New Mercies

I wish I could bottle up the sunshine and seal it tight and save it my dresser drawer. That way when the clouds come and refuse to leave I could take it out and empty it in my room. Then it would bounce around and light up everything so I would forget about the clouds. I can't bottle up the sunshine though so I guess today's sunshine is only for today. Will there be sunshine tomorrow? Or will the clouds come and refuse to leave? My Father promises me new mercies tomorrow but still I fear the rain. I wish that by mercy he meant sunshine but I know that mercy sometimes means rain.

Rain.

Rain.

Rain.

Then I think that on dry days, I wish I had bottled up the rain. So I guess rain is a mercy too and each day cannot live up to yesterday even though I try to make it do that. Today can only be today and mercy doesn't necessarily mean rain or sunshine but mercy means God wants you closer to Him and what He gives you today is specially designed so that can happen. That sounds really nice like it would feel good all the time but I know that's not always really the case. I know it means that tomorrow might be painful or sad or I will have to give up something or make a hard decision or maybe I will laugh so hard that I fall on the floor.

Mercies are meant to be received today, whatever they are. Sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's easy. Maybe I need to throw away all my bottles but I think I'll keep them and use them for memories instead. That way I can remember that no matter what the new mercies were from my past days, they were given out of love and I'll be able to empty them out on days when I need to and remember that God is faithful and will be for all my days.

To Set Sail

Our hearts cannot live apart of my hope. I am living proof of this. To be detached from things that you used to trust and to be left floating like a boat out in the water. When you were fastened to the dock, you didn't have to worry about the strength of your sail or the rudder but now you find yourself wondering whether today will be calm or storm. There can be an impending fear that takes over you when no longer have lines fastening you to a place you are used to. You raise your sail for the first time, watching it flutter and fill out and feel the wind pulling your boat forward with a quiet exhilaration. You are moving in a certain direction and you wonder where the wind is taking you. And so your hand finds the tiller and you adjust your rudder and see how the bow draws itself across the horizon. The rudder and sail are the first things you trust and your heart begins to slowly wrap itself around them and become familiar with them. When the storms come, they only cause your heart to cling more tightly to these things and your heart sends it roots deeper into their surface. Though even then you still fear the storm and you feel deeply in your heart that you can use your sails and rudder but there is a power beyond you that could overwhelm you. Your heart clings to the aspects of the boat for stability but all these live and move over the ocean and your heart slowly comes to realize that while it can control the sailboat, it can't control the ocean. The heart wonders, "Then who controls the ocean?" And what would it be like to sink your heart's roots into the one who made the ocean?

Our hearts cannot live apart from hope. And this is evidenced by how we lay in bed at night and wish our day had gone differently. We wish we had used different words. We wish we had not spend all day thinking about ourselves. We wish there was greater richness in our friendships. We wish so many things and our heart feels like a tree that wishes it would rain so that it could drink and not be thirsty. Why such thirst if there was not water that could satisfy it? Hope is born out of this thirst. All of our hearts are thirsty and so we begin tying ourselves to things that help quench our hearts. We lie in our beds at night or when we wake up and we wonder what could quench the longings of our hearts. There are those who do not lie in their beds at night and wonder this and I believe it could be because they are tied so tightly into their slip of security that they have forgot what is to have their boat placed at the mercy of the ocean or rather to have their heart placed at the mercy of God. They have sheltered themselves from the natural elements which force the heart to confront its' true thirst. Everyone is scared to leave their slip though because no one knows what exactly God will do or whether he will bring calmness or storm if all is abandoned to him. And so we sit in our slips and do not risk the ocean. In doing so, we keep our hearts from the very reason we were made.

My desire is that my heart would sink itself into the one who made the ocean and I would be tied to him in love. Storm or calm, I do not care. I want to be willing to leave my slip and risk the ocean because anything else would be to deny my existence and to deny that he created me for Himself. God calls every heart to abandon itself to him. To say, "Lord, WHATEVER you want, I am yours. I will cast myself upon you. Make me yours." Only when every tie is cut, can the sailboat leave the slip. And if my heart is stubborn and does not have the courage to cut the final cord, I pray that God would send a wind to pull me until that cord is snapped and I am loosed fearfully into the open water. It takes an abandoned heart to take a knife to the cords on your boat as the world is crying out and scoffing at your foolishness, "Why would you set sail?!" The answer is obvious, "Because I am a boat and I was meant to!" There must be a greater voice that is calling you in your heart in order for you to ignore the voice of the world. The ocean calls us and we hold a knife in our hands. The ropes are taut in our slips. Our sails are waiting to catch the wind. And the Maker of the ocean is waiting to reveal himself to those he created for himself.

"And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statues of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?" Deuteronomy 10:12-14

To Give God Glory

What does this mean? It sounds so intimidating and beyond us. I was try thinking of examples of people bringing God glory and it's hard. I think most of the time I would use the phrase to describe someone doing something and then giving God the credit. As in, "I worked really hard at something and now that I've accomplished it, I must tell you that it was really God all along." Of course, this truth cannot be disputed. Only the person in question will know whether this was really true in their heart. This brings us to the place where giving God glory is determined: the heart. You can go to church, sing, serve, work, dance in a circus, love your wife, and give to the poor and say that it's all for God's glory but how can we tell that's really true? There's two options: either you are telling the truth and your heart-desire really was to glorify God or else you are paying lip service to God when really your heart-motive was focused on yourself. The only way we could tell for sure is if we're in a trusting relationship with you and you disclose your motives to us. We know our own heart-motives though and so I think each of us has to look inward for ourselves and see things for what they really are.

Notice how we try to squirm out of this using a number methods though. Sometimes we prefer apathy. We say that we're overthinking things and who can really have perfect motives all the time? So we hide from truly examining our heart. Sometimes we prefer busyness and we just keep our lives so filled with activity that we never take time to examine our hearts. Sometimes we compare ourselves to others and since we do more good things than others or maybe even have "better" motives than others, we don't take time to examine our hearts. Lastly and worst of of all, we can prefer to just plain fool ourselves by redefining God's glory into something less than it is. We lower the bar so that our current heart-motives are satisfactory.

If prayer is coming to God with our hearts and we get in this habit, how could we ever claim to come to God truly as we are and as a result, how could he ever truly meet us in our hearts? I experienced this in a personal way recently. I was disgusted as I realized how squirmy I was with letting God truly have my heart. I didn't want to be vulnerable. I didn't want to give him my heart unless I knew what he was going to do with it. Most of all though, I was afraid he would kill and put to the death all the things that my flesh holds on to for comfort (friendships, my plans for the future, my future career path, timing, etc.). This is the place of surrender and it where's I found myself. I began to pray that I would live a life devoted to giving God glory. Something began to break inside of me as I prayed and I felt a sharp pain in my heart. I wanted to shrink from it but I wanted to hold myself there because I felt like something was dying in my heart that I was really sick of having there. Afterwards, I felt a very real desire growing that yes, I did want to bring God glory. Since then it works like this. I get into situations and I realize how selfish my heart is that my desire is not to bring God glory through the situation and I realize I need help. And so I come to God again and force my squirmy heart to sit still and be exposed to his light. Perhaps we are meant to have a small taste of what Job felt. "Though he slay me, yet I will trust him." When we give him our hearts truly, he truly changes them right down the very core. Right where it hurts the most, and right where it feels the best afterwards.

When you come out on the other side there's just peace and joy. You start to actually have experiences where your heart-motive is to bring God glory and you encourage, love, or serve someone. I'm probably more emotional than most but it seriously make me want to laugh. I will tell you, I have not laughed so much and so deeply in a very long time. Bringing God glory doesn't seem as intimidating and beyond anymore. To intentionally do things with the heart-motive to make Jesus look more beautiful is what brings God glory. I'm praying that my squirmy heart will eventually become established and rooted in this mission. It's not just the call for believers who want to go the extra mile. It's the call for every believer. To give God your heart and have him transform you at the core of who you are.

Drawing Lines

There's so many lines that we draw in our lives it's so hard to know which lines are good ones or bad ones. So often it seems that we're taking out our erasers and the canvas of our life is full of smears as we draw and redraw the lines that determine our behavior. And it makes it frustrating as a Christian because it's clear from the Bible that we're supposed to draw lines around our behavior but so often our drawing of lines becomes purely mechanical and lifeless or else it becomes completely based on emotions. I notice a common tendency in myself throughout my life has been that I tend to place my lines into two categories. I'm a super emotional person so my lines are placed into the categories of boring and exciting. I find myself just trying to draw fun lines every day and trying to avoid any other kind of lines. But since I attend church regularly I can't really draw lines like that all the time so I get my eraser out and draw new lines. In this religious mindset, I place my lines into two categories based around what people think. If the lines I draw bring the applause of the other people at church, they are good lines but if they are frowned upon, then those are bad lines and quickly get erased (at least for now). I'm learning though that drawing lines is meant to be refreshing and life-giving. It's meant to both protect out hearts from sickness but also fill them with peace and clarity.

Here's what I mean. In all this erasing and redrawing and seeking the praise of others, our lives become frantic and confused and it's hard to find peace when the painting that represents our lives isn't beautiful but is a mess of smudges and confusion. What you and I really need in the midst of all this is the presence of God. You need to be touched. When someone touches you in the midst of confusion it brings such peace. When someone breathes warmth into your spirit when you've been drawing lines of cold religion, it takes a huge weight off your shoulders. A lot of people won't seek the presence of God though. For some it seems too free-spirited to them and they've heard of people who've lost their way. I'm not saying to walk away from the Word of God and just go seek the presence of God. God's Word and his presence are so clearly linked together but while these "lost free-spirits" have sought the presence of God and forgotten his Word, it is just as silly to cling to be clinging to His Word yet neglecting the seeking of God's presence. You can't separate the two either way. The Word tells us how to draw our lines but it also instructs us to seek his presence. There is a passion for God's presence that fills the Word. There is literally nothing like talking honestly with the Lord and feeling his touch as He calls you his own. You find yourself desiring him and longing to be near to Him. When this happens, there becomes new categories for your behavioral lines. There are lines that bring you closer to Him and there are lines that take you farther away. Sometimes you make mistakes but instead of using your eraser, you seek out God's presence and let his touch erase the smudges and confusion so that you can draw lines as He leads you. Still some will resist or be half-hearted about this because they're afraid they might get lost if they actually take their little sailboat out of its slip into the ocean and hoist their sails in faith. The wind of the Spirit is a powerful and fearful thing but the Spirit is the third person of our God who we're commanded by the Word to walk in. Those who refuse to seek out God's real and personal presence have no choice but to draw lines of religion. They will protest and justify themselves by claiming their lines are drawn according to God's Word but they forget that the Pharisees drew lines in the same way. Yet they never sought God's presence. Jesus called them whitewashed tombs. Some people fall somewhere in between though. They have a genuine love for God's Word but out of love for comfort and safety, they are ignorant the Scripture's passion for God's presence.

Take your sailboat our of its' slip and raise your sails. Show him the smudge-filled canvas of your life and seek out his touch and presence. Don't give a rip what other people think about your lines. Those who seek God's presence as well will love and support you. Include them and seek God's presence with them. God will show you how to draw your lines and he may take you through a vast array of storms and pain and rainbows and beautiful evenings but through it all you will actually grow in the knowledge of Him who loves you. Jesus said it was better that he left us so that God in His Spirit would come. Seek the Spirit. Seek his touch. Seek his presence. He will show you how to draw your lines and he will ultimately help you draw more permanent lines that will define the next season of your life. It is hard to roll the tombstones of your heart away and let Him, the Holy Spirit see and touch those places. Jesus was always taking his disciples to new places of faith and the Spirit will do the same for you. I pray that this will be a new season for all of us: one of seeking the presence of God, the Holy Spirit and letting him see and touch the dead places.

Reconciliation

A sip of coffee in the morning. Especially on a Friday morning with the weekend spread out before you like an open landscape. Birds sing and a soft breeze comes through your car window. Everyone is a little more talkative at work and smiles come light and easy.

You've been fighting with your friend and you can't seem to let go of your entitlements and sense of fairness. They stop by in the evening and give you a hug and ask for your forgiveness. You feel a lightness, an easiness and your muscles unfold and relax. A few tears fall and you tell them you're sorry.

There's a hundred other moments during the week where you find comfort or long for comfort. The word reconciliation weaves its' way in and out of these moments. Every moment you find comfort during the week is your heart longing to be reconciled. We think the longing is merely for comfort and peace but it's really so much deeper than that. Comfort and peace is only the surface. The longing really is to be reconciled to the way things once were and the way that, we hope, things might be again. The sip of the coffee, the hug with your friend, the harmony of life that you long for most especially when you experience the dissonance of pain, boredom, discomfort, or fear; they are all longings for reconciliation if you look closely enough. You see, if you don't view these things as reconciliation, you'll just view them as comfort and peace. What I mean is, comfort and peace are meant to be feelings within a larger story. Reconciliation is the larger story. You and your friend experienced a fracture in your friendship and through forgiving each other, there is comfort and peace in your reconciliation. Comfort and peace without reconciliation means you and your friend are fighting and you feel like crap so you grab a beer out of the fridge and now you feel great. You experience comfort and peace but no reconciliation. One that hits closer to home for me would be living half-hearted day after half-hearted day until finally you take that weekend trip and while you're away on vacation you feel so alive and comforted and at peace and then you return to your half-hearted life during the week. This is comfort and peace without a larger story of reconciliation. Eventually you'll end up with a life full of some random, interspersed beautiful scenes that don't really fit together and leave you confused and trying to convince yourself that you lived for something meaningful. But if you view comfort as a reconciliation with the way things were originally designed, then you'll find yourself living a beautiful story with an overarching and reverberating theme woven throughout. Your moments of comfort and peace will find a context and a resting place.

If you're going to be reconciled to the original design, you must first ask the question though, "Can you reconcile yourself? Can you reconcile yourself to the original design?" Think about it. And don't think about what you say you believe but think about what you actually believe? Look at the landscape of your past. You were able to reconcile yourself to an extent, weren't you? But then there are still pains and things that happened to all of us that we don't understand. To put it plainly, we all may have done great reconciling ourselves for a while but we never really ended up finding a resting place where we felt reuly at peace.

If we can't reconcile ourselves to the original design then the answer must come outside ourselves. Look at the landscape of your past again. Were you best moments of comfort actually reconciliation or were they aimless wanderings and reveling in just feeling a certain way? I know this is possibly a little harsh to think about but I think it's important. It's the difference between being reconciled to illusions and being reconciled to someone living and breathing. There's a big difference there between the two. Jesus offers reconciliation to the original design. You see, Jesus gave up comfort and peace to restore us to the original design. The hands the formed the world were split with metal nails so that things could be restored and reconciled. Jesus isn't offering you comfort and peace. He's offering so much more. He's offering you, personally, reconciliation which includes comfort and peace. Will you receive reconciliation with Jesus? He doesn't want your nice actions and sweet skills. He doesn't want you to read your Bible more or to be a better person. He wants you to be reconciled and restored to the original design. And the original design was that you and him would find life together in the beautiful sips of coffee and hugs with forgiven friends but also in the midst of the seemingly senseless pain of life and miscarriages and days that seem to just fall off the hinges. He also calls you to follow him in restoring others. As you long to be restored, don't you also long for those you love to be restored? Think about the landscape of Jesus' past. What was his most beautiful moment? It was when he gave up his life to bring reconciliation to the original design. He gave up comfort and peace for reconciliation and now he is receiving his reconciliation and his children are coming home to him every day.

We're all afraid of it. Jesus may call us to die to and give up many of our comforts and perhaps some day, all of them. Some he may simply take away suddenly. And I think it's because he knows that our most beautiful moments, just like his most beautiful moment, will be when he leads us to lay down our lives to help others find reconciliation. You can do a lot of things in this life and some may be sweet and comforting, but if you don't live a life of reconciliation then you'll never really find life at all. The beautiful moments, the painful ones, the sacrificial ones, they all find their harmony and life together under the theme of reconciliation with Jesus. Our lives are ones of longing and they always will be. The question is where will you take your longings? Will you be content to simply play in the river or will you go upstream to the source of the river and be reconciled to the one who made you and the place from whence you came?

"But you who were once far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Ephesians 2:13

Love In The Present Tense

Love is in the present tense.

That sentence was just in my head. You'll have trust me I guess. I even typed it in google to see if maybe I heard it in a song somewhere. There's some book called "Love In The Present Tense" but I had never heard of it. Anyway, I'm not sure how it got in my head, whether God put it there or whether it was just there randomly, but it really resonates with me today. I was worshipping God this morning before church, and by that I mean, I had some worship music playing and was praying for some friends. All of the sudden, I was just filled very tangibly with love for my friends and just broke out in prayer for them. It was like I couldn't stop praying either but was just filled with desire to pray for them. Then I saw the morning sun shining through my balcony windows and I just couldn't contain all the joy of it all. I know what I was experiencing was God's presence in me and around me. And it was crazy because when I thought of the sun rising and shining through my balcony windows, it felt the exact same way - the presence of God was rising and shining in my heart and overflowing in prayer and love for my friends.

I'm growing to expect this more but I think I've gone long periods of time where I was hardened against it. When I think about it though, should I be surprised at God's tangible presence when he puts His Spirit to dwell inside me and makes me His temple? Where does God's presence dwell? In His temple! And what does the psalmist pray for in Psalm 27:4, "One thing I ask and this is what I seek, to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon His beauty, and to inquire in His temple." This psalmist gives me a wonderful example to inquire within His temple, which He, through Jesus' work, has made inside of me. This is so encouraging for me just to know that I can experience God's presence on a regular basis.

Love is in the present tense. A lot of times we can trick ourselves into depending on our past experiences with God or even just a hope that someday we might experience him in the future. But God doesn't do any of these things with His love. He loves us today. Yes, Jesus died for me 2,000 years ago but people are experiencing that love all over the world today. That's because Jesus didn't just love you 2,000 years ago but He also sent His Spirit as a witness and Helper to you so that I can experience that love today, in the present tense.

I want to seek God like it says in Psalm 27:4 - today, in the present tense because His love for me is always in the present tense. This is part of what Jesus paid for so I can't let anything stop this. Am I feeling sinful? I still have to come to him and asked him to help me! Am I in the midst of seduction by some idol in my life that I might not even want to let go of yet? I still have to come and ask him to take over and give me a greater love for him so that I loose my grip on my idol. The key is, though, not letting anything keep me coming to him. Psalm 27:4 should be our battle cry to experience the presence of God on a daily basis. EVEN in the midst of our sin. EVEN in the midst of our distractions. And EVEN when our feelings may not be all there.

"One thing I ask and this is what I seek, to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon His beauty, and to inquire in His temple." Psalm 27:4

Silence and Speaking

A poem of encoruagement written in the midst of the heartache that comes with not sharing the love of Christ with someone.

What’s the difference between silence and speaking?
Is it small and simple like a single step that you take?
Or is it like a race with a brick wall at the start line?
Sometimes
To speak into silence feel likes both
And it’s confusing
Because how can it be both?

It’s an illusion.
To speak looks so far, so hopeless,
Like a chasm you can’t jump over
And if you tried, you would just fall helpless
Hopeless
Hopeless
Hopeless
And then lost.

But the truth is
To speak into silence
Is closer than your skin
As close as the Spirit to your soul.
It’s a song waiting to be sung
It’s a simple question just waiting to be asked
It’s love hovering so close and waiting to touch down
It’s a breath just waiting and waiting to breathe.

What is the distance between silence and speaking?
The truth is
It may look like a chasm
And it does every time
But know

Know

That you have wings
And the Spirit will never never leave you.