Core (& Cultural) Belief in the Undefinable

We spoke on Jude 3 and 4 in high school last night and although it’s only two verses, there is much to be grasped.

From the vantage point of an “insider” within a church body, Jude’s words can stir us to swift action against the imposters and expel them from the walls of our hallowed assembly.  But I can’t help but think that maybe we are too swift to label dissenters, doubters, those who are difficult, too passive, too charismatic or anything outside our target demographic as someone who needs to find God elsewhere.

Do we lack that much confidence in our own ability to exhibit Christ’s influence over those He came to save?  Apparently so.  And just like most every other act of believer’s blasphemy, it’s steeped in Biblical justification.  ”We don’t want them to come and poison the flock,” or, “Paul says that we should ‘expel the wicked man from among us’.”  I don’t disagree with either statement, but those should only be thought, much less spoken, after we have come to the end of all the guidance God has given; not to weed people out.

Instead, let’s concentrate on loving others like their lives depended on it.  We can not be so worried that these “godless men” have infiltrated our ranks because God knew they were coming and He’s been warning us for centuries (Jude 4a). He allowed them to come anyway.  Which means that He has got them covered and us too.

The parting comments from last night’s service were in essence that we are willing to love people only to the extent we acknowledge the cost of the cross.  The people described in Jude 4 turned it into license for immorality.  We need to be careful that we don’t turn it into an excuse to turn away and live in fear.

It’s been quite odd over the last weeks because there have been several people who are weighing heavily on my heart and mind.  For no apparent reason or uncommon tragedy but because God’s burden is mine as a man in Christ.

During an uneventful time of prayer, I began to think – really think – about Psalm 37.  Within it’s uncomplicated lines, lies one of the most ludicrous statements in all the Psalms:  delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

What?  the desires of my heart?  This must be at best an exaggeration or at worst entry to a divine bate and switch.  I know me and what’s in my heart.  God is crazy to give me those things, they wouldn’t do either of us any good.

And then it happens; the unflattering but comforting hiccup in my spirit that tells me the lies are again burrowing themselves into the chinks in my armor.  I’ve got to acknowledge in my head the truth that’s present in my spirit and again turn over to Jesus the real estate of my mind that He died to overcome.

All at once I think I understood.  The desires of my heart are not really the desires of my heart.  They are the desires of His.  When I collected on the promise that I would receive the graceful beat of a heart of flesh to replace the rigidity of my old stone one, I was made new.  Not reformed or made morally good, but brought to life from the black, scary, selfish deadness I’d known.  Dying with Him severed me from a perverted life of independence and put to death the hold it had on me.

So there it was.   As plain and simple as can be:  I want to bring Him glory.  I have a deep desire to show Him off.  My heart’s desire is to reflect who He is.  Being made in His image and born again means that when He looks at me He sees me as I should have always been…looking like Him.

His desire is to be glorified and because of my newness my desire is to glorify Him.  In those truths, why wouldn’t He give me the desires of His heart?

Is eternal life really eternal?  Or does “eternal” life commence at the point of our death, like we are cashing in on an investment made long ago.

Dictionary.com defines eternal as without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing.  Based on this definition, our eternal lives can not begin when we die because that begins with a single act – a moment in time.  John chapter one says that Jesus was in the beginning with God.  Later on, in chapter 14 and verse six Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life.  The words “in Christ” appear 93 times from Matthew through 1 Peter.

So, if we are in Christ, and Christ is the life, and Christ is eternal then it stands to reason that eternal life, as defined by Father and effectuated by Jesus, is what we are experiencing NOW even while we temporarily reside on the earth.  When we move from death to life we step into a continuousness that spans from before anything was through to an infinity of when all creation was long since decayed.  To delay the acceptance of eternity is to choose to not alleviate the faultiness and uncertainty of temporal living.  God exists outside of time and our natural order and invites us to partake in His life which is not ultimately effected by their limitations and confinements.

How else could Jesus willingly walk to the cross and experience peace at the same time?  To contend that it was somehow dependent on His deity is to undercut the model of His dependence on Father.  He lived that way so that we may live that way.  Jesus’ contentment with resting in Father allowed Him to be the Christ.  Likewise, our contentment with resting in Jesus allows us to not simply withstand but overcome.  That is the essence of eternal life:  being exposed to the life around me and living subjected to the Life in me.

Much is made about the way in which we communicate.  From the words we choose to the expressions on our face.  From the tone of our voice to the deepness in our breathing.  It all arranges itself into what we call communication.  Being around people who make their living on their ability to convey thoughts and ideas, I understand the manner by which I choose to express them are as unique to me as my DNA.

However, the message that unfolds in my chosen forum never changes.  In fact, the story we all project to the world around us (and to that being living inside our human shell) hinges on one central figure.  All the world can be categorized either as a believer or unbeliever.  All other labels, statuses, categories and castes develop out of our belief in God.  Not a believer in a god, but a believer in the God.  To believe in any god other than the one true God is to believe in no god at all.

We were designed in such a way that our function is to bear the image of our Creator.  Not simply behave as He would, but to actually behave as He does.  How is that?  In complete dependence on the Father.  Not to ask, “what would Jesus do?” but to allow Jesus to actually do what He wishes at whatever time He wishes to do it.

All of my expression was designed to be encapsulated by the fruit of the Spirit.  Any deviation, no matter how slight, is an indication that there is more me than God in that moment of expression.  The formula for that indication is as easy to recall as it can be brutal to follow:  God plus our willingness. Nothing more.  The addition of our self-rooted “good” works to God’s perfect equation takes away from God’s presence in that moment.  God is the means to His own end and cause of His own effect.  And because there is only 100 percent of any particular thing to be had, God’s desire is to inhabit all corners of that everything so He may be the fixer, redeemer, reconciler, forgiver, befriender, and Father.  That’s where God receives glory.  To add me and my skills to the situation when God has not called on me to do so, robs Him of what is His by right.  My contentment must be found in being a participant and never in the selfish naivete that I am more than a fledgling humanoid utterly dependent on Father’s love and grace.

The expression of that realization is what we communicate to the world 1, 440 times a day.  I need to get back to basics and see that in some form or another, I am displaying who I am experiencing God to be.  Never affecting the truth of being in Christ, how closely I align my life choices to Father’s will conveys how I am thinking of, loving, and obeying Him.

“Christian perfection is not, and can never be, human perfection.  Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship with God that shows itself to be true even amid the seemingly unimportant aspects of human life.”  This is a quote from Oswald Chambers’ book My Utmost for His Highest.

In reading, I’m struck (and challenged) by the depth of what Chambers is saying:  my life should be so integrated with Father’s through Christ that it permeates every nook and cranny of my 86, 400 seconds of any particular day of the week.  That in my rest, He arrests my desires to act independently and instead exchanges my dead acts for works of righteousness which produce life.  His life!  Incredible!

Perfection is defined as:  a quality, trait, or feature of the highest degree of excellence.  Humanly speaking, this is completely attainable because the measuring stick for such a feat is, most often, other people.  But with God, perfection has everything to do with His completed nature infilling us, His vessel.  By being filled with a perfect, complete (lacking nothing) God, we are transformed from empty vessels into jars holding a treasure too overwhelming to be confined by men and too personal not be affected.  We become complete and perfected because of who He is, not because of who we are.

So the essence of any relationship is not what I bring to the table, but rather what I allow God to bring through me.  For example, I’ve been told that I am a good listener.  Truthfully, I am not.  If I allow it, my mind wanders, or I formulate rebuttals, or get hung up on grammar.  But when I permit God to be my ears, I hear the way He would hear, then my focus is attuned to not only the words but the emotions behind them.  So it’s not me that listens, it’s Father.

It sounds haughty to the unknowing or natural ear, but God’s proven desire – as evidenced by His crucified and resurrected Son – is to so overwhelm us with Himself, that we become, by our choice, workers arm and arm with Him for the same goal:  loving people.

Correct perspective can be a frightening thing.  With its non-negotiable approach to my life, its design could be construed as cold and impersonal.  But that view would be undercutting the work of a heavily biased tool in the hand of God.

All along I had been ebbing and flowing along the current of my “mission” and felt somewhat fulfilled by my involvement in its divine agenda.  But something happened. When those tasks were replaced with service and sacrifice through obedience, I saw myself not as a capable, semi-spiritually coherent man after God’s own heart, but instead as a man who, placed under the right kind of pressure, in the right circumstances with the right players, is reduced to a frighteningly dependent child who has to - has to - rely on God’s intervention in his life.  And I believe that is priority one in God’s plan for me:  to create the kind of character in me that begs for His presence.  To exchange my dead independence for a full life experienced through His life in me.  To be Himself to the people around me.

And herein lies my issue:  He has not been able to fully express Himself to me (and consequently to those around me) because I have not exchanged my life for His in those minute by minute details of my day.  I have come to realize that it’s the minutes of the day He asks for, not the circumstances.  I don’t believe God is about the circumstances themselves, I believe He’s about the minutes and seconds that make up the circumstances.  The only detail all of my circumstances have in common is they are all made up of increments of time.  Regardless of whether it’s split second flash of elation or disappointment, or lifelong baggage or decades of a fulfilled life, they are all composed of time.  This side of heaven time doesn’t change.  It can not be manipulated, condensed, expanded, deleted or repeated.  It is constant and continues to run without regard for our personal agenda.  No matter the power we wield or the strides we make in scientific discovery, time will forever be outside the limits of our grasp.

How appropriate is it, then, that an eternal, unchanging, ever-present God wants to be in the details of those building blocks of my life?  That is the essence of the New Covenant:  God in me and with me.  Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we can now live freely because we have been made righteous by Jesus’ blood.  That is how we can live second by second, day after day, decade after decade with God in the details that make up a lifetime.

I fully intended to write yesterday and even began to compose something, but I could never seem to have enough succinct thoughts to accurately convey the emotions and excitement of the day.

It’s been a full day since the surgery and there is still a sense of awe surrounding the entire event.  One phone call and text message after another are driving home the ripple effect of what choosing to live as a mirror in a fishbowl is all about.

The fullness of my experience here is summed up in the levels of rest I allow.  The completeness of Father’s work is, when viewed without obstruction, overwhelming.  The details of the details are so interwoven that my natural senses only begin to experience them as they come into focus.  The truth of the matter is, however, that their inception occurred outside my view.  Quite humbling to know these moments do not depend on my ingenuity, intelligence or spiritual maturity.  They simply are put into play from the wisdom of eternity past and are now being revealed to me.  These times have traveled a great distance to come into contact with me and they deserve to be cared for.

In raising my hand to be part of this transplant, I have elected to live in a fishbowl; inviting all who want to to observe, from as safe a distance as their dependence allows, me encounter God and wrestle with (and sometimes lose against) my flesh.  Desiring with all my heart to cling to Father’s peace while at times demonstrating the same independent spirit that separated us from Him in the beginning.  At times the level of conflict is crippling.

I have been created to worship and because I was reborn with a spirit connected with Father’s, I, by design, reflect His glory.  The indwelling of the Holy Spirit illuminates my life and each time I allow my light to shine through my good deeds, I’m living in harmony with who God created me to be.

That is the essence of living as a mirror in a fishbowl.  A life knitted together with Father through the Spirit and on display for anyone to see.  Please watch us.  Watch us succeed by His power and fail apart from it.  Watch us ask questions and search for answers.  Watch us struggle for strength and overflow with joy when He saves the day. Our desire is that through the pain, the meds, the hospital stays, the prayer requests and interest in God’s work here, that you would look into our fishbowl and be blinded by shining lights so that you might know Him and give Him praise.