Bubbles and Questions and Divisions

I was reading a guys blog who was talking about the "bubble" we often get stuck in in life, and the balance of living outside that bubble but keeping from going off in the wrong direction. Then I've been reading ch.10 of Pursuit of God by Tozer over and over just soaking it all in. It got me started thinking about some things I'd been meaning to write for a bit and I'm finally going to write it down like I've been meaning to.

Have you ever seen the commercial on TV where the people jump from one bubble to another, each bubble playing a different song? I think that's been me a lot. There have been separate bubbles for the way I talk, another for my actions, one for being with my friends, another for my parents, and so on. I've been thinking about my faith, about my Savior. I don't ever want to be ashamed or too distracted to live Christ' ways or to speak his name. I've been thinking about how so often the things in my heart, word, and deed are so different. Tozer calls this the 'sacred-secular antithesis.' We so often divide our lives into different areas, some we consider 'sacred' good things like church or singing a certain hymn, and others we consider 'secular' and are frustrated yet very drawn too like eating or movies etc. It's a difficult balance, I find myself constantly in situations where I wonder what I'm suposed to do and be. It's hard to know when to preach with words or deeds. It's difficult to feel as if you're a Christian when you often end up in places that contrast church or a religious place. Sometimes it's easy to feel as if you have to either be this wet blanket depressing 'christian' or else the wild little sinner. And both leave you dissapointed.

This has been on my heart and mind for a while. And after questions and pondering I've come to a realization, but I'd rather just share those questions and thoughts right now. I hope you'll find what I did.



What if my words were the same as my actions, and my actions reflected by my words?

What if my heart compelled every action I do and word that I spoke?

What if nothing in my life were separated by bubbles, if there were no separation between my actions, my words, my thoughts, my heart?

What if it's not even about my words, deeds, or heart?

What if my self were gone, and only the image of Love remained?

What if everything I am were surrendered and captivated in Love?



I don't want to live this life in a bunch of different bubbles or even just one bubble, asking a bunch of questions, but never having the guts to break out of those bubbles and live the answers out.

God is God wherever we are, when ever etc. And His Spirit is alive in us.

....let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith... Hebrews 12:1-2

Injustice

Today I was checking out some pictures from International Justice Mission that just totally broke my heart, made me rather angry/sad, and caused my soul to cry out. I saw pictures of beautiful young girls, who had been rescued from trafficking and were now in a safe house. That's great, I'm so glad to see justice and hope being brought into their lives. But the thing that made me so upset was that they even needed to be rescued. The most basic things of life, having a home and someone, like a parent, to love and surround you as you grow up in safety and love, that was taken away from them. It's ridiculous to me that in an age where we walk on the moon, drive one of our several cars down paved roads, that such disgusting injustice lives on the same earth that I do. Those girls in the pictures should never have had to be rescued in the first place, there never should have been such a twisted 'business' to be caught in.



You know what else is totally crazy to me? That I can sit and look at a computer screen and my heart so totally go out to girls I've never seen before. I love that God so breaks my heart for them and that He shows me that there are better ways and that this trafficking thing that got those girls is not right. But that's not all, it's totally crazy to me that I would want to love and help those girls I've never met, because their condition of need is so visible and tangible to me, and yet that I would hesitate or refuse to reach out and love a neighbor because their problems are only of the invisible, non physical need of a soul for Christ' love. In an age where the gospel is so easy to come by and share here in my community, I'm afraid or 'too busy' to share what I know.

For me to love someone here is to step out against the normal ways of this society and truly care not just about how someone looks or what they do or don't have, but to care about what they'll have in the next life, weather or not they have any true hope for this life and after. If I'm going to love someone here it's not going to be easy, because there are so many other things that the world I live in offers me here and it rarely points me to anyone but myself. I don't pretend the world is not tempting and that very very often I'm not lulled by this race for the American Dream that I've grown up around, but the more I press into God, the more I'm awakened to the injustice right here. To the Father my neighbor is just as important and valued as the girls I saw who were rescued from trafficking, they were created just as uniquely and with beautiful plans and purpose for their lives in the hope of Christ.

Injustice. It's not fair that those precious girls from Cambodia have gone through so much that they had to be rescued and taken to a safe house where their faces have to be blurred from pictures for their protection, and it's not fair that my neighbor is often just a familiar face in the little brown house, that an encounter with them is often thought of as annoying or an interruption to my day. I am saved from my own sins and their eternal consequences only by the sacrifice of Christ for all, so I'm meant to be sharing what I've been given and to be a part of the body of Christ who is alive and working still. To every soul there is a value and an urgency that we can never see until we are willing to choose to set aside what pleases our eyes and self, and allow Love to open our hearts to what his heart sees.

Hunger Touches All of US

So I was checking out i-heart.org today, ( the I heart Revolution site) and followed the link to freerice.com. Just through playing the games, you can help feed hungry people. For every answer you get right they donate ten grains of rice, after five minutes or so it really adds up!



A few facts on hunger:

963 million people do not have enough to eat, more than the populations of USA, Canada, and the European Union

Every six seconds a child dies because they are hungry

25,000 people (adults and children) die every day from hunger and related causes.

Lack of vitamin A kills a million infants each year.

For more stats check out http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats.



Pretty crazy, that we live in this 'other world' where this doesn't really touch us. Or does it?

I remember so many times that I fell to my knees in the comfort of my church, "Jesus I want to know you, you seem so far away. Draw me closer I want to know you more." He already answered that cry over two thousand years ago, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Quite simply, to serve others is to serve Jesus, to lay down your life for another is to be like Jesus. Think about how much you can learn about someone by visiting them in the hospital, or by cleaning their house, or by just taking time to talk with them unexpectedly. Think about how much better you understand another person's perspective when you pause your own thoughts long enough to think of theirs. That's the point I think Jesus was trying to get across, when you humble your self enough (think about how humble that the Son of God came to earth as a mere man) and put your self aside, you're becoming like Christ and the veil between you and him is torn, self is on longer in the way.

So yes, hunger touched me (and quite honestly still does) in the form of hungering more for myself, and in that way hunger gripped the starving all the more through my selfishness.

Hunger touches all of us. When we blatantly ignore the cries of the hungry, we are touched by hunger not in the form of starvation, but of gluttony. Hunger and starvation bring yet another under their power. When we ignore or turn away from those who are hungry, not only do we not avoid it, but we become a valuable ally and slave to it. But when we choose to touch back, to touch the starving, we erase a bit more of the darkness that is hunger. When we choose to stop our lives for a moment to reach into another life with love, we push back the injustice reigning over lives. Let's take a stand against all hunger with the one thing that every soul needs, Love.

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18

Confrontation

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.

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.