Defective

"I hate that I can still be so easily shaken, and somehow I convince myself that if I could just develop a healthy enough psyche, life couldn't touch me" (So Long Insecurity, pg 51)

How did Beth Moore get into my head? Is it plagiarism if you never wrote it down? Seriously, I think we "mature" Christians get down on ourselves for getting down. Instead of realizing that we are human, and running to our Father when we are hurting. We try to buck up, make it all better ourselves and end up feeling defective.

"I am broken and no amount of superglue or duct tape is going to keep me together, keep me from splitting apart."

Sad, but that is how most of us walk around, wounded, alone and about to split apart trying to hold ourselves together with duct tape and glue.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved...For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your feet from being snared...So do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God you will receive what He has promised.

Suburbia

Keep it clean, keep it neat, keep it nice, keep it safe, keep it whatever you have to as long as you don’t keep it real.

I think that would about sum up the lives of many out here in Suburbia. We are clean, we are neat, we are safe, we are kind, but we don’t have any idea what is real.

We live in our nice little subdivisions, driving our mini-vans to swim practice, Bashas’, and youth group, and talking to all our friends on Facebook, who are just like us, but never getting to the real.

Our heroes have to be clean, have to be neat, have to be nice, have to be safe, but not real. If they swear, they aren’t clean, if their life is in disarray, they’re not neat, if they struggle to love their enemies all the time, they’re not nice, if they run toward gunfire because they not only want to save lives but because they get a rush from it too, they aren’t safe. They wall off though, knowing we won’t love them if they show the real.

We say we want to love, we want to care, we want to comfort the hurting, and love the unlovable, but we don’t know what that means, we don’t know what that looks like, we don’t know what’s real.

One day a woman name Haggard woke up to the real. She was hit in the face with the real, once living the life of Suburbia, she thought life didn’t get any better than this, and fell to her knees when her hero wasn’t clean, wasn’t neat, wasn’t nice, wasn’t safe, and was finally real.

Be careful, the walls will crash down; the clean will become dirty, the neat washed away by the messy, the nice replaced by the ugly, the safe gone forever because the real was revealed. That is when truth is seen, and the facade can fall away, and Suburbia can die. It’s in the real we meet Jesus, and that is where He wants us to stay, not in some white washed world of our imagination, of our creation, but with Him, living in the lives of others, not because we are cleaner, or neater, or nicer, or safer, but because we are real.

As Far As The East Is From The West

Sometimes I get stuck in the past. I love history, I have a degree in it, so it makes sense that I would enjoy the past, but looking back, holding on to what was doesn’t exactly work well in life. It’s almost like playing the same movie over and over again (which I do with my favorite movies) and never seeing anything new.

If I am real I have to admit that I don’t like change very much. It’s not comfortable, it’s not familiar, it isn’t “safe” and just when I get use to the change, it changes again. So I have to start the process of adjustment all over again, and sometimes I just choose not to play along. I fight the reality, keeping both fists firmly wrapped around the past. Of course I always lose that battle, because I can’t hold on to something that is no longer there.

Relationships are one of those areas for me. They are alive, and ever changing. New people come in and out of all of our lives all of the time. We never know how they might impact us, or what they will one day mean to us. We have new interests grow in our hearts as do those we love, so we have to adjust to changes in ourselves and in others. We have to be willing to change with those we love, so that we can continue to have a relationship with them, and we hope they do the same for us.

This looking backward can really hurt friendships. Too often we want to hold onto what things were once like, look to the past and reject the alterations that are a part of any healthy relationship. This backward gaze also means wounds are remembered. A good memory might be a strength when recalling names, dates and places from history, but it is not an asset when it comes to forgiving and forgetting.

I am a forgiving person, giving second, third, forth, fifth chances, but in order to protect myself I begin to map out the injuries that have been inflicted on me by those I care about. I notice the patterns played out by the person hurting me. I start to defend myself against the pain, and in the process lose my ability to forgive. If I cannot give someone a blank slate, then I have not forgiven them. I am always watching, always protecting, always noticing certain actions, and planning a defense.

There have been times when I have really believe in my heart that I have forgiven a person, only to discover from a bitter comment or a stray thought that I have not. And from experience, I don’t believe I am the only one who struggles in this area.

As humans, our inability to truly forgive makes long term relationships difficult to maintain. All of us hurt each other all of the time. We have sin natures that rear their ugly heads at times and dictate our actions. When that happens we sin against those we love. If they are unable to let go of the hurt we have caused them, the relationship will not move forward in a healthy manner. As years pass with unhealed wounds, defenses go up higher and higher.

As I considered the way we remember, the way I remember, and the pain reliving actions others have taken against causes us, I thought of Psalm 103:12,

...as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

When I looked up that Psalm and I read: The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, He will not always accuse nor will He harbor his anger forever, He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is His love for those who fear Him: as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

As I read those words, I was struck by something. God will not always accuse us. He won’t, once we have surrendered our lives to Christ and accepted His payment for our sins, accuse us for those sins EVER AGAIN. They are gone, He wont’ remember them, He won’t protect Himself and guard His heart against us. He forgives us and removes our sin.

Yet there is one who accuses, and roams the earth to dig up “dirt” on all of us. He attempts to sully our names, going before God like he did when he attempted to accuse Job of being less than he was. Satan is always dragging up our pasts. He is the one who uses those sins against us, and if we let him he can use those sins to make us doubt our worth before God. But that is the reason our God put Psalm 103 in the Bible, as well as the book of Job. The accuser of the believers can accuse us all he wants, but it’s never going to stick because Jesus already paid for our lives and nothing we have done, nor will ever do will separate us from the love of God.

You might be wondering how this relates to my love of history and my inability to adapt to change, well I realized that if I am unable to let go of the past, I am unable to forgive, and if I can’t forgive, I can’t love others with a heart of abandon. If I am always protecting myself, walling off to protect my heart, well I won’t let anyone in and I surely won’t go out to them. By not letting go, I am playing the role of accuser, even if I am not accusing anyone openly, I am accusing them in the conversations I have in my head and those conversations separate me from others. I realized when I don’t forgive, that I am aligning myself with the accuser.

But, if I live like my Father, I accept people at face value. I forgive them, and remove their transgressions toward me as far as the east is from the west, never throwing those hurts at them again, either literally or in the deep recesses of my mind. I set them free from their sin, and in the process set myself free.

Jesus came to set the captives free. He didn’t just mean those bound by sin, He also came to set those free who have been hurt by sin.

Is there a person, maybe a spouse, a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, a co-worker that you need to really forgive for a sin (maybe years of sin) they committed against you, and not just forgive, but forget. Forget, and let the wall you have built around your heart as a defense against further pain fall, in order for you to move out of the past and into a new life, a healthy life with the ability to grow deeper, closer relationship with those you love, as well as with those you haven’t yet met.

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits – who forgives all your sin and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. Ps. 103:2-5

Confident Humility

As my pastor preached a few weeks ago, his words resonated with the experience I had had the day before. You see, I took a chance at something, I never take chances, and through my story you will see that I don’t actually believe in chance. I entered a contest and attempted to win a new car.

I was standing in the parking lot of a car dealership in Phoenix for three hours. I was by myself, well not quite true because one of our family’s really good friends was in the cow suit, but I didn’t really hang with him much because he was kind of busy. Okay, I digress. I was standing there for many hours waiting for “chance” to play out. I was one of 105 people called to come to the event in which each person would have an opportunity to try and start a new Kia Sorento.

Out of those 105 people, only 66 showed up and put their name in the hat to win the car. There were 66 keys placed into a large jar. Each contestant was given a raffle ticket when they arrived. Half way through the event, the raffle ticket numbers were called, determining the order in which we would choose our key. As each raffle number was called, I continued to wait. The first twenty were chosen, and I prayed, “Lord, that is okay there are a lot of keys and I don’t think being one of the first twenty is necessarily a good thing.”

But when the numbers reached forty and I still didn’t have a place in line, well I was a bit more discouraged. I looked around, knowing that my God leaves nothing to chance, that if He wanted to give me that new car He would no matter my number in line. He is the God who even controls the outcome of a dice roll, right, so He was in the drawing of the raffle numbers too. I was becoming discouraged because I was pretty sure He was saying “No” to the new car.

I looked around knowing everyone had at least whispered a prayer to win the car, and I began to consider those around me who probably needed the car more than I did. Some people had several kids, others were young, just staring out, and one guy was in the military, just back from basic training. All in more need than I was, but that is when the knowledge of God’s love for us, for me, really hit my heart.

At that moment, when I was comparing myself and my value or worthiness to all those around me, I was filled with utter peace and a quiet joy. I was so thankful that salvation isn’t a contest. It is a free gift and there isn’t just one shot to win it either. Every single one of us is at the same level of “need”. The amount of money we have does not lessen our need for Jesus, actually according to Jesus, it might increase our need. But God doesn’t look down from heaven and say, “Okay, that one is worthy, and that one isn’t. That one really needs Me, but that one doesn’t.” He doesn’t roll the dice and say, “You’re in, and you’re out.”

Instead, He says, “I love the WORLD.” He loves every single one of us, and wishes for NONE to perish. Isn’t that amazing?!? I don’t even think we can comprehend His ability to see us for who we are, who He made us to be without comparing us to anyone else. We might have a little bit of that kind of love toward our kids, but in our humanness, we still look around at others and contrast our kid’s strengths and weaknesses with others. But our Father doesn’t put us into categories or groupings like that. He loves us…neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ.

So, when Lloyd preached that God does not just love us, that He likes us, I thought back to the day before and knew that was totally true. He likes us so much He wants a relationship with us no matter who we are. It doesn’t matter what we wear, what we drive, where we live, what we look like, how we speak, or even the sinfulness of our hearts. He wants to KNOW us! He wants to spend time with us. He likes us.

It is very possible that most of the people at the event last Saturday were Christians, because it was a KLOVE and Chick-Fil-A sponsored event, so it wasn’t like anyone had a leg up on anyone else, an in with the “Big Guy”. We were all there because He had chosen us to be, and when I was chosen 61st in a group of 66, I knew if He wanted to, He could give me the right key to start the car. He delighted in all of us that day, and probably heard from a lot of us, more than He has in a while. So, when I wasn’t chosen, and found out number 31 was the number of the day, I was okay with that, because I found out, through the three hours of time that at first felt wasted, a new aspect in my relationship with my Father.

Why was number 31 chosen that day? I don’t know. I don’t know if her need was greater, if she needed a miracle in her life to strengthen her faith, or if she simply needed a new car, but what I do know is that my Father doesn’t love me any less because He didn’t give me the car.

I can live my life with a confident knowledge that I am loved, and if any gift is worth all others, it is the gift of love. Because I am loved, I can freely love others. We can walk through our lives with confident humility, loving as well as liking others because our Jesus first loved us.

The Light, not Twilight

Our world seems to live every day in the dark. At times the Church looks to this same darkness in order to “reach” those who need to know God. There is a search for meaning, hope, a hero in the hearts of the people all around us, and sadly a few have given up and are willing to exist in the darkness, not even trying to find a way out.

It is into this same kind of culture that the Light burst forth 2000 years ago. How bright the light of Christ appears in such a dark world. The darkness that we now live in is the perfect place to bring forth the Light.

Take heart my friends, we are the hope. It is to us that Jesus gave the great commission. God into ALL the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and I am with you ALWAYS even to the end of the age.

Jesus totally knew that the false image of God would dominate the best seller list for months, as The Shack sits on the top #10 list on every bookstore shelf in the country; that Twilight would claim the hearts of His daughters; that movies like Transformers would present lustful images to ours sons taking them to places of desire they should not be taken to; that the youngest among us would be fed a line of hopelessness from a movie about Wild Things, and that those same kids would be led to worship a man instead of the One who all of our hearts were made to worship.

It is into this age that He chose for you and me to live, and it is those of us who hold the name Christian that He chose to bring the light into the darkness. Don’t get me wrong, we are sooooo flying upside down, but we have the knowledge that our Savior lives and that He is at work all around us.

Paul experienced life just like we do at times. When he walked into one of the most immoral city in the Roman Empire, the city of Corinth, the Bible says that he entered with fear and trembling. Now this was not a metaphor for how he kind of felt inside. No, Paul was physically shaking when he entered the city gates. He was all alone at the time. Silas and Timothy were still hanging out in Berea, and Paul had just left Athens, failing to see the Spirit move among the people of that great city even after he delivered one of his most eloquent messages.

Paul felt rather useless when he entered Corinth, but he did something that a lot of us DON’T do when we feel we have failed. He surrendered his life fully to Christ, to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. No too often, when we feel that God has not used us, we withdraw, go into a hole, take our toys and go home. But not Paul. He sought more of Jesus and kept going, not worrying about the result.

Corinth was the home of the cult of Aphrodite. The city was filled with sexual immorality because of this, and that sexual immorality was not left at the door of the church. Yet, through the faithful preaching and teaching of Paul and other men of God, the city was forever changed as the Light of Christ entered its streets.

Every day we have the chance to walk into Corinth. Kids are put in our paths who think that salvation means picking up the trash in the neighborhood to help save the planet. They need to know that work is good, but it isn’t the answer to eternity. They need to be loved for who they are, and shown Jesus.

There are teenager girls dying to talk to us about how wonderful Edward is, so we need to engage them. We need to say, “Ya, Edward’s cool, but he isn’t real, and even if he were his salvation is death, but there is someone so much more wonderful, who loves you and defeated death. Jesus is the answer to all your heart’s desire.”

There are young men so captivated by the images on a screen, that they live lives no different from those who once worshiped at the altar of Aphrodite. They can't have a real relationship with a woman because they have been made to feel less than as men. These young men need to experience the love of God in their hearts, and then their lives can be saved.

The world seems so dark at times that I just want to keep the doors locked. I don’t want to be faithful to anyone but my own little family, to keep it safe from all the wrong in our culture, but that is not how we are suppose to live. We are to be lights in the darkness, to stand up for the innocent, to share the love of Jesus in the smallest way to every person we meet, and who knows, that Light might hit just one person's heart and drive the darkness out! So, if you are sad about what is going on all around us, know that He has chosen you for just this moment in time. Take heart, He has overcome the world.

I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have OVERCOME the World. John 16:33

Where the Wild Things Are

Jesus Hates Zombies and Lincoln hates Werewolves, well that is a title for a graphic novel if I ever heard one. Our world looks for heroes in the strangest places. We now equate, Jesus with an American president, and I am surprised the author did not have the zombies and werewolf as the good guys.

If Jesus hates zombies, he hates vampires, but that fact might greatly upset a whole generation of girls who believe the greatest men of our day, are a 90 year old vampire, who looks nineteen and a teenage werewolf. Girls (and not just girls) swoon at the thought of knowing men like them. They have no repulsion toward the bloodletting that one of the characters indulges in, nor do they recoil at the idea of a wolf sleeping with a woman. Their hearts throb in anticipation as a vampire sneaks into the room of a girl their own age every night without anyone knowing. They long for a smelly werewolf to sit at their door to protect them.

Our world seems to be flying upside down, as Dallas Willard points out. And the sad thing is that the culture doesn’t even care, because there is not right side up. There is an emptiness, and a searching among us. Yet we are looking and searching in the dark. Hoping that some supernatural being will save us from our mundane existence and add excitement to our lives. Thing is that, that Supernatural Being died and rose again 2000 years ago to save us, yet we ignore him in favor of the "undead".

Funny, we are even willing to embrace someone else’s dream to gain our own hope of salvation. That is right, Stephanie Meyer had a dream about a vampire that led her to write the Twilight series, and through that dream came T-shirts, and discussion groups, and pilgrimages to the small town of Forks in Washington state.

At least in the pages of the Twilight books, there is the hope of redemption, the dream of an eternal future. One that is seriously misguided, but still it is there. I realized today that there is a part of the world that does not even have a false savior to give them hope. Part of the world is living in such utter darkness that they don’t even believe that there is a way out of the bleakness of human existence. They visit a place called Where the Wild Things Are, and discover there is no redeemer, there is no better tomorrow, there is only pain and sorrow.

If you are not familiar with this title, it is a very short children’s book, about a boy who visits an island inhabited by fantastic creatures called the “Wild Things”. That said the short children’s book has been transformed into a motion picture, in which a boy filled with anger and rage flees to the Wild Things, and discovers that they are just as angry and destructive as the place of pain that fills his own heart. He promises them that he will be their king and save them from sadness and pain with his invisible shield, but in the end, they discover that he is a fraud and all their hope for happiness is dashed when he fails to save them from themselves. The boy returns home to his own mother, his own family, with the simple words spoke to or by one of the unhappy Wild Things, “It’s hard to be a family.”

There is no redemption just the reality of the darkness, joylessness, hopelessness of life to endure until death. That, in the end, is the takeaway the movie leaves the audience with. I left the theater utterly depressed, thankful that the sun was out in all of its Arizona glory, and that the Son of God reigns in all of His.

I have always told my children that no matter what story, what movie, what book, or play, that I can find Jesus in it in some aspect or another. But today, I told them that I was wrong. Today, there was NO redeemer in Where the Wild Things Are. When the Son is absent, then too is His light and all that is left is darkness. The makers of the movie must have felt this as well, because the forest the Wild Things live in is without life, the world they exist in had a sun, but it is muted by clouds, and the lives they live are filled with bitterness, rage, betrayal and violence.

When a vampire is the hero of the young, and a movie for kids is filled with so much “realism” that they leave the theaters in quiet contemplation, we know we are flying upside down, about to take a nosedive into the earth.

The postmodern age looks to darkness for redemption and when it does not find it there, it discovers that the darkness is devoid of all hope.

The Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.

Even within the walls and halls of our own churches, the younger generation is looking to darkness to redeem them. Will we be like the generation Jesus first came to, the one who crucified him, who were His own, but did not recognize Him because He came as light.

In Him was LIFE and that LIFE was the LIGHT of MEN!

Faith Without "Perfection" Is Real

I was visiting with a friend of my mom’s today; well actually, she is also a friend of mine. She is recovering from surgery, and is headed home from rehab tomorrow. She is a great lady, who has been going through some really hard physical trials. While recovering from her latest test, she confessed that she wasn’t as “godly” as she wished she would have been while being in the hospital.

As she was sharing with Mom and me, she talked about different nurses coming in to check on her. How there were a few of them who would see her reading a devotion or her Bible and stop and ask her what she was reading. Those who were believers would get a chance to share a moment of fellowship openly with her, praising God or giving Jesus glory. I am sure others, who were not followers, still respected her devotion to her faith.

Our witness is to be real, and sometimes when we are real, we might be a bit testy, or upset, but that actually helps people see that we aren’t playing at our faith or putting on a show. The Jew in the Shakespeare play, “Merchant of Venice” says at one point, “if you cut me, do I not bleed.” Meaning, just because I am a Jew doesn’t mean that I am not human. So too, Christians hurt, they bleed, they laugh, they cry, they live as humans, yes fallen humans, that have the hope of one day living with Jesus without their sinful natures.

My friend might not always be the best patient, nor the kindest wife, nor the most gracious person, but what she always is, is a sincere follower of Christ. I know that even in her most trying times, when she is struggling with her attitude that she is still seeking Jesus. And when that moment of impatience passes , I know that she is openly confessing her attitude to the Lord; asking not only for His forgiveness, but for His strength to be more like Jesus the next time.

It is this seeking, this asking, this confessing that God is looking for. He knows that we are just dust, that we are never in this life going to be perfect, nor superhuman, nor little gods. It is not our trying, nor our working, nor our attempts at perfection that please God, but instead our seeking.

“Without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God.

For we must believe that He exists

and that He rewards those who earnestly SEEK Him.”

(Heb. 11:3)

It isn’t the doing everything just right, that pleases Him, it is the believing in Him, that makes Him happy. And I have to say I am soooooo absolutely thankful for that, because I will never attain perfection in this world, and this causes me to look forward to eternity so much more than if I thought I could work things out here.

When I read faith, the kind of faith that pleases God, includes believing that He REWARDS those who seriously seek Him, so much of His Word, and the Christian life made sense. Often times we look at men like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David and wonder how they could be the best of the best. They carry such titles as “friend of God”; “Israel”; “most humble man”; and “a man after God’s own heart,” even though they all committed HUGE sins: lying, murder, manipulation, adultery and the list goes on and on. However, when seen in the light of Hebrews 11:3, their lives of faith, their titles, their place in the Hall of Faith found in Hebrews 11 makes total sense. They were human, they messed up, they fell short of God, but each and every one of them BELIEVED that God was real, that He REWARDS those who earnestly SEEK HIM.

Now some of you will say we are told in Scripture to be “perfect, as I am perfect.” This is true, as those who have surrendered their lives to Christ, we are called to live set apart lives, to be holy. The desire to be holy “set apart for a higher purpose” is there within each of us. That is why when we behave badly we run to the Lord in confession. It is the Holy Spirit of God pressing on our chest every time we break God’s moral law. It is that same Holy Spirit that seals us until the day of Christ and makes us holy. He does the perfecting so we don’t have to.
My friend is one of these seekers, just like my Mom, and countless other women I know, who please God because of their faith. They not only believe, but they live for Jesus. They fulfill Matthew 6:33, which says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things (needs as well as rewards) shall be added unto you.”

Do not expect human “perfection” from yourself, or from anyone else you know, just live out your life in faith, and trust our God with the perfecting.