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.