Thoughts on the Gospel and...

What follows are peices of conversations I've had with people regarding various aspects of the Gospel. I thought I'd share a few of them with you...


The Gospel and The Realities of my Life

It is so true that God is the ultimate filler of our deepest needs and desires... and even our voids. He alone has to be the one in which we find our identity, security, worth, etc. I have found it so much easier to deal with life when my eyes are fixed on him and he is my security.

I know that no matter what I have gone through or experienced, God has made me a new creation and I don't have to live under the power of "what was". I have come to absolutely love the person God has made me. Not because I'm anything phenomenal, but because it is so freeing to simply be the person he created and designed. Although I am constantly learning new things about God and about myself, I do rest secure in who he is - God.

I have never wanted to think about my childhood. I have never wanted to search the depths of my life's experiences. Those are things that I naturally would love to sweep under the rug and move forward in life in the name of "keeping my eyes on Christ" and "God makes me new so it doesn't matter". In my naturally ignorant being, I would love to ignore my past.

The crazy thing is that, as I have found more and more security in God, he has freed me to see things in a new light. The more I find my identity in him, the more he takes me by the hand and begins to show me things about myself and about how to become more Christ-like. Some of those things he has begun to work in me, are things that force me to face my past and deal with the realities of my life.

I keep thinking about the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. In their conversation, Jesus could have easily revealed himself and then said "go and sin no more"... which he did... but not until he made her face the reality of her life; she had been with many men and her past had created a cycle of that in her present life. She had to face that because she was facing who Christ is and what he wanted to do in her life.

I know that my relationship with Christ is a constant transformation of myself. I don't think, by any means, that filling in the gaps of my memory or finding answers to my past will somehow cause me to "arrive" or to finally be the person I'm suppose to be. There is no "arriving" but rather a continuous transforming. To me, that is the most beautiful thing about how God works. I recognize that me asking all these questions and learning about my past is just a part of that transformation. (That is not to say that everyone needs to do what I'm doing... I'm just saying that for me, right now, this is something God is doing in me.)

I am confident that no matter what I find out about my past, whether all my questions are answered or remain unknown, I am confident that I will remain secure with Christ, that he will continue to work in me, that he will continue to be my everything. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, right? I take hold of that as I am on this journey.


The Gospel and The Wrestling

I am doing well. I am uncovering deep truths about myself and about God. I believe that as I wrestle with God, with truth and with people, that I will continue to uncover more and more. I don’t believe God ever intends that wrestling to end. Life is a refining process, a journey, sometimes a battle.

I have lived most of my life believing that if I was wrestling with anything, if I was questioning anything, “working on my issues”, then I wasn’t doing well. I have come to realize, though, that it is in that wrestling that God makes something beautiful out of my life. So if I am wrestling, I consider myself to be doing pretty damn well.

I am a broken being living in a broken world. God is leading me through a process of healing but I don’t believe that it will come to completion until this life is through. So if I’m walking in that process, I am doing well.
It doesn’t always look great from the outside. Usually, it’s pretty messy. So I can understand how someone could assume, from the outside, that I wouldn’t be doing well as I struggle through this life.

But the day I stop wrestling, the day I think I’m healed, the moment I feel able to walk on my own two feet, is the day I will say I’m not doing well. To me, this is a radically different view of life than the one I was brought up on. However, it is this truth that is revealed to me as I honestly seek to understand the gospel, and it has given me a freedom that I feel I’ve been repressed from throughout most of my life.


The Gospel and The Fullness of Life

I am all about being sensitive to God’s leading and following the spirit. I want nothing more than to be surrendered to God and live a life that glorifies him. But in that, I think God is about creating a full life for me, too; one that allows me to follow my hearts desires and passions in a way that works within his kingdom.
By that, I mean that I think there are two concepts that work in tandem with each other. On one hand I think God guides and directs us, sometimes to places and situations that we may not understand at the time. On the other hand, I also think that God created each of us unique, with passions, talents, etc., that he wants us to use to his glory. So for example, I have this huge passion for and talent of writing. I believe God gave me that ability and intends for me to use it in a way that honors him (however that looks).

Very often, I have seen Christians act and talk like doing things that make the individual happy, are bad. Like, for me to follow my passion of writing is bad because it's selfish, or it's all about me. When in reality, it's God who gave me that passion and I think I can use it in a myriad of ways that are all glorifying to him.

John 10:10 talks about how Christ came to give us life and to give it more abundantly (or to the full). I don't think this is limited to eternity. I think God created life here on earth for us to experience to the fullest. It can be a great and amazing thing - life. I have felt before that many Christians pound on the "self sacrifice" and "martyr" drum so much that they don't truly enjoy life; they just try to find one more "good work" to do for God or one more thing they can sacrifice for God. I feel like they give up so much of life that God actually intends for us to enjoy. Life here on earth is not inherently bad, simply because we're living in a fallen world.

Engaging Culture

At LCC we have been defining and re-defining the best way to communicate what this journey called Christianity looks like. Almost a year ago, a few of us spent countless hours in San Diego wrestling with these ideas. It is still a work in progress, but from that time we have deemed these ideas "The Process". It is a process of loving God, living in community with believers and engaging culture. I was asked to write about our Engaging Culture philosophy... this is what I could muster up:


Engaging Culture is a lifestyle. Unlike other aspects of The Process, you are not going to find a great deal of structure here. We define Engaging Culture as a way of life; being aware that every moment is an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work and choosing to allow the Holy Spirit to work in whatever way, at whatever time, he chooses. This looks different for everyone because we are each created in a unique fashion and placed in unique circumstances.

In Christianity, everything is Gospel; Christ must be central in all things. Consequently, we engage culture by living out the Gospel. What does that look like? Fortunately for us, we have the example of Christ to look to. In order to understand the heart of Engaging Culture, one must understand the heart of the Gospel, the heart of Jesus. In Luke 19, Jesus weeps over the condition of Jerusalem, the culture around him. In order for us to truly engage culture, we must first develop a heart of compassion for the culture we are in.

Culture is the framework within which people live their lives. To engage that framework is simply to engage in relationship with other people. If we are accepted by Christ unconditionally, then our first and foremost responsibility is to accept each other the same way. Mercy is not optional in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself was labeled as “a friend of sinners”. We must care far more for the souls of people than any label the world might place on us.

If we wish to see the transformation of others, we need to be transformed ourselves. Our transformation comes as we discover God’s love for us. As we experience our own transformation, we begin to realize that it can happen for others, and we begin to desire that for them. Our own transformation, as we are open and honest about it, will bring about the transformation of those around us. Just as God is patient in our transformation, so we too must be patient with the transformation of others.

When God wanted to show his love, he did not demand that we go up to heaven to meet him; he sent his son, himself incarnate, to the earth to demonstrate his love. Then he calls us, his followers, to do likewise. We cannot demand that people come to us in order to experience our love. We must go to them to demonstrate Christ’s love.

Engaging culture can be messy; it is honest, it is real. As the Gospel of Christ is transforming us, we are constantly inviting people into that process of transformation by living out the gospel. In his infinite love, God sent his son to meet us where we are. Christ does not come to take us out of where we are but to transform us in the midst of it. In response, we turn to those around us and love them; we accept them as Christ does in the hope that they too will be transformed by Christ right where they are. Christ came to bring us hope. As we are transformed by Him, we become vessels of that hope to those around us.

Augustine once said of his writing that “the words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.” So when people ask what does Engaging Culture really look like? All I can say is that it looks like Christ. It is having a heart and compassion for people, spending time with people, being involved in their lives and being a Christ-like presence in their life. It is a loss of self. It requires that we take our eyes off ourselves and look solely to the person of Christ. Being transformed by the Gospel, our hearts will naturally begin to see those around us in a new light; we will begin to see people the way Christ sees them. Transformation is an experience and we cannot fully understand the concept of Engaging Culture until we have experienced the transformation that only Christ can bring.

My Eye Just Can't Take It Anymore!

I got in a fight. I was trying to pluck out my eye. I don't know. Stress. I was crying too much. Your face just busted a blood vessel in my eye.

I say all sorts of random stuff when people ask me what happened to my eye. Truth is, I don't know. I woke up one day and it looked like my eye was bleeding, but on the inside, but I could see it from the outside. Strange phenomenon.

The first day it was just a red line along the side of my eye ball. The next day it was a huge red ball, nice and bright for the whole world to see. So I called Kittie, my resident eye doctor. "Is there any pain?" she asked. "Well, no, not besides the pain of embarrassment that my ego seems to be experiencing right now." She said it is probably a broken blood vessel and will go away in about a week. The cause? Probably stress.

Probably? So, like it could be a massive tumor in my head causing random blood vessels to blow? But it's probably just stress. Whew! Close call.

I'm also having trouble remembering things. I thrive on details. I'm an organizational guru of sorts. I remember things. I remember everything. I remember what color his cuff links were two and a half years ago at my uncle Joe's funeral. (Not really; I don't have an uncle Joe. Dramatic affect. Work with me.)

But lately I can't remember much of anything. Yesterday someone was recalling an event that took place a couple months ago, talking about who brought what, did I bring the cheese, the wine, both? Turns out I brought both. But for the life of me, I couldn't remember that until this morning. I was sitting in my car, parking outside of the polling place, and suddenly I remembered, "I brought the cheese AND the wine!" Then I went in to vote and realized that I had forgotten my ID in my car. Go figure.

Another thing; my muscles are tense, constantly. I get these fantastic tension headaches that linger throughout the day and on to the night. Advil is my closest companion these days. We go way back.

Did I mention that I've been sick, too? Nothing like good old fashioned head cold to ease the heavy burden of a stressful existence.

As I'm searching for a clever way to end this post, I have noticed that Blogger allows you to create labels for each post. They suggest "scooters, vacation, fall, etc." Hhmmm... I think I'll go with scooters. That word makes me laugh.

Scooters.

Couldn't say it better if I tried!

Check out this piece by Donald Miller, "My Journey from being a Reagan Republican to an Obama Democrat" ... Seriously, I couldn't say it better if I tried!

http://donmilleris.com/2008/11/03/from-reagan-to-obama-a-brief-political-history/