Some thoughts

I think best in type!  Here are some thoughts that might reveal more about what I have been burning about lately.

Loving God more than anything else and, because I love Him, loving others as much as I love myself.

Radical God Centeredness –

            God is real.  He is the most real thing.  His reality and worth should penetrate and permeate EVERY aspect of the life of His people.  Worship should be a life lived out of the fact that God is the most valuable reality we acknowledge.  There is no more valuable one.  We love Him more than we love ourselves.  We treasure and value his infinite worth above all else.  There is no more worthy one.  Our lives exist ONLY to experience, comprehend, display and enjoy the infinite worth of our God.  We do that through a life of righteousness. 

 

Real Righteousness – defined holistically as “doing the right thing.”  A life characterized by:

Honest Work –

The word of God encourages His people to work.  God gave Adam and Eve a job in the garden.  The Apostle Paul worked as a tentmaker everywhere he went.  Jesus worked in his father’s world of carpentry until He was 30.  The body should be a group of down to earth men and women who live life in the real world of work. Working with our hands to help each other is a big part of this.  Whether it is homemaking or sales, construction or teaching; the people of God should not be about leisure but accomplishment, not about retirement but the release of resource.  Our work does not define us and it is not the sole purpose of our lives but it is God’s way of providing for us and for others through us.

Resource Cultivation and Investment –

God has given all of us resources, whether they are money, talents and abilities, or relationships He has given them to us for the divine purpose of cultivation and investment.  The job of man in paradise was gardening, “Cultivation of the resources to draw out hidden potential and create flourishing.” We are to be about that same task even now.  Being used of God to release the potential from every place we see it.  In each other, in the financial and business world, releasing the wisdom of God to create flourishing all around us in our own lives and the lives of others; all of us utilizing all of our gifts to make the church and the world all around a better place.  Trusting in the power of God to bless our efforts as we align our purposes with His and knowing we cannot do it on our own but are in partnership with Him.

Creativity –

A part of that ethos of work and resource cultivation and investment is the use of the creative facility that God has given to every man and woman.  God has made us creative beings. We must make a concerted effort to release that creativity to the glory of the Lord in ever possible way.  Whether it is through arts of all kinds or new practical ideas; looking at every situation as an opportunity for the release of the wisdom and resource of God through creativity and prayer.

Study of His Word –

God’s word is his primary means His revelation of Himself to man.  If we see God as the most valuable thing, the most treasured one, we will plumb the depths of his word to find the gold and jewels of his beauty that lay hidden there in plain sight.

We read the word to find Jesus:  We desperately need Him.  Joy in the Lord is COMMANDED in scripture!  It is the fuel for life.  The joy of the Lord is our strength.  It is only through the revelation of Himself in scripture that we see, in as much fullness as we can now, the full Glory of Christ and so are filled with “joy inexpressible and filled with glory” 1 Peter1:8

We read the word to find wisdom: His word is full of instruction and wisdom that enables us to live life to the fullest revealing God through our lives as submitted to the wisdom of His word.  That means life done right!  Marriage, Finances, Justice, and Friendship in the kingdom of God should all be walked out submitted to His word.

 

REAL Worship – Adoration expressed in song other art forms:

We were built to enjoy God. Our enjoyment is not full until it is expressed back to the source of that beauty and outward to all within earshot. The human heart responds to beauty with joy.  This is adoration.  Through song and every other art form we will rejoice in the goodness and glory of the king of kings!  That the world may know how good He is!  Let them taste and see!  Worship and adoration are God and His people celebrating each other.  Let the party begin!

The Lord commands praise and celebration of all that He is. 

            We remember all He has done – and respond in thanksgiving

            We look to His promises for the future – and respond in hope and joy

We see the matchless beauty of His character and His intrinsic worth, His sovereignty, His goodness – and we respond in awe and knee bending worship

Real Connection –

            Nothing about the church should be impersonal.  Nothing about the church should be disconnected.  The pastor is a man not a god.  The power and authority of his sermons should come from the reality of them that people see every other day beside Sunday.  Not because he has it figured out, but because with the Lord’s help he is figuring it out.  He is learning from the Lord in the full view of the church.  Church should be about real people being real and honest with each other at all times; honest about struggles, frustration, pain, joy, sin, victory, loss, and gain.  The power of the Gospel should be seen in every life because every life is open to being seen!

We should weep together and rejoice together because we all value each other as much as we value ourselves.

Real Religion –

            The Bible defines true religion as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, ministry to the sick, and visiting the imprisoned.  Jesus NEVER allowed for a vertical relationship with God that did not flow outward on the horizontal plain of those around us who needed help.  Love your neighbor as yourself was connected 100% with love the Lord your God.  The whole of God’s revelation to man hangs on “these two” Jesus said.  We CANNOT ignore this as a church.  Not just ministry to the poor but to mankind as a whole to each what they need!  To the poor, to the rich, whatever person the Lord puts us in contact with we release the life and resource of Jesus into their lives.

 

 

 

I am Burning but I like it

I am burning.

The last three weeks of my life have been about burning.  I have had countless seasons like this but as always I am completely consumed with this one.  This one is more dangerous however than the last few.  This time it is accompanied by some kind of release.  Not the release I want.  Not the, go ahead and quit your job and get into the prayer room full time to gaze on my beauty and groan in repentance and intercession all day, release, but the, "I am not just teaching you this so you can learn", release.  He is calling me to respond.  With obedience.  Here is the problem.  What the heck does that look like?  How do I walk this out with wisdom and in love and doing my best not to offend anyone or break fellowship with anyone.  THAT is the hard part. 

I'm sorry, if this isn't making a whole lot of sense. I am being cryptic on purpose.  I can't take the time yet to fully pour out my heart on what is going on because the Holy Spirit is still forming it in me and I don't yet have verbiage for it all.

Jesus is reaching into my heart and changing my whole internal definition of Christianity, and it is painful.  Painful because it looks nothing like my old definition and it grieves me that I could live so long and be so off in so many areas.  Painful because I know that what He is doing in me now is only one more step to becoming like Him and I have a billion times further to go than I have gone.  Please please please don't think that I think I have "arrived" or figured all this out.  I so HAVEN'T.  I've just been confronted again with HOW MUCH I haven't. 

All I know is I cannot continue to be the SAME person.  I cannot continue to live the same way.  I wasn't in sin don't misunderstand what I am saying.  I just cannot live the same way anymore.  All my definitions are changed and to be honest with myself and with what the Holy Spirit is doing in me, I have to change too.  What I do not know yet is how far this change is going to go or what all of the ramifications of it is going to be.  I am willing to go wherever and do whatever the Holy Spirit leads me to do, but I do not yet know what that means.  The majority of the changes are in the way that my life is lived every moment of the day and will not be extremely visible to those that don't do every day with me, but there may be other changes coming down the road that will be far more radical.  I won't speculate as to what they may be.  I just want to hold my life with a very open hand and say "Yes Lord" to whatever He wants to do. The problem is that when you try to do something better than you have been, even when it is JUST ABOUT YOU, you end up offending people.  They see you trying to change and they call it a critique of the way they are living.  They feel judged by it.  That is another reason I don't want to TEACH any of this yet.  That is why I haven't been writing my Blog very often.  Everything I am hearing is beyond me.  Every time I try to explain it I only capture a small part of the massive thing He is doing in me and what I do capture is just a shadow. 

 

The best I can do is to say that really what is going on in me now is about a change of desires.  Father is teaching me to desire the things He desires.  I don't know enough about these things that He desires to talk about them with any kind of clarity.  I just know that I deeply deeply desire to see them.  Things like justice for the poor.  Things like REAL DEEP HONEST connection one brother or sister with another.  What does it mean when Jesus says "make them one as we are one"?  I just don't know but I know I DON'T HAVE IT and I DESPERATLY desire it.  What does the deepest heart expression of worship mean in the community sense.  How do we come to God together with one voice in prayer in worship?  What is God's will and desire for the market place?  Am I cultivating every area of my life to display the Glory of God through righteous living, giving, resource development and investment, relationships with my fellow Christ followers, relationships with the people of the world?  These are questions I don't have good enough answers for and I want them and of course the biggest question HOW do I do this?  Am I living my life truly deeply based upon loving God the most and everyone else as much as I love myself?  NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'm not.  So HOW???

I'm not content to go on not knowing, and not trying.  I want to hunger and thirst after righteousness.  I can honestly say I am beginning to begin to hunger and thirst after righteousness.  That is my problem.  I am hungering and thirsting after it but I do not have it.  I have hope.  He said "they will be filled"  He meant it.

 

Oh thank you Jesus you meant it!