Joy can only be experienced in the present moment, in the small things, in appreciating life for what it is and nothing more.
Dread and fear are only known in anticipation of future events, so don’t go there.
Regret is only known in looking back, so leave.
Come to this moment and truly live.
When I walk in public places, I find myself searching the faces of strangers, wondering what their tragedies are. We all have them.
Anyone who tells you life is a bowl of cherries, easy-peasy, cloud nine, is full of it.
That doesn’t mean life can’t be full of joy, but joy isn’t dependent on what’s happening to me. I can have joy regardless of my circumstances. I don’t always, but I can. Peace too.
Anyway, life is hard, pretty much across the board, for everyone. Don’t be fooled looking at people who seem to have everything that you wish you had. Look into their eyes, behind the stuff, and you’ll sometimes get a glimpse of the tragedy. And even if you can’t see it, it’s there.
We are an angry people. Anyone who spends five minutes in traffic can attest to that. Getting behind the wheel of a car gives us just the anonymity and the power we need to vent some of that anger on other anonymous souls.
We’re angry because we have a longing for eternity (perfection) in our souls, and all we have experienced is imperfection. We’re angry because we desire beauty and love and satisfaction, and nothing man offers can fill that desire.
No amount of money, no number of possessions, no conquest of the heart can fill that desire, and we are sorely disappointed.
The last several decades have been particularly godless and the fruit of that is anger. I think we’re making a turn back to recognizing true spirituality, which gives hope, but for almost fifty years children have been born and raised in hopelessness.
I don’t think this is the first such period we’ve gone through. It’s a cycle - we move closer to God, we move away, God calls a remnant to him, those that hear, and eventually many follow, then many fall away. So I don’t think it’s the end of the world or something just because there is so much evil and godlessness. We’ve had that before.
And we all have hard lives. No one is immune to this. Don’t let some starry-eyed evangelist ever tell you that if you just say the sinner’s prayer, all your problems will be solved. Untold numbers of souls have been harmed by this premise. Say the sinner’s prayer, become a Christian, happy happy. Then when the problems and struggles don’t disappear they either hate God or themselves and put on the happy happy mask and shake their fingers at others who are unhappy: you don’ t have enough faith.
Seems clear to me that Jesus told us we were going to have troubles. And when he went away, he didn’t say he was going to solve all our problems. He just said he was giving us peace. And he asked us to lay down our lives for each other. I didn’t hear anything about financial or physical prosperity.
So the difference between me and someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is not that I have a tragedy-free life. It’s that I have a source of peace in the midst of my tragedies. I know that he has overcome the world and that I will overcome also and experience perfection. Not in this life - no one gets to have that. But when I see him face to face, it’s going to be worth it.
For my sake, he didn’t give up, through the trials, the persecution, the injustice, the hurt, the betrayal, the poverty, the hardship, the pain, the death. He persevered through his tragedies, and he overcame.
And for his sake, I won’t give up either. I’m not looking for financial blessing, physical health, to have my needs met, a nice, neat, bow-tied-on-top ending to my life or the lives of the ones I love, or any kind of security other than the hope that I have in him that it’s going to be worth it all.
And there is peace and joy in that, even if we don’t understand it. There really is.
Jesus tells us over and over not to be afraid.
Fear of the unknown can drive us to do many things to feel safe, not the least of which is to surround ourselves with unnecessary structure and rules and people to tell us the right things to do so that we never need make a mistake. Or if we do err, it is someone else’s fault because we have transferred personal responsibility. And once we have surrounded ourselves with this high towering structure that we can see and touch, we no longer need have faith. Because, as scripture tells us, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of which is not seen. We have an example of what can happen when we desire a king that we can touch - this is what happened to Israel. God wanted to be their king but the people wanted a king like all the other nations. Someone to go to battle for them. Someone to protect them. This grieved God’s heart. But he gave it to them. He didn’t come up with the idea, but he went along with it. That’s not the ideal.
Inserting ourselves into structures led by kings that we have asked for, which God has given us, is not his ideal for us. But this is what we choose because we are afraid of being unsafe. We choose the good instead of the best, in the name of safety, when all along we have been safe because we are in the hand of God. We choose to put mediators and messengers and vessels between us and God. We choose Moses instead of Jesus. We choose the law instead of the Law Fulfiller. We choose a veil, a curtain, to shield us from God’s glory, when God himself has torn that curtain so we might go directly by way of Jesus to him.
We expect God to be safe, when in fact he is not safe at all. God is good, but he is not safe. If he were safe, we would not need faith. Yet our spirits are safe in his presence, because of Jesus. Not because of a man or a church. But because of our faith in Jesus.
Worshiping God is not a matter of going to a certain place or doing a certain thing. That is how God operated before Jesus was sent. Jesus fulfilled all of the going and doing. It is left to us to believe and follow and worship in spirit. It is not our job to follow rules, but to follow Jesus.
Exodus 20:
18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Jeremiah 31:
31 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to [d] them, [e] ”
declares the LORD.33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”35 This is what the LORD says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the LORD Almighty is his name:John 4
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
John 6
63The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit[e] and they are life. 64Yet there are some of you who do not believe.”
Do you ever listen to The God Journey podcasts? These guys speak a lot of Truth, so if you ever get the chance give them a listen. I caught a recent episode while I was walking on the treadmill this morning. Brad Cummings was talking about how he was teaching his little girl how to snow ski, and comparing that to how Daddy wants us out of the ski harness and learning how to fly down the slopes of life untethered. Just like Father, Brad was always there with his little girl making sure she was safe, but he let her decide which turns to make. The institution seems to have a vested interest in keeping us in the harness well past the time it is needed. Just like Brad’s daughter was afraid at first, we’re made to be afraid of all the bad things out there that could befall us if we ski through life unharnessed. But Daddy isn’t afraid to let us fall in the snow sometimes, because that’s how we learn that we’ll be OK if we keep pressing in. Then we can all ski together, unharnessed, and we’ll never be satisfied with the tether again. Take a listen: Beyond the Harness
For me, it’s just gotta be heart.
How can we put God in a book and tell him to stay there?
Sure, there are facts we become aware of - they are few: Jesus, the Son of God, crucified for my redemption, resurrected for my eternality. But where we store these facts, where we plant those seeds, determines whether they will grow or not. The mind is rocky soil, mixed with so much thorny, puffed up and prideful proof of righteousness, that facts planted there often grow stunted and produce haughty fear-fruit, if they even take root at all. But the heart, what rich soil unhindered by vanity and the pretensions of intelligence, that produces a lush harvest of love for our brother Jesus. What trust, what longing, what unconcern for details, what abandon, that follows him even to death. The head cannot conceive of such unsafe behavior and instinctively condemns and shuns the rebellious, libertarian heart.
I was writing a prayer today and I was asking God to please take away this awful burden of self, these daily temptations and driven desires that make endless demands on me. Please take it away, I was begging with my pen, and as I wrote those words I heard him say, Please give it to me.
Huh?
Please give it to me.
……………………………
Oh, you mean I’m holding on to this thing and asking you to wrest it from my white-knuckled grip, when instead I could just hand it over to you? I thought about that for a moment and then the questions started. He probably expected that. He was probably shaking his head and chuckling a little bit as I ranted: How can I just let go because I started to do that a few months ago and look at where I’m at now. It sure doesn’t look like you’re handling it, Jesus. I don’t think you took it away, this burden of self, because right now I am buried even deeper in it. Look at me, I’m struggling and I’m questioning and I’m feeling really stuck. I must have been doing it wrong but I don’t know how to do it the right way and I’m scared.
And he said, Just trust me.
So I changed the subject for a little while, because the thought of just letting go of all of that, ceasing to be concerned about it, and living in the moment with my life directed completely toward him above everything else, was just too risky.
Now, after a morning of consideration, I am feeling brave enough to confront that idea again. And I can see that in constantly begging him to take my burden of selfishness and self-concern away, I don’t have to trust him with that burden because I am still holding on to it. Trust means letting go of the crap voluntarily, not waiting around for him to rip it away forcibly. Trust means not judging the outcome of letting go according to my own desires or vision. Trust means opening my hands and my heart and keeping my eyes completely and only on him, and following with all my strength. Trust means giving up control because I want to, not because I have to.
I have been ignoring this blog because I have allowed things to motivate me and lead me that shouldn’t be motivating me and leading me. Consequently, I haven’t been following my passion, which is to write about my spiritual journey and the things that I believe Dad is showing me.
The most recent distraction has been money. I have been all about finding a way to make more money using my God-given writing gift. This, even though I have clearly heard Spirit-voice telling me it is time to stop using my gift for what I can get out of it and start allowing myself to simply be a conduit. How could I possibly make money writing about my passion? So I have been focusing on other things, like a Web site about telecommuting that could draw lots of visitors and therefore ad dollars. Something that is completely without passion for me.
Another thing that has distracted me is the fact that people from time to time have such a strong reaction to the things I write. So I have blocked myself from expressing what I hear Spirit-voice saying to me because I have been worried about what people would think or if they would be offended. I tried to explain it to myself in pious terms. You shouldn’t be causing others to stumble, I told myself. You shouldn’t make it sound like you are pointing fingers, I said. Don’t express the things in your heart because you might hurt others. But these were really just excuses to play the martyr. My refusal to write the things God has put on my heart is a selfish act of the will designed to mitigate personal risk. If I don’t share my heart, then people cannot disagree with me or get angry with me. If I don’t share my innermost thoughts, then the resulting silence is the result of my own choice, not someone else’s choice to say nothing about the thing I have risked myself to express.
Of course, all of this is wrong thinking. I realized that this morning as I was journaling, a discipline I am working on separately from blogging. Neither money nor risk mitigation are valid reasons to abandon my God-given passion. So to hell with money, and if you are offended by what I write please do not make the choice to visit and read. I will not be co-dependent with the world.
We had a great time this morning. We spent almost three hours at Starbucks chatting with a couple that we met online. They’re on a similar journey to ours, and it’s so nourishing to sit with people who are on the same wavelength and talk about Jesus, Church, work, fishing, alligators, Jesus, legalism, Jesus, kids, crazy “praise “songs you can’t believe you used to sing with such gusto (don’t be stingy, don’t be tight???**), having babies, being pastors in our environment, giving money to homeless people you know are lying to you, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And we learned from each other. We don’t have another meeting time scheduled but we’ll get together again soon. Our time together might be only for a while because our friends are thinking about moving out West soon to be near family. That would be sad, but it would be OK because we trust Father. It’s not up to us. That almost three hour time period went by so quickly, and we could have sat there for a few more hours. It was great. Thanks, Papa, for putting people on our path for a time to share this life in you.
**from the Ron Kenoly song “Give to the Lord.”
I shouldn’t be writing on my blog today, I have a lot to do. But I just wanted to share about simple living and how counter-cultural that is. Jesus just wanted us to live this day and not worry about tomorrow. A book I recently read, the one with the provocative title that you would love anyway, (warning: PDF file) talks about trusting Jesus: don’t you have what you need to make it through today? Why worry about the future?
Trusting God means not needing a person or thing in my life in order to make God more real to me. That’s not to say that Father doesn’t sometimes give us people or things when it seems good to him. I need to realize however, that if he hasn’t given me something then I don’t need it. That’s a faith journey.
I don’t need fellowship or money or retirement funds or insurance or a job or religious icons or “spiritual covering” (what the heck is that) or meetings or preaching of God’s word, or somewhere to lay my head even. All I need is him. Simple and free. Daily bread.
My friend Jim read the book whose title shall not be mentioned (warning: PDF file) and it really had an impact on him. Isn’t that cool? Maybe you want to read it too.
Once upon a time there was a mom who had a little girl, and really the mom was just a girl herself, so having a little girl wasn’t something the mom could quite grasp. The little girl was a treasure but she was a hidden treasure because the mom (who was really just a girl) couldn’t see. Then one day the mom was older and though she was really just a girl herself, she began to see the treasure of the little girl and she began to treasure her. But the little girl couldn’t see because the mom hadn’t seen, and so the little girl went away and became a treasure lost, but a treasure still seen in the heart of the mom. And the mom, who wasn’t such a little girl anymore, wanted to go away too because she finally saw her treasure, but her treasure was lost. And so the mom went away, far away, where she could be as alone as she felt, and she hid there. She’d lost her treasure, and it was all her fault because she couldn’t see, and now that she could see, her treasure was lost, and she was angry and alone and… nothing. She had grasped her treasure, but it was too late, and then the treasure was out of her grasp, running, running, running. And the mom was angry, and scared. The mom was finished. She was away, and alone, and she was finished, without her treasure she was nothing.
“Go back,” the Wind said. “Go back. We are with you.”
“I won’t go back,” the mom said. “I want to wait here for my treasure. Maybe she will come to me.”
“There are other treasures waiting,” said Wind. “Go back. Your eyes are open and you must safely keep them, while you can. Forgive, pour out What is in you, because that is what makes the unseen treasure come to life, and that is what makes the lost treasure found again. If you don’t go back, your unseen will become your lost, again, and again, and again.”
The Wind wrapped around the mom and held her, and she felt held and wrapped up in Truth. “I will go back and see, and pour out. I will leave my lost treasure with the Wind and I will go back and give myself to Life and I will trust.”
“And I will hold her, and I will hold you, even though you are far apart, because I am with you, always.”
