God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.
--Psalm 46:1-3
When I read that this morning, I started to picture what it literally says: epic landslides and tsunamis and the earth imploding. This Psalm is about holding on to God in the midst of chaos. If our earth suffered unexpected catastrophe, and even the natural world--mountains, seas, etc.--fell apart, we would have nothing to make sense of our lives except for God. He is our only calibration. And then the Psalm tells us that, in that event, we actually would not have to fear because He is bigger than the biggest disaster we can imagine.
I was like, "Ok, gotcha. God is big. We literally have NOTHING to fear." That alone was impressive and reassuring to me as I sat pondering. Then I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me: "Who do you think made the mountains and the sea?"
The natural world is the manifestation of the imagination of our God. YOU are the manifestation of the imagination of our God. He is a creator. I mean, He speaks, and galaxies happen. He thought of DNA. He built you from scratch. He can't help but create. It's His nature.
Psalm 46 continues: "He raised his voice, the earth melted." His words are able to create or destroy. But He has to consciously decide to destroy. His default setting is "create" and "unimaginable beauty." All His ways are perfect. He makes things alive and colorful just by going near them. Think on that for a second.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.--Ecclesiastes 3:11
This verse is clear: we cannot understand the intricate plans of God. But we are built to seek after His heart and long for His beauty.
God is the definition of "beautiful." Unless He chooses to destroy, He cannot touch something and NOT make it beautiful.
If you let Him touch you, if you let Him come even a little bit near you, you will not be able to help being restored to life and beauty. He is the essence of beauty; He is a creator; and He created YOU.
How could you not be beautiful?
"Cease striving and know that I am God"--Psalm 46:10
That one is pretty self-explanatory.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Saturday, June 11, 2016
The One Thing That Will Change Your Life
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.--Matthew 6:33
I want to ask you, if you're a Christian: what is the kingdom of God?
It seems like, if Jesus told us Himself that seeking it was the most important aim of our lives, we ought to know what it is. But I bet most Christians have never even considered how God defines His kingdom. And we're going to have a hard time finding it if we don't know what we're looking for.
This whole time, I've thought that the kingdom of God was getting people to accept Jesus and have their lives radically altered by Him. Not to mention peace and joy and hippie Christian commune in the Holy Spirit. Casting out demons. Seeing the blind receive sight and the lame walk. In short, heaven on earth.
But the most important thing in the kingdom of God, I have thought, is for us to know our identity in Christ. If we know we are sons and daughters of the King, of course heaven will naturally come to earth. It all has to do with how much we understand our own identities!!!..............Right?
So I've sought and sought to find out who I am in Christ. I've made it my one true aim. I opened the scriptures every day to find out what He says I am.
And I've been frustrated.
Let me tell you why. The Bible is addressed to me and talks about me, but I (and you) are really only minor characters. Reading the Bible to find out your identity in Christ is like reading backwards. There is only one true star of the whole script.
It's kind of a "duh" moment, but I just realized that the Bible isn't about me. It's about God.
In our culture, we are constantly instructed to "find ourselves." I spent years looking everywhere for myself. I finally ended up a Christian because I understood that God was the only source of my identity. But I've gone about this Christian life with the wrong aim. I've been looking for me instead of Him.
I've heard message after message about "hearing God," my "identity in Christ," "prosperity," "grace," "God's will for your life." These messages aren't bad; but if they're all I'm hearing, I have a problem. All of these topics are about ME. We listen, and we take our new little "nugget"of "revelation" home and try to apply it to our lives. We live from revelation to revelation. Snack to snack. And we are hungry and frustrated. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that I am way more boring and less satisfying than He is.
What if my one singular purpose in life, what He created me to do, is not to find out who I am, but to find out who He is?
David wrote, "You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11).
He does tell us what path to take. But that's not the point of this verse. I think the kingdom of God is this simple: fullness of joy in His presence. Knowing HIM. Who cares about us and our identities? I only want to care about HIS identity.
I mean, He made the whole world just by speaking. Don't you want to get to know someone like that?
I don't know about you, but I want to know the same kind of intimacy with the Father that drove Jesus to the cross. He didn't give up His life for an ideal, for His country, or even really for us. He gave it willingly because His Father asked Him to.
What kind of goodness must the Father possess if people, including Jesus, are willing to die for Him? They must really know who He is. No one will die for a tyrant. But for someone they love, they will sacrifice their lives.
What if we knew the Father so well that we would do anything for Him?
When I read the Old Testament, I see that time after time, the Israelites forsook the God of Abraham and went after idols. And all the way from Genesis to Malachi, the Lord repeats the same complaints: "They don't know me." He is angry with their blatant sin, but He always points out that the reason they are sinning is because they don't know Him.
The Israelites didn't continually turn from God and serve the Baals, sacrificing babies and committing adultery with temple prostitutes, because they didn't understand who THEY were. It was because they didn't understand who HE is. They did not understand His righteousness.
Oh, wait--didn't we hear something about righteousness in that verse about the kingdom of God?
"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness."
If we don't know what the kingdom of God is, maybe we should just look a few words over. The kingdom of God is HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. In other words, His character. Who he is. His identity.
You will never perform a miracle because you know who you are. You will perform a miracle because you know who He is.
I've tried a thousand times to approach a sick person to pray for them by pep-talking myself about my authority and identity in the kingdom of God. But I haven't tried to approach them with the simple thought that He is the God who created light, ocean tides, mitochondria, and seahorses....Like, "awesome" doesn't begin to cover it.
I've spent so much time asking God, "Who am I?" Maybe He'd appreciate it just a little bit if I started waking up every morning and asking Him, "Who are you?"
My pride and selfishness will only leave me frustrated. A humble heart toward the Lord will ignite me to my true purpose.
I don't mean to step on any toes (and I'm preaching to myself, too), but you aren't going to get to know Him that well just by sitting on your butt. You will only get to know Him as He is by spending time with Him and asking Him.
"But I don't hear clearly from God," you might say. Well, can you read? Obviously, because you're reading this. Read the Bible as if all you are looking for is what it says about HIM.
I have a right to say this to you, because I'm just now realizing it myself. Our culture has jipped us. And the church is missing it just as much as secular culture. Church is not about us. It's about Him. Anytime we reduce it to anything less than that, it's a frustrating experience. It may draw people in briefly, but it will ultimately drive them away, dissatisfied.
Do you know why? Because the only satisfaction we can find in life is in God. That's it. There's nothing else. We can't find purpose even in our identity as believers. Yes, it's good to know our identity, and good to embrace it. But identity is a by-product of knowing Him. Our identity is not our purpose. Knowing His identity is.
When I had this gentle revelation, I felt like I felt the day that I first really decided to follow Jesus. I felt a sense of overwhelming relief, and a feeling that everything is going to change for good.
We don't need self-help books and personality tests and themed Bible studies. These are not bad things. But they aren't what we NEED. They are the things that are "added unto us." But the thing about adding is that you need a foundation to add to. The fact is that, if you don't understand that knowing Him--His heart, His righteousness, His goodness, His beauty--is the most important thing, even your greatest revelations about your identity in Christ are like Legos on quicksand.
What if the whole church stopped straining to make ourselves into "who we're supposed to be" and just started seeking His face? What if we stopped continuously seeking to preach and buy and read our "identity in Christ" and just spent every day asking Him about His identity?
I tell you what would happen. We wouldn't have to search out our identity in Christ. We would just become it. And we would change the world.
I want to ask you, if you're a Christian: what is the kingdom of God?
It seems like, if Jesus told us Himself that seeking it was the most important aim of our lives, we ought to know what it is. But I bet most Christians have never even considered how God defines His kingdom. And we're going to have a hard time finding it if we don't know what we're looking for.
This whole time, I've thought that the kingdom of God was getting people to accept Jesus and have their lives radically altered by Him. Not to mention peace and joy and hippie Christian commune in the Holy Spirit. Casting out demons. Seeing the blind receive sight and the lame walk. In short, heaven on earth.
But the most important thing in the kingdom of God, I have thought, is for us to know our identity in Christ. If we know we are sons and daughters of the King, of course heaven will naturally come to earth. It all has to do with how much we understand our own identities!!!..............Right?
So I've sought and sought to find out who I am in Christ. I've made it my one true aim. I opened the scriptures every day to find out what He says I am.
And I've been frustrated.
Let me tell you why. The Bible is addressed to me and talks about me, but I (and you) are really only minor characters. Reading the Bible to find out your identity in Christ is like reading backwards. There is only one true star of the whole script.
It's kind of a "duh" moment, but I just realized that the Bible isn't about me. It's about God.
In our culture, we are constantly instructed to "find ourselves." I spent years looking everywhere for myself. I finally ended up a Christian because I understood that God was the only source of my identity. But I've gone about this Christian life with the wrong aim. I've been looking for me instead of Him.
I've heard message after message about "hearing God," my "identity in Christ," "prosperity," "grace," "God's will for your life." These messages aren't bad; but if they're all I'm hearing, I have a problem. All of these topics are about ME. We listen, and we take our new little "nugget"of "revelation" home and try to apply it to our lives. We live from revelation to revelation. Snack to snack. And we are hungry and frustrated. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that I am way more boring and less satisfying than He is.
What if my one singular purpose in life, what He created me to do, is not to find out who I am, but to find out who He is?
David wrote, "You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11).
He does tell us what path to take. But that's not the point of this verse. I think the kingdom of God is this simple: fullness of joy in His presence. Knowing HIM. Who cares about us and our identities? I only want to care about HIS identity.
I mean, He made the whole world just by speaking. Don't you want to get to know someone like that?
I don't know about you, but I want to know the same kind of intimacy with the Father that drove Jesus to the cross. He didn't give up His life for an ideal, for His country, or even really for us. He gave it willingly because His Father asked Him to.
What kind of goodness must the Father possess if people, including Jesus, are willing to die for Him? They must really know who He is. No one will die for a tyrant. But for someone they love, they will sacrifice their lives.
What if we knew the Father so well that we would do anything for Him?
When I read the Old Testament, I see that time after time, the Israelites forsook the God of Abraham and went after idols. And all the way from Genesis to Malachi, the Lord repeats the same complaints: "They don't know me." He is angry with their blatant sin, but He always points out that the reason they are sinning is because they don't know Him.
The Israelites didn't continually turn from God and serve the Baals, sacrificing babies and committing adultery with temple prostitutes, because they didn't understand who THEY were. It was because they didn't understand who HE is. They did not understand His righteousness.
Oh, wait--didn't we hear something about righteousness in that verse about the kingdom of God?
"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness."
If we don't know what the kingdom of God is, maybe we should just look a few words over. The kingdom of God is HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. In other words, His character. Who he is. His identity.
You will never perform a miracle because you know who you are. You will perform a miracle because you know who He is.
I've tried a thousand times to approach a sick person to pray for them by pep-talking myself about my authority and identity in the kingdom of God. But I haven't tried to approach them with the simple thought that He is the God who created light, ocean tides, mitochondria, and seahorses....Like, "awesome" doesn't begin to cover it.
I've spent so much time asking God, "Who am I?" Maybe He'd appreciate it just a little bit if I started waking up every morning and asking Him, "Who are you?"
My pride and selfishness will only leave me frustrated. A humble heart toward the Lord will ignite me to my true purpose.
I don't mean to step on any toes (and I'm preaching to myself, too), but you aren't going to get to know Him that well just by sitting on your butt. You will only get to know Him as He is by spending time with Him and asking Him.
"But I don't hear clearly from God," you might say. Well, can you read? Obviously, because you're reading this. Read the Bible as if all you are looking for is what it says about HIM.
I have a right to say this to you, because I'm just now realizing it myself. Our culture has jipped us. And the church is missing it just as much as secular culture. Church is not about us. It's about Him. Anytime we reduce it to anything less than that, it's a frustrating experience. It may draw people in briefly, but it will ultimately drive them away, dissatisfied.
Do you know why? Because the only satisfaction we can find in life is in God. That's it. There's nothing else. We can't find purpose even in our identity as believers. Yes, it's good to know our identity, and good to embrace it. But identity is a by-product of knowing Him. Our identity is not our purpose. Knowing His identity is.
When I had this gentle revelation, I felt like I felt the day that I first really decided to follow Jesus. I felt a sense of overwhelming relief, and a feeling that everything is going to change for good.
We don't need self-help books and personality tests and themed Bible studies. These are not bad things. But they aren't what we NEED. They are the things that are "added unto us." But the thing about adding is that you need a foundation to add to. The fact is that, if you don't understand that knowing Him--His heart, His righteousness, His goodness, His beauty--is the most important thing, even your greatest revelations about your identity in Christ are like Legos on quicksand.
What if the whole church stopped straining to make ourselves into "who we're supposed to be" and just started seeking His face? What if we stopped continuously seeking to preach and buy and read our "identity in Christ" and just spent every day asking Him about His identity?
I tell you what would happen. We wouldn't have to search out our identity in Christ. We would just become it. And we would change the world.
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