God’s love

Blessed are the merciful

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“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7)

In the Bible, grace and mercy are many times used together. I’ve heard it put this way that grace is getting what you don’t deserve, and mercy is not getting what you do deserve. Mercy is withholding the right to revenge and giving grace instead. One of God’s characteristics is that He is merciful. If anyone had the right to exact judgment on what we’ve done wrong and how we’ve screwed up and when we’ve outright rebelled against Him, it’s God. But He in HIs grace gives us what we don’t deserve– forgiveness– and in His mercy withholds from us what we do deserve– everlasting punishment in hell.

To be merciful is to be like God. To forgive, even when forgiveness is not sought, is to be like God. Mercy is loving the unloveable. It’s easy to love someone who loves you back, but God calls us to love those who are so caught up in and trapped by fear and addictions that they are unable to love us back.

I like the Message version. It says, “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.”

If you show mercy, you get mercy. I also like to think that one of the characteristics of those who have experienced God’s grace and mercy is that they live out that grace and mercy toward others. You forgive much because you have been forgiven much. You don’t worry about the $100 worth of wrong someone did to you when God just forgave the $1 million worth of wrong you did against Him.

Brennan Manning says it best: “Our encounter with Mercy profoundly affects our interaction with others . . . . We look beyond appearances, beneath surfaces, to recognize others as companions in woundedness. Human flesh is heir to the assaults, within and without, of negative, judgmental thoughts, but we will not consent to them because God is merciful to us. We will not allow these attacks to lead us into the sins of self-preoccupation and self-defense. Swimming in the merciful love of Christ, we are free to laugh at the tendency to assume spiritual superiority– in ourselves. We are free to extend to others the mercy we have received.”

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

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“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6)

When I think of hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I don’t think of when I would like dessert after a good meal. I don’t even think about when I am late for a meal and how “hungry” I feel. I think of someone who is starving to death and the lengths they will go to get food. To hunger and thirst for righteousness means more than simply wanting to in right standing with God and to please Him; it means that everything in me longs and yearns to see God glorified by my life.

The Message puts it this way: “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.”

The question is: How badly do you want God? Not how badly do you want your prayers answered or how badly do you want gifts and blessings from God, but how badly do you long for God Himself? Honestly, I seek after many other things more than I seek after God, including but not limited to approval, attention, a dating life, and spiritual experiences. Is it any wonder that these things, whether I obtain them or not, will leave me empty and hollow? Only God can fill a God-shaped hole in my heart.

The hard part is that if you love and long for God, you will love and long for fellowship and community with His people. If you don’t love and long for His people, you don’t really long for God. Jesus says, If you love me, you will love my church (and that doesn’t mean you will love a building or a campus, it means you will love God’s people). If you are pulling away from God’s people, how can you say you are drawing near to God? I know there are seasons of solitude that God calls us to, but if we have no desire to pray for and support and encourage our brothers and sisters, we really are saying we have no desire for God.

Sometimes, when someone isn’t in a place where they can seek God and God’s people, we can rally around that person and pray God’s healing and restoration for him or her. A friend of mine said sometimes when you can only give 40%, I must be the one to give the 160% to make up the difference.

What does it mean to be filled? It means overflowing beyond your capacity to receive. It means God gives you so much that it runs over in you and spills into the lives of those around you. To be filled means to have life abundantly, or life to the full, that God will give beyond anything we could ever ask or expect or hope. As John Piper says, “God will not give up the glory of being the Giver.”

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Brokenness and Community

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We are all broken. Some are just better at hiding it than others, but deep down inside we know we don’t work right. I believe when God reveals our brokenness within the context of community, we have two choices. I can see your brokenness and choose to walk away and shut you out or I can choose to walk with you and share your burdens, “and thereby fulfill the law of Christ” (Ephesians 6:2). I’m not saying it’s wrong to walk away; some are not ready to handle brokenness in others. But to stay and walk with a brother or sister through brokenness is the better way.

I also think about the image of Jesus breaking bread and blessing it. If we want God to bless us, or better yet to bless others through us, we must first be broken. Only in the context of community where we love each other and share joys and sorrows and bear each other’s burdens can this happen. We shouldn’t just pray for blessings on each other. We should be able to pray for brokenness for each other. We should be authentic and transparent enough to be broken and honest with each other.

I am reminded of Henri Nouwen’s term “wounded healer.” If we aren’t broken, we can never reach beyond the surface in our relationships and serving and ministry, but if we are broken, we can empathize with the weaknesses of others. The more we own our brokenness, the more loving and Christlike we will be toward the brokenness in others.

I want to buck the trend that says that weakness is something you don’t talk about. I want to be like Paul who boasted in his weakness, because that’s where Christ’s strength is perfected. Let people see that you are not a perfect saint, but a weak and broken and transparent vessel through which God’s love can pour unhindered to the world around you.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

I want to be maladjusted

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I was thinking about a speech Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave where he stated that he was proud to be maladjusted to things like social injustice. I like that terminology. I am also proud to be maladjusted to this world that doesn’t work and to the church when there’s too much world and not enough Word.

I want to be maladjusted to superficial relationships and fair-weather friends and to me when I am both of these.

I want to be maladjusted to when the most exclusive social circles are in church settings.

I want to be maladjusted to inauthenticity in myself and others instead of compassionately bearing one another’s burdens.

I want to be maladjusted to looking out for my own interests as I walk right past the broken and hurting without even seeing them.

I want to be maladjusted to thinking that spiritual problems can have political answers.

I want to be maladjusted to giving God my leftovers and not laying down my life for the Kingdom of Christ.

I want to be maladjusted to a self-sufficient American Church who relies on their own talents, abilities and strategies and does not cry out to the Holy Spirit out of utter need and dependency.

I want to be maladjusted to commitment-phobic Christianity when other Christians around the world are willing to pay with their lives for the privilege of what we take for granted on a daily basis.

I want to be maladjusted to anything less than building-shaking, fire-falling, Spirit-drenched revival among God’s people.

I want to be maladjusted to this world and not try to fit in, but instead be like my Lord Jesus Christ.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

My prayer for tonight

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God, I don’t understand why things happen the way they do, but You do.

I don’t understand why I should be so blessed when all I seem to do is complain about what I lack, but You know why and love me anyway.

I don’t understand why people act the way they do, but You do and You call me to forgive them as You have forgiven them.

I don’t understand many times why I act the way I do, but You do and You forgive me.

I can’t fix my brokenness, but You can because You took it upon Yourself at Calvary.

I can’t mend broken relationships, but You can because You make all things new.

I can never be a man of God on my own, but in You I am one because You are in me.

I can never die to my way of doing things and say, Thy will be done,” but You did. And Your power and resurrected life are in me.

I can’t change the world or eradicate injustice, poverty, wrong and evil, but one day You will.

All the things I long to be in my best moments and all I ever dreamed I could be, You are.

To all that I have needed or will ever need, You say, “I AM!”

Thoughts on prayer and healing

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I was thinking today about Job’s situation and how it relates to mine (and possibly yours, too). In Job 42, God tells Job’s friends that they have slandered Job and misrepresented God. He tells them that Job will pray for them, and He will hear him and not deal with them as they deserve. Job prays for his friends, then God gives him back what he lost, doubled.

Job had to pray for those who wronged him before God restored him. Job had to forgive the ones who slandered him and his God. Is there some area of your life that needs healing and/or restoration? It could be that God is waiting for you to pray for the ones who hurt you in that area before he restores to you what you lost or heals you.

As much as I pray for God to forgive those who hurt me, that much will God forgive me (see the Lord’s prayer). As much as I pray for God to bless those who slander me, God will bless me. As much as I pray for the restoration and healing of those whose wounds I carry, God will restore and heal me.

This is me thinking out loud again. So take it for what it’s worth. As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

A Question I Ask Myself A Lot Lately (One we should all ask at some point)

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My question came to me after I had been reading Forgotten God by Francis Chan.

How can I have the Holy Spirit inside me and have the power of the resurrection and have my life look just like the people around me who have no Holy Spirit? In essence, why can they not tell a difference? Why can’t I tell a difference?

My prayer is from Acts 4:13. May be so immersed in Christ and filled with the Spirit that those around me are astonished and can tell that I have been with Jesus. If I am gifted in every way, but do not have the earmarks of abiding in the presence of Jesus, what good is that? If I have all this education, but lack being filled with the Spirit, it is worth less than nothing.

My prayer goes like this: Lord Jesus, captivate my heart in such a way that I am drawn to You and others see Jesus in me and are drawn not to me, but to the Jesus in me. Make my life an epistle, a testimony of how good You are.

What I want (what we should all want)

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“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

I don’t want people to know me for being smart or funny or clever or nice or gentle. I want people to see me and be astonished and say “That man has been with Jesus.” I hope that is your prayer, too. That outsiders will look at us and recognize Jesus in us, and see that we, like Moses, are radiant from having been face-to-face with the King of the Universe. Because when we have been with Jesus, we are never the same. We can never again settle. We are “ruined for the ordinary.”

Which brings up a convicting point for me. I NEED TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH JESUS. If I only give Him 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there, I doubt that people will know that I have been with Him. It’s got to be more. If I am to love with the love of Jesus and be His hands and feet to the world, I have to know His heart much more fully than I do now.

Here’s a question that nailed me today. If your witness for Christ was limited to your facebook posts and replies and comments, what kind of testimony would that be? Would it be the kind that would make people want to know Jesus more or would it drive people away? Would people think that we were different or would they think we are just like them and therefore they have no use for what we have to say about our faith.

If we have been with Jesus, our words will match our walk and what comes out of our lips (and from our keyboards) will match our lifestyle.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

A Church Without Walls (part 1)

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Here’s my vision (not in the apostle John way, but just something I am hungering for lately). I see a church without walls. I see a church not bound by bricks and mortar, but made up of living stones, of people whose broken lives are being made whole. Something Henri Nouwen calls “wounded healers.” I see a church unified in purpose and dedicated to sharing everything, from joys to griefs, blessings and sorrows. I see a church where worship breaks out in front of Chick-fil-A or Starbucks. Where worship is not an event, but a lifestyle.

I see a church with real people who are authentic in their brokenness and who can be genuinely themselves. I see a church earmarked by grace and acceptance, not condemnation and judgment. I see a church with no walls between believers, because a wall between two believers is a wall that keeps a non-believer from seeing Jesus in us. I see a church where I will lay down my offering or stop my worship and go to my brother or sister in Christ and be reconciled before I write one tithe check or sing one note of praise.

I see a church who meets wherever there is a need and whenever someone is hurting. I see a church who would rather draw in the lonely, the outcast and the sinner than the perfect saints, career churchgoers and religious-types. I see a church who follows Christ, not American Christianity. The church I see is becoming my passion. I want to see Acts 2 in action. I am sick and tired of the same old routine and traditions and forms without power. I want the kind of anointing that caused thousands to come to Christ daily. I want the building to shake from the power of God inside. I want signs and wonders. I want people on the outside to see how much we love each other and be in awe of the power that God’s love in us unleashes.

The Bible says that we are living epistles, not written with ink but by the Spirit of the living God (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). We are God’s letters to the whosoevers.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Lessons Learned from a Life covered by the grace of God, Part 1

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I have learned a few thing in my time that I want to pass on:

1) Never try to figure out anything, especially people, when you are tired. I personally tend to drift toward the negative when I am exhausted and am not really good at being balanced or fair to others when I am worn out.

2) When you are inclined to judge someone’s actions, remember that there is at least one factor that you don’t know about that person that if you knew, would cast a totally different light on their actions. Also, remember that in the same circumstances you might do the same or worse. Which leads to the next point.

3) If you err, err on the side of grace. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Of course, use common sense and don’t be a doormat, but think of what you would be apart from the grace of God and then you realize that you have no place to give up on or despair of anyone (I totally stole that one from Oswald Chambers!)

4) Remind yourself that in life and the big picture, it never was, is not and will never be about you. It always was, is and always will be about God and His redemptive plan for the world. His will for you is always in context of His plan for the world.

5) Never go by first impressions, regardless of what the world tells you. Some of the best people I know who have impacted me were the ones whose first impression was unfavorable. I think you sometimes have to step out of what is comfortable and familiar if you want to find God’s secret blessings and surprises.

6) What is important in life, what I want you to remember, is not me or how well I write or how clever I am. You can forget all about me and if you remember that God loves you, that God is in love with you, and that God can take the worthless and transform it into something priceless, then I am OK with that. As one person said, I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody that can save anybody. That’s all I am, regardless of what my ego tells me.

What are some lessons you have learned? Share them with me, because I am always learning and God always has something to show me. Plus, we only grow and mature in the faith in community. You can never discover God’s will for your life by yourself, but only with other believers as you share yourself and your gifts to serve one another in love.

That’s all for now. More later.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.