Against the grain

Let’s be honest, following Jesus is a risk. It calls us to go against the grain of society and sometimes, the path laid before us is one that seems utterly insane, mocked by those both in and out of the church, but when followed, erupts in a lifetime of heavenly reward. 

Truth is, we must be mindful that when we choose to live by faith, to live in Christ, we will meet with turmoil, tension and struggle. And how we deal with such struggle depends on our perspective. That is, if we choose to look through the lens of the world we will hear such things like, "life has thrown you a curve-ball," or "well it will all work out you just need to keep pressing on." But those of us who love Jesus and see life through His heart will hear something different...

When struggle comes into our path, we will hear the Spirit softly whisper, "I have a plan for you for you are my beloved. In Christ and through the Spirit, you are more than a conqueror."

Yes, we can live life in Christ, or we can live life from the world. But when we say we love Christ, we must ask, "does my life erupt in His truth?" That is, as a follower of Christ, does my faith cause me to get lost in the truth of His love and praise?

Thinking about the risk and the reward of faith, Charles Wesley penned these words for his great hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling;
All thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart.

Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

The risk of faith is made possible not because of the glory we might receive. Not because of the riches we will earn. Not because of the accolades we will acquire. No, the risk of faith occurs because in our life, love divine excels all and in this pure, unbounded love we are overwhelmed with the presence of the Spirit so that we might see the greatness of Christ and the beauty of His salvation that lays before us. And when our hearts are awakened and our souls enlivened, it is then that we become lost in wonder, love and praise for our Savior.

Throughout the history of the church, the saints took the leap of faith—they stepped into and embraced the risk of faith, and in doing so, they participated with the God of all creation in the redemption and reconciliation of the world. The question for us today is are we going to continue on in the legacy of the church, to be life-changers, history makers, ministers of reconciliation? Will we be lost in wonder, love and praise so as to become the insane love of Jesus in and through the Holy Spirit...regardless of the cost?

Waters of life

There are times in life when it seems that no matter what you do the waters of life remain tumultuous. We seek out avenues of refuge, we strive to find pathways of release and still, our souls continue to feel the weight of life. It is during these moments that I close my eyes and allow the tears of my heart to saturate my soul. And as I gently find my place on my knees, I am consumed by the sweet melody of uncompromising faith…

When peace like a river attendeth your way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever your lot—I have taught you to say,It is well, it is well, with your soul.

In Jesus and through the Spirit, our Lord God has given us the melody of rejoicing in our times of turmoil, our moments of discomfort, our situations of suffering. In Christ and through the Spirit, we have been given the opportunity to become His melody of insane love. An opportunity that comes only because we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit comes into our lives so as to eternally remind us of our truth in Christ. The Spirit comes to us so as to awaken our hearts to the voice of the Father. “Let me say it again: I have chosen you,” says our Father in heaven. “I have called you by name; I have redeemed you; I have sealed you by my Spirit. Your inheritance is sure, because I am passionately committed to magnify the glory of my grace in your salvation.”

When we experience God’s grace at the cross, instead of being our Judge, God becomes our Father and Jesus Christ becomes our Lord. Rather than running from God because we wanted to hide our sins and because we feared His judgment, we can draw near to God with hearts washed clean (Heb. 10:22). Instead of proudly running our own lives to promote our own interests, we now submit gladly to Jesus as Lord and Master, seeking to do His will.

For when we seek His heart we find His will. And there in His heart we find His Spirit who lifts us up out of the valleys of darkness so that through His insane love we might “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (v16). Yes, when we embrace the Spirit so as to go deep into the heart of Christ we are engulfed in His mercy and grace such that our hearts are transformed such that we want nothing more than to sing out the glory of His presence:

And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll; The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, Even so, it is well with my soul.

Father God, in Christ and through the Spirit, You have made it well in our souls. Help us to live out the resounding sound of Your love through our acts of mercy and grace. Amen Jesus!

Ascend to Heaven

Christmas is the entrance of “great joy for all people.” It is a time that should reveal to us the joy of life that comes only through Christ. And this realization of joy comes when our lives become prayer. I am convinced that in order to be one who “rejoices always” we must be one who “prays without ceasing” so that in everything we will “give thanks.”

As Paul writes to the church of Thessalonica:

“Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5.16-18).

Our call to rejoice and to pray are not suggestions, they are expectations. And why? Because Paul knows that when our hearts our consumed by prayer then all we experience, all we encounter awakens us to our need of Jesus, and in this need we come to realize His unceasing love. We come to recognize that in Christ and through the Spirit we are the beloved, that in His birth we have been born into His eternal joy, which produces a heart that wants nothing more than to give thanks to the One who transforms us into more than conquerors.

To give thanks in everything is the result of a heart of worship. It is the natural result of one whose life is saturated in prayer. For when we bow our hearts in faithful adoration to the One who came to give us the abundance of life, we can do none other than rejoice always.

When our lives become a fountain of prayer our hearts overflow with the sweet melody of a radical love that rejoices in the truth of love poured out. When we embrace the Spirit so as to go deep into the heart of Christ, our lives become the truth of His birth daily.

Christmas is a time meant to be erupt in the Christmas miracle and this happens when we are bathed in prayer. It is a time that when we look upon the birth of our Savior our first response should be to fall to our knees so that we might become His insane love lived out.  

Giving our hearts to Jesus through unceasing prayer is such a sweet offering that in Revelation the prayers of the saints are called "incense," because, when they ascend to heaven, God smells the sweet savor of our hearts in them (Rev 5.8). Moreover, what a profitable thing unceasing prayer is! It does more good than service; for in our service we might help but a few, even a dozen of needy individuals, but with our prayers we intercede on behalf of thousands, millions, the world!

Revolution of love

The increase of life has come through the entrance of the Kingdom of heaven into the kingdom of this world. The increase of life has come through the Prince of Peace reaching into the turmoil and tension of this world so as to consume and transform it into the beautiful mosaic of abundant joy and thanksgiving. The increase of life has come through the One who invites each of us to believe so that we might become the truth of His increase.

 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do” (Jn 14.12)

Through the increase of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit, the community of God is called to become the increase of God…if we believe. If we step into His coming so as to become His peace the kingdom of this world will overwhelmed by the crazy insane love of Jesus’ kingdom. Dead souls will come to life, broken hearts will be revived, the sick will find healing, the hungry will find bread, the invisible will be seen—lives will be transformed and transferred from the temporal into the eternal. And truly all will come to understand what it means to give thanks.

Jesus’s coming is the collision of heaven and earth; it is heaven’s revolution of love so that our hearts, minds, bodies and souls might be transformed to such an extent such that our will has become God’s will. That is, we live not for self but for God. We Love God so as to love the other.

To follow Jesus is to embrace His coming so as to become broken like He was, by the pain, the torment and the darkness of this world. It means to follow Jesus into the abyss the world’s hopelessness so as to offer the hope of peace “made by the blood of His cross” (Col 1.20).

In order for His peace to infect this world our lives must become prayer so as to become God’s conduits of transformation. Christ came to be our increase so that in the Spirit we might increase. Christ’s increase for us was poured out in His life of prayer on earth, and of intercession in heaven. And it is this increase that the Spirit breathes into us in as much measure as our surrender and our faith allow and accept.

We need His increase so as to be the peace that surpasses all understanding for the sake of the world. Nothing but intense, crazy, and radical believing prayer can meet the intense spirit of worldliness, which is ever‐so‐present and complained of everywhere.

Do you really want to be His increase? Then make time with Jesus today and ask the Spirit to remove all hindrances…

Reform the devastation

Thanksgiving is here and Christmas looms. So what are we celebrating?

A quick look around the globe presents the tremendous tension that hovers over us: to give thanks and celebrate while destruction and death overwhelm the lives of so many. Planes brought down, scandals in our high schools, shootings in communities and freeways. Devastation all around seems to dampen the delight of divine beauty.

In light of this present reality many are wondering how it is that we can move into the holidays with hearts filled with good tidings and cheer? Where is our hope?

The complexity of the answer to where is our hope is found in the simplicity of what was done some 2000 years ago for the whole of humanity. A baby was born so that as a man He might hang on a tree. 

One birth. One death. One tree. Three nails. History witnessed hope.

Hope is wrapped in the truth of Immanuel - God with us. The only way to engage the happenings of life while seeking to celebrate the reality of life is found in the One who came to reorient our perspective. Christ came so that we might have hope, and in His coming He gave us the way to respond to the darkness of life.

We can only celebrate the truth of Christmas if we are willing to give thanks for the ability to step into the devastation and give of ourselves. To give until it hurts.

We give until it hurts because of what was done on our behalf. Yes, for us the giving did not stop at "until it hurts." The giving was done "to the point of death."

God’s self-giving in Christ is the epitome of His love and should become the essence of our thanksgiving. These days where we find our perspective constricted by the devastation of living our hearts must become saturated in the eternal vision of divine joy. We must look to the cross so as to see the beautiful joy that erupted through the birth of a baby.

Through His revelation, invitation and reconciliation we can step into the performance of a lifetime and live out the truth and reality of “God with us” so as to reveal the way of reformation of today's devastation. Through Christ's self-giving performance we are given the way to live out the truth of "we with God." It is a way that sees the truth of our "we with God" performance exploding on the stage of life through acts of kindness and love, acts of self-giving towards the “other” that not only overcome, but transform the postsuburban mentality that seeks to elevate self over the “other.”

Christ's Eucharistic performance (His self-giving) must become the root and foundation of the Church's being so as to become the motivation for her living. Hope will remain deferred if the Church remains destitute and deficient in her response to the world's devastation. But if we embrace the Spirit so as to grab hold of the heart of Christ, we can then become the hope that will reform the devastation into the divine image of heaven's glory.

Infection of the world

The life of faith is a life with God. And life with God is a communal reality, because all at once we are brought into the community of God that transcends the ways of this world—it is a community that is more than a simple gathering, it is an intimate family (Eph. 2:18-21). You have brothers and sisters who are yours, and you have a God who is calling you to Himself in love. And together we are to become the ultimate gift to this world.

Yes, as a follower of Christ the Holy Spirit beckons our hearts to come to the fountain of life. We are called into the truth of our foundation so that our actions, our lives are defined by being in Christ. This is what makes us His body, His community, His Church; it is what separates us from the world so that we might infect it (the world) with the crazy insane Love of Jesus.

The infection of the world through the church comes when our hearts let go of our worldly perspective so as to grab hold of a Christ-centered perspective. That is, when the joy of His love saturates our souls to such a depth that our thanksgiving overflows into the ocean of unending praise and giving. Yes, when we finally wake up to the truth of His sacrificial giving for our sake. When we cry out to the Spirit so that we might seek to imitate the bloody and beaten One draped over the cross of love by giving of ourselves for the other’s sake.

The world is crying out for the church to be the church. For the witness of our thanksgiving to be the complete giving of our hearts—relentlessly giving all of ourselves, withholding nothing because the only thing Christ withheld from us was the death sin is so deserving of. How can we not be thankful for the fact that He didn’t simply withhold death, but He swallowed it up in the victory of the cross? And then unashamedly has the audacity to invite us into His victory so as to share with us His eternal weight of glory that overcame sin and death.

How can we not be anything but joyously thankful and always giving?

Let us this day, as Christ’s disciples, as one body, one community—as His church, say yes to the Spirit so that through His presence and in His power we might live out our faith by living out Jesus’ commands—Love the Lord your God, Love your neighbor as yourself. Let us this day drench ourselves in prayer such that we lose ourselves in Christ’s heart so as to gain the victory of the cross. And let us step into the Holy Spirit so that through our lives of insane love the world might come to know the surpassing knowledge, peace and love of Jesus Christ.