The Lifeboat

"We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." -Romans 6:4

I wonder what God imagines when He thinks of the "new life" He wants us to have through Christ. And I wonder how many people live up to His expectations there. I know I don't. When God brought me back to Himself about a year and a half ago, there were definitely some things that I purged from my life and some amazing ways my life was transformed. But by no means was I living a completely new life. And I don't think He means that our whole lives need to be different outwardly once we are baptized in His blood. But I do believe that inwardly we should be dead to our old selves and therefore be living a wholly new life with Christ. And naturally that should manifest itself outwardly in our lives. But twenty-five years of crap is a lot to sift through, and there's a lot of that crap that frankly I don't want to let go of. It's scary to let go of the life that you've been used to for so long. But I feel like it's a bit like being on the Titanic and having to jump onto a lifeboat but not wanting to because I know that up until this point I've been safe on the Titanic. And if I jump into the lifeboat, I can't keep holding on to the Titanic, because eventually it's going to sink. I wonder what parts of the Titanic I'm holding on to that I need to let go of. I know there are plenty of them. And if you asked me on a normal day, I could probably give you a pretty good excuse for why I still cling to them and why it's okay for me to keep them in my life. But when I'm alone with my thoughts and prayers and can really see clearly, I know that in order to embrace the new life God has given us through the sacrifice of His only son, I've got to let go and jump in the lifeboat.

The Way Home

Something I didn't think about in my first post, when naming my blog: we're all headed to the same home. Or at least we should be. We may stray and we may wander, we may take different roads, but in the end hopefully we'll reach the same home. And while we should not hold our road above the roads others are taking, thinking ours is the best or only way, we should be keenly aware of whether those around us are headed in the right direction. None of us, if we saw a child wandering the streets looking lost and alone, would leave him to find his own way. In God's eyes, we are but children, trying to find our ways back to Him. And if we are willing, He will lead us where we need to go. But He also uses His children to help Him find those who seem to have lost their way, and we must be willing to help the lost ones, guiding them back to the right path.

Faith

I need to remember what faith is. I really struggle with feeling like I have to fully understand everything and needing concrete evidence for things, especially when it comes to God. I read Jesus’ encounters with the Pharisees and think how ignorant they were to have Jesus standing right in front of them, living among them, and still not believing in Him. And really, when I think about it, I’m doing pretty much the same thing. I say “God, I know you’re here, I can see what you have done in my life and feel your presence inside of me, and you even make sense to my skeptical mind, but I still need just a bit more proof from you, and then I’ll truly believe in you.” And what I’ve just now realized is that this is me leaving out one of the most crucial components of believing in God, which is faith. I may not have Jesus standing in front of me telling me He’s my savior, but I have the Bible telling me that, and I have Him living inside of my heart and showing me that in my life daily. And I still doubt Him. So until I can say “I believe because I have faith,” I’m no better than those Pharisees.

Whispers

“How faint the whisper we hear of Him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?” 

(Job 26:14)

How exciting is that! I read that, and then I look around me, and all I can think is, whoa. We think that we see Him in the sunset, and that we feel Him when we experience love, and that we commune with Him when we pray, and here we learn that all of that is but a shadow of His true self. How can that be? How could anything be more beautiful or powerful or awe-inspiring than this Creation? I guess it only makes sense that its Creator is exactly that—more beautiful, more powerful, more perfect in every way. But here’s the crazy thing, the fact that because we hear only a faint whisper of Him, we can’t even understand the thunder of His power! It’s no wonder men have spent centuries writing about it, singing about it, fighting about it, agonizing over it. God obviously made us with an innate desire to know and understand things, and we have come a long way in the realms of science, and mathematics, and medicine, and even the study of our own minds and understanding. And yet try as we may, we just can’t seem to wrap our heads around God. Unfortunately for many, this inability will be their downfall. It was nearly mine. But luckily for us, God gave us not only our heads, but our hearts as well. And boy does He know how to speak to our hearts. We could argue until our faces turned blue about the attributes of God and whether His existence makes logical sense and whether all of the facts in the Bible line up, but it’s pretty hard to argue with people whose souls have searched the world for rest and found it nowhere but in God’s loving arms. I know one thing I can’t deny is the whispers I hear from God daily and the power He has exhibited in my own life. I have seen firsthand how He can transform a life, and I don’t understand it, but I can’t help but believe it, because the evidence is inside of me. How precious are those whispers I hear of God. I don’t know that I could handle anything louder.

Jesus' question

“Do you want to get well?” – Jesus 

(John 5:6)

Seems like a pretty easy question to answer, right? If we’re sick, if something is wrong with us, if we are hurting, of course we want to get well. But if you know anything about Jesus, you’ll know that He doesn’t just arbitrarily say things that we are meant to gloss over. So in revisiting this question, which Jesus asks to a man who has been paralyzed for thirty-eight years, I have to wonder if we as humans really and truly want to get well. I know when I re-dedicated my life to Christ a little over a year ago, I needed to get well. And thankfully, enough of me wanted to get well to allow God to come into my life and begin the healing process. Words cannot adequately express how grateful I am for His rescue. But goodness, is He relentless in His pursuit of every part of me that needs healing. Frankly, if Jesus were to stop me at every crossroad and ask me if I wanted to get well, the answer would probably be “no” more often than I would like to admit. I want to be healthy, I want to be happy, I want to grow in my relationship with Christ, but does every little broken part of me need to be fixed? Can’t I keep this one vice or this one idol or hold on to this one grudge, just for a little familiarity? God’s answer – no. I have died to myself and been reborn to a new life, and I must crucify my brokenness if I am to truly live as one who has been reborn in Christ. God never starts anything He doesn’t intend to finish, and we are no one to tell Him otherwise. So maybe that’s why Jesus asks a man who has spent thirty-eight years of his life waiting to be healed if he wants to get well. Because getting well is hard, and it’s unfamiliar, and it requires action on our part, and God has a lot greater expectations for us than we ever had for ourselves. Jesus asked this man if he wanted to get well because Jesus knows that in many ways getting well is harder than staying sick, even if we have Jesus helping us. I think when Jesus reaches His hand out to us to offer us salvation, the question He is asking each and every one of us is just what He asked the paralytic: “Do you want to get well?” And it’s up to us to decide if we do want to get well, if we want to be healed from everything inside of us and saved from everything surrounding us that keeps us sick and keeps us from living the full lives that God intended for us. So God, here’s where I need Your help – I need You to help me to say “yes” to You every time You ask me, even when my first inclination is to say no. Because it’s really easy for me in my short-sightedness to try to keep You from healing certain parts of me, and I don’t want myself to get in the way of Your sanctification. Make me want to get well. 

How easily we forget things

Isn't it funny how easily we forget things? Even things I tell myself, or resolve to do, I forget them at the drop of a hat. Think how much progress we could make in our lives if everything we learned, every experience we had, everything we decided to change about ourselves we could remember and put into practice. On the contrary, I forget my thoughts sometimes before I even complete them. It makes it really hard to make any changes in my life. Especially since I have a whole lot of thoughts. If I didn't have a journal to write in and God to pray to, I'd be pretty miserable to be around because I'd probably never stop talking about all of my thoughts. If only I could remember God's promises more, I know that would drastically change the way I lived my life, and maybe even calm some of the thoughts running rampant through my head. I wish I didn't have to read the Bible every day to be reminded of how great God is and how present He is in my life. Maybe as I get older it will be a bit easier for me to remember His word, after hopefully having read and studied it for years. But I presume I'll be needing to go back to the Source daily for the rest of my life in order to remind my forgetful, distracted self that I'm in the loving arms of the Creator of the universe. And you know what, that's probably a good thing, because God doesn't just want us to remember everything He tells us in the Bible and try to live by some set of rules He's given us. He wants our time, and our hearts, and He wants our lives to be dedicated to Him. So maybe that forgetfulness and that need to keep coming back to Him to be reminded of His promises is there to keep me from thinking that as long as I know about Him I don't need Him.

Off the Pedestal

I wonder what my life would look like if I acted on everything I said I wanted to act on. I have all of these lofty, righteous thoughts in my head of how awful all of the injustice in the world is and how I'm going to change the world someday, and I just let them come into my head, hang out long enough for me to voice them and feel better about myself, and then I go back to drinking my five dollar latte. It's pretty sad, really, how easily I can convince myself that I'm so much better than all of those selfish people who never even think about all of the poverty and suffering in the world. When honestly, who's worse, the one who doesn't think about it, or the one who thinks about it and doesn't do anything about it? And my inclination, even as I write, is to think "oh, but I can't do anything now about it, because of where I am in life right now. But as soon as I am in the position to take action, you bet I'll do something!" And that's just crap. Thoughts are just thoughts and nothing more until they are turned into action. The thoughts dancing around inside of my head should never make me feel more righteous than anyone else. I hope and pray that someday I won't be such a coward and God will break through my wall of comfortable living and intellectual "holiness" and show me what it is like to truly live the gospel. I guess one place to start is by taking myself off of the pedestal I've placed myself on and look around me at the world I live in, which I have not only the opportunity but the calling and the responsibility to impact in a real way. I can't reach anyone from a pedestal. And no one can reach me on my pedestal either. Because the reality of the situation is that I need salvation just as much as the people I so righteously want to save.