Thursday, May 19

The end of the world as we know it.....

“In the future, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved His appearing.”
[2Timothy 4:8 HCSB]

Reverend Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio Worldwide, is saying that the world is coming to an end on a calculated date of May 21st, 2011 which is coming this Saturday. On Syracuse.com (as well as other sites) Reverend Camping is quoted as saying….” "Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment."

This is a familiar ‘rant’ from Camping who miss-predicted the end back in 1994. This time, Fiji and New Zealand will get hit with earthquakes at 6pm and Christ will gallop across the sky to reclaim His followers right after.

The end of the world process will be complete five months later on October 21, 2011.

This has spawned so-called ‘rapture parties’ and ‘looting gangs’ on the social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

And many Christians are joining in the ‘fun.’

Ysolt Usigan posted an article on CBS.com “End of the world, May 21, 2011? Whatever, it’s funny” and remarked “Well naturally we though[t] that was kind of funny,” (apparently grammar wasn’t important to Usigan) in reference to Reverend Camping’s second prediction, “But we weren't the only ones.”

Usigan finishes the brief article with a link to ‘favorite rapture tweets.”

WendySparrow claimed the top one of the 20 with the remark, “I really don’t have time for the world to end this weekend. Plus, the weather is supposed to be crappy.”

GottaloveCYD says, “The only way I would believe in Judgment day is if Morgan Freeman came up to me and told me I was god.”

Nzcspaul quips, “So the end of the world coming on Sunday while I’m out of the country? Better pack my electric thumb and towel.”

Whether these samplings are from those who express a claim to be Christians or just atheists and agnostics who want to have some fun with such familiar doomsday preachers, Usigan is unclear and doesn’t specify.

A certain amount of ridicule from the non-Christian believers is to be expected and obviously will be used by the mainstream media to heap doubt and intolerance upon the end-time doctrine of the universal church.

It is common in this world, even as those very people question the validity of it and in backrooms often try to ‘buy some insurance just in case.’

We cannot predict the day or even the hour of Christ’s return…..we are instructed to live as if He’s coming tomorrow and keep watch to the skies for His eminent return. Reverend Camping’s prediction is presumptuous as it is ‘mockable.’ Of course, it won’t be portrayed that way, as another failed human attempt to define and predict God’s ways and timing, in the media…..it’ll be just one of those ‘fanatical Christian sects’ who were ‘wrong again.’

There are several sites debunking Camping’s prediction from the math he used to other data anomalies that skew his dating. Others are pointing to the fact we’ll not be able to watch the end of “Dancing with the Stars” or other ‘important’ events that ‘sweeten’ our lives.

What bothers me is the amount of “Christian” people who are jumping on ‘looting’ bandwagons and ‘before-rapture’ parties saying that they’re going to have a ball either as the 21st draws to a close and the world begins to end or jumping on the looting for that big screen TV after everyone has disappeared.

And then just answering posts against such comments as “lighten up, we’re just joking.”

The most important event in Christianity since the Resurrection is a joke?
Whether you believe in pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib for the reclaimation of Christ’s followers from this world before He returns the whole of creation to its intended and original state, Christ warns us about ‘mocking’ God.

Proverbs 9:12, Isaiah 28:22, Obadiah 1:22 to name a few.

The biblical text is replete with what happens to those who do. But honestly, what does the mockery we are making of ‘end-of-times’ predictions say about our biblical beliefs about this event?

“About the times and the seasons: brothers, you do not need anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the Day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. When they say, "Peace and security," then sudden destruction comes on them, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in the dark, so that this day would overtake you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day. We're not of the night or of darkness. So then, we must not sleep, like the rest, but we must stay awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we are of the day, we must be sober and put the armor of faith and love on our chests, and put on a helmet of the hope of salvation. “ [1Thessalonians 5:1-8 HCSB]

How do you live your life?

If you have to live by the ‘predicated’ end-of-time hoopla that comes and goes with the marching of this world towards its true end, it would be nothing but a mockery on the public square as you silently (in the darkness of your own home) ‘make an insurance bet’ on such utterances.

If you don’t believe in the gospel, well you’re going to establish such enterprises as “Pet care after rapture” and “Estate planning for the raptured.” You are going to live your life the way you want, assured of the day coming after that will allow you to get ‘caught up’ on those things that you didn’t do today or you make jokes about finally getting that big-screen TV that was abandoned by the raptured folk or looting the grocery stores.

You participate in the world’s madness or the world’s mockery of this ‘beginning of the Kingdom come.”

If you live with your eyes towards the sky, sobered by the fact that we cannot know the day or the hour of His return, only that we can remain ‘awake’ assured of its guaranteed happening, then such predictions are a method of answering the brokenness and sinfulness of the world desperate for God’s salvation.

You stand upon the biblical truths of this event and you use the mockery of the world to speak truth……”We know not the day or hour, but we do eagerly look to the sky for His coming.”

We live with the realization that tomorrow might not come and therefore the importance of what we do becomes relevant to what we believe. We hear the din of the battle waging and we grow not weary in our fight for the souls of the lost and the redemption of the worldly.

We no longer ‘panic’ when such predictions are uttered because we know regardless of truth or falseness, we are destined for home…..in God’s time. But we ‘panic’ about the abundance and overwhelming amount of ‘work’ left to be done under a timeframe we are not privy to.

There is no doubt that the end of the world as we know it is coming the 21st of May, 2011…this Saturday……..because we will know either the folly or the accuracy of Reverend Camping’s prediction.

Christianity will be proven right in the finality of the world or mocked again because of the misguided theology and predictions of one who claims to know God’s timing. Either way, the world changes. It will become more worldly or have judgment passed.

Either way, how are you living?

As I posted on the page on Facebook promoting a ‘looting party’ after the rapture day,

“I won’t be looting but preaching the Gospel to those of you who are.”

As I will do today……

And tomorrow……………

And the next day……………..

Until I see my Savior galloping on a white horse across the sky.

Sunday, May 8

Waiting

“However, I have let you live for this purpose: to show you My power and to make My name known in all the earth.” [Exodus 9:16 HCSB]

The complexities of life sometimes overwhelm me and the simplicity of ‘waiting’ on the Lord becomes a painful reminder of how unworthy and inadequate I am for any cause or purpose that He’d put into my fragile and weak hands to carry. In every aspect of my life, every bump and resultant bruise that happens along the bumpy road of this journey, there is struggle and painful realizations of how accurate the ol’ song is “If it weren’t for bad luck……”

I’ve come to realize just how broken and lost my life before Christ had become, not by some simple measuring stick that I’ve come across in the Bible but as I’ve faced the situations that have left me grasping for air, struggling for understanding and agonizing over the feelings of being left behind again. As I face on a daily basis that major wound of community, with which I’ve been told I’ll never be able to find acceptability of my purpose within the family…..I’ll forever be the crazy old uncle or brother or friend who runs on the outskirts of the family muttering crazy things no one listens to.

Gone are the illusions of those who spoke edification into my life as if deranged themselves about me being some mighty leader on the front lines with lines of faithful standing with and behind me as I race over the hilltop screaming the battle cry “For My God and King!” (yes, someone actually said that to me years ago….) Gone are the assurances that sometime, in God’s time, such realized purpose will suddenly burst upon the landscape of this world like an atom bomb…..like a revolution of the Gospel speaking salvation into lives once as broken as mine. What I once saw my life as, not as completely in that moment of this imagined call as it had morphed and developed over time, is not what I now see my life becoming.

A friend of mine sent me a post via that great social media called Facebook all the way from the country of England (known as Great Britain or ‘our cousins across the pond’ in some circles). It’s not Mother’s day over there in the enlightened lands of the Brits…..but I digress. I’ll just print what the ‘gist’ of the post was:

“[Message] was on "If we are humble": Shepherds were detested by Egyptians; Moses, having been raised as Egyptian would have known that his kind didn't become one, became shepherd for 40 yrs, during which time he may have thought his being used by God wasn't really going to happen; God was teaching and developing Moses to be humble in tough times so he could be used in later good times.....”

No, I don’t suddenly see myself as a modern-day Moses…..born into slavery and sneaked into royalty until the realization of his birthright drove him to ‘connect’ with his ethnicity in quite the wrong way and he suddenly became a fugitive from both cultures after 40 years of the ‘good life.’ For one, I can’t recall ever having the ‘good life’ (though I am sure there are some who would dispute this fact with me…..) and I definitely screwed up my life well before my 40th year.

But Moses fled and spent the next 40 years in the wilderness tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian around the wilderness of Horeb (the mountain of God). A Shepherd, something the Egyptians despised (at least according to one pastor), is the very thing that Moses became…..apparently without argument or fight. He marries, has a son and doesn’t even have his own wealth….rather he protects and nurtures the wealth of another, his father-in-law, for 40 years. A royal, trained to lead a nation and educated in the methods of the time, puts his staff in front of him and pulls his body along after the sheep. Hard times? Indeed…..hard times that become so commonplace that he doesn’t recognize the hardships anymore.

I have come to learn the purpose of family by the hard road of having treated my family so loosely that I didn’t seek a covenant marriage in which to grow one…..I am blessed with three great kids; one of whom I have just been back in contact with since he was twelve (he’s now sixteen) and two who are living with me, struggling with the broken family that such foolishness of my actions caused. The ignorance of the Gospel only serves as a excuse and not a very valid one at that.

I have come to realize the power of intimate relationship in the brokenness of the many I thought I had before; where I thought I was a contributor and not a destroyer. Where, with God as the true center, there is glorious blessing and where God is put into a makeshift temporary shelter, disaster strikes as you try to make blessings of your own manufacture. The reflections of my earthly relationships have driven holes into the shallow relationship that I have with my Heavenly Father. I have come to realize the truthfulness of the trio of a relationship being sacrosanct….you, the other person and God. I have also realized that I’ll never open the door to that possibility again…..some things are best left in the rearview mirror of our departure, for everyone’s sake. Some would call me a coward, but I realize some wounds will never heal and if they cannot be identified…..the soundest course of action is inaction.

I have seen the good and bad of community, both within the larger context of the universal family of God and in the smaller context of earthly communities where I have spent my time as a resident and an outsider. I see how hard it is for that community to break from the stagnate stillness of the protective walls of its ‘society’ and I’ve seen the harshness that comes from the ‘inbreeding’ that takes place when such a community is so isolated. I have seen communities who struggle successfully despite disadvantages and achieve the type of fellowship that God intended for His bride and be brutally attacked by the world and even other Christians, myself included. Of course, I am one of those who wander in and out of community because my opinions have been said with the intentionality of murder, like Moses and the overseer while others have been because there are those who wonder by what authority I proclaim what I do……like Moses and the Israelites in captivity.

I realize that my life, wrought with pain and trials and suffering and sorrows, has not been worthless or in vain…….the very pain in my joints and the brokenness of my mind have existed because of the road I once walked and that beckons me from over the treetops of this path is nothing more than part of the journey I have been on since I was first gasping for breath in the harsh light of this cold, cruel world…….

We tend to look to God and expect as He has performed open heart surgery that we will recover quickly and completely…..new creatures who simply skip through this world with joy, joy, joy in these newly beating hearts with nar a sorrow to revisit. We find rather quickly that some of us are born for the adversity and others for the nobility of our Father’s kingdom. Some will struggle forever and some will find healing in the morning light.

Saint or Sinner. Noble or Shepherd.

All serve His purpose.

Wednesday, May 4

Financial Peace......maybe for my children

Tonight, at the 'worldwide' headquarters of the Mosaic A2 Church offices, I sat down with some friends and some yet-to-be friends and listened to Dave Ramsey, the celebrated Financial Guru talk about how I need to seek the hard road to financial freedom.

It all starts with savings.

It is heartbreaking to see the charts of compound interests and how to effectively use them, knowing that if I would've started in the darker years of my life (19-27) just saving a measley 2,000 a year how much of my life would be different right now. Of course, if I had that kind of financial responsibility back then, life would indeed be so much different right now. Ramsey has learned from his mistakes that took him from a 4 million dollar empire and left him with a wife, a home and the clothes on their backs when he was 30.

For the next ninety-one days, one night a week, I will sit down with my cohorts in this endeavour and face the realities of financial bondage as we learn how to be realistic about finances. "Money is not the root of evil," Ramsey reminds us, "It is the LOVE of money that is." Not only is Ramsey going to show us how to 'beat debt' but actually turn the tables and make some wealth to be debt-free for the rest of our lives.

A wise and important process to learn, especially in a college town where many of the very future of this country are already indebted by heavy expenses for the education they are pursuing.

I don't know if Ramsey's process of focusing on the hard road to financial freedom is going to be able to transform my life; I have no unemployment to rely on and am laid off of my temporary position for at least the next three months with only enough to keep the family in a home and with electricity for this month alone. Back in the search for employment, even if it makes me nothing more than the 'working poor.'

The fantastic idea of having an emergency fund AND six months worth of living expenses is a fantasy that I might be able to fool myself enough to get to sleep tonight but not a realistic way to face the scary future to come. These are ideals that I never even thought of when I was young.

Ramsey might be a genius on the financial market but he isn't a miracle worker.

But looking at the effect that 'credit' has had on my life and the destruction of living beyond the average 'paycheck-to-paycheck' mentality that afflicts most Americans, I have to do my best because it is not me I hope to save from the hardships that are ahead, but my children....one of whom is coming up closely on that 'magical' 19 year old mark. Amid the fact that I won't have a car in a month (its dying) and am behind the proverbial 'eight-ball' with too much needed to even start off at the basement level of living, I have three children that are looking at our situation and wondering how they can do any better.

This is what I believe Dave Ramsey can teach them and through the process of attending and struggling through the classes, this is what I hope to teach them; something as valuable and freeing as anything else I can bring to them....biblical principles of money management in a practical format for the realities of this world.

You can go to the daveramsey.com website and look up other classes that are beginning or underway in the Ann Arbor Area and begin the adventure of reclaiming your financial freedom from this life through the realistic teaching of Dave Ramsey. You can do this as a single person, as a married couple or a family......but until we, as the American citizen, reclaim this area of our lives, we will always be victims of the ill-advised "American Dream" of stuff.

And if we start teaching a generation to live financially free maybe, just maybe, we will create a generation that will become those statesmen and women of the Federal Government who will reclaim for the country its own financial freedom from the debts that we have allowed to be incurred in the name of democracy.

Maybe in this process, you'll learn to reclaim your lives from the financial bondage that has gripped many American families in the declined economic market and then we can, as a country, reclaim our government from those who have indebted generations to come.

One 'baby step', as Dave Ramsey would say..........

Begins the journey towards its reality.

Have you seen them?

“Joseph, a Levite and a Cypriot by birth, whom the apostles named Barnabas, which is translated Son of Encouragement, sold a field he owned, brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.” [Act 4:36-37 HCSB]

Some people say to follow the fruit back to see what spiritual gifts you have been given by the Spirit to use for the sake of the Kingdom and the mission of all of those in the family of God. It is in the evidence of what has been done that what can be done is visible to expand upon and grow into an orchard of fruitful trees. They often use that in justification of the mega-church or multi-church phenomenon that has overtaken the Western Christian faith in the postmodern world.

We love successful things, tangible and concrete metrics to measure the effectiveness of our God’s investment in our lives. And it makes great business sense as well, which is the typical ‘structural’ integrity of our church system, whether it is fundamentalist Baptist, nondenominational bible-believing, missional Protestant or Roman Catholic. What chaos would ensue if we didn’t follow a successful model?

We want it in our leaders as well, that unblemished and unaltered image of success; pews or seating filled to capacity, a worship style that has them swaying in their seats and clapping out loud and a sermon that fits the needs of everyone without offending anyone. It’s a condition of the American dream; success. We don’t want those who aren’t successful by the standards set or at all to ever be in charge of something as important as the church we’ve worked so hard to establish. We fracture, angrily lash out or are heartbroken when one of the “leaders” of the universal church falls or goes off into unbiblical grounds.

We defend those who preach a gospel absent of total, absolute truth like Rob Bell and Joel Osteen "because its not hurting anyone" while crucifying those who have been isolated to the accountability of brothers and sisters around them to the point of falling into sin "because they've fallen from grace". We cheer and clap as those who have committed sin daringly stand in defiance of Scripture and proclaim themselves healed and yet keep underfoot those who openly struggle with worldly things……for they aren’t allowed to speak God’s word.

Makes me wonder if there are any Barnabas’ left in the postmodern Westernized Church of Christianity.

I know there are, because I have seen them. They aren’t the ones who grace the leadership team, spending 65% of the church’s budget to pay for their salaries and those of the rest of the team. They aren’t the ones who typically lead the ministries that are customized by the leadership to reach the ‘maximum’ people. They aren’t the ones who are visible in the church social functions or outreach events or tithing accountability.

They aren’t the ones who sit in the pews, nod at the appropriate times and dutifully clap when a worship song is done particularly well. They aren’t vocal in church dissension and don’t usually argue their cases before the authorities that be. They are silent, unassuming and dedicated to a cause that defies church walls and is unrealized by social circles.

They are the ones who are always there in the church, always doing something within its walls to encourage those who are in power positions to thrive, to do the job right that God has graced them to have and to make the mission of primary and utmost importance. They are the ones who never say no, even when they would rather take a break from volunteering and maybe be served for some time instead. They are the ones who step up when stepping up gives them nothing except a heartfelt thanks.

They are the ones who encourage those who are in better positions than they to keep on when the going gets rough and who impart the knowledge gained from their own failures for the sake of someone else’s triumphs. They very seldom sit down in a meeting or silent during discussions.

They wear their hearts on their sleeves and their lives on their shoulders. They take slights and insults, bear misery and denials and grudgingly give up on God inspired dreams when faced with opposition. They allow the lives they themselves would rather have to be lived through those who are in better positions to live them and yet they never say a word to anyone. They struggle in their weaknesses and acknowledge them for the benefits of others to avoid or draw comfort from them while encouraging those who struggle with things that aren't as bad (on the human scale).


Barnabas, the Encourager, was still active in the Lord’s work in 55 A.D., though we are not told what or where he is. Church tradition says that both Barnabas and John Mark “continued their missionary work and Barnabas became the first Bishop of Salamis, his native city, where he is said to have been martyred and secretly buried by his cousin Mark” (Meinardus 1973: 11; Acts of Barnabas). Barnabas was active in ministry in Rome, Alexandria in Egypt and Caesarea in Judea, according to The Recognitions of Clement (1994: 78-80; Zahn 1907: 459, footnote 2).

To the west of the ancient ruins of Salamis there is a Greek Orthodox monastery dedicated to Barnabas and a tomb in the surrounding area that is said to be his.

Dr. D. Edmond Hiebert notes this about this man, “Barnabas stands out as one of the choicest saints of the early Christian Church. He had a gracious personality, characterized by a generous disposition, and possessed a gift of insight concerning the spiritual potential of others. He excelled in building bridges of sympathy and understanding across the chasms of difference which divided individuals, classes, and [ethnic groups]. He lived apart from petty narrowness and suspicion and had a largeness of heart that enabled him to encourage those who failed and to succor the friendless and needy. He did have his faults and shortcomings, but those faults arose out of the very traits that made him such a kind and generous man – his ready sympathy for others’ feelings and his eagerness to think the best of everyone” (1992: 52).

Do you know someone in your church fellowship who is like that? Who stands firmly in the shadows of those who need or have to shine brighter for the sake of all those who stand in the darkness? Can you see the weaknesses that they have being a part of who they are valued as?

I know a few Barnabas’……

They don’t grace the stage on Sunday, power the glorious worship in the beginning or even drive the ministries in the Church walls or without. They are there, they are unseen mostly but always sought out when things need to be supported with prayer, with time/money tithing or even physically. They never quit even when they long to be encouraged.

They are our safety net in a world that would abuse us.

They are a reflection of God's desire for us.

And that is more valuable than any success we could have.

Sunday, May 1

God....so much more than that

"He stretches out his heavens over empty space. He hangs the earth on nothing whatsoever. He holds the water in his thick clouds, and the clouds don't even split under its weight. He covers his throne by spreading his cloud over it. He marks the horizon on the surface of the water at the boundary where light meets dark. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished when he yells at them. With his power he calmed the sea. With his insight he killed Rahab the sea monster. With his wind the sky was cleared. With his hand he stabbed the fleeing snake. These are only glimpses of what he does. We only hear a whisper of him! Who can understand the thunder of his power?" (Job 26:7-14)

I don’t write like I used to.
I find myself being sidelined or even pushed out of the way, it seems. Everyone tired of the same old weary repeat of my life being a struggle or a fight to even breathe sometimes. No one wants to listen to a story that is crawling along, seemingly without merit, in the drearily pre-morning gloom before the dawning of the sun. The Christian life is supposed to be one of salvation, struggle and then achievement…..the overcoming of the many strongholds that complicate our lives.
When someone brings up the fact that Christ struggled, many times in His ministry time on this planet, they are shooed quickly out of the picture. God doesn’t want us to suffer, He doesn’t want us to feel the bitter pain of abuse or neglect or hatred, and no, no, no--- He doesn’t send things our way that seem usually harsh and full of sorrows. He is a gracious God, a good God and would never deliver upon us difficulties that we, as our bodies are lashed to the main mast of our ship, are not sure we will survive. That would be evil, and our God cannot do evil.
Funny thing is, no one said God does.
We struggle with who this God is, what He is about and how we can fit Him into our understanding. So we come up with highlighters and go through the Bible marking each and every love phrase that we can possibly contrive such feeling from……and when we hit the hard ones, the ones that bring us face to face with the realistic image of God….a complete image of Wrath, Anger, Love and Compassion, when we hit those we stumble and twist them around to try and fit our image of who God is. We try to bring God back down to earth on our terms.
And we fail.
Once upon a time, when this was all new and fresh to me……you know the time I’m talking about, when God’s voice remained fresh in your ear as if He had just whispered “I love you” in them. Where you can still feel His hand upon your shoulder as He displays all of His glory for you……in that time, I believed the powerful, magnificence and beautiful authority of my God when He spoke those words that sent me into a wild frenzy of denial and hysterical laughter. I believed when, as I finally surrendered before Him yet again, that He would do what He had planned free from the constraints of my past and my future even as He walked in my present. Believed that, in Him (not through, because or even for Him) that I would do what He wanted because it was His plan, His ideal and His life to do with what He would do. I gave it to Him that February day, because I thought anything less was not showing my gratitude for the gift of mercy that He gave me.
Me. Chief of all sinners (as Paul would say).
Even as I started on the systematic journey of demolition to my life, (you see even the joists in the floor were rotten) I was still walking on the proverbial cloud nine….God would, God could and therefore God was going to do what He wanted in my life to prepare me for the purpose that He had presented to me that October day. Oh, there were plenty of moments in the midst of the pain, in the heartache of the disbelief and the discouraging, that I would wonder why, why this God would even bother with this mess called humanity. Why He wouldn’t simply just erase and repeat with a better design. I questioned even as He presented the next part of the journey, the next desert experience and those late night campfires in the wilderness of despair. I wondered why me and pondered the divinity behind the call, the purposing behind the purpose.
I have been uncomfortable since that day in February and completely lost without a clue of my direction since that October day even as I’ve grown comfortable in His provisions and focused only where He would have me go rather than the journey to get there. I have argued, cried and begged just as many times as I have calmly thanked Him for the limitations, healing and discipline that He has introduced into my life. Even as I’ve realized how far I’ve come, I realize how far I yet to go with the likelihood I will never get there this side of the White Throne.
But in everything, even this journey towards the Home I’ve never known, I guess the ‘honeymoon’ phase has to come to an end and the mundane of just the daily walk come to a collision point and the mundane takes over. Like an ‘old’ married couple, the Christian settles into an easy kind of life where things turn into blessings on a dime and your steps become a graceful gliding sweep through chandeliered ceiling halls and beautiful ordained gardens. Struggles become those moments at ‘tea time’ when the cupcakes aren’t perfect and the tea a bit tart.
God becomes this great guy who wants nothing but love and is willing to do anything for us to get us to love Him. Why wouldn’t He want to ‘bless’ us with more money than we can spend in one lifetime? Our tithe of 10% would be so much more if we had more money to take care of everything else too. Why wouldn’t He want to fix our wounds, binding them tight with His healing mercies? He doesn’t want to have us experience pain or sorrow.
What we fail to realize, what we don’t want to understand and what we dare not think is that God is not us. And He ‘owes’ us a lot less than we think we are due, even if we are simply grateful for His gift of Salvation. And He is God, unlike us in every way.
His own Son, three-in-one/Fully God-Fully Man/Messiah, felt the struggle of despair and sorrow. He experienced the harshness of death and the silence of hatred. In the Garden, the night before His death, He wept tears of blood and was broken in the despair of what was to come. But He did it, not because of love but because of the commitment He made to His Father’s will……He doesn’t say in the night before that He was doing it because of love, though love was surely one of the motivations He felt. He did it because it was His Father’s plan, because He had to.
And God, in His way, turned His back upon His only Begotten Son as He was draped with the sinfulness of the whole of mankind in disgust and shame as He died. He despaired for this lost Son even as He waited for the plan to go forth to its conclusion for this part……
That sounds like a Father of Love to me.
He owes us nothing more than the penalty for the sinfulness that we have, even these ‘crystal-clean’ Christians. He is more than justified to reach out and strike us all dead as He did the generation in the desert who made the Golden Calf idol rather than redeem any one of us. The greatest of us, the ones without many sins, are just as guilty of the punishment we deserve as those like me who have more than a lifetime full of penal labor to try to start paying for the price of our admission in Heaven. He has more than a right to demand our lives in servitude and withhold judgment on whether we are getting into His mansions or even the grounds of His kingdom. Just because He desires that all would be saved, He doesn’t force everyone to be saved.
He doesn’t have to remove the penalties of this world upon our lives or instantly change all the imperfections that we develop over the life spent in the darkness; the bruised knees and shins, the bleeding cuts and scrapes or the bumps rising on our heads from the collisions in the night.
We have but a whisper of who He is and what He is capable of.
It would take an eternity to understand who God is and what He thinks about the struggles in our lives or the sorrows that come our way. Part of our Heavenly eternity is going to be the eternal opening of our eyes to His wonders anew and the deep awe of how far off we were of His grace in view of His power, His wrath and His righteous anger towards our sinfulness.
But the church isn’t all bad, as Pastor Will from the church plant group I attend every other Sunday was pointing out today. Far from being understanding of our lack of perfection and highlighting what is good and right in this warfare that is taking place on this world. We aren’t prone to divorce more than non-Christians nor are we lacking in charity or other works. We are not perfect and it is that lack of perfection that hazes the image of God. We are told we’re constantly screwing up when it is not us who do the real work anyway. But we become complacent in our worship, bored in our walk and fade away from the fellowship…a fellowship we vitally need, if the stats that Pastor Will showed us tonight are truthfully as best they can be.
Connection with church and the fellowship helps us be better followers and the fruits that come from our faith are exponentially greater in the community of believers. But I digress…..
As we grow closer and closer to this God we cannot get a ‘full picture’ of because of our humanity, our humanity is more conformed to what God intended us to be in the first place and we become less combative about ideologies that are wrong and more interested in enticing them to grow in those ideologies to the point where they realize the emptiness of the religious movements by humans. We become less bitter about the deliberate wounding by the world, those who are in league with the enemy and those within the family who stumble along as much as we do. We seek as a community, as a family, to gather our understanding of God together and dialogue about the mysteries that are revealed in the discussions about our Father and His Son and His Holy Spirit. Then we become a even great force for the glory of the Kingdom’s King and less marked by the world’s culture because we are the ‘dominant culture’ by our effectiveness at love with accounting, mercy and grace.
And when the stories of struggles, trials and pain come into the repeat mode of life, when a brother or a sister struggle with an addiction, disease or mental fatigue yet again or a once-dedicated and effective warrior for the Kingdom is tricked and swayed by the enemy’s lies when they shouldn’t have been, we don’t hesitate to step into those lives and see the glory of God working itself even in those places and by our rejoicing in the struggling well of our family member they are empowered once again to rise back into God’s grace and be repurposed in His plan for them.
And it no longer becomes a game of ‘when are you going to be ready’ but a life of dedicated ‘we will get you ready’ for what God has in store for His people.
So, if your beliefs are so fragile that you cannot dedicate the time to a family member in the body who has been struggling well, but struggling long or you look with painful sorrow upon a brother or sister who was once of prominence in the body but has fallen from the isolation of leadership or the whispered lies of the enemy that have opened those old wounds……then I would ask God to strengthen you for the primary duty of this Body, to love one another and strengthen one another, accountable in love. Because when we focus on what God calls family with what God tells us the characteristics of that family, we live that life as undeniably God’s. We stop worrying about a 'definable' progress, check marks on a list of things that we cannot control in a general sense and become more specific in our personal dealings with someone else.....we seek God's will not our own definition.....we worry less about our agenda and more about His.
This is why I don’t write so much anymore…….I really don’t know if anyone is listening anymore. And this is why part of the adore of the call has faded into the background of the din of battle……
God is so much more than what we can even imagine and as Job says, we have glimpsed but a whisper of His thunderous power…….He is so much more than the simplicity of love and more wrathful than our worse and darkest anger……
He is our God and jealous for us…….
With just the glimpse of His power and character, I’ll stand steady for Him on the mysteries I have yet to become revealed on….
Because of what I’ve already seen, He is worthy of my praise and justified in His plans for me, whether sorrow or joy, peace or chaos, pain or peace……
God is god, and I am not, and He is not limited by my lack of understanding.

Understand if you've made it this far in this blog, I am not saying that God is capable or even willfully involved in the evil works of the enemy. I am saying that in the definition we use of what bad and good is, we must realize that we are using our definition and not necessarily God's. For if what we once thought was a bad thing (mislabeled as evil) actually brought us closer to God or disciplined us to be effective warriors for the Kingdom, isn't that a good thing?

Just my thoughts.