"The kingdom of God is like buried treasure that one must search for in order to find" (Matt 13:44- Kees Bruin, artist.) He paints these beautiful pictures that are displayed in the Christchurch art museum all with this verse in mind. Each of his paintings holds many subtleties that unless looked for one would totally miss. I think he's right how you have to search for God in everything. Yes, God is everywhere, but to see Him I think our eyes have to be trained to see first. "God creates everything out of nothing- and everything God is to use He reduces to nothing" (Soren Keirkegaard). When we are born again (although I hesitate using such a phrase that's been so plastered with churchy, unrealistic, save every person you talk to people), we come as a child to the Father. I think this is where my Christian journey turned off the straight and narrow path. Sure, I've been a believer since before I could properly say the words Jesus Christ, but I've never allowed God to be all to me and make me who He wants me. I have this great complex to be perfect, at everything. I don't really like trying things because there's a possibility that I might not be great at it right off, and I'd rather not know. Yet, if people are around I'll be more than happy to step in because then I think I'm being the bigger person by making others feel comfortable, so then I'm able to pat myself on the back for being such a perfectly nice girl. It's a viscious cycle really, my mind is always looking for my gain. Oh, to defeat the mind and stand in victory with Jesus over the sinful nature. I truly think that our greatest enemy is ourselves. We accredit Satan with far more power than he actually has, and far more intelligence too. I mean really, we're so scared in life of bad things happening. But ya'll, look who we're up against- ourselves and Satan. The Devil, this angel that actually thought he could be God and so tried to basically take over- which is completely rediculous. Or is it so? Oh, we could have the excuse that he saw everything that God is in heaven and then crazily thought he could 'beat' God. But is this not exaclty like us? God's everywhere and so mujch of life He has made Himself so clear to us. Everyone that's a believer has had those stand in awe, struck down to your core, can't move or breath kind of moments that you shake your head that God is so real. And yet, we try to control our world and usurp the higher authority. amazing how ignorant we really are.
I think I'm a terrible writer. I think so because unless you have action behind your words they are worthless, therefore making most of my words worthless. I'm learning here that you can make your life seem perfect by telling people only the details that sound good or are pleasing to the ears and entertaining, but where are all the honest people? Where are all the people that ask the hard questions and challenge you to be the person that when they look at you they see? How can I be that person? I think I've waited my whole life for someone to disagree with me. I say all these super 'spiritual' things and get into all these deep discussions all the time, but it's not challenging most of the time. I don't mean that curely or pridefully, but people just agree with me and so let me carry the conversations and they just chyme in occassionally. Most of my talking and writing is really just rambling, waiting to actually figure our what I'm talking about and fuss at myself later for saying such ignorant things. I think I might marry the first guy that tells me I'm wrong and feels no shame and offers no apologies for doing so. You shouldn't, you know.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Friday, April 07, 2006
winter
I wrote this is the airport, and I'll lose or forget it if I don't type it..
I'm sitting in a crowded airport, people on both sides, all from their own backgrounds, with their own experiences and happenings- their failures and their loses, their victories. It makes me wonder at a God like that. A God that controls time and space; a God that has His very "hook in their nose" (2 Kings 19:28) that controls all things simply because He is God and He created all of this. I wish I realized this great truth all the time- that my Heavenly Father has my good in mind through all events of life. It's so easy to see the tragedies of life as harsh punishments from God sent from fire in His fingertip- the judge, always giving me the hard way so 'I'll learn more'. I have this great clowded view of God so often. He controls the Universe- He's huge!
"Now I saw that as God had His hand in all the providences and dispensations that overtook His elect, so He had His hand in all the temptations that they had to sin against Him, not to animate them to wickedness, but to choose their temptations and troubles for them, and also to leave them for a time to such things only as might not destroy, but humble them- as might not put them beyond, but lay them in the way of the renewing of His mercy." -John Bunyan
It inevitably seems that when I come out of these hard times or seasons I almost long to be back in them, although at the time no thought would have been accepted. I learned in a documentary yesterday that the Kiwi bird species of New Zealand have lost their ability to fly because of lack of preditors. Interesting, isn't it? Those things in life that try to hurt us, bring up down, are the very things that keep us flying and being how God created us to be- the "bad" makes us not just be typical, but to fly. Or here's another:
"We are apt to overshoot, in the days that are calm, and to think ourselves far higher, and more strong than we find we be, when the trying day is upon us... we could not live without such turnings of the hand of God upon us. We should be overgrown with flesh, if we had not our seasonable winters. It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is not winter there." Without the often harsh, trying winter it could bear no fruit and be what God intended for it to be.
I'm sitting in a crowded airport, people on both sides, all from their own backgrounds, with their own experiences and happenings- their failures and their loses, their victories. It makes me wonder at a God like that. A God that controls time and space; a God that has His very "hook in their nose" (2 Kings 19:28) that controls all things simply because He is God and He created all of this. I wish I realized this great truth all the time- that my Heavenly Father has my good in mind through all events of life. It's so easy to see the tragedies of life as harsh punishments from God sent from fire in His fingertip- the judge, always giving me the hard way so 'I'll learn more'. I have this great clowded view of God so often. He controls the Universe- He's huge!
"Now I saw that as God had His hand in all the providences and dispensations that overtook His elect, so He had His hand in all the temptations that they had to sin against Him, not to animate them to wickedness, but to choose their temptations and troubles for them, and also to leave them for a time to such things only as might not destroy, but humble them- as might not put them beyond, but lay them in the way of the renewing of His mercy." -John Bunyan
It inevitably seems that when I come out of these hard times or seasons I almost long to be back in them, although at the time no thought would have been accepted. I learned in a documentary yesterday that the Kiwi bird species of New Zealand have lost their ability to fly because of lack of preditors. Interesting, isn't it? Those things in life that try to hurt us, bring up down, are the very things that keep us flying and being how God created us to be- the "bad" makes us not just be typical, but to fly. Or here's another:
"We are apt to overshoot, in the days that are calm, and to think ourselves far higher, and more strong than we find we be, when the trying day is upon us... we could not live without such turnings of the hand of God upon us. We should be overgrown with flesh, if we had not our seasonable winters. It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is not winter there." Without the often harsh, trying winter it could bear no fruit and be what God intended for it to be.
The color bracelet
In my Rock Solid group that I volunteer for every Friday night we're teaching the color bracelet. All of us that have grown up in the church are well aware of the color bracelets- red is the blood of Jesus, black is our sin, white is that He washes me whiter than snow, on and on... Are we really supposed to be teaching kids this? Or I even remember my Bahamas experience with my church that I was to share the neat color book with the town people at any point in time that I was allowed even a word with a person. Does this really grow the Kingdom how our Father wants it grown? I just can't wrap my albeit small mind around such a concept that this color wheel produces a lasting believer, there's just no depth. It was probably intended to be a sort of jumping off point, somewhere to start, but I think we've got it all wrong now. How can we acknowledge Jesus as Lord not knowing truths about our new life- like how hard it's going to be and how lonely and misunderstood we will often feel or that Jesus was very different than some of the adjectives we use to describe Him today- the adjectives are correct, but we've changed their meanings. Don't hear me preaching that following Jesus isn't worth it, it's totally 100% worth it, but it's the hardest thing you'll ever do, because you'll try. Every day is the constant struggle to get out of bed, to spend time in prayer, both continually through the day and also in specific chunks of time, to love people I don't want to love and learn to want to love them, to die to myself and live for other people, to press on when I feel like quitting, to speak to people that probably won't speak back, to truly care when I ask how someone is, to care about people more than I care about myself, to not be selfish, to not change my personality and vocabulary for the particular people I'm around, to not have to have the last word, to not have to explain myself and 'look good', to see that I'm enough and I've been made perfect, and the hundreds of other things that are flooding my mind right now. Can you last as a believer knowing a condensed sounds-good version of what Jesus actually is and came to do? I'm not really sure, actually.. I just get so frusterated all the time over the lack of depth in teaching, like we're trying to spare people the truth and teach what makes people feel good.
I'm reading Ezekiel right now. GOOD GRIEF! "We shall not seek to understand in order that we may believe, but to believe in order that we may understand." I think if I didn't have this Tozer quote along with obviously some sort of faith in the Bible being the inerrant word of our living God that is supreme in love as in power, I would have tossed this book out the window having heard only the color bracelet in my new "faith". Have you read Ezekiel? Am I firm in my belief in God enough that if God asked me to say some of the extremely bold, radical and seemingly crazy statements to people that I would be able to do it? Besides the real vision Ezekiel sees at the beginning with the four animals that have strange characteristics amongst eyes covering their bodies where Ezekiel ends up eating a scroll so he can go proclaim to Israel the things God tells him, besides all that stuff, God is shown to be the jelous, angry God that wipes people off the earth for disobeying His commands. You gotta read this stuff- it's amazing. There's no way if I had never previously known the great love of our God that I could read this and still be ok with who God is. But God is great. He's great because He "brings men into deep waters not to drown them but to purify them". In these situations the Israelite population was destroyed and most that survived were scattered, but then the greatest thing happens. God is gracious and does not fully give them what they deserve- on at least 2 occassions God says, "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh (11:19-20, 36:26). And this is not because of them at all- they're still corrupt, He does it for His name's sake. That's been my prayer recently, that I would follow God whole-heartedly and that God would give me a new heart and spirit in the ways that I'm corrupt and change me not for my own accord (bc a lot of times I don't want to change) but to purify me for His name. We're incapable of changing ourselves in these ways- it's the prayer of the father "I do believe! Help my unbelief" or the ultimate prayer model "Thy will be done".
Thy will be done, Father, above my way, above my plans for life. Oh, God be bigger than me. Be my rock, be the one that prevails. Forgive my hidden faults and keep me from willful sins, may they not rule over me. Make the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart pleasing to you. Give me an undying love for you. God you are faithful, purify me to more of your image.
I'm reading Ezekiel right now. GOOD GRIEF! "We shall not seek to understand in order that we may believe, but to believe in order that we may understand." I think if I didn't have this Tozer quote along with obviously some sort of faith in the Bible being the inerrant word of our living God that is supreme in love as in power, I would have tossed this book out the window having heard only the color bracelet in my new "faith". Have you read Ezekiel? Am I firm in my belief in God enough that if God asked me to say some of the extremely bold, radical and seemingly crazy statements to people that I would be able to do it? Besides the real vision Ezekiel sees at the beginning with the four animals that have strange characteristics amongst eyes covering their bodies where Ezekiel ends up eating a scroll so he can go proclaim to Israel the things God tells him, besides all that stuff, God is shown to be the jelous, angry God that wipes people off the earth for disobeying His commands. You gotta read this stuff- it's amazing. There's no way if I had never previously known the great love of our God that I could read this and still be ok with who God is. But God is great. He's great because He "brings men into deep waters not to drown them but to purify them". In these situations the Israelite population was destroyed and most that survived were scattered, but then the greatest thing happens. God is gracious and does not fully give them what they deserve- on at least 2 occassions God says, "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh (11:19-20, 36:26). And this is not because of them at all- they're still corrupt, He does it for His name's sake. That's been my prayer recently, that I would follow God whole-heartedly and that God would give me a new heart and spirit in the ways that I'm corrupt and change me not for my own accord (bc a lot of times I don't want to change) but to purify me for His name. We're incapable of changing ourselves in these ways- it's the prayer of the father "I do believe! Help my unbelief" or the ultimate prayer model "Thy will be done".
Thy will be done, Father, above my way, above my plans for life. Oh, God be bigger than me. Be my rock, be the one that prevails. Forgive my hidden faults and keep me from willful sins, may they not rule over me. Make the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart pleasing to you. Give me an undying love for you. God you are faithful, purify me to more of your image.
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