsense.  It’s not their way.  They are harsh ones who tend to carry whips and try to get them into our hands for self-flagellation.   We can’t handle their verdicts or the knowledge of our own guilt, so the gods of “comfortableness” usually win and we trot off to ease our guilt with one of a plethora of self-satisfying potions or people.

But really, we know when we are crossing lines.  We feel the bristles of our own actions, or at least we used to if we haven’t practiced denial for too long.  It is so easy to brush aside that nudge of conviction and begin to insulate and defend ourselves.  

The thing is that there is a moral code.  For all we’ve tried to embrace as another norm for life, the cry for justice is only one tiny situation away if someone wrongs us.  (And that’s enough to prove the point.) We know when wrong has been done—if it’s the other guy who has done it and we don’t have any difficulty shifting to defending ourselves, our rights, our feelings.  The list is long and we’ve been trained well to get to the courtroom asap.

If we have done the deed however, we often can only see through the lens of mercy, tolerance, and pressing the point that the other guy give us a break.  “My intentions were good, for heaven’s sake!” We hide our guilt behind so many layers.  “I’m only human,” we say, and expect forgiveness we’ve not sought, before repentance we’ve not walked out, or the efforts of repair we’ve not worked at. 

So how surprised should we be that a God who has always kept His word, not only allows us into His company, not only invites us to run into His arms, the mess that we are, who not only is more than willing to wipe our bloody hands and wrap us in His own fine garb, would go far beyond anyone’s expectations, and

COME TO FIX OUR MOST INTERNAL DAMAGE HIMSELF? 

He did all the blood and sweat and tears that would have rightly been our responsibility to do.  It was a scandalous, a very UN-godlike thing to do.

I look at what this precious Messiah has done on our behalf.  I envision the Father who gave His best to allow it.  It is unconceivable that He would send His own Son to do our dirty work, when we so comfortably spit in His face.  I am appalled at how easy it is for me to brush Him off and do what I prefer.  Perhaps that is why it would take an immaculate conception to convince us

It is more than clear that I would not conceive of such a plan, but He could.  And did.  He not only saw it in theory but actually lived out the idea to its violent and effective end. It was such an ungodly thing to do that I am persuaded that it could of only been thought up by a God who loves.  It’s pretty unbelievable otherwise, which is apparently why so many see it as such.   But it convinces me that He is the real deal.  The God of whom prophecy after prophecy was written and spoken.  The God who would be so far from the shape of our expectations that He is easy to miss, and harder to follow.  The God who modeled such a lifestyle that it takes all our yielding to get in the streams of water that give life because our own pride is so damned thick, and we don’t want to admit that we needed such extreme measures of help.  It took the life of GOD to save me?  Really?  I am tempted to run back behind the fig leaves instead of acknowledging that much nakedness. 

But here we are, invited to step ankle deep first, then to feel the consuming waters of our baptism, and dive in and begin to swim. And all He asks of us is to receive the help He’s offering and swim.  It’s mind-blowing.  We should give it a try.

All In

She went and got the alabaster jar.  There wasn’t a tug-of-war going on in her heart over this, but then, it seems that it was the mindset that went along with the name.  Whether she was His mother, Martha’s sister, or the one from Magdala, if your name was Mary, you seemed to be an  “all in” kind of woman.  And so when her spirit nudged her to go and fetch that jar, there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation.   It was to be used, and it was to be used now. 

The others wouldn’t understand, and maybe she didn’t either really, but that was rarely a consideration for her actions.  Little did she know that she was portraying a stunning parallel to the events that would be unfolding in just a few short hours. 

Something of great cost was broken and poured out for its purpose and in its time.  First the precious ointment that smelled of the aroma of both beauty and burial, and then Jesus Himself, the aroma of the most beautiful of earthly sacrifices that would ever fill the nostrils of Heaven. 

Be offered, be spent, be poured out.  It seems to be a mark of the Kingdom. 

How we think, how we serve, how we live will likely have this resemblance once we’ve been adopted in and are moving in the same dance of the Spirit that wafted those days into being.  Those holy winds seem to fill the sails of obedience and trust as we raise them up to be moved for His work. 

Go where He calls you.  Hoist the sails of trust today.  The cost will never outweigh the benefit of what He will do, even if you are only asked to give Him a couple of fish and a few loaves.  He will determine what He is asking of you, and He will give you the means to do it.  All you have to do is decide if you are an “all in” kind of person. 

Undone

I too often hope to add on the robes of righteousness over my own comfortable clothing, which leads to being bulky and over bundled in the extra layers.  I was reminded this morning of the importance of the continual stripping down of my own perspectives and priorities, trying to be able to know His and to catch the subtle breezes of the Spirit moving against skin that would shift my day one way or another as He moves. 

The option is that I put Him in the position to come as an earthquake or gale force wind before I will pay attention.

Eyes Open

One of the most important things we can do is observe closely and, without jumping to conclusions too quickly, to watch the effects of what is going on.  Is the situation bringing health and wholeness as its ripples go out?   We are supposed to be people who discern well and respond to our culture. When we weigh in rightly, it will bring both justice and care into our community.  

One of Us

It might have been easier for the Old Testament folks who believed in a God who was huge and over and external and distant.  He was “out there” somewhere, enough removed to enable us to ignore Him most of the time if we chose.  Never mind that the gap was caused by the first couple of humans stepping away with the fruit in the Garden and then tucking themselves behind trees and sewn leaves.  It seems that most of us have been trying to hide ever since those few innocent walking-together days at the very beginning of mankind’s story.   There were a few brave souls who persisted to chase Him down, but Abraham and Joseph and Moses and David and Daniel were rarities, and even they didn’t get it right all the time. 

God had shown up as the years went along in the non-human shape of pillars of fire or pillars of clouds and sent His messages in rainbows, writing on the wall, and through His prophets.  He was clearly not like us.  And our response was to tremble in our sandals, turn to Him and repent one moment, and build our golden calves the next.  The human dance with God is as complex as it gets.

Then Jesus came.  And we’ve been muddled by it ever since. 

He draped Himself in flesh and blood. He lived out the human potential every day of His life, except for those last few when He was doing the God-part of His mission that we couldn’t possibly do for ourselves.

He confused us further by His love language and gestures that were sometimes the balm-and-healing kind when things can be nurtures to wholeness, and other times were the surgical kind when things need to be removed with a sharp scalpel to accomplish wholeness. 

It is not an easy thing to wrap our heads around a God who looks like us.  Those who saw Him face-to-face were still not likely to recognize Him.  And it brought holiness a little too close for comfort, because now, though most couldn’t recognize the God who stood before them, the inclinations of our own hearts was crystal clear. That is what happens when you brush up against God.  And once we know the truth about ourselves, the responsibility is ours to respond to.  It’s a lot easier to keep God at a distance than to go through all that confession and repentance and sanctification stuff.  But then we are kind of back where we started, aren’t we, …people who are in great need and looking for an answer.

Jesus took things one step further by leaving earth so we could have the Spirit actually move right into our beings.  Now everywhere we go and everything we do, we are taking Him with us as a guest to the events.  It’s a sobering thought.

His love is stunning, His grace astounding.  He is still hanging Himself out there for us to consider.  But He is as willing as ever to let us decide what to do with Him.   He’s apparently still as open to our hurled stones and crucifixions as He is to our love.  Only a God-Man could see our frailties and still give us so much room.   Only a patient God would let us have that kind of time.  Only a God who wanted to share love would create beings with free will instead of making them into tiny slaves.   Some think He is stern and unjust and far too inactive, but only a relational God would take the risk of denial and curses and such damage as is done on earth, for the chance of someone’s affection returned.  That He ever gave us the opportunity at all is crazy wild.  That He is still giving us the chance to respond, in light of the messes we make, is unbelievable.  It will take a tiny mustard seed of faith to get us on our way to receive the gift.