Bones, pt. 2

The other day I got woken up by a strange man in my room.  This is not a dream, nor is it just a clever ploy to keep you reading.  This really happened.

In my dorm room, one of our lights was out, so my roommate sent in a maintenance order to get it fixed.  We didn't know when maintenance would come, but we figured we probably wouldn't be there.  Well, I was there.

I was asleep and heard a knock on the door so I jumped out of bed and there he was.  He was there to fix the light.  It was awkward and embarrassing and the kind little man with only the best intentions written all over his face said, "Did I wake you up?!"  And of course I said no.

So he woke me up to fix the light.  And now I can see just a little bit clearer.  It's just a little bit brighter in here.

But he had to wake me up.  Or he couldn't get in.

I hardly ever use little analogies from my own life, but this one is just too good for the concept that God has been teaching me not to use.  And it's been stuck in my head ever since it happened.  This really happened.  God's got jokes.

Now, analogies to describe spiritual things can never do justice, they can never really perfectly convey the mighty works of such an eloquent and creative Writer.  And I am not claiming that this one does.  But just think about it.

Too often, we don't want to wake up.  We just want to stay in our comfortable place.  We want breakfast in bed.  We want to watch the cars pass by from the window in our 3rd story rooms.  But we never want to go down the stairs.  We never want to throw back the covers.

Well, scrambled eggs can't make themselves.

Our lights may be broken.  Our vision may be just a little fuzzy; it may be focused on something else.  We may be missing something that cannot be seen, something waiting for us in the corner of the room where the light doesn't quite reach.  We can't see it because our light is broken.  But we don't want to get up.  So we may never know it's there.

We just wait for the light to be fixed.  It will just "happen" to us, right?  We don't have to make an effort to meet people or to fix something in our hearts because it is just a phase and it will pass, right?  We'll be with the right person one day, right?  We'll be in the right town sometime, right?  Or in the right major, or at the right church.  This will all work itself out.  It will just happen, we think.  So we don't even try.  We just sit in our beds, hoping for that middle lightbulb in the center of our ceiling to get fixed by itself.

We need Jesus.

We desperately need Jesus to wake us up.  And sometimes we even ask Him.  Sometimes we even say, "God just wake me up!  Wake me up for what you want me to see!"  But we really have no intentions whatsoever to wake up.  Because it's going to be awkward and embarrassing if He wakes us up because we just look so rough when we first get up.  What, with our hair everywhere and our eyelids oozing and our faces scrunched up.  Or we don't want to wake up because it's cold outside or it's raining or we just don't feel like it.  So we sit.  Our bodies ache for something more, our muscles long to be exercised or even just stretched.  Our bones are dry and we sit.

Bones.

How does this tie in?  I'm not sure.  I think the concept of bones signifies depth.  Bones represent this organic, natural state of vulnerability, of openness, of the very essence that holds our bodies together.  When we ask Jesus to be in our bones, it's like we are telling Jesus that we want to go further than skin deep.  We want more.

And Jesus doesn't need us to tell Him that.  He does it anyway!  He came into our bones the day they crushed His.  He flooded our bodies the day they broke His.  The day we broke His.

He fills us!  Oh, He fills us!  He only wakes us up because He has so much for our eyes to see.  And by so much I mean Him.  He wants us to see Him, His beautiful face and everything that comes from His hand.  His creations, His goodness, His glory.  He just wants that for us because He loves us.  He doesn't want to talk to a sleeping version of us, one that cannot make replies, one that can't laugh or cry even or do anything more than just show off our skin as we sleep.  Because that's all that we offer Him.  Our skin.  Jesus just wants to know us.  He just wants to look into our eyes.  He just wants to fix the light so we can see a little better.  So we can see eternity with Him.

But we have to let Him in.
We have to let Him in when He knocks.

God is a rebuilder.  He restores things and makes them better, new creations, even.  But how can God be a rebuilder and a restorer if there is nothing to rebuild?  How can God rebuild if He doesn't wreck, first?

Wrecking scares us.

But God is a wrecker.  He wrecks every preconception we ever had about life and love and motivation and purpose and direction.  He wrecks our hearts, our souls.  It hurts, but He has to do it.

Where God's perfect love is, there can be no fear, so He wrecks it.
Where God's spirit is, there can be no oppression, so He wrecks it.
Where God's holiness is, there can be no impurity, so He wrecks it.
Where God's grace is, there can be no guilt, so He wrecks it.
Where God's inheritance is, there can be no identity crisis, so He wrecks it.
Where God's Son is, there can be no sin, so He wrecks it.  And He wrecks it forever.

And He rebuilds.  He begins this construction of this beautiful, beautiful new creation.  Reading Isaiah, a wonderful depiction of wreckage and rebuilding, I found myself on the edge of my seat saying, "Is He going to rebuild Israel!?  Is He going to rebuild the land!?  Surely He isn't going to leave it in ruins!"

"Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.' And they shall be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord;and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken." -Isaiah 64:11-12

Not forsaken.  Not barren.  

Sought out.  Redeemed.

God cannot build onto you a grand palace where there lies a dozen rickety shacks.  The Constructor cannot build without first demolishing.  There has to be space.  There has to be space for Him to build.  So everything that is there to begin with, must be destroyed.

Put off your old self.

And let Him renew your mind.

So, by saying, "I trust Jesus.  I want Jesus."  We cannot just add Him onto all the other junk in our lives. Jesus comes into that junk and He wrecks it.  He comes into our dirty hearts and He cleanses them.  He is not the powder we brush over our blemishes.  He removes them.  He doesn't just cover them up, He takes them away.  To have Jesus, we must let Him have us too.  All of us.

Jesus wants to fix our light, even if it means waking us up.

Jesus wants to make us beautiful, even if it means bringing out the wrecking ball.

Jesus wants to enter our bones, even if it means tearing back our skin.

Let Him in.

"Love be in my bones, love shake down my walls..."

LMB

Bones, pt. 1

Summer is over and I got to experience one of the greatest adventures of my life so far.  The thing I prepared for and prayed for and got excited for and nervous for and so many other emotions and preparations were made all for this one thing that happened.  And now it is over.

But I refuse to write a post "closing out" what I learned this summer because in a lot of ways, this summer started so many things, not ended them.  A lot of things that I learned this summer I will keep with me for the rest of my life as God builds onto them, refines them, and even further reveals them to me in new and exciting ways.  A lot of the people I met I have just started forming relationships with, so despite the fact that we are in separate places and we "had a good run," the run is not over, my friends.  Oh, no.  The depths of the purposes of this summer are beginning to dig into my life.  A faith that is not persistent over time is not a real faith.  A faith that comes in stages will leave you with a million lessons left on a shelf, screaming to be used in the next "stage" while you are fumbling in the dark, looking for the same help you have shoved in the corner.

The door to a season may close, I guess.  But it never really locks.

"being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

Closing off Summer 2012 as a summer that was well worth the while but over and done is like slamming shut the cover of a book and moving on to the next edition, completely forgetting what happened in the book before, leaving it and all of its words and truths and lessons and chapters to collect dust and cobwebs.  Now that's just silly.

Yes, we move on.  But we carry with us lessons and truths we have learned.  We follow up with the people we have met.  So, I'm going to do just that.  For the rest of my life.

Now that that's out of the way...

Reality.  Not just any reality, a different type.  One that is past the reality of just going to church or just going to bible study or even praying pretty prayers, the kind you rehearse before it gets to you in the circle because it has to sound just right.  Oh, no.  Beyond that.  This is the reality of our God.  An active, living, powerful God who interferes with our lives and speaks to us on a daily basis.  I don't mean speaks to us on a surface level, I'm talking about words that pierce us deep to our inner core and make us feel.

Feeling God.  What a controversial issue in Christian culture today.  There is a difference between an emotional Christian high and an emotional response to the love evoked by the One who has captivated our hearts.  So often we try to either:  

1. Avoid the emotional experience by living a life of studying the bible every morning with a cup of coffee and a notepad to jot down new facts about God or Jerusalem or the ancient customs of Israelites or the many trials of Paul and the trinity and whatever else that is solid and good and so applicable to our lives and these things connect to us, they make us ponder and wonder and make us so interested.  And then that's it.  That's enough.  We read about it and study it and know it and like it even, but that's all.

2. Feed off of the emotion and completely miss the God of it all.  We stimulate tears with sad music or think we have to cry or fall on the ground or lift our hands or come down to the alter call and pray "the prayer" because we feel so emotional.  And then we leave the dim lit room and love Jesus for a week and then it's all over and we go through this turmoil of why we can't "feel" God.  It's because we felt human-produced emotion, not the spirit-produced presence of God.  We just want to feel something.

Well, look.  I'm not an expert at this.  What I have learned in my life is that there is emotion involved in loving Jesus.  It's love.  We don't worship that emotion or that feeling.  We worship a God who loves us for all of our faults and shortcomings and quirks and that, my friends, produces love in our hearts.  It produces an active, living, excited love in our hearts for Jesus.  One that can be recognized both internally and externally.

One of my favorite lyrics from John Mark McMillan:

"Like fools in love, we're bound to make a scene..."

And yet we don't speak up about Him.  We talk about Him and read about Him and sing about Him, but when the hard truths come up about the reality of who He is and how His power is in us to use and how He can save even the furthest soul and how He can heal every disease and how He is in every part of our lives and deserves every bit of our surrender, we shrivel.  Yes, when we think about that God, that uncomfortable, interfering God--we stop in our tracks.  We have reached the threshold of "just enough" Jesus.  Just enough Jesus to get by.  So we think.

We don't believe He can speak through us so we don't speak.

We don't believe He can write through us so we don't write.

We don't believe He can speak directly to us so we don't listen.

We don't believe He can reveal to us things we do not know, so we don't ask.

We don't believe we can actually feel His presence so we don't even try.

He says believe.

We don't even try to feel His love.

We don't look for His face everyday.

We just know about Him.

We don't know Him.

This is what He says:

I am your reality.  I am real.  I am active and living and I am here to love you and make you feel loved.  Don't forget the reality of who I am.  Don't forget the reality of a life spent with me.  Right in front of your face, living inside of you.  Yes, you live in another realm, you live in a world with an open heaven right above you, with all the power you could ever ask for available to you.  I want you to have it.  I am the well that never will run dry.  I want to talk to you, I want you to hear my voice.  I want you to feel me at your very core, in the marrow of your dry bones--Yes, I want them to come to life.  Don't look past who I am.  Don't look past what I can do.  I'm not just something you sing about or read about or talk about.  I'm right here.  I'm in everything you see.  I'm everywhere you go.  I'm a reality.  I'm real.

We are not just readers, no.  We are characters in this story.  We are not just on the outside looking in.  We are in.  We are here.  We are a part of all this.  This beauty.  This reality.

Live in expectation.  Expect Him.  

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,

And daub their natural faces unaware.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Lee

Surrender yourself and say, I believe that You are here.  I believe that You can speak to me and I don't care what it is I have to say because all I want to hear is what you have to say.  That's how you hear Him.  You say I don't care what I want to do because all I want to do is what you want me to do.  That's how you feel Him.

He consumes you, your thoughts, your desires, your passions, your every move.
You and Him are one.

The bible does not just say "Study and know about."  It says "Taste and see." (Psalm 34:8)

Taste it.  Taste the sweetness.

My prayer is that God would become more to you than just a powder.  He is not just something you brush onto your skin when you want to look pretty or feel pretty.  He isn't washed away by the strongest rush of water or blown away by the heaviest gust of wind and even the biggest tear could not leave a single track on your face.  No, there is no record of defeat where Jesus is.  His presence is a strong presence.  He is embedded deep into your very bones.  He is in the blood in your veins.  He is deep, deep down to the core of your being, of your soul, of the very essence of who you are.  Every day.  Under every circumstance.  He is in you. He is in everything.

This is a reality.

LMB