Creating through Communication

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Last night we had an awesome time with our life group and as we were closing we had this question to pray through and meditate on – what does total surrender to Jesus look like to you?

We were encouraged to ask God about the season we are in right now.

As I closed my eyes I had a memory of a cave in Indiana. It was the third cave of the trip and it featured a 30′ rappel right into its mouth. I would like to say it was just like the movies, but I haven’t seen any movies where the actor just bounces against the side of the cave and gets scraped up. Others were more successful at rappelling than I was that night. From there we hiked and climbed further down and I got to lead a couple excursions. Being the first light into the darkness is an incredible feeling. The one cavern I headed into dropped another 50′ – 60′ feet to the floor, fallen jagged rocks were every where, at the bottom was another hole going another hundred feet, and the scene would repeat over and over again.

That beauty would have remained hidden had someone not gone there, and it would have remained unknown to the world unless that person opened his mouth and shared what he or she saw in the cave.

That is where I see total surrender worked out in my life.

Some of the scariest things that I can think of aren’t the things that you can’t do anything about, but rather the ones you can do something about when God prompts you to do them. The whole goal may be impossible or outlandish, but the individual steps typically aren’t.

For example, seeing a person’s life transformed from someone living on the streets in despair to a life of gratitude, provision, and helping others in turn on your own is impossible. That said, being obedient to love the guy on the street isn’t impossible, rather, it is very possible.

Part of our call in Utah is doing impossible things through starting on the possible ones. And, when my life is in committed surrender to Jesus, He consistently calls me to impossible things.

The most possible start to almost anything God tells us to do is opening our mouths and sharing what He has told us to do with others. That is one of my greatest points of weakness. It is the point where you throw yourself into what God has said, what He has prompted you to do, and trust that He will be faithful with the rest. It may be the prompting to reach out and talk to the guy laying on the sidewalk (what will the other people think of me?) or call out the person on their morning run (what will this person think of me?), or maybe the person is obviously well out of your league (am I breaking social protocol?), or they are on their tablet siting next to you on the train, on the bus, or standing in a line (this person obviously wants their privacy…) – fear and insecurity can tag us out of obedience.

More often than not, I find that when we do throw ourselves into whatever God has told us to do He does work it out for the best.  A lack of trust on either our part or on the part of the other greatly impacts the effects of our obedience, but God is faithful to back up what He has said.

The only thing that didn’t bounce against those cave walls so many years ago were the bottoms of my feet – face, hands, arms, shoulders, chest, knees all bruised – and that was because I didn’t trust the guy on the other end of the rope. Many of the dreams and hopes God has for this world remained unexplored and unheard of because we are unwilling to really trust Him in committed surrender.

If our trust falters, it gets harder, but God is still willing to take us there.

By the end of our moment of prayer at life group I had a couple of ideas of where God wanted me to go and this principle, trusting Him to communicate what He wants to do, was key to that. It also reminded me of my young heart for making stories and the desire to share those with others. So, that desire and call really has been there since I was a kid. I may go ahead and sign up for National Novel Writing Month as well – there is a project that I’d love to finish and it will be good prep for our creative writing side of the Discipleship Training School.

Looking forward to an awesome season of committed surrender!

 

Fear

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What comes to mind when we think of fear?

Is it a reaction? Is it a way for our body to respond to something that startles us or maybe to protect us from imminent danger? If this is the first thing that comes to mind, then, no, that is not the sort of fear that I am thinking about. That sort of fear is healthy, and if you push it a little bit it might even get fun. It is definitely something that God gave us for our benefit.

This was the only definition of fear that I knew about growing up, though, the world of reality around me seemed to share that there was something more out there. This sort of feeling is often brushed off.

In the first couple chapters of Genesis we see the creation of the world and the creation of mankind in God’s image. We are created, breathed into, spoken to, given instruction, given responsibility, wondrously made not alone – this was what God desired for us. There was something special about these people He created. He had already gone above and beyond for is by creating us in His image, but to be a part of our lives – this is what he wanted.

Inside of that creation fear hadn’t been felt by the first of mankind and it was beautiful.

But, that was about to change. One of the instructions given by God included one simple request, “you may enjoy every tree in the garden except for the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” The first of us heard this, they understood it, but when another came and questioned the words of God they disobeyed the one request.

Up until this point they had only each other and God, everyone had been good to them. Perhaps this really was a hard test. How many of us have heard some one say something negative about someone else? It is certainly within us at this point for our heart to give pause and question someone, even a friend, just by hearing the words of another.  The first of us followed this other’s voice and disobeyed God.

The response was immediate and terrible – the words of God were true! At that point fear, shame, and guilt flooded into the lives of those who had sinned. Their relationship with God was separated, driven apart by disobedience, and the fear, shame, and guilt bore fruit in their lives. They hid from God, they were ashamed of being naked, they accused one another to shift the blame away from themselves.

These three things that had no authority in their lives were now present and wreaking havoc.

When we step away from God’s instruction and desire for our lives death follows in the wake of our decisions. We may think we can master it after it has come, but that isn’t the case. The only thing on our part we can do is say no while we still can, but we were past this point in the story.

When God reveals Himself He shares what will now happen and the world begins to change. It isn’t what He had hoped for, but the changes in the world are for our own good. He addresses the other in the conversation as well, the serpent in the story that had accused God, to the serpent He promises defeat – that someone from the woman would come and defeat the serpent. It is a loaded statement, a prophecy that takes the rest of the Bible and mankind’s history to reveal in its fullness.

Today, we are still having a hard time because of this moment – fear, shame, and guilt are still present in this world, but that victory that God spoke of has come and is still coming in its fullness.

There is certainly that sort of fear that God has given us, the startled jump or the burst of adrenaline that can keep us safe from danger, but there is another fear that we experience in our lives – it isn’t a fear that God desired, but it is present. In Christ, we can master it, but it does take mastering. It is difficult to explain, but one of my teachers shared it this way, “When you are afraid it’s not that you are feeling fear, but it is fear feeling you.” In our own disobedience we can give such a vile sort of fear authority in our lives.

As a child this was the sort of fear that bit at the edges of reality, as I grew this was the sort of fear that could incapacitate incredible young men and women from making right decisions, on outreach this was the sort of fear that showed up when you went to speak and couldn’t find your ability to speak. It is strange, but this is the reality I’ve seen over and over again.

However, there is hope!

One of these hopes is that God is fulfilling His promise through Jesus Christ – as we stand near to Him, as we cling to His Spirit in intimacy, we find ourselves surrounded by His authority. This returns us to a second hope – we are still created in the image of God! One of the instructions God gave us in the beginning was to aggressively defend the creation He was giving us. We still have that command and it can be found again in our relationship with Jesus.

In this world we will need to stand against all sorts of fear – the fear of sharing our faith among them, fear of rejection included, the fear of what others think but don’t say. This isn’t our fear to deal with – we can stand with Jesus to reject that fear’s authority and bring something better in its place.

Let’s not wait around for fear to show itself – we can take the fight to fear on the ground that God desired for us, in relationship with Him and in good relationship with each other!

Communication in Genesis

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth – earth had no form, it was empty; the Spirit paused in ready anticipation for what was to come next. Then, God spoke light into existence.

And so the story goes.

The first section of Genesis has always been one of my favorite portions of scripture. It is simple and it speaks poetically of things that will have ripples throughout our human history. The incredibly powerful God speaking things into existence until He comes to mankind. He takes dirt into his hands, forms us, breathes life into us, and creates us in His image. His masterpiece that He gives such strength to is small, weak, and frail compared to the creatures, trees, oceans, planets, and stars that He has just spoken out of Himself, but this one is special in a different way.

In our frailty we show of His nature, being just an image of it. In our freedom we have the we have the opportunity to share His character with each other, the families that we create, and the world that we form.

Our history is enough to show that our story could have been better than it now is, but it also shows a God who is willing to keep speaking life into His creation to bring us back to Him. When we hear His words and live by them we get to walk in that original hope and bring His life and beauty to a world that is broken. When we reject Him and His words we add to the destruction of everything we love until there is nothing left to save. We are able to justify ourselves in this until we look just like the very enemy of God.

This battle of communication starts in Genesis and continues throughout scripture. God speaks life – it is accepted with blessing or it is rejected with destruction. This happens with the first of mankind, the nations that spring up following the great flood, and over and over again through to present day. This is still the world that we raise our children in – the world where they will grow up in, find husbands and wives, create families, and form their part of world in the love of God or in the rejection of Him.

This communication is what Genesis is all about. We get to see God’s heart in intimate detail as He addresses sin with Adam and Eve, when He pleads with Cain to choose the good and reject temptation, when He shares His broken heart with Noah, when He consults with Himself at Babel to preserve mankind, and when He speaks a blessing and a promise over Abram that will put the words of God into the family of Abraham.

We enter into this battle when we speak.

Do we speak words that are true to God’s heart? Do we speak with His heart and with His passion? Do we seek His values in the world around us?

Whether we speak plainly or poetically, with common sense or intellectualism, our words will leave ripples in the lives of those around us, in the families that we raise, and in the world that we are forming. The best place to start learning the difference is in the Bible and in His presence.

I’ll share more about that later.

Let there be light!

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“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, NIV). This is how our Bible starts. A clear introduction, that by itself could be enough. But it doesn’t end there. This is just the beginning of the wonderful account of how God first created the world out of nothing, followed by His relentless pursuit of the human heart after we decided not to trust in Him. One concept seems especially important in this account, the concept of light:

And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day. (Genesis 1:3, NIV)

Light; the first thing God created. We don’t always think much about the importance of light in our lives. Usually, it is just there and, if it is not, we turn on a lamp. Around this time of the year, however, when the seasons change and we start waking up while it is still somewhat dark outside, we are reminded of the light in a way that we are not when it is more readily available.

It is also the time of the year where other things can remind us of the necessity of light as well. Halloween is coming up. Though most of us still like to celebrate this holiday, as Christian’s we are aware that Halloween is not by nature a celebration of light. While dressing up, often as darker creatures, with symbols of death abounding around us, light too begins to become more important. But this time we hope for a different type of light; a light that penetrates the darkness from the insight out.

In John 8:12 it says: “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (NIV). It is a wonderful promise, but it might lead us to wonder: Could this be true? Could we truly walk with Jesus in such a way that the darkness has no effect on us? And could we instead affect the darkness around us? Jesus says that this is possible and he showed it with his life. Wherever he came he brought healing, hope, and life. Could we really follow in His footsteps?

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Luke 11:9-10)

Ask. Ask for more of Him and seek relentlessly for His light. For it is there, all around us. From glimmers of hope in a dark situation, to the good we see in a person that we didn’t thought could have anything good going for them. Jesus is active in this world.

I challenge you this season to look for it. Look for His light, in even the darkest of situations and ask Him to use you to increase the light you see in the world around you. And though some things may remain dark around you, I pray that you may always be reminded of the light.