Personally, for me it's much more natural to avoid confrontation at any cost, even if it means letting myself or something I believe in be trampled on. The negative effects of confrontation far out weigh the good in my mind. Oh yeah, I can get into a debate or argument over things, even important 'big' things. But when it comes to actually getting into the face of a problem or someone who needs to take a step or two back, I'm ready to run and hide. If it takes more than some words or a few minutes of heart felt effort I'm not so into it. I think we're all a bit like that, even the most obnoxious, 'tough' people have their certain things they avoid confronting. Why? Why are we so afraid to face up to certain things? Because we either fear or, more often than fearing, know that we don't have what it takes to face that thing and at least come out some what whole.
That's how it was for me the first time I faced something really big, I'd thought and talked about this for a long time and all the words and phrases and verses were in my mind. I went into it thinking I had this under control, oh it was going to be so hard but I was ready for it, I was going to wear my stoic "I'm so strong and brave in the midst of this" face and walk right in and out of this situation. Then I got sick on my flight, I mean the kind of sick where I was starting to try and figure out which people looked like they could best handle being puked on around me. Suddenly all the phrases and words I'd memorized were gone, and I was left with basically one, "God help me." As waves of nausea and feeling like I was going to pass out kept taking their turns crashing on me, I was ready to get off that plane and be in my hotel bed. As we flew over the beautiful and very needy country of Guatemala, I wasn't quite ready to meet the reality waiting the second our plane touched the ground. To be honest I was like a bowl of jello dropped in a big mess on the floor. After finally making it through customs or whatever all that mad passport stamping was, and don't even get me started on how they dump your luggage out of the plane, we were on our way outside to be picked up by our hotel. So I thought.
Then it happened, confrontation.
Not a normal kind of confrontation, but the kind that confronts and challenges or up sets everything in your life. I saw poverty, poverty I could never end even if I completely emptied the wallet I was clinging too in fear that 'those people' might take the paper stashed inside. It was so hectic, the fumes and smoke from the vehicles, the smells of too many people and too few showers, all the suitcases and business people, the traditional dress of the natives, and the language I couldn't understand all spinning around my already spinning head. Then there she was, the spinning stopped and she looked me straight in the eye and begged me to buy a pack of gum so her children could eat. Confrontation. Everything I'd ever known collided into a parallel world that just happened to be a few hours flight from where I live every day in my perfect little life. The heart break for this woman, what ever her situation was, screamed to open my purse right there amongst the crowd and madness even though it wasn't smart, hey this woman was in need. But to my self the fear screamed much louder, 'someone might steal from you if you loosen your grip, they might even hurt you if they see you pulling out money, for all you know she's a drug addict or an alcoholic, she might not even have kids.' The spinning started again and there was our ride to the hotel, I dismissed her with the excuses that I had to go and technically I didn't have anything right in my hands to give her, but not before I saw the look in her eyes. That look still haunts me, the look of fear and disappointment, a struggle to hold to some sense of worth and hope as she turned to find some one else.
I was in Guatemala with my mom to adopt two kids into our family, adoption was something I'd prayed for our family my whole life. For the first bit of our drive I quickly found that looking into the streets of that city meant looking into the reality of the poverty there, and I was ready to get back on that plane and leave the country. So I tried basically staring a hole into the van floor, "God help me," I prayed, I didn't want to be there and I didn't want to see this over whelming need that I knew I couldn't fix no matter how many packs of bubble gum I bought from these people. Then I heard the voice of God probably the most clearly I've ever heard, "Don't look away." That simple, but it changed my life completely. Confrontation is what I was made for.
I was born again into a life of love and grace through the Savior who walked this earth confronting sickness with healing, the bound with freedom, the sinful with forgiveness, the hungry with food, the broken with restoration. We've let this idea of confrontation become something negative with us, we take phrases like 'everybody love everybody' and 'peace' and then think that means just sitting back and taking it easy. I thing it's time we wake up and shake off the dust of self and realize that to love some one you've gotta get up in their face and love them even if that's hard for you or them to take at the time. Loving someone doesn't mean staying out of their life and giving them space all the time, love confronts the hurts and anger and fears and does something about it. And peace? Oh sure, this isn't the real world, if we sit back and are polite then all the jerks out there are going to magically leave us alone and no one will hurt anyone. There is wrong in this world, there is evil that would deny peace and freedom to innocent people. So what, we sit back and don't fight that which tears peace and denies justice in the name of 'peace'? It's time we stand up and confront every situation and wrong with the love and strength we don't have in our selves but in God.
We were not made for a life of just getting by or our own pleasures, we were made to be an army of people united in belief that the love of our Father is what this hurting world needs. Let's confront the bitterness, pain, grief, hate, poverty, fear, complacency, anger, addictions, selfishness, orphaned, slavery, injustice and every wrong we meet with the perfect love of our Father.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Heart
The church and Christians, we refer to ourselves as the 'body of Christ' and as being 'Christ-like.' But I wonder if we really understand what that means, what it even is to live so caught up and surrendered to Jesus' love and grace that it consumes us and we become more like him. As I've spoken some on faith and a lot about loving others and how we need to show our faith in actions, I've also been really coming to realize that we can not be the hands and feet of God if we don't have our hearts so consumed in his. I've realised that so many times I'm quick to jump into being 'his' hands and feet and doing and going all 'for him' that I lose sight of the grace that enables me to do anything, I've realized that often I think that it's all about what I can do for him, how much I can work. It's crazy that I've actually caught myself doing things in an effort to please and earn what I've been freely given by my Father, I know so much better if I would slow down enough to just ponder this amazing love He has for me.
So my point in all of this is, how many times do we get so caught up in the look of God's heart instead of actually getting into His heart and love 'till that spills into our lives? If the heart of the church is not God's heart, how can we be his hands and feet? In James chapter 2, it talks about how the body without the spirit is dead and goes onto say that faith without deeds is dead. The church without the Father's heart is dead, the church without the Spirit of God is going to be dead. We can't be the hands and feet of him until we have his pulse to give life to our hands and feet, without his Spirit living in us we can't be alive in Him. In John 15 Jesus tells us that He is the vine, and that every branch that does not bear fruit will be cut off. And get this, here's such a simple and basic thing that we often just totally forget, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." (John 15:4)
It's so easy to let these human logic's get in our way. I've went through a Genesis study in school this year and I know that I've always before totally missed the fact that the temptation Adam and Eve faced was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After thousands of years it really hasn't changed much, we still want to do things our own ways with our own knowledge instead of relying on God. It's so easy to only see what's right in front of us in the human sense rather than surrender our flesh and let the Spirit open our eyes to God's kingdom. But we can't have it both ways, we can't get to God through our knowledge and our actions, we can't share the love of Christ with the world just by copying nice things he did for people. We've got to reach down in our hearts and souls and give it all up, let the sacrifice of Christ wash away the self and the old ways of sin so that the love of God can take over in our lives. "Remain in me, and I will remain in you." It's not going to be easy for us to to remain in Christ, we are born into the flesh and sin so it's going to take waking up every day and choosing Christ and surrendering self. We've got to continually press into the amazing love of our Father and the grace He's pouring down, Jesus isn't going to stay where He isn't welcome anymore, where our own motives and ways of following him are taking first in our hearts rather than the Spirit's lead. But if we deny ourselves and chose to remain in him, he will remain with us and show us how to live and be the body of Christ.
Alright, so all of that to basically just say that if we are going to bear Love's heart we've gotta know him first.
So my point in all of this is, how many times do we get so caught up in the look of God's heart instead of actually getting into His heart and love 'till that spills into our lives? If the heart of the church is not God's heart, how can we be his hands and feet? In James chapter 2, it talks about how the body without the spirit is dead and goes onto say that faith without deeds is dead. The church without the Father's heart is dead, the church without the Spirit of God is going to be dead. We can't be the hands and feet of him until we have his pulse to give life to our hands and feet, without his Spirit living in us we can't be alive in Him. In John 15 Jesus tells us that He is the vine, and that every branch that does not bear fruit will be cut off. And get this, here's such a simple and basic thing that we often just totally forget, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." (John 15:4)
It's so easy to let these human logic's get in our way. I've went through a Genesis study in school this year and I know that I've always before totally missed the fact that the temptation Adam and Eve faced was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After thousands of years it really hasn't changed much, we still want to do things our own ways with our own knowledge instead of relying on God. It's so easy to only see what's right in front of us in the human sense rather than surrender our flesh and let the Spirit open our eyes to God's kingdom. But we can't have it both ways, we can't get to God through our knowledge and our actions, we can't share the love of Christ with the world just by copying nice things he did for people. We've got to reach down in our hearts and souls and give it all up, let the sacrifice of Christ wash away the self and the old ways of sin so that the love of God can take over in our lives. "Remain in me, and I will remain in you." It's not going to be easy for us to to remain in Christ, we are born into the flesh and sin so it's going to take waking up every day and choosing Christ and surrendering self. We've got to continually press into the amazing love of our Father and the grace He's pouring down, Jesus isn't going to stay where He isn't welcome anymore, where our own motives and ways of following him are taking first in our hearts rather than the Spirit's lead. But if we deny ourselves and chose to remain in him, he will remain with us and show us how to live and be the body of Christ.
Alright, so all of that to basically just say that if we are going to bear Love's heart we've gotta know him first.
Monday, March 9, 2009
To Bear Love's Heart
For quite a while I've wanted to do something dedicated mainly to orphans and this "new thing" in my life to share the heart of Love with those in our world who are so very needy. Over the past year or two God has used my brief meetings with those who truly can be called in need in the physical and material sense to open and motivate me to press into a deeper place in my faith. To have faith in the love He has given me, and so to try and share that as He's called me too not just with the poorest but with anyone who hasn't know the love of the Father. Quite honestly I think I'm probably stumbling along in this first phases of walking a deeper place of faith with deeds. But I'm trying and learning that the more I press into God and allow him to love me, not trying to earn or deserve it enough, but to simply allow the grace I've been given to open my heart and eyes to others and to break and share this amazing love I've so mercifully been blessed to know.
SO, this whole idea started when I was writing. Funny how the words I write are being used back towards me more than ever it seems of late, maybe I should stop writing....haha like that's gonna happen. So I'm sitting in church one night after I'd spoken earlier that day on orphans and Love and faith. Then these words just start to burn in my heart, "I want to be Your love song to the world, I want to bear Your heart in my deeds."
And now, this is what's kind of been 'born' I suppose you could say, in my heart. A desire to truly Bear Love's Heart in this world. It's my hope that the stories and thoughts shared in this blog are just the beginning of something much bigger, beginning with my own life but also in others.
Here's my definition, with some help from a dictionary on the word 'Bear', of what it means to Bear Love's Heart. And yeah, by Love I am referring to God.
To accept showing Love to my world as a responsibility.
To hold in my mind the desires and purposes of Love and communicate that to others.
To conduct and carry my self in accordance to Love.
To move and follow where Love leads.
To show Love not just through words, but by making professed faith in Love shown through actions.
To support and transport is one definition of the word 'bear', the goal is to support and transport Love through out my life.
To know Love's heart and continually strive to go deeper in my relationship with Him, to share what I've been given with the world, believing that God is love, the only source of love and to know Him is to know love.
To bear Love's heart is, in essence, to chase the heart of God and share what he shows and gives to our world through word and deed, to live our lives striving to be the reflection of Christ' light in our world. To show love and hope we can all have through the sacrifice of Christ to every person, rich and poor, young and old, local and foreign.
I challenge and encourage anyone who reads this blog to just open up your heart to the love of God, and let him reign fully there and use our lives to live in and out the love we have from him. It's what I've found I'm here for and know it's what we are all created for, to live a life in this imperfect world consumed by the perfect, unconditional love of our God, and to really live in a way that shows that love in all that we do.
Love.
SO, this whole idea started when I was writing. Funny how the words I write are being used back towards me more than ever it seems of late, maybe I should stop writing....haha like that's gonna happen. So I'm sitting in church one night after I'd spoken earlier that day on orphans and Love and faith. Then these words just start to burn in my heart, "I want to be Your love song to the world, I want to bear Your heart in my deeds."
And now, this is what's kind of been 'born' I suppose you could say, in my heart. A desire to truly Bear Love's Heart in this world. It's my hope that the stories and thoughts shared in this blog are just the beginning of something much bigger, beginning with my own life but also in others.
Here's my definition, with some help from a dictionary on the word 'Bear', of what it means to Bear Love's Heart. And yeah, by Love I am referring to God.
To accept showing Love to my world as a responsibility.
To hold in my mind the desires and purposes of Love and communicate that to others.
To conduct and carry my self in accordance to Love.
To move and follow where Love leads.
To show Love not just through words, but by making professed faith in Love shown through actions.
To support and transport is one definition of the word 'bear', the goal is to support and transport Love through out my life.
To know Love's heart and continually strive to go deeper in my relationship with Him, to share what I've been given with the world, believing that God is love, the only source of love and to know Him is to know love.
To bear Love's heart is, in essence, to chase the heart of God and share what he shows and gives to our world through word and deed, to live our lives striving to be the reflection of Christ' light in our world. To show love and hope we can all have through the sacrifice of Christ to every person, rich and poor, young and old, local and foreign.
I challenge and encourage anyone who reads this blog to just open up your heart to the love of God, and let him reign fully there and use our lives to live in and out the love we have from him. It's what I've found I'm here for and know it's what we are all created for, to live a life in this imperfect world consumed by the perfect, unconditional love of our God, and to really live in a way that shows that love in all that we do.
Love.
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