Jesus is still our hope, our joy, our comforter and friend. Yes He has rules to follow, but they aren’t rules intended to harm us, they are rules set up to help us and protect us. Like all good Fathers, our Father in Heaven gave us a list of rules that keep us out of trouble, those rules don’t mean He doesn’t love us- they prove that He does love us. Jesus reconfirmed those rules when He was ministering so we would know that they were still important. But moving away from that. The laws of God are always getting contorted so we end up saying that God has no rules because His rules make Him sound less loving. That’s not true. Parents who don’t decipline their children may look loving to the child getting away with everything, but from the outside looking in, all people see are parents who don’t care enough about their child to correct him or her. When I was little I was taught to always say ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘ excuse me’; you know, the basics, yet people are often saying how polite I am just because I use common courtesies that all people should know and use, because my parents cared enough to teach them to me. Having this General basis of knowing polite conversation has helped me a lot in my buisness life. God’s rules are there to help us in all aspects of life. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t have affairs, treat others as yourself, one man should be married to one woman, don’t lie, don’t go into buisness with people who don’t share your faith, go the extra mile. So on, and so on. All these rules are there to keep us safe. And God’s plan for our lives is not an agenda that He is forcing on us, it’s simply a plan for us to become the best people we can be. He still loves us. He is still our hope and our joy. His rules that keep us safe don’t change how much He adores us, they are proof that He loves us. And He always will.
Category: searching
Flawed and authentic, Jesus will fix me if I let go and let Him in where the real me hides
If you see flaws you know it’s real.
My mom and I were sitting in the airport waiting for her flight. There was a plant infront of us. It was nice and green and healthy and looked fake so I asked her if it was, (she used to be a florist). “Not at all, see the flaws? If a plant has flaws you know it’s real.” Then she went and moved the plant forward more because people kept banging into it and damaging it’s leaves.
We are so fake in this world. We use filters to fix the flaws in our photos, we use lies to fix the problems in our lives and then people bang into us thinking we can’t get hurt because of how perfect we are. Yet we are not perfect. Our lies don’t fix our problems, our filters can’t filter out pain or illness, then when people treat us roughly we damage even more and have to hide even deeper. It’s when we show our flaws and admit them that we can finally be seen as real. Our real-ness doesn’t always stop people from hurting us, in fact it might make them hurt us more; But when we give Jesus our whole lives, true and real and ask Him for help, He moves us out of danger by placing Himself between us and those who are out to get us. The nice thing about being real with Jesus is that a. He truly cares, and b. He can actually help.
When we admit to Jesus that ‘no, I’m not really okay. This hurts, this is a problem, I can’t cope anymore, I don’t want to live in this anymore.’ He guides us, aides us, and fights for us. Jesus loves us. So be real with Him and show Him your flaws and watch how He helps you. You might not see it right away, but someday you’ll see the moment you fell at His feet and He picked you up and carried you.
The lamb
The lamb
In the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, on the shores of Aslan’s country, the children find someone they don’t expect, a lamb. The gates to the country of the great lion are watched by a small, delicate animal of sacrifice.
But between them and the foot of the sky there was something so white on the green grass that even with their eagles eye they could hardly look at it. They came on and saw that it was a lamb. – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader chpt. 16 pg. 267/268
“There is a way into my country from all the worlds,” said the lamb; but as he spoke his snowy white flushed into Tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself towering above them and scattering light from his mane. Chpt 16. Pg. 269
I cried great tears when I read this. I knew the lamb would be Aslan, but that made it all even sweeter. Lewis never missed an inch, right down to an image almost akin to Revelation with the lamb waiting at the gate.
Of course the lion of the Narnia saga wouldn’t move me to cry so (I would still shed tears, just not such flowing tears) much if he were just another story, but because the author made him a rendition of Jesus I can’t help but long to be near him. Jesus is such a wonder. He’s a mighty lion and a slain lamb. It’s easy to miss the lamb while being caught up by the lion, but he’s just as much a part of our King. Remember, only the lamb is worthy to open the scroll. That terrifying and wonderful scroll. Lions are so big and powerful and lovely; lambs are small and soft and delicate, no one would choose a lamb to be the hero of a great tale, exept someone who knew we needed a pure sacrifice. Nothing is an accident in God’s plan, no one would sacrifice a lion or a warrior, not without great accolades and songs in his honor- but who notices a lamb? (Plus a lion would not be a perfect sacrifice.)
Yet isn’t that the whole mystery. Jesus is both. He’s a great warrior even if we miss that fact, and He’s a gentle lamb.
Don’t forget that Jesus is a warrior. He said He would return with the armies of the Lord, He’s not sitting back thinking swords look dangerous, He is King and Ruler and we owe Him honor. Someday, we will reach Heaven’s shores and lay our crowns at the feet of the lamb who is also a lion.
He didn’t fix the broken world, but He does fix broken people.
“Help her to know that the world is not a safe or nice place just because Jesus came, but that we still need His grace.”
Tonight I found a video of my Grandfather and Grandmother praying over right after I was born. They said a lot of great and kind things, yet this stood out to me. It’s so terribly true. So many people come to know Jesus and think that by knowing Him the world will suddenly change into a nicer, better place. Then it doesn’t and they- like the seed that fell on the side of the road- lost their faith as soon as bad times came. We preach that Jesus will make everything better, and He does, but not in the way that most people understand. Like the Jewish people expecting the Messiah to over throw the Roman tyrany, we expect something that our carnal minds see, not what God actually has planned. When Jesus comes into our lives and changes things for the better it doesn’t mean that He changes the world around us, it means He changes us. Sometimes God does something crazy and fixes every problem and cures every illness, but many times He doesn’t. Many times He changes our outlook, our plan, sometimes even our friends circle changes to help us where we are in that season. But the most important thing is that He Himself comes into our lives and His presence makes everything better. Jesus didn’t come to make the world a better place, He came to make us better people and to prepare us for His kingdom.
We still need His grace.
Of other worlds
CS Lewis spoke of a place that you want to go to but can’t because it doesn’t exist. A place you long for with all your heart, but find yourself in desiderium. You grieve for it as something lost, yet you’ve never been there. Narnia was like that for Lewis. Yet as the author he was able to visit there in his mind. I found that, after reading Prince Caspian for 1000th time since my dad read to me when I was too young to read myself, I felt that same ache and sorrow I always did when the children went back to England- back to our world. It’s always so sad in my opinion. Our world is dark and evil. The White Witch hasn’t been slain yet here. Children aren’t permitted to just be kids anymore and adults are stuck into a mill of being what they are told to be and acting as the government demands us to act. It’s sad and depressing some days. I want to go to that world where the great Lion is king and evil is shown to be evil and is destroyed by the shaking of his Mane. Yet that world is fiction. Or is it? My Poppa was singing an old song the other day, one I forgotten about, and it reminded me of a joy that I had been missing lately by being caught up in the world around me, (that happens to us adults from time to time). Want to know what song it was? When we all get to Heaven.
Remember it? If not I recomend finding it on youtube. It goes:
‘ when we all get to heaven what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory.’ Now slap your knees and sing that one full throated!
We forget sometimes what Heaven is like. We don’t know how it will feel, taste or smell, but we do know that there is no sin, no sickness, no fear, hunger, shame or sorrow. Best of all, Jesus is in Heaven. This world feels so real right now that we feel desiderium for the past and for worlds that don’t exist. Yet Heaven is real. Heaven is not a faèry tale. Heaven is promissed to those who run the race and keep the faith. There is a place where evil has been seperated from God, a place where sin is not welcome or relevant, a place where the great Lion of Judah shakes His mane and all wickedness is destroyed, a place that I am unworthy to enter but by Jesus’s love, death and Resurrection, and my choice to leave my sins behind and follow Him, I am permitted to come and join in the feasting.
We long for a world other than this one because God programmed us to long for where He is. The made up realms are nice for now, but it’s the very real place of Heaven that is the true escape. We just have to hang on until the end and remember that we are strangers and aliens and not of this world, we are from God, we are Heaven bound.
Agapao
Lent day 22
Agape (noun)
Agapao (verb)
We all know the Agape love of God that is spoken of and written on Church billboard signs; but what about the Agapao love of God?
Agape is a noun. We all know what a noun is. In fact I struggle with Agape being a noun because it doesn’t seem to fit the feeling the word offers. Yet Agapao is the verb and this word being a verb is exactly what we feel when God says He ‘Agapes’ us. Now, I’m not a scholar or a linguist so I won’t dive into these words too much because I know I will get in over my head. But here’s the “big idea” for the day: God’s love is an action. His love is never stagnant. God loves is with a love that chases is down and fights for us. There is an old poem called ‘the hound of Heaven’, it speaks of how God relentlessly pursues us even though we run from Him. That’s what His love is. It’s never giving up. Never battered down. Never beaten back. Always persuing us. God is waiting to come until the whole world hears, why? Because He doesn’t want a single soul to be lost so He bides His time until every ear has heard about Him, so that the ones left behind are there because they chose to be, not because they didn’t know any better. I bet it breaks His heart when people choose to not live for Him. He actively loves them. Actively pursues them. And actively holds all of us in His arms if we choose not to struggle away from Him.
God’s love is an action.
Don’t gloat
Don’t gloat when your enemies fail.
This one is so hard. Yet, it’s in the Bible. When people are nasty, unloving, cruel, conceited and so on, it’s hard not to be happy when they fail. In fact, how you respond when they fail shows you if you love them or not. I don’t mean a group, orginization, or even government, that has wronged you failing and you being happy or relieved, I’m sure every person in the Allied Forces was thrilled to tears when enemy finally fell, there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean how we feel when an ondividual person fails. Do we smile? Do we cheer? Are we annoyed when they succeed? Then we don’t really love them.
I felt that recently when someone I have had trouble with in the past failed, I smiled and was glad. Then I felt rebuked (justly) by God for the next several hours. I knew ot was wrong to feel glad about that and now I see that I truly have problematic feelings toward that person that I need to deal with. But we all have someone we feel this way about from time to time. Some people we have to fight with ourselves to love every time we hear their name. Some people are hard to even tollerate. If Jesus didn’t tell us to love our enemies I’m positive we wouldn’t bother. But He knew that we needed to be different from the crowd.
This makes me think of a time when I was out walking my dog. We came across another dog and it started barking and snarling and flipping out at my dog, my dog started barking and snarling and flipping out in turn. I got down, put my hands on his back and said “be the bigger dog bud.” To my shock my dog turned around, looked at me and woofed. Everything in his face said ‘why should I be the bigger dog? he started it.’ Now I’m sure my dog didn’t understand what I had said, but he would have understood the corrective hand and my tone of voice and could have very easily felt like he shouldn’t be the one who needed to give in. How often does God have to pull back on our leads and tell us to be the better person? How often do we argue His words? How often do we ignore them out right?
Don’t gloat or say ‘I told you so’ when someone you can’t stand fails. No matter how much you want to. Because God will be pleased if you don’t and pleasing Him is what matters.
Every one of us
Lent day 19
Every loser
Every outcast
Every dead walking
Every can’t take another day
Every prisoner (in the mind or body)
Every never enough
Every striving too hard
Every hypocrite
Every filthy rags show off
Every sinner
Every pastor
Every child
Every adult
Every senior
Every. Single. Person
Is loved unconditionally by Jesus.
I know I’m a sinner. I know a fail Him every day. It’s hard to believe that He would keep reaching out and loving inspite of me. If Jesus didn’t love us we couldn’t be better than we are, we couldn’t throw away our sins and failures, we wouldn’t have a chance. It’s because He loves us that we can change. It’s because He loves us that while we were His enemies He died for us. We are all the Centurion at the Cross, holding a spear dripping with His blood in our hands as we realize, “this man must truly have been the son of God.”
We couldn’t repent of our sins and find Jesus if He hadn’t first paid everything for us. We no longer have an excuse to cling to our past, our sins, our filthy rags- Jesus died so that we would have a way out.
He gave us a way out of hell, not a free ticket to both the hell “party” on earth AND the paradise of Heaven. We get one or the other. But praise God that He is paitent and just so that no soul will be lost, because He wants all of us. God is the only one who can be greedy, and He is greedy for our souls, He does not want the devil to have a single person and will give up everything so that the devil can’t have us. If in the end every sould found Jesus except on and that one went to hell, that single soul would be on God’s mind all the time and would break His heart.
He loves us and gives us every opportunity to change and find him. We have no excuse, so let’s throw away the excuses and run into Jesus’s outstretched arms.
Water in my peanut butter
Lent day 19
Watered down peanut butter. My dog is on a diet. I used to freeze peanut butter treats for him, however lately I’ve been having to water them down so it’s mostly water with a tiny bit of peanut butter. And he’s fine with that. There’s enough of a taste of what’s real that he’s totally satisfied with the water down treat.
We water down scripture. In our churches and our mission field. People are still totally satisfied with the water down version. There is enough of the real truth in the diluted version that people soak it up, thinking that is all there is. We’re not getting the real treat, or in this case the real gift of God’s word, because we’re so afraid to preach the truth that we watered it down. How much are we missing? The tiny bit of real we get isn’t enough to sustain our Immortal Souls, though it’s enough to satisfy our mortal Minds. When will we see the truth? When will we get tired of not getting the full amount and just having a watered down treat?
Lupins
Lent day 17
Lupins
Lupins are a beautiful flower that resides in many parts of… well…everywhere it seems. Once you know to look for them you find them rather often in scenes of nature. I even found a bunch by accident while exploring with my dog this past summer. Lupins are distinctive in the way that they look like wolves sitting back and Howling up at the Moon. They come in several varieties of color, and seem to be much loved by many gardeners. Which raises the question, why do people love the flower namesake after a wolf so much when people dislike wolves so much? Wolves get a bad reputation, flowers do not. Simple answer. Wolves get a bad reputation because they’re misrepresented a lot of the time. Wolves are actually essential to our ecosystem, they are great family members to each other, and opposed to popular belief they very rarely go after people. But ever since Little Red Riding Hood people believe that wolves are big bad Grandma eating animals. The wrong people were telling their story. The same can now be said of the Christians. In many cases we seem to have gotten a bad reputation. Movies, TV shows, even some books play a part in this. Christians are often represented as the bad guy, even to the place of documentaries about the Church that were against us and proven not to be accurate accounts have had lasting effects on the people who watched them, because you still can’t get the image out of people’s head even if the image is fake. Think about Jaws. The book came out, people read it,, the man who wrote it even said it wasn’t an accurate representation of sharks, and yet people went nuts and started fishing the oceans dry, killing as many sharks as they could out of ignorance and Terror because of one silly book. Sometimes sharks do attack. Sometimes wolves do attack. Sometimes people who claim themselves to be Christians don’t act like Christ. But when the movies come out and only show the one side of the story it gives a bad account for all who fall under the same label. I have had personal contact with Wolves. I’ve even shared my lunch with one. They aren’t out to get you. I’ve also had personal contact with other Christians. I’ve shared many lunches with them. They aren’t out to get you either. When the facts are distorted, and the story is told by people who are prejudice, the wrong image is set forth and people can be hated simply for something someone saw on TV. Doesn’t matter if it was true or not, people believe what they see and are easily fooled by a clever soundtrack and a well-paid cast of actors. So what do we do when other people tell our story and we are misrepresented? We keep going. We stand up and keep on being the True Body of Christ, showing what real Christians are like. We live a life that tells our own story, so people can see that the fake facts on TV are just that, fake. Don’t be afraid. Show what Jesus is really like through your lifestyle and ignore the haters that try and tell your story for you, making you the bad guy, cuz in the end you’re doing the right thing and it doesn’t matter how people who don’t know you paint you, because Jesus knows the true you and He sees you and loves you for who you are.
Carried in the cross 