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.