Spiritual Bug Eyes

I don’t know what to say, but I know I am supposed to write this. This is one writing about three different people posted on three different blogs about one God. Genesis has been blowing all of our minds. God has plucked us out of our individual lives and placed us together to break our hearts over His deep and crazy love. And we are letting Him. Sunday mornings have been titled blogging Sundays, I think after this session it should be called, “Spiritual Vanilla Chai Tea Latte Day.” What started as a morning of writing the thoughts of our last week has turned into an intense awakening to the being of who is God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit in one. He’s so intricate and knits together a girl from Southern California who can never get warm, another from Georgia with the greatest raccoon hat known to man, and another from England with a right obsession for tea and saying the phrase, “like a beast” to be ravished over the same part in the Bible all at the same exact time. We’re a weird match and its perfect. Over this last week God has given us eyes like bugs to read Genesis. They are big and bulging and have an anointing to read the Word like we’ve never seen it before. They have adopted the name Spiritual Bug eyes and I pray they will stay forever.  He has revealed to us, all in one moment, His love for us. He has molded our hearts into loving God the Creator, God the Maker. All of this world, every single tangible and spiritual thing in life goes through Him. John 1 says, “All things are made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made.” Our question to that was simple. Why? Why would He create the world, why would He create each one of us knowing that we would sin? Throughout the week He revealed the answer in a few very tangible ways—because He loved us. Reading that you may say, “That’s Christian 101.” We said the same thing. But this is different. He took us and He broke us into the full impact of what it looks like. Every class, every sermon, every five-minute conversation while standing in line for the shuttle revolved around God being the Creator. We took this as a sign that He wanted to take us on a journey and we were right to listen.

The first occurrence happened in the prayer room when the first girl asked God to allow her to love Him with the same love He has for her. Suddenly her heart was being squeezed and physically ached. God himself, in that moment had taken her heart (her actual physical heart) into His actual hand and squeezed it. He said, “my heart aches like this for you everyday, all the time, this is how much I love you. My heart physically aches for you.” And then her heart broke. Mine happened over three days. It started with extreme pain in my ribcage, an ER visit with no diagnosis, and a continual discomfort that felt like a little man was in the inside punching out. After prayer the pain went away and was replaced with a sensation that felt like a hand holding my rib. God in that moment says, “I am holding your rib to remind you of your beginnings. There was pain because you had given a part of yourself to the world and now I am taking it back.” And for the rest of the night the tangible presence of God was touching my rib; holding the very beginning of my existence. And when we didn’t think anything more could happen (oh our tiny flesh-like brains) God touches the third one with lighting-like pains down the inside of her body and we all fall down.            

As we continued to write in the café and be ravished by more of God the presence came over us. We looked around to see if anyone else looked crazy too, but it was just us. Holy Spirit was blowing His power over the entireties of our bodies and we prayed for an increase. And then it happened, the specific moment that made us stop everything we were doing, praise Jesus, then write about the glory of this God we know nothing about. We realized that all of us have glitter on the palms of our hands. After searching for the source and failing we realized it was not glitter from the things of this world, it was gold dust from the power of God. There were no words, no sounds, just three truth seeking souls looking down at six hands that the Creator of all things made. One says, “I’m so hot I want to be naked, but I’m freezing,” and we all understood its meaning. We were drunk in the Spirit and could not move. Friends came by our table and we didn’t respond, we couldn’t respond…what do you say that doesn’t make you sound crazy? But it’s not crazy. It’s not fake, it’s very, very real because He is. He squeezes heart, carries ribs, sparks bodies and brings spiritual gold dust to the flesh of Jesus chasers all because He loves us. And in this moment, right here in a coffee shop drinking the best vanilla chi tea lattes with our shiny hands and individual touches of God on our internal organs we fully receive that gift.­­­­—God loves us fully. He has permanently engraved His love on our hearts like an etch-a-sketch. He’s infinite, yet opens the curtains of Heaven to gaze at three small grasshoppers in the corner of a small coffee shop on a normal Sunday morning.

White Washed Tombs

Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And in John 1 it reiterates, “all things were made through Him, and without Him not any thing made that was made.” He is the only uncreated being who has been forever and will be forever. He took the waters, expanded them, and created earth. Why?  He was completely in union with the Godhead. There was nothing that He lacked and yet He created night and day and all plants and birds of the air. But again, why? And then He created man in His own image (whatever that image might look like, ponder that for years) and gave him dominion over everything. He gave man a perfect dwelling spot, the most beautiful oasis ever known. And then man is deceived and falls and sin enters the world that will one day be redeemed by the blood of His only Son. But remember—God is the only uncreated thing. Everything else, this entire world—sin, darkness, freewill, the cross, was all known by God.  While I do not believe that God created sin, He did create man and an angel Satan knowing that both would fall out of perfect holiness with God. So again why? He was completely satisfied without us. He knew Jesus would die because He created it that way. How can anyone who experiences this truth not fall down in worship? And to think He did this because He simply desires a relationship. That’s it. That’s the answer to all of this. He wants the glory of us choosing Him. He wants us to enjoy the process of loving Him. He created freewill because all He wants is for each of His creations to choose Him over everything else.  He knew Satan was going to fall from Heaven; He even gives Him authority to tempt Jesus for 40 days. In Isaiah 53 it says that it was the “will of the Lord to crush [Jesus]”; that He delighted over the cross. This at first seems crazy. And to flesh eyes it is. But put on the lenses of the Kingdom and learn that this is so God’s personality. He loves us.  And the only way we could be with Him is if His son brought death to sin. (Where there is light, darkness can not enter). We were enemies and He never leaves. The cross gives life. It leads many to be “accounted as righteous” as “we were redeemed without money.” 

His kingdom is completely upside down; backwards from anything that we know (or think we know). I mean we sing it in songs, talk about it while standing in line waiting for coffee, but when we actually come to know what it means everything changes. When we get small chips of revelation there is no time for half-meaningless singing, no strength to stand in lines, there is only room in our hearts to cry out to God. Society has corrupted us. We believe success is based off of strength. Satisfaction based off of fun. Happiness obtained in the fruit of the “here and now” But in truth that is nothing. In truth, if we go back to that gem of a book known as Genesis we will learn that we are prisoners to God’s rules and by His reign alone we are supposed to live. He calls the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful to claim the Kingdom of Heaven. When we finally realize we have literally nothing to give is when God smiles down and says, “Finally now put down everything and follow me.” In those daily abandonments to Him true joy can be produced through the process of relationship and time. Like trees that do most of their root growth in the winter when it does not bear fruit, so does God do with our hearts towards Him. They are greenhouses at which He cultivates. Though we cannot see the fruit in the beginning God is still moving in our hearts.

 Immediate rewards give us nothing in the end. Like the sower who’s seed was devoured by the birds and scorched by the sun because there was no root. As humans (both believers and non-believers alike) we tend to lean on the same process. We’ve been taught to grow up and out; more money, extreme intelligence, even bigger churches is ultimate living. But it leaves us with a house built on sand and when the wind blows the humpty-dumpty house falls down. Jesus is our cornerstone, the first and strongest part of the foundation. Without Him we have nothing. He desires our hearts more than our outside appearance and riches.  That is why He stops the healing revival and preaches the Sermon on the Mount. That is why He called the scribes and Pharisees whitewashed tombs for they appeared beautiful on the outside, but their insides were dead. He’s offensive, but it is because He wants us to go deeper and grow roots that will withstand the persecutions and not just appear to be strong through knowledge.  God cleanses out the toxins from our greenhouse hearts and takes time to root us in love so that we may bear the healthy fruit of His kingdom. He does this to create encounter, to plow a space in us so that we may be able to walk with Him in the cool of the day like in the days of old.

The Ultimate Alternative

I am discouraged when God does not fix people right away. When I pray in faith and really mean it and then nothing happens. I open my eyes, check in on the thing I prayed for and everything has stayed the same. Corey Russell during our Burn class made the point that God has not come to fix things, but to create relationships with us. This has stayed with me and started a battle within. Its truth stings the very same spot as my frustration over "failed prayers.” It involves patience and I’m really bad at sitting and waiting. John 3:17 says, “God has not come to condemn the world, but that it may be saved through Him.” This tells the reason for Jesus’ visit to earth. He came to break bondages. He walked the cities to bring the Word of His Father to the hopeless and in the end suffer so that sinners may live. How nuts is that. He brought the ultimate alternative—the truth of humanity.

I never understood how life could be limited to an average 80 years (a super star if you pass 100). I refuse to believe that we are born, master the art of communicating, learn to bake a cake and peel an orange only to end up in a wooden box you can buy at Costco. There must be more than this. And there is. His name is Jesus. A third of the Trinity brought down in the form of man to destroy death and its modern day “no big deal’ viewpoint. We don't just die and become skeletons. There is Heaven or Hell. And they are both very real. There is eternal beauty or forever suffering in the lake of fire. He brings a way that has true purpose. Why would anyone pick 80 years over forever in a Garden with no pain or tears? All He asks is to give Him us. Give up attempting to control ourselves (and failing) and to let Him take care of us.

He's asking for my burdens. He's asking to hide my anxieties in Him. It's so simple and yet I so often am reluctant to release control. I instead fall to believing in flesh, that I can be better at life than God who created all things. I am a living testimony of what the power of God can do to a person. From death I came into life. I was empty. The black sheep that He washed white as snow. This is not said to boast in my transformation, for only God can have that glory. This is to fall humble before my Beloved. How can I sit here knowing what God has done for me (I've only brushed the surface into His all-consuming heat) and believe that He cannot do it for others? I have a spirit of pride in me when I believe that my entire being can turn from sin and obey the righteousness of God, but another walking in darkness cannot do the same. Who am I to minimize the power of the living God? His task is to save. His desire is for a relationship with the very thing He made. He does not obey by our time. His plan is perfect. Let not man step in the way of the Maker restoring communion with the broken.