Perfect?

I have spent much of my Christian life, having the idea of Original Sin pounded into my head. I have been convinced, much like many of my Christian brothers and sisters, that we are imperfect, I mean it is forever a part of my URL… But what if there is more to the story? What if there was something greater than this Original Sin? What if Christ came to give more than a ticket to heaven?

From day one we are taught we are imperfect and we are broken, and it is correct, but that’s where it ends. We are broken and Christ has come to set us free, save and restore us. The life I was promised, the life we were promised has been a great disappointment thus far. I was promised peace, and renewal, and grace, but have felt guilt and shame, and condemnation. Whether it is from within, or form others scolding my actions and decisions, I have felt ashamed, and useless and broken. This is not how it was supposed to be.

I learned something and am still trying to learn it, and I mean really learn it. I want more than head knowledge, I want wisdom, and wisdom is in our hearts. I want this idea, this truth to take root in my heart and change me from the inside out. I AM PERFECT… I know this seems so strange to see, when I first heard the words spoken to me I was in shock and full of doubt. I wanted to disagree. How could I be perfect? I struggle daily with sin. I am completely overcome, at times, with guilt and shame for things that I have done, but something inside of me closed my mouth and sealed my lips shut (and for those that know me, this is no easy feat). What I learned that night was a truth that has been hidden away for some time, I believe. I learned I am perfect now.

I have spent much of time, trying to perform the right combination of actions to have God grace me with more, to make me more good, and have come up short. I develop growth plans, and boundary lists, and action plans to beat sins I struggle with, but I constantly fail. I try to become more intimate with God by being good and behaving well and proper, but what I didn’t know, was I can’t get any better. I am going to mess up, and God knows that. He hasn’t put a cap on how far His forgiveness will stretch. My sins are as far as the east is from the west. There is no need for shame and guilt, all is forgiven, I am commanded to love God and love people. If I am doing this with all my heart, my mind and my soul, then I am doing what is most important to my Father.

It is a hard concept to come to terms with. We are perfect, not broken. We have something in us more powerful than Original Sin. We have Original Glory. We were made in God’s image. Christ came to restore this. Just as Adam brought sin into the world, Christ vanquished sin for all those who asked. He removes the evil from within us and gives a new heart. This heart is no longer a heart of stone, but a heart of flesh. It is clean and perfect, and God dwells there. God cannot dwell with evil, so as Christians, there can be no evil in our hearts. When I read this, it was as if God was putting life into me, taking me and breathing into my nostrils as he did Adam. My life, began a long time ago, but I have been walking around in my grave clothes for a long time. I have felt dead, unwanted and unneeded, but this is not the case.

So many of us ask,” why would God use me? I am a mess up.” We look at our lives and we see bad decisions, and sin running rampant in daily life, but what we fail to consider is we are saved by grace. We cannot earn our forgiveness and yet we try. And we fail. Shocker, right? No. Of course we fail, we are humans and still live in our flesh and we ignore our hearts, and the law that has been written in them. We ignore God inside us and we give into the flesh, and then we focus on that. We focus in on this sin that is beating us, and we let it eat us up. We need to live in that freedom. When we truly live in freedom from sin we can thank God and truly love Him. So many times I have struggled with how to love God. I can’t see Him and often I can’t hear Him, but when I think about all He has done for me it becomes easier.

That life I was promised,…I understand it now. It has been right in front of me and I have been blind to it for far too long. My heart is free from trying to be more than it is, because it is the most it can be…PERFECT.

I am indebted to Ron Duncan and John Elderidge for this post. If it weren't for Ron I would have continued to wander aimlessly through my life trying to reconcile my brokenness though repentance and shame, but thanks to him I now THINK DIFFERENTLY.

What in the Hell Are We Doing?

I am so sick of being the same as I was yesterday. I am sick of my Christian brothers and my Christian sisters being the same as yesterday. I am sick of apathy and complacency. Apathy is a cancer eating away at Christianity. Complacency strangling any progress that could be made for His kingdom. I am sick of fear and pride. Fear paralyzes us in moments that God calls us to move boldly. Pride blinds us to everything that God can do for us. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
We have failed, we have missed, and we continue to miss it, daily. It would be a modest guess to say that over seventy-five percent of us who claim discipleship to Christ miss it. If you are reading this, you have probably missed it. I am not trying to be critical, and if you disagree with me then stop reading now; this is an examination of what we could be doing but are not doing. this is a journey into our journeys we are taking with Christ. So if you are denying yourself and taking up your cross an a yearly, monthly, daily, hourly, or on a second by second basis, then by all means stop reading, call me and tell me I am wrong.
We listen to worship songs and we sing out to our God. We go to church conferences and we learn about God and His workings in us. We go to our church services and get encouragement and conviction. We do our devotions, and Bible studies and fill our heads with knowledge. We do our duty and volunteer in this ministry or that. We have small groups to discuss our love for our God and our own personal theologies. All of things are good but can only do so much. These things are accompaniments to our walk but they are not what make up our walk with I Am.
So now I pose a very important question...What in the Hell are we doing? We proclaim our love from our seats at church. We shout and holler for revival from beaches at church camp. We declare our passions fervently at church conferences. We declare our claim to Christ on bumper stickers, and t-shirts. Does it make a difference? How many lives have been saved because of my WWJD bracelet, how many souls have been spared because of my clever bumper sticker? It makes me sick to think that this actually passes for evangelism to many of us.

Revelation 3:16

"So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."
I have been lukewarm, at best in the entirety of my life. I pray this ends this late night or early morning, whichever it is now. I want people to look at me and call me "holier than thou". As a follower of Christ, should I not be holier than a sinner who does not know Him. And yet in this knowledge, I am afraid to live like I am a redeemed and holy saint. I want to be hot, no, on fire, truly on fire for God. I don't want to talk about love. I don't want to talk about God. And I don't want to talk about loving God. I want to do it. I want my actions to speak so loudly that I no longer need words to express my love for I Am. I want people to see me and see something different. I want to feel my spirit burn in the face of sin. I want my passion for righteousness, and my desire for my God to drive me to lovingly correct sin when I see it. I want to lose my job because I talk to a coworker in need of the Savior who has transformed my life. I want to lose friends because I am a "goody two shoes". I want to be excommunicated form a church because I am dangerous to their reputations. I want to tarnish and destroy my reputation in service to my Christ who had no concern for His reputation. I want to learn how to worship with nothing more than a song in my heart and my Word in my hand. I want to pray as naturally as I breathe. I want to be silent and only speak when He speaks through me. I want to love my God. I want my generation and past generations to wake up to here and now and move. I want complacency, apathy, laziness, fear, pride, and hurt to stop being excuses and start being just a time of tribulation in our testimonies of His glorious redemption of us. It is my prayer that this something that you want.
Start living like a saint, and stop living like a sinner who is still broken. Your sins are gone, forgiven by our savior. Start doing and quit talking. Move in faith, and quit being frozen in fear. Be the disciple that Christ calls you to be. Be radical. Love...love God; that is our first commandment. In doing this, our love will spill over to other people. What difference are we making to the people in the here and now. So I ask again, What in the Hell are we doing? Are we making the population of Hell sparce or are we just letting them run head first into the lake of fire?...

Light up the Darkness

Imagine with me, a dark, room. This is not a dim room, it is a heavy and weighty black.This heavy black, this weighty darkness is what covers our world, and the enemy wants to keep it that way. Looking into our world and seeing nothing but dark is depressing and hopeless at best, but in the middle of the room there is a small Light. Suddenly there is a direction, a goal, and a vantage point. Suddenly there is hope. As you walk to the Light, candle in hand, your anticipation grows. You get to the flame and light your own candle, but now a new challenge awaits. This candle is now producing light but how much? Can others see this Light? Will it stay lit? People are all around us looking for the the Light but have such a troubled time finding it. We are now light-bearers, and are responsible, no privileged enough to be shining the Light for those searching. Some of us move, completely unaware of our dwindling flame in hand. We rush to and fro, dimming the light for ourselves and those around us. We skew the perspective of those searching, and lead them astray. What may look like truth ends nothing more than a lie clever placed by the one who prowls around like a lion waiting to devour us.. Others of us hide our Light afraid the flame will be blown out. We are finicky and tossed at sea like waves when the winds of transgression start to blow. This is no light to be hidden! We must learn to have faith in this flame, in this Light, for it is the Light of the world, the Light of life.!

This Light is an eternally burning flame that has been ablaze long before we were created and will be burning long after this earth is gone. It is a flame that exposes what is hidden in the darkness and brings sin to light. In the same fire that exposes this sin it burns it up leaving room for grace to intercede and transform us. This flame is the fuel for life. Not a life lived in darkness, where one can wander lost, scared and completely alone; but a life exciting and new and un-tamable like a wildfire, burning everything in its path. We should pray for this fire, for this life! It should be our desire to seek out how to feed this fire, and how to encounter and spread it daily. I want to be on fire! I want to light up the darkness!

Here are some verses that deserve some attention and meditation, concerning this entry...

"And Jesus spoke to them, saying 'I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life.' " John 8:12

"for at one time you were darkness but now you are light in the Lord.Walk as children of Light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true)" Ephesians 5:8-9

(We were darkness and God still loved us. We were not just walking the darkness, we were contributing to the problem and standing as adversaries to God. Despite this, He saved us and desires a close, and intimate relationship with Him...leading us to the next verse...lol)

"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

Mute

Recently one of my friends was in prayer, and looking up verses in the Bible and going over prayer requests for a really long time. During this time I was working and waiting for a reply to one of my texts and assumed she had gone to bed. She texted me back at around 3:30 in the morning...yeah kinda weird how God keeps such late ours. It's almost like He doesn't sleep or something. Anyway, she tells me she has no voice and at this point something just clicks and I realize something that I knew but didn't know I knew, or maybe it was something I knew I should have known. Either way it was pretty cool. When we seek God and want to hear Him, the cost is sometimes losing our voice altogether.

Physically we should lose our voice when we are seeking God with our whole being. In worship our vocal chords should become strained in exclamation in the love for our Savior. We should talk until we are blue in the face, as we give thanksgiving for all that He does for us. In our adoration of He who set us free, our praise should be loud enough that we should leave wherever we are with our ears ringing and our throats in need of something warm to drink, and in our back pockets we should have a ticket from the police for breaking a noise ordinance.

In submission we should lose our voice. When we really surrender to the Almighty, we realize it is no longer our voice. " I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" Galatians 2:20. When words come out of our mouths, they should be "cross-filtered". We have been crucified on the cross with Christ and risen to a new life and so the words that flow from our mouths should be controlled and filtered by that same cross we were on.

In prayer we should lose our voice. Not in all cases should we have no voice when we are in prayer. So often we desire to hear God but don't close our noise-boxes long enough to listen to something God is trying to say to us. Why would we talk over our perfect all-knowing, loving and merciful God, when we are nothing more than vapors? It is in the stillness, the quiet that God speaks; in fact, I think God whispers sometimes, so we have to really trey to hear Him. "How bad do You want to hear Me? I AM, at your service, I AM, speaking to you right now? Can you hear me?" When have I missed Him or when have you missed Him. Maybe He has to whisper to get our attention. We have constant noise around us, so we might not even recognize His voice.

I am indebted to Allie for inspiring this post. It is through her friendship with me and in her relationship with God that i found my "muse" for this post. May others be so blessed to encounter another, who has such an appetite for God.

Awaken

"Awake, O sleeper

and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you"

I was reading through Ephesians Chapter two and an important repetition started to play out in the writings of Paul. It's hard to put into words without just showing you, so here is an example:

Ephesians 2:1

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins"

We are called to die to ourselves and sin on a daily basis ( 1 Corinthians 15-31, Romans 6:11).

In this death to sin we are called to be alive in Christ. We are either dead to Christ and alive to sin or we are alive to Christ and dead to sin. We cannot serve to masters (Luke 16:13). Being dead to sin means we are no longer slaves to it.

Romans 6:14

"For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace"

Sins power is lost!

Okay, so I should probably warn any readers that I tend to get excited and maybe even of track, assuming it is possible to do so when discussing God and our freedom in Him.

...I digress; next verse

Ephesians 2:2

"...following the prince of power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-"

We are no longer sons of disobedience, we are sons (and daughters of course) in God's family. We are fellow heirs, to share in the Kingdom of our most High God because of the blood Christ shed for us on Calvary (Ephesians 1:11-5)

We are not sons of disobedience but children of light and called to live as such, seeking out and discerning what is pleasing to God (Ephesians 5:8-10)

Ephesians 2:3

"among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body, and mind, and were like children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."

Many may take this verse and think that passions and desires are inherently evil but this is not so. We are called to love God with all our heart soul and strength. Now don't miss this because, not only do we find it in Deuteronomy 6:5 but it is a verse that Christ reiterated later in Matthew 6:22-37. If we commit our selves, our whole selves to the serving and living in Christ we sill be transformed. Our transformation will come from the renewing of our minds as Paul teaches . We are to be different from the rest of mankind.

Romans 12:2

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

When we undergo this transformation, our desires change (Psalms 73:24-25)

I could continue for the rest of the night, in awe and wonderment of the writing in God's Word. Every time I open up my Bible in an earnest and honest search I am shown something more, but it takes me effort and lots of it. If we seek we shall find; sometimes it may not be what we thought we were looking for. God really does make us glad with his presence and, for me it is never more evident than when he reveals something spectacular to me.

Father, I come to you humbled by Your grace and Your constant outpouring of blessings and knowledge. i thank you for the undeserved wisdom you give me and all other who call on You and recognize You as their ever-present Father, Redeemer, Avenger, Sanctifier, Lover, Friend , Creator, Judge, and Holy, Righteous, Almighty Lord of all! I am so unworthy to even be able think your name or receive the grace you and forgiveness you granted me all those years ago and that you continue to rain on me on a daily basis. Thank You for the sacrifice you made for me in Your Son. Thank You for allowing me to be reborn to live in Christ and die to my transgressions and sin. Father, let me always understand how completely dependent on You I am; souls are at risk and I pray that would be a burden on my heart every day, and through that I would remember that You have chosen me as a light. Help me to shin e bright and put myself in a place to reflect Christ!

Awaken me, daily God,

let me be dead to sin

and Christ will shine on me