Jesus is Not Fun-Sized

Jesus is a real man. He is not a giant man, He's not a mini man, He is not fun-sized, but a normal sized man. He was born a baby and left hanging on a tree. The King of kings, Lord of lords walked among the earth with weak and broken people (and He meant it that way). He stormed darkness with light. Its crazy to think that the man we worship everyday, the one I came to this internship for, the man we’re supposed to sacrifice it all for actually lived on the same land that we live on. He is the ultimate celebrity who proved to be a servant. He did not come “to call the righteous, but sinners.” Imagine just knowing Jesus is alive on the earth and knowing the truth of His identity. Imagine the feeling you would have if you could actually be near him, face to face, in full body form. The reality that you could travel to see Jesus as simple as we travel to see our favorite band play.  He was on the earth, and yet died with everyone denying Him. This picture is only a small foreshadow to the life promised in His second coming. One day the Man sitting on the throne will return and split the sky with His fierce beauty. In that time all will bow to the holiness and His judgment will fall over the earth. We will get to one day walk with Him. We will see Him face to face and be awestruck by His beauty. No longer will there be pain or mourning for His presence—He will be here. He will cast the reprobate into the lake of fire and His elect will meet Him in the sky to live together forever.

In my Sunday night usher group we are doing gospel meditations. At first the idea of meditating on one verse for 2 hours (maybe even longer) made me cringe. Everyone in my group was so excited about it and I sat in the corner on the dark gray chairs wishing I could be listening to the beginning of Abby Bennett’s set. The leaders kept proclaiming the power of meditating and how they would probably be one of our favorite parts of the internship. There was even a pep talk about how it was okay to cry and share our emotions to the group during debriefing. Cry over a sentence? I was so confused. That was until last week when I was that girl who walked in the room crying like a baby. In Luke 1 Elizabeth and Zechariah get filled with the Holy Spirit in order to conceive John. Six months later the angel Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her she will carry Jesus, the Son of God in her womb through the Holy Spirit. When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth and enters the room the sound of her voice causes the baby in Elizabeth’s stomach to leap. "Pre-born" John didn’t jump over Mary’s voice, but at the sweet sounding presence of God that was resting inside of her. Before He was even born the Holy Spirit moved John’s tiny peanut-sized heart; he was captivated by love. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the two women throughout their pregnancy. The Holy Spirit had not yet come to the Earth, yet they were filled and it was the very thing that gave them both their children. From the beginning the power of Jesus was touching the hearts of men. Jesus, as God and fully man, came to redeem every sinner.  He left the sweet dwelling place of the Trinity to become a man and sent Himself to the lowest place He could go. He was the only baby that new He was going to be one. He became a bundle of cells in a young Jewish girls stomach so that He may relate to man in order to save us. Jesus came down as the new Adam sacrificing everything to redeem a people that were brought into corruption by one man’s deception.

Read on further to Luke chapter 2:1-7 and the tears in my eyes can now fill a small lake. While on their way to register themselves in Joseph’s hometown, Mary gives birth to Jesus. They are in Bethlehem, around 200-300 miles away from home, and there is no room in the inn so what do they do? They lay the newborn in a manger outside. Meditate on that verse for even 10 minutes and it will sting your heart with love. The Son of God was put in a manger and, once again, God purposefully intended it that way.  Not only is He fully God brought to earth and made man, but He spent His very first night in a place meant for animals. From the very beginning of His life on earth Jesus walked a servant lifestyle. He did not come as a pharaoh’s heir, but a carpenter’s son. He was poor and greatly unaccepted. Mary and Joseph were presumed by there family to be walking in sexual immorality, yet they were fully doing the will of God. He grew up a normal kid. He obeyed His parents, learned proper manners, and needed to be comforted if He hurt himself. He peed and He pooped, yet was completely 100% God. This may sound offensive, but so is the reality of how much we deny Him while fully aware of His torture on the cross. Every time I ponder that thought the Trinity crisis in my head grows. And to think He spent His days learning the trade of carpentry until His ministry started at age 30. We don’t even wait that long to start our own ministry work. So what was the point of the first 30 years of his life? It was to spend time in sacrifice and intimacy with the Father. For 30 YEARS He dwelt in secret with the Father. Every nail hammered, every yes to His parents, every secret prayer done was to grow in a relationship until He was called to His ministry that then only lasted around 3 1/2 years. He has forever been living the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle; humbling Himself in order to get close with us and teach us His ways. We were created for companionship with Jesus. The one Most High became a sack of cells, was born in a manger to a carpenter’s son, and died a sinner’s death all to have me as His inheritance.

How can I not give you everything Jesus.

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.

The Magnificent Storyteller

It’s the moments that I fall on my face in adoration that breaks my heart the most. The moments where every song I hear is turned into a testimony of loving God and longing for more of Him. My favorites are those where I’m laying left cheek smashed against the surface of my fairly new 20 dollar IKEA carpet, mouth on an old fashion bible (remember the ones with pages that have actual ink that can smear if touched before dry), and I am literally and metaphorically eating the Word of God. From an outsiders perspective I probably look strange and awkward, but to me it is natural, to me there is nowhere I’d rather be then consumed by the Spirit. I feel like I am in the middle of storytelling time where I am the listener and God the magnificent storyteller.  Except it’s not stories, it’s truth. It’s real life spit out.  Where God says His throne is heaven and the earth His footstool and every word, every letter, sounds like He is actually breathing it into my ear. The small “house” sounds that seem to begin only at night when the world is hushed silences and I am left with a voice that is not my own. And when the fan begins to blow too fast and my body turns numb from the artificial wind I cant’ stand up, I can’t move—I don’t want to leave that beautiful taste of His word and the humming of His voice.  His breath is breathtaking and that makes me laugh in irony. The God that the world misconstrues as being nothing but nice is also a righteous condemner to the evil and that fascinates me.  To some that may sound harsh. To some I may look like a lover of people suffering. But to that some I ask do you know God? To that wondering some I give them the opportunity to open a Bible and read every part (not even skipping over the family names). Forget the John 3:16, its been engraved in every brain and In-N-Out cup in America. Try Isaiah 66:24 where the dead bodies worms will not die or Joshua 10:11 where God kills more of the world with hail than by the swords of the Israelites. I am not forgetting the grace and love of Jesus or why He died on the cross I am doing just the opposite; I am exposing the truth that God is magnificently righteous, that He is the creator of all things, that sin has corrupted the world and in the end Jesus will come again to bring justice to the wicked and every bone and piece of flesh that make up an individual will know the true beauty of the King.  

[Real time posting: August 11, 2012 1:03 am]

A Collection of Cries

Your love is all that matters. It is all the matters. How can the nations forget, how can we turn our eye from the magnificent wonders of this man. The One who turned water to wine, food from nothing, the Son of the God who split the seas for the Israelites then closed them to annihilate the Egyptians. The One cast down to earth to capture the righteous, destroy the wicked and yet all we fear is bankruptcy and horror films produced by lost souls. 
     
Awake, awake o sleeper He is coming and then the world will fully feel His power. Where will we be when that man with fire in His eyes and hair as white as snow comes to destroy the deceiver and chaser of darkness. Scripture says beware for he "will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2 ). We know not the day or the hour so let us become a generation sober; awakened for when that moment comes where life as we know it ends. The reckoning is approaching and all people walking in light and darkness will be judged--no one can escape. Kingdom come and wipe away the tears of the faithful. Open the pits and the wicked will fall in. Fall with the false prophet, the Anti-Christ, the deceivingly-colorful dragon into the place with unquenchable thirst, the fire forever burning. 
    
Let us turn and run after Him. I will sing His song with His sweet voice as the melody. And when my lungs get tired and my faith weary I will remember He died hanging on a tree for me and the fuel will ignite me once more. 

I want to waste my life loving You, God. You whisper, "I am here" and my heart falls. You say follow me. I say "okay". You say '"Seek my face.' My heart says to you, 'Your face, LORD, do I seek'" (Psalm 27:8). I want to forget the things of the flesh, and meet the Onething that will turn meaningless lives into lampstands for the kingdom of Heaven. I long for a movement, a revival of the nations from darkness to light in search of the city in the sky who's maker and builder is God. 

De-friending the World

          I don't want a fix. I want a full obsession. I don't want a two hour church session I want an everyday lifestyle. I want the Sunday mornings to be silent compared to the rest of the week. I don't want to be looked as radical, but want the all-day prayer sessions, hands raised and screaming "Jesus" moments to become a normality. I desire to dwell in a place where God will be in everything and the whole world rejoices. But the world is so opposite from everything that matters. From everything that will withstand from that splitting of the sky, from that moment when the alarm will sound and each soul will bow down and see what the elders saw when they all fell down. The Scripture says "God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (Deut. 4:24), yet we turn our eyes to the things of one minute satisfactions, forgetting the one that added bones to our dust pile. His word says do not befriend the world for those that do our enemies of the Lord, yet popularity is at the focus of our life search. addicted to increasing the number ticker on our virtual friends on profile pages; as if the bigger the number the more powerful we are. There's even an unofficial score card; 500 friends: weak, try harder, 1000: average, but no uniqueness, 2000+ all the world should meet you-an idol. Yikes (red flashing light), what happened to running from idolatry? What happened to the land flowing with milk and honey? Where is the one crying in the wilderness eating all those locusts. This is a generation murdered by the deception of fame and fortune. 
           We are called for more than this. More than jobs with cool blue shirts and unending discounts or 6-figure salaries, more than a message notifying one more "friend" was added to that freakin list. We must turn our hearts back to the maker of everything. Let's be a people built upon the rock. A people that screams and walls fall down, a people that walk through the desert for 40 years moaning, but meeting God. I want to be the one screaming on the side of the curb about His return and the runner passing by joins in. The image of His second coming compels me to scream louder, maybe on different curbs.  The one the world denied, the one that was condemned for our sins, the one who died on a regular tree will split the sky and the world will never be the same. 
          Its a complicated thought to not befriend the world we currently live on, but I wish nothing more than to turn my heart towards His kingdom built by light dwelling in a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. Oh how God will never be hidden. I desire to de-friend this world and gaze upon the lover of my soul. It is the backwards, upside down reality that to lose is gain, to die is Life that I crave. The Man that gives sight to the blind is my beautiful obsession. Break the chains of our love to the world and bring us a wedding in the sky. The Spirit and the Bride say come.