Indeed, I cannot

But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. -Jeremiah 20:9

Just read this verse.  Insane, isn't it?  Is that how I feel when I am told to contain Him?  Is that how I feel when I am told to hold it in, to calm down a bit, to act a little more restrained?  Is that how I feel?

Do I feel weary?  Does it even strike a place in my heart?  Does it make me even think for a second that it's not right or that it's not natural or even that it feels kind of funny?

Do I feel the fire shut up in my bones, does it burn my heart to the core like a flame screaming inside of my skin just to break free?  Is that the type of pressure that I feel?

Or could I go on like any other day?

Could I go on?

I have been thinking a lot about the phrase "I can't live without your presence" because a song I have been listening to lately says that sentence in the bridge.  And I really liked it.  My ears perked up a bit and I sang along and I liked it.  Yeah, I liked it.

And then I started thinking about it.  Then I started to ponder it in my heart and it hit me.  The Holy Spirit hit me.

The sentence doesn't say "I can't live as well as I want to without your presence" or "Life isn't as fun without your presence" or "I can't call on you when I need you without your presence" or even "My Sunday mornings are free without your presence."

It doesn't say "I don't like it without your presence but I can still live."
Or "I miss you and all but I can go on without your presence."

And so I got to thinking about how I literally think without His presence... I could not live.

I could not breathe, I could not think or act or talk or move.  I would toss an turn in my bed at night for I could not sleep without having Him in my life.  I wouldn't be myself.  I wouldn't know what to do.  My identity would be in major crisis and everything on which I have built my life would be shattered and I would inevitably fall to the ground, left lying on top of the pieces of rubble.

I would be confused and disoriented and unsure.  I would be tired and drained and hopeless.  My head would probably snap right off at the pace of my neck twisting and turning, just looking, just looking for Him.  Somewhere, any sign of Him, His shadow, His breathe, even just to hear His voice.  I need it.  I need Him.

And there are people who don't have Him.

How do they do it?

No, really.  It's this serious.  It's not just that I can call on God when I need Him or laugh with Him when something funny happens that only He sees or cry out to Him when I am desperate and alone.  It's His presence.  It's the way He's always there and never leaves.  It's that at any given time I have an army of angels surrounding me protecting me against the enemy.  It's times like this moment now where I am alone in a coffee shop and am completely satisfied in Him and have nothing better to do but write to Him out of worship. He's here.  Times where I am walking and the wind is blowing and there is nothing on my mind in particular.  Or times when I am trapped behind a cubicle in the library and want to be anywhere but there, but I know He's there too.  It's sitting in my room by myself every morning, drinking in His word and just talking to Him like He is right there.  Because He is.

It's not only those extreme times.  It's those times, too.

It's times when thoughts of my past are completely shameful.

It's times when thoughts of my present are completely confusing.

It's times when thoughts of my future are completely frightening.

It's times in all this change.  And one thing remains.

So there is this stillness in the midst of war.  There is this peace in the middle of chaos.  There is this rest in the middle of busyness.  That's Him.  That's His presence.

And when I lay my head to sleep at night, He is there.  And when I wake up in the morning I imagine Him looking over me saying, "Good morning, sunshine!"

I can feel it.  I can feel His presence.  And sometimes I can't.  But I have this hope and this trust and this hidden, secretive feeling ingrained deep down in the calcium of my bones that says "I'm here."

There is this intimate connection between Father and Child, Rescuer and Rescued, Redeemer and Redeemed, Sinner and Savior.

There is this connection, this indestructible bridge that connects God and me.  Forever.  The cross.   And I have been sealed by His promise.  I am His.  Forever.

There is the Holy Spirit, living inside of me and it will never move to a new house or get tired of me or get fed up with my consistent disobedience or pride or discontentment or unbelief.  Grace overflows from this Spirit and fills the whole neighborhood within me and it bubbles out of me until I taste and see and realize that He is there.  I realize that I have no other choice but to respond to this grace, to move, to smile, even.

His presence.  I could not live without it.  I would be crawling on the dirt floor out of starvation and suffocation, weary and lost.  Desperate and hopeless.  Drained and dreary.  I would be nothing.  I would be useless.  I  would be pulling myself with every last bit of strength that I had.  I would collapse on my flimsy arms, lying in the puddle of my own tears whimpering, "I can't live without You, God."

What a humbling picture.  Is that how much I depend on Him?  Is that how much I value His presence?  Is that how much I treasure the Treasure?

My skin would explode, pore by pore, my bones would be clanging with the pain of suppression. My spiritual stomach would be growling for Bread, surpassing the pangs until it finally shrinks and shrivels up.  The Spirit would be pounding, kicking, screaming inside of my heart like someone locked alive in a casket, being lowered to their grave.  Pounding.

Tell me to hold it in.

I will tell you, "Indeed, I cannot."

LMB

The experience

Good Friday.  It's Easter season.  What does that mean?

On Monday, Easter is over.  The day will be passed.  Easter is over.  What does that mean?

I like to think that there is no difference.
I like to think that Easter is everyday.
I like to think that resurrection is recurring.
Daily.
Moment by moment.

What is the difference between a day set aside for celebration and family and church and sunrise services and chocolate bunnies and the next day of our lives and from then on?

As a person who is directly affected by the resurrection, what is the difference?
As a person who is forever changed by the blood of the Lamb, what is the difference?
As a person who is constantly redeemed and refined and renewed, what is the difference?

As a sinner, what is the difference?

It's not enough just to know about Easter.  It's not enough just to have head knowledge of it, to know all the theology behind it, the history.  It's not enough to know Easter.  We must experience it.

Let us experience Easter.
This year and forever more.

We have been saved!  We have been rescued!  He died for us and rose again and we pass by Him as He hangs on the cross.  We look at Him one Sunday as a Savior and forget about it the rest of our days.  We pass by the tree on the hill.  We pass by.

But blood can cause a scene.  Blood can turn heads and make you stop in your tracks.  Blood can make you do a double take, turn your head and look back and point and see and say, "What is going on there?"

And this is not any blood, this is perfect blood, this is blood of a sinless Man.  And then you find out that the Man is dying because of you.  So your eyes get wide and you thank Him once and walk away.

Our lives will never be the same.  We will never be the same.  The death, the gruesome, ugly, chilling death that sends shivers up my spine, makes my knees weak and my eyes water when I stop and think, "That Man loves me!"


That Man loves me and here He is dying!
Dying because of me!

How He suffered and died.  He bore all this grief that I feel every day, He bore all the shame that consumes me and suffocates me and makes me stay up toss and turn night after night.  It's heavy.  It's so heavy.  The justifications.  The idols.  And all these days I turn my face from Him and all these moments I lie and lust and cheat and steal.  The instant I give into temptation and the denials I serve to Him daily, I beautify them and place them on a platter and serve them right to Him.  Right to His face.

And He takes them.  How can He take them!  He takes them onto Himself.  He bears them on his back and with every stone we throw, He feels it.  It's just another sin He has to carry. It's just another sin.

It's just another day we live in disobedience.  It's just another idol we worship.  It's just another area of life we can't give up.  We say we can't give it up.  We won't.  It's just a little thing.  We say we will change tomorrow.

It's just another day.

It all adds up.  He carries it on His back and it gets heavy.  He is beaten and battered and bruised and mocked.  People rebuke Him, challenge and test Him and tell Him to come down.  If He is really the Lord can not He just come down? Can not He save Himself?

But He chose to save us instead.

We are the mockers. We are the spitters. We are the stoners. We are the sinners. We are the redeemed.

He redeemed us!  He gave us life when we had none!  When we were dead in our sins He revived us!  By His last breath we breathed our first.  The saints rise up when His head hangs down.  This is our life.  This is our Savior.

This is our Savior.  This is why we live.

He carried the weightiest burden of the world to deliver the weightiest truth to the world.


He chose me.
How could He chose me?


We have no other choice but to spend the rest of our lives pursuing this God.

He was satisfied with the will of the Father.
We aren't satisfied with Him.
He chose to pray instead of sleep.
We chose to sleep instead of pray.
So much sleeping.
He humbled Himself.
We raise ourselves up.
He carried others' burdens.
We turn from the troubles of others.
So much turning.
He loved.
We hate.
He was perfect.
We are sinful.
So much sinning.
He died.
We live.

So much living.

And it doesn't stop at the cross.  The grace doesn't stop there.  By the power of God, Jesus rose again!  He rose and lived and lives today.  The earth shakes with His power and the boulders can't bear to stay in place.  He is alive!  He is alive and death is no more.

A death like His cannot just be considered. A death like His means complacency is impossible.  A death like His deserves all of us.  It deserves all of our praise, every bit of our hearts and our souls and our deepest, deepest dreams and fears and insecurities and worries.  He handled death.  He can handle that.

Trust me child, I can handle that.

Our graves are being dug and our energy drained.  Our arms are being crossed and our eyes shut.  Our bodies are being lowered and our lives decayed.

But He says No!

He says there is no fear in death, He says there is no death at all but only life and life in all its fullness!  And He says it's eternal!

He says there is only Love and redemption and resurrection.

Everyday.

He reaches His hand down to us and pulls us out of these tombs.  Jesus doesn't do tombs.  He doesn't like tombs very much and He knows you won't either.  He pulls us out of these graves and makes us live.

And it's all because He died.
It's all because of Him.

It's not because of us.  When did the resurrection become ours to control?  When did Easter become about us?  When did it start being about our preferences?  When did we get to start choosing when to live and when to sleep?  When did we start worshiping this fuzzy feeling we get when we go to church on Sunday and read the Easter story once out-loud with our suits and ties and new dresses and baskets filled with candy and flowers and our schedules to abide by and our time constraints to meet and this and that...

When did we start living comfortable?
The King wore a crown of thorns and a robe of bruises and lashes and nails in His hands and His feet and a hole in His side.  He died on a cross!  That is not comfortable!

What about our Savior!  Have we experienced His life for us?  We worship a God who died to give us the greatest gift of all.  Grace.  We worship a God who died with our names on His mind.  We can run to Him.  We can talk to Him.  We are His because He bought us.

Adopted as sons and daughters.
We say thank you one day and walk away.

But this changes everything.

Let this reality sink into your heart today.  He loves you.  Marinate your heart in this love.  Let the resurrection permeate your heart to the core.  Let it fill the emptiest part of your heart.  Let it bring you to your knees and fill your eyes with tears.  Let it stir inside of you, His blood rushing wildly through your veins.  He loves you.  Meditate on this.  He bought our lives and gave them to us.  And we keep them for ourselves?  They are His.  It's all Yours, God.  He deserves it all.

Glory to the One!  God's murdered Son!  He took our sin and shame!  He is our hope and peace! Hallelujah to the One who died and rose and lives today!  Praise be the Him in the highest!

We are set free because of Him.  Free.

We have life because of Him.  Life.

It's not enough to know about Easter.  Experience it.  Every single day.

LMB

...I say "we" in this post because I mean me, too.

Freedom

I am starting this post with absolutely no idea where it's headed.  I don't know what I am going to write about, all I know is that God's love is exuding out of me and I have to find an outlet somewhere.

So, this has to be the Holy Spirit.

I don't know how I got here and I don't know if I ever want it to stop. Those moments in life when you have nothing in your brain except for thoughts of eternity and heavenly places and it seems so ironic because you don't even know what you are thinking about because you have never been there.  I mean, I have never been to heaven.  So what exactly am I thinking about?

I do believe that our God meant what He said about life on earth as it is in heaven.  So why do we not live that way?  Why do we not live like our God is alive?  I ask myself these questions.

Easter looms around the corner but honestly it has never left.  Each day is a new resurrection and if you live your life thinking that God is far and that these fleeting thoughts you have about Him are just a phase or just in vain or whatever else you think, think again.

And again and again.  I told someone the other day that I am a firm believer in meditating on things.  Which is a really weird sentence to even utter and I'm not even sure how it even came out of my mouth.  I don't even know how my lips formed that statement.  Sometimes I will have a conversation with someone and just sit there for silent awkward minutes at a time until the other person has to say, "What are you thinking about?"

And then it gets even weirder when I have to say I don't know.  I mean, it is so far beyond my comprehension and still I know it is about Him.  It gives me this swaying feeling, like wind blowing the lightest object in the wind to where it flutters and moves back and forth with grace.  I don't have much grace.  But Jesus does.

So we have these thoughts about whether or not God loves us or whether or not He is even real or whether or not we can give this up or that up or whether this sin or that sin is holding us back or whether or not God wants this for us or that or whether or not we are "called" to this thing or that place and then we get rid of them.  We banish these thoughts and then we say, "I just don't feel God."  But are we letting Him in?  Are we even giving Him a chance?  We get scared of hard things and this radical life God has called us to and we pray with loud voices because we want to override the whispers that we know He wants to speak to use because we know they are scary.

He wants to do impossible things with us.

If we aren't living differently then we aren't doing something right.

What do we expect?  Really, what do we expect?  We expect good worship that makes us feel good and we expect truth to be spoken through other means and through someone else and we expect God to show up when we are pretty and we think God is only there when it's a beautiful day outside or when it's raining really hard and He's like the umbrella or something.  He is the rain.

Let Him rain.

He's the clouds and the stream and the sun and the moon and the cars and the trees and the industries and the smoke and the air and the furnace and the completely normal day where nothing extraordinary happens and yet everything but normality is fluttering about us in our very midst but what do we expect?

Do we really have to have special circumstances to see our God?  Do we really have to have a ministry or a worship night or a summer trip or a crazy conversation or a pretty sunset or a devout blessing?  What about in the corners of our rooms sitting on the floor by ourselves?  Can we talk to God then?

Where did all these lines come from?  These lines of our hearts that God just wants to erase, demolish really and I'm not talking about these lines that say, "I never want You anywhere, God."  I'm talking about these lines that say "God you can be here at this time and here at this time but only a little bit here and only if we sing this song here and only if someone is with me here and only if it doesn't hurt anyone's feeling here and only if you call me here." We tell Him He can't make us look too weird or He can't make us offend anyone or He can't tell us this because it would completely change the way we live and that is just too much to handle right now but maybe later when things calm down.  Maybe later.  We tell Him we will sacrifice this or that on the surface because it's easier than saying "God change my heart."  We tell Him we will abide by the rules because that's all we need to do and it's easier than bringing up these insecurities and these bad memories and these ghosts of our pasts or these fears of our futures.  We tell Him we'd rather Him not interrupt out lives because they are going good and we're feeling good and we are reading really good verses and singing really good songs and having really good conversations with our brothers and sisters.  We tell Him that once we get alone we don't really know how to talk to Him so we just don't.

We just don't.

We think about these things and just let them go in a minute and we don't even stop to think that that one hint of doubt we have in our hearts needs to go to God.  It was just a fleeting thought, right?  No big deal.  We don't even let Him speak to us because we don't give Him a chance.

God is relentless.  God is louder than our voices could ever be.

These lines and these categories and segments and definitions.  These time constraints and these pretty plans and these ministries and these rules and boundaries.  What are we doing?!  We live in this freedom, the freedom of the One True God that nothing could ever hinder.  We live in the wind, the mighty rushing wind that  doesn't just come in the hurricanes or the breeze of the beach.  God's presence is not stimulated by a guitar or a conference or a few tears.  It is stimulated by anything.  It stimulates everything.

Just tell Him to come.  Tell Him you will let Him come.

Come about us, Father.

This freedom.  Ah.  Let us not make our ministries our lives but our lives our ministries.  Let us not follow the rules of time and space but let us follow the flow of the Spirit that never leaves.  Let us not get caught up with life and God just be there, but let us get caught up in God and life just be there.  Let us not worry about stepping on people's toes anymore, but let us be concerned with speaking truth into people's hearts.  It's not about toes anymore, it's about hearts.

Jesus stepped on people's toes.  Jesus captured people's hearts.

Church, in order for revival to take place, God is rising up His body.  He is telling us to wake up, to be the vessel for His Spirit to run freely, flow freely into each passing body, each passing glance, even.  Those cutting eyes that see us ordinary people and know that we have been with Jesus.  Those double takes.  Erase the lines, church.  Stop stifling His Spirit because it feels weird or it looks strange or it offends people.  He has sent us here to pave the way for His Spirit to move.  That road right in front of us.  Are our structured Christian lives displaying the freedom that that Christ has given us?  Or are they actually just the road blocks?

Are we entertaining the very things that crucified Christ on the cross?

Reject passivity.

You could lock me in a dark and empty room and sit me in a corner and tell me to think about the resurrection and I think I'd be just fine.

I preach this to myself, brothers and sisters.

Chaser

I have been learning about this for quite some time now.  You could say I have been learning about this ever since I first heard the word Father and that I will be learning about it for the rest of my life.  This is an impossible thing to describe.  This is an unreachable thing to grasp.  This is a cliche topic that is anything but.  It gets thrown around and contrived to fit our circumstances and is apparent to us only when we need it.  It sits on a shelf in a box for us to grab and go when we please and sometimes that shelf collects so much dust because we never think that we need it.  We don't even look at it.  This is not a light matter.  This is not a word on a page or a line in a song.  This is not even a tingly little feeling we get inside of us that makes us think  in our heads that God is close in that one moment.  This is not something we can pick and choose to have.  This is not something we deserve.  This is not even something that makes dark days disappear or light days last forever.

This is something that is realer than any stigma of real you have in your head.

This is something that penetrates, pulverizes us.

This is something constant, something that will never go away even when we don't accept or acknowledge it.

This is something that makes dark days lighter and light days kingdom days.

This is something that changes everything.

This is the love of God.

The love of a Savior, a Master, a Redeemer.  This is the love of a Father, totally undeserving.  It's revolutionary.  It's love unlike any other love.

Words do not do this concept justice and they never will.

Oh, the love of God.  It grips me and compels me.  It knocks me off of my feet.  It is that powerful.  It is the hurricane, the whirlwind.  And juxtaposed to our love, our little human love, the love we have for the very person we love the most, that love that hurts from the strain it causes us and every chemical we have inside of us that has to do with love is active and moving and flaring and our hearts for these people and things feel like they are about to burst.  The love for our mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and friends and husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and dogs and cats and whoever else it is that we love, that we would do anything for, that we would willingly stop what we are doing in our tracks just to utter to this person a single word.  Yes, this kind of love.  His love makes this love look like hate.

His love makes no sense.  It is one big paradox.  He needs no reciprocation and yet it does not take away the intensity of His love.  We spit at Him and mock Him and rebuke Him and refute Him.  He loves us.  We disobey Him and run from Him and turn our ears from Him.  He loves us.  We never call Him Father and we never will.  He loves us.  We try so hard to love Him and fail time and time again.  He loves us.  We don't deserve this.  Who loves like this?

His love is furious and gentle at the same time.  He pursues us.  He does not relent.  He runs after us with fury and might and He strains for us.  He is jealous for us.  Jealousy is a consuming emotion.  Just think about it.  When you, little human, get jealous, it consumes your thoughts and you feel your chest turning and your ears reddening and you clinch your fists and grit your teeth because your heart wants so badly what it does not have.  That is Him.  But that is Him multiplied by infinity.  He hurts when He doesn't have you in His arms. He wants to hold, child, and let you rest.  He cringes when He sees you turn away.  But He does not stand and pout and let emotion override Him.  He runs.  He runs after us.

He chases us.  He never stops.  He is so much faster than we will ever be.  And when we run for the rest of our lives He is running too.  He goes before you.  He is in the belly of the whale before you are tossed from the ship.  You cannot hide from Him.  He wants you too badly.  He just wants you, child.  He says you can run.  Just run to Him.

His arms are open.  He delights in every detail of your life.  He will never let you fall, though you may stumble.  He cries when you cry.  He laughs when you laugh.  And when your heart is latched onto something other than Him, it saddens Him.  Because He wants you.  When no one else wants you.  He wants you.  When you don't want yourself.  He wants you.

Let Him have you.

All of you.  This is not a halfway love.  This is not a love we get at our convenience.  This is not a love we can wake up one day and say, "I think I will have some of God's love today."  This is a love we cannot lose.  This is a love that interrupts our lives and attacks our normality.  This is a love that flips everything else upside down.  This is a love that makes even the very thing your heart desires the most look like rubbish.  It will change your life.

His love burns.  It burns like fire and your heart will never be the same.  This is a love that if you taste it one time you hunger for it all the days of your life.  He screams for us.  He whispers for us.  He carries us and watches us and waits for us.  He does not give up on us.  He does not become discouraged by us.  No matter how far we run He knows you can never be too far off from Him.  Never.

He sees our brokenness.  He sees our skewed thoughts, our insecurities, our dreams, desires, fears.  He sees the deepest parts of our hearts.  He sees the war.  He is in the war.  He never stops fighting for us.  He loves us.  He loves His children.

He needs no conditions.

He needs no confidence.

He needs no self-esteem.

He needs no perfection.

He needs no reciprocation.

He needs no clean record.

He needs no obedience.

He needs nothing from us.

He still loves us.

He shatters our idols.  He throws them against the wall and watches them break right in front of His eyes.  He loves us so much that He is willing to put Himself through pain to save us.  Consider.  He allows us to hurt which hurts Him even more because He knows that these tears will one day be a stream of living water that will rush so freely and wildly, turning every bend, with waves that crash loudly and leave drops of  this water to soak into this dry land that surrounds it on every side.  He only wants good for us.  It hurts Him to see His children hurt.  But He loves us that much.

He is the rushing wind.  He comes riding on a white horse.  He rescues us.  He pulls us out of the pit of destruction.  The enemy is under His feet.  He rebukes Him and casts Him away.  He goes through lengths that we will never see and never know about and never be able to thank Him for to protect us from the enemy.

But He doesn't need "thank you's" to love us.  He does that anyway.

When He looks at us, He doesn't see a banker.  When He looks at us, He doesn't see an immigrant.  He doesn't see a student or a lawyer or a homeless person.  He doesn't see an orphan or a disloyal husband or a prostitute.  He doesn't see a hypocrite.  He doesn't see a convict.  He doesn't see the girl with the insecurities that are ruining her and causing her grief and making her reach for things of this world to satisfy her and give her worth and who pours into herself lies from the ruler of the kingdom of the air instead of heeding to the truth of the Father.  He doesn't see the boy who thinks he is too far deep in sin to go to God, that he could never change his ways, and he thinks there is no turning back now so he runs.  But God doesn't see a runner.

He sees beauty.

When He looks at us, He sees Christ's righteousness.  When He looks at us, He sees His creation.  When He looks at us, He sees His beloved.  He sees perfection when He looks at us.  He sees worth when He looks at us.  He sees past the surface when He looks at us, past the blemish, past the shame and the guilt and the dirt and the sin.  He sees something beautiful. He sees something that He wants, He strains for and yearns for and strives for.  He sees His son.  He sees His daughter.  He looks into our eyes and smiles and sees something that He loves.  When He looks at you, He sees something He loves.

He just loves you.

That's all He knows to do.

That's who He is.

The love we do not deserve.

The love that completes us.

It makes us whole.

We were made for this love.

He stretches out His hand.

He says take it.

It's free.

He says won't you just take it?

Won't just just take my love?

Glory pt. 2

The glory of God is not a halfway thing.  It is full.  It is rich.  It is all-consuming.

So often, we live life halfway.  We trick ourselves into thinking that we are living life in all its fullness, when in reality we are living in just that--reality.

Why live in reality when you could live in spirituality?  When you could defy the odds of life and the world and everything that is plastered into our brains that life is all about when we could live with Jesus.  Here on earth.  Living with Jesus and by Jesus and for Jesus.  In every single part of our lives.

This summer I learned a lot about putting Christ at the center of my life.  Not the "number 1" thing in my life, but at the absolute center of everything.  Our lives are so categorized into different segments and parts and here is my friend life, my school life, my sports life, my relationship life, my church life, my job life, my relaxation life, my Facebook life, even.  Life becomes so segmented and while God is so very near and dear to us, He becomes near and dear to us only at our convenience, only at the parts we let Him in.  We pick and choose where and when we want Jesus to be the main parts of our lives.  Jesus does not pick and choose when He loves us. At all.

Jesus does not love us halfway.  He loves us fully and completely and unconditionally and all the time and when we do not deserve it and when we feel Him the least and when we love Him back.  He does not choose to love what we do at school but not really care about what we do at home or at work or even at church because at church, you know, He can turn a blind eye since we are at church so we must be doing good, we must be living life fully.  No, no He does not love us halfway, He does not assume we are fully displaying His glory.  He makes sure of it.  He searches the depths of our hearts and our intentions and our failures and dreams and desires and shortcomings and plans.  He is jealous for us and attacks and wrecks every single wall that is in the middle of us and Him because He loves us that much.  He uses things that are painful to us because He knows better than us.  He sees these little areas of our hearts that we keep from Him and He goes after them relentlessly, because He wants all of us, and not half of us.

How much does it sadden Jesus to see us only receiving half of His love?  He gives freely to us and we do not take it.  His love came at His own price, a price we have to stop to consider, a price that brings us weak to our knees and causes our eyes to be lifted to Him and Him only and yet He does not make us pay for the phenomenally expensive love.  He gives it all to us freely.  And we only take half of it.

Jesus did not just die on the cross.  He did not just do half of the job and leave us to sulk and mourn and be sad because our Savior, though He died for our very sins, making us halfway joyful and halfway appreciative, just died and left us to wonder what we do next, oh no.  Instead He rose too, making this selfless act of love complete, giving us the Holy Spirit through the power that overcame death and the grave and no one could do that with only half the effort.  He loved us so much that He died and rose.  Not just one or the other.  Not just half of it.  He completed it.

And yet we see this love and we stifle it, we smother it with ourselves and our own desires because as long as we have enough Jesus to make us feel justified and give us that little tingling feeling inside then we are doing exactly what God wants us to do.  No.  We were not designed to live life halfway; we were not designed to only let Jesus into parts of us because that is not how He created us!  He is not a halfway God and His glory is not made to be halfway displayed through us because it is just that--GLORY.  It is full and rich and all-consuming.  It cannot be cut up and divided into pieces and appointed to certain parts of our lives.  It does not have a roll-over effect where if you display the glory of God in one part of your life more than another, it equals out and covers up the shortcoming.  No.

So now we see that even the things that make us the happiest leave us the least satisfied when Jesus is not in the center of it all.  Our lives are not shelves.  There is no structure or categorization or segments.  We cannot pencil God out of our schedule, even just for the day, because our time is different than His because I am pretty sure He is the Creator of time itself, therefore it is all His.  There is God and there is His glory and unless we submit to it in every part of our lives we will not know the fullness of God.  We will not be satisfied.  Because we are not living in the way that He created us.

We were created to display His glory.  That is why were were made.  So when we hinder that in the slightest sense, it becomes magnified and eats away our skin like acid until we finally stop the burning and say, "You can have this part of me!"  These parts that we keep to ourselves all add up and we see, then, that when we do not let Him have even the smallest one, the one that hides behind the bigger ones in the back and act all innocent and quiet, it begins to charge its way to the forefront of our lives and consume the bigger and more apparent holes that we have until they all mesh together and we are so far gone that we have no idea how we got to this place and we are miserable.  Because we were not created for this.  We were not created to hold back.

Every day is a new opportunity to let the glory of God consume new and hidden parts of our lives and these shelves that we have set up in our very souls come crashing down into one big mound of life that we get to stand on the top of with God in triumph and say "Hallelujah!  You have won the victory!"

The victory of the grave, the victory of our souls, the victory of our very lives, yes, He has won it.  And so we learn that even the faintest hint of segmentation is fatal.  It kills us.  It eats away at us.  And though it may be masked, though it may look pretty and lovely and good for us, even if we come across it every day and it is all smiles with this thing, we will never be satisfied.  Because we were created for God and when He is not there, we are not being fed with the very bread of life that was made solely and exactly for us.  We will continuously feel empty because we were created to display the glory of God in its fullness.  So displaying only half of it may look appealing to others, it may be good enough for a pat on the back or for some affirmation from yourself or a justification for that lie you keep telling yourself, since you look good.  You look good in this area!  But that is not life.  Life is not about you looking good.  It is not about you looking anything.  It is about how God looks.

May we stop living this life halfway.  May we not be comfortable with giving God only parts of our lives.  May we be holy and pleasing living sacrifices to the Lord our Father in Heaven.  May we, as a body of believers, give Christ our bodies.  Not just our limbs or our eyes or our ears or nose or fingers.  May we give Him our bodies, church, to together create the ultimate body that is the Body of Christ.  May we display the fullness of His glory together. Amen.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 10:31

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Psalm 16:11

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. Romans 12:1

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Epehsians 3:17-19

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Glory pt. 1

I have learned so much this semester.  And lucky for me, I am now home for about a month with little to no standing obligations but to relax and enjoy the stillness of life.  So, that means I will have much more time to try to sort out all that God has done for me this semester.  This is an impossible feat, but the beauty of life is that we get to live trying.  That's why it's life and not eternity.  That is life, to constantly search for the beauty and the glory of God.  And in eternity we will see it in all its fullness.  That is eternity.

And that is one thing God has been teaching me this semester-- His beauty and his glory and all that He is.  Oh my, I cannot bear to look at the world, at earthly things and fleeting things and just things.  They become vain to me and right before my eyes everything turns to nothing compared to this new glory that has been revealed to me.  I see it everywhere.  And I want to forever live in the search for more of this glory.

The world is such a juxtaposed place.  If you know me, you know that juxtaposition is one of my favorite literary terms ever and I cannot believe I just wrote this sentence.  But it is true.  Juxtaposition means the act of placing close together or side by side, especially for contrast.  Think about it.  Think about the stark contrast.

This is about to blow your mind.

God, the ultimate artist, carves this earth with His hand, this beautiful earth with clouds stretched across the sky and canyons that swallow even the largest person whole and trees that are skillfully placed on the perfect hill so that the dynamics of vertical to horizontal effectively display the beauty of its Creator even in just one passing glance.  He spoke it.  He spoke grass so green that it compels us to run over it, to grab it, smell it, pull it, lie in it and look at the skies. Skies that burst into colors that we could never dream of recreating, no matter how many paints we squirt and mix together, the kind of colors that make your heart melt on the drive home from a long day at work.  Mountains that lay plastered against the sky only to enhance the effects of their boldness and solidity.  Their heights scream at us.  The ocean, with waters that engulf us, depth that deepens our very souls and even our heaviest burdens in those moments seem to look like the smallest little issue compared to the vastness of it all.  We get lost in it and its stillness with simultaneous perseverance represented through the aggressiveness of the waves and that is what we see.  These creations were made to bring about these reactions in us.  They were not just made to look at.  All this took some thought.  This world contains intricate detail that is strategically developed to reveal to us the Creator's glory in the best and clearest possible way.  And we miss it every day.

And then we see us.  These broken and fragile beings, so small that even words are too long to describe our state.  We know nothing and yet we think we know everything and even that makes us smaller and smaller.  It all adds up onto us.  We consistently reject and deny our Savior time after time and we blatantly disobey the very one who made us and saved us.  We look at this Artist's creations and spit at them, toss them aside.  We long for other things, we throw ourselves at people, items that we were not created for.  We have no strength in us and no fight in us and no power in us and the only way we are even living and breathing is because of someone else, some other power.  We have done nothing on our own and yet we try to do everything on our own.  We are wicked.  We are vile.  We are stained.  We are hypocrites, skeptics, cynics.  We are sinners.  We are at the mercy of God above.  And what a mercy it is.

So God placed us, these barbaric creatures described above, on this wonderfully made earth.  It makes us seem even smaller and even more like just dust and ashes when we zoom out and see these little black dots on this absolutely breathtaking canvas.  How did we get here?  Dirty and small and broken people.  Spotless and massive and beautiful earth.  He placed us here to greater display His glory.  How juxtaposed we are.

Praise be to the Lord Almighty!

But then there is this other viewpoint.  This paradoxical explanation that also persists to display the glory of God.  Because God is really good at making things that seem to make no sense make sense.

Here we are.  Redeemed and made complete and alive in Christ.  Our sins washed away and he grabs our hands at the well and gently helps us up and tells us that He knows all the things that we have done but we are made new.  He makes us in His image.  He cleanses us of every impurity, even the ones hidden deep within ourselves, the ones that our closest friends and relatives either don't know about us, or see and despise in us.  And He sees those things in us and loves us anyway.  He wrecks the walls of pride and guilt and shame and all the ugly, ugly things about us and rebuilds us in splendor and glory and purity.  He makes us, the vilest of all the creatures, into beautiful things.  He uses us, totally undeserving, to display His mercy and His love.  He washes away our sin with the blood of Jesus Christ.  He constantly resurrects us and shakes off our dust and makes us beautiful.  He makes us beautiful.  He pushes our brokenness aside and makes us whole again.  And He does this day after day after day.

And he sends us out.  Into this world.  This world full of sin and materialism and idolatry and greed.  This world full of war and suffering and pain and so much distortion that even the prettiest things of this world are hidden deceits of the devil himself.  No one is safe.  Mass chaos and destruction fill the earth.  Hate is more real than love and even the true love that does exists stands firm under conditions and reciprocation and selfishness.  Fear overshadows us and the ghosts of timidity haunt us and now on this earth we are told to live and love through tolerance and acceptance which are really synonymous for passivity and idleness.  Everything is messed up.  Everything is masked or skewed or taken out of context.  People resent people.  People resent God.  People resent people resenting God, so they keep Him to themselves.  The Spirit is stifled, smothered and even worship is questioned for its haughtiness or non-traditionalism.  Genuineness and sincerity are ambiguous.  Brothers and sisters become our cynics and skeptics.  Everything is wrong.  We can't escape it.

New people.  Bright with His light, shining in the splendor of His majestic presence in our very souls.  This earth.  Loud with its vanity, taunting us with the trickery of deceit ingrained in its very core.  There must be a reason we were here.  He placed us here to display His glory.  How juxtaposed we are.

We are aliens here.  Just look at the contrast.

In both of these views, this thing I call the "Double Juxtaposition" or "The Juxtaposition Paradox" or "The Juxtaparadox" (actually, I just made all of those terms up)...anyway.  In each of these views, we are not perfect.  We are dirty sinners, but we are made beautiful in Christ.  We were created to be that way.  We are created to do those things, to submit ourselves to the Creator, and in each different perspective, that is how His glory will be maximized.

No matter which way you look at it, His glory is to be revealed through us.  That is why we live.  Think about that.

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.  For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.... Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.  I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." Isaiah 43:1-3, 5-7

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Oh, longing

I am a little behind.  Actually, I am a lot behind.  But then again, what is behind anyway?  What time restraints do I have?  As long as time is not wasted, time is of little importance.

It has been a while since I have written on here.  Longer than I would like, but at the same time, this just means that God has been using my time for other things.  Computers get opened less and texts get answered hours later if at all.  My journal, though, has been working overtime and the old school pen and paper have become more and more a favorite part of my day.  Simplicity is winning, or at least fighting.  God is winning, but He always wins.

There are so many things that have been blowing my mind lately.  As much as I can try, this post will abstain from so many uses of "overwhelming" and "words can't describe," but I cannot promise you that it is that easy.  If you know Christ and His beauty and overwhelming (oops) majesty, then you know that it is not easy.  But, who likes easy things, anyway?

This feeling has been etched into my heart this semester.  I have literally been thinking about it for months which may be the longest time I have gone without writing it all down in one place.  Different parts of it are scattered throughout my journal pages and throughout the files of my mind and finally I will try to make sense of it all or at least sort it out because it is too good to not share.  This one is a bit...abstract. But that just makes God cooler.

I am in Psychology of Emotion right now and we have talked about how there are all these different emotion words but there are also some emotions that don't have words in the English language.  Makes sense, right?  How many times have you had this feeling and just not known what to call it or how to classify it?  Maybe that is just me, but I feel like it happens a lot.

There is this grief.  Grief may not be the right word, but that is the closest I can get.  Now this grief is simultaneous with intense joy, but do not lose me here.  There is this feeling that I get from the deep sadness that comes with having to encounter everything of this world moment by moment that pours into my life these things that make me so happy and yet leave me so empty.  This grief that gets me as I lie down to go to sleep and think over my day and all the people I am so blessed to know and fellowship with and all the good books I can read and good coffee I can drink and the A's I can make on tests.  I think about the conversations I can have or the meals that I can share and the girls I get to pour into and hug and live life with and there are all these smiles going around and people you pass by everyday on the way to class that make your face light up in that three second time span you see them.  And I think about how there is this new CD out that I can listen to whenever I please and the cool shoes I can buy and the letters from friends that make me smirk when I read them at anytime I want and the phone calls with my family that always leave me laughing.  And now the air is so nice and the leaves have peaked and they flutter and fall around me as I walk across campus and yes, I think of all these things.  I love all of these things.

Yet, there is grief in these things.

I go to bed with a longing almost every night.  I think about these things and about how happy they make me and yet I am left with this uneasy, saddening feeling that they are not why I was created.  They are not why I live on this earth.

My God, how beautiful is He.  How someone can give me all these things and others and still leave me searching for more and more of Him.  Restlessly longing for more of Him, knowing that the things of this world are pleasant yet fleeting, but that God is sweet and that the only thing this sweetness leaves is me coming back for more, running back for more.  I have this feeling that I don't belong here with these things because I don't.  I don't belong with things.  I belong with my Maker.

So this grief may be confusing to explain because it comes with this unending joy that comes from being able to seek for more and more of that which I have tasted and seen is good.  My old friend C.S. Lewis says this:

It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.
 
When I was thinking of this feeling, a memory from playing softball in high school came to my head.  It was my senior year, first game, first at bat.  We were away and I was lead-off batter so I had the very first swings of the season opener.  I was never a power hitter and everyone knew it, so while the rest of my team was slugging home runs left and right, I was always getting seeing-eye singles and the occasional double.  So I get up to bat and swing.  I hit the ball to right field and this is the first at bat of my senior year so I am excited to even make contact.  I look up slightly on my way to first, yet it wasn't really about what I saw, but what I heard.  A clanking sound.  But I just kept running and running all the way to third which never really happens because I am not too quick, but the adrenaline was helping me and the wind probably was too.  I slid into third safely and I stood up, brushed myself off, and realized--I just hit the top of the fence.  Then within the span of about five seconds, my mind went into full-blown warfare over whether I should be happy or upset.  Happy, that yes, I just got a triple on my first at-bat of my senior year, or upset that I was probably an inch away from hitting a homerun, something I had never done before and had convinced myself (and rightly so) that I could never do.

That closeness.  Inches away from the ultimatum, the goal you long for and dream of and work toward.  The joy that comes from getting so close and yet always being left with more.  And you're left with this grief of knowing that you are so close and this joyful feeling that the closeness itself brings, but you realize there is something more, something greater and unexplored.  You hit the top of the fence.  Should you be happy?  Should you want more?  Both.

But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. -Hebrews 11:16


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