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Another Transition

ADT

Speaking of transitions, I am getting ready for a big one…I think I may have mentioned a couple of times in this space that I’ve been in an eight-month advanced discipleship training course (or ADT for short) since last October.

(Just between you and me, they should really drop the advanced part from the title.  I think that was just to make over-achievers like me feel better about the fact that we are really just beginners when it comes to the gospel and the truth of the grace of God.  You just don’t realize it until about a month into the course.  It should probably be titled “Do Over for Slow People Who Missed Some of the Most Important Parts of the Gospel the First Time and Have Tried to Live in Their Own Strength.”  I realize there are drawbacks…like that title won’t fit on a t-shirt or a tote bag, but I think it will catch on.)

This post will go live less than 12-hours after our last ADT class.  I started to get nervous today and I kept picturing that Sandra Bullock movie “28 Days” where her character goes to rehab for an alcohol addiction.  While she is in rehab other patients graduate, but when they get back out in real life they immediately do drugs again and wind up back in rehab.  Eight months ago I entered the ADT program for a flesh addiction, I guess I am subconsciously worried that after I leave ADT (my spiritual version of rehab) I am going to crash and burn, do flesh-crack and wind up back at the facility.

Things I learned in ADT that I pray God will never let me forget (and when I do, I pray He reminds me quickly!):

  • First and foremost, there’s good flesh and bad flesh and it all profits nothing and bears the fruit of death in our lives, no matter how good it looks.  You can dress it up, you can even bedazzle it, but flesh is still flesh.  It stinks and it’s dead.  The Pharisees had a lot of really good, really religious flesh, but Jesus was harder on them than He was the prostitutes and tax collectors.
  • Jesus died not just to save us from our sins, but so that we could LIVE.  He wants us to live abundant, full lives unencumbered by sin, free from the shackles of religion, and from our union with Him.  We no longer live by simply a moral code.  It’s about relationship with God and that relationship can’t be reduced to a list of do’s and don’ts.  We are united in Spirit with the Creator of the universe.  We are one with Christ.  He is in us and we are in Him.  We are to live, here and now, from that union. (Just to connect the first two items – God’s not looking to strengthen our good flesh or help us be good or live better lives.  He wants us to live in relationship with Him, in moment by moment dependence on Him).
  • Living from our union in Christ is uniquely expressed in every single one of us.  Christ expresses Himself differently through me than He does anyone else on the planet.  I am free to be myself and God doesn’t expect me to be like anyone else.  Even more good news is that you are free to be yourself too and I get to enjoy how Jesus expresses Himself through you.
  • Because of Jesus, and absolutely NOTHING else, I am loved, accepted, valued, and totally secure.  It’s not based on what I do or don’t do.  In Christ, these things are true, ALL. THE. TIME.
  • In spite of my best efforts (that’s code for Kim’s flesh), I am never going to fully understand all of this.  After eight months, I am really comfortable knowing I will never understand it all.  In fact, it’s been very freeing to say there are things I don’t know and things I will never know.  It’s not my job to figure it all out.  I just need to receive what God chooses to reveal to me.
  • Being real and vulnerable is the only way to have true relationship with God and with others.  Hiding and wearing masks is deadly in all kinds of ways.
  • Expectations kill relationships.  When we tell people what we expect of them, it places limits on how real and open they can be with us.  It keeps them from sharing their hearts with us and erects walls and barriers.  Enjoy who God created them to be and allow Him to transform them.
  • Finally, Jesus is enough.  It’s not Jesus plus anything else.  It is only Jesus.  Which is why I realize that while I may feel like an underdone cake, in Christ I am complete.  I don’t need to go to ADT every week to finish baking.  I need to walk in total dependence on Christ.  He is the Author and Finisher of my faith (not me and not ADT) and until I see Him face-to-face, I will probably feel like an underdone cake, and that is perfectly ok.

I apologize for the length of my list, but after all it was the most transforming eight months of my life.  And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I would also like to say thank you to everyone in our class who so openly and vulnerably shared their lives.  It took me a while to understand, but I finally got it.  The ugly parts and the struggles are where we really see our flesh for what it is and learn to live as Christ.

Finally, thank you to my family for freeing me up one night a week to make this happen.  And thank you for loving me and my brand of crazy, I am a blessed woman.  I love you all and love how God created each one of you to uniquely express Himself to the world through.

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Transitions

So, I way underestimated how long it would take me to gain traction and stop spinning my wheels as our household has once again transitioned from the day-in-day-out grind of a busy school year to the much more loose routine of SUMMER!

In theory this should be seamless for me, right?  I don’t go to school.  I don’t have homework every night.  I don’t have to sit in six classes a day, take the right books to each class, and (gasp) remember my locker combination under the pressure of a five-minute class change.  But in reality, I am floundering.

What I forget every single year, for about 16 years now (if you count pre-school – and I do), is the impact of having everyone home, all the time.  No kidding, every year I forget, as if I’ve never done this before.  So it takes me a while to adjust.

Just like going into a dark building after being outside in broad day light.  It takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the lack of light and you feel lost.  You fumble around in the darkness for a few seconds, as if blind.  That’s me, the stumbling, summer-blind woman.

Generally it takes me longer to transition from one thing to the next than most other, more normal people.  In fact, when it comes to summer it takes me just about all summer to relax and figure it out and then it’s time for school to start back.  Then it takes me until Christmas to gear up and transition back into the school routine.

All I can say is I am slow.

The truth is, I don’t handle any transitions well, not just the annual, seasonal ones.  Some of the other poorly handled transitions in my life:

  • When I was a kid we moved a lot or at least to me it seemed like a lot.  There are so many places to go with this my mind is in a whirlwind, but suffice it to say I think I was the last person to know when we were going to move each time because it was so hard for me no one wanted to be the one to tell me.  Every time I started a new school I ate alone for months and it would take me the entire school year to make my first friend.  Yes I was that kid.
  • My husband and I helped start a new church within a few weeks of getting married.  We attended that church the first 12 years of our life together.  When it ended we joined another church and have been there over 10 years now.  It took about seven years for it to start to feel like my church.  It still feels like my new church.
  • Speaking of being married 22 years…after all this time I actually am starting to feel like I have some idea of how to be married.  I’ve been looking for a formula for how to do it right all these years and I finally found it…Jesus is the formula.  Everything else is worthless.  Again, I am slow and I am sorry.
  • When our first daughter was born, I think I spent the entire first year of her life sitting in our recliner rocking her because I had not thought one minute about what to do with babies once you have them.  The truth is I still feel like I am transitioning into parenthood.  Again, I wasted time looking for the formula.  Again, Jesus is the formula – period, end of story, amen.

All this to say, I had grand dreams of what I could get accomplished this summer without being hemmed in by the parameters of three different schools on three different schedules.  But between dentist appointments, sleep overs, vacations, and summer jobs, well…we’ll see.

To my family and friends, I can only apologize and remind you that there are other reasons you love me.  I am trusting in God’s grace and that He knows me better than I know myself.

2 Corinthians 12:9 (NASB) – “And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

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It’s Official – It’s No Longer A Series, It’s Graduated To A Theme

A couple of weekends ago I was chattin’ with the Lord about some things on my heart:  family, grace, love, vacation, the grocery store, making dinner, Bible study, writing.  You know the usual stuff.  I took a lot of notes about our conversation.

I keep several small notebooks around all the time because you just never know where you are going to be when inspiration hits and you’ve got to jot it down.  I am apparently at that age when inspiration hits you better get it down fast or it’s gone, quick.  And I mean like lightning.  Sometimes it’s gone before I can even uncap my pen!

I’m just going with the flow though.  It’s a season of life and Jesus is enough.  I just try to laugh… A LOT!

Sometimes when I am chattin’ with the Lord He answers questions for me.  Sometimes He just tells me things I wasn’t even thinking about.  He often speaks to me in the shower or when I first wake up and haven’t gotten distracted yet.  Sometimes, our conversation is more of a regular dialogue and less of a question answer session.  You know, like a regular relationship.  So as we’re chattin’, I jot down notes.

In case it’s not obvious, I have spent quite a while talking to Him about grace, love, The Resurrection, abundant life and reigning.  The more we talk about it, the more He reveals and I have begun to realize that it is truly a never-ending topic.  And for that, I am profoundly grateful.

So back to a couple of weekends ago, as we were talking, I heard a question in the back of my mind, “What would you write if you thought it wasn’t for public consumption?”

I thought about what that meant.  Honestly for a while I wasn’t sure I even understood the question.  But what I finally came around to was, if I wasn’t concerned about audience, format, topic, length, voice, marketability, etc., what would I write?

Once I understood the question I had to admit that I wasn’t sure I knew the answer.

So I sat down to find out.

I started doing some regular, spontaneous free-writing (I am sure there is some technical writing jargon for this process, but I am learning as I go and someone can tell me in the comments what it is called) just to see what would happen. So I’ve been sitting down with a blank Word document, praying and then I just start writing and see what happens.

 

Writing Desk

 

And you know what inevitably happens? Every single time no matter how I start at the beginning I end up dialoguing with God on paper instead of out loud or in my head.

And you know what we talk about?  Grace, love, Jesus, abundant life, reigning, Bible study.

I guess my point is, even when I sit down in a completely unstructured environment with no expectations or planned outcomes, this is still what’s coming out of me.  Therefore, I think it’s safe to assume for the foreseeable future it’s going to be a theme around here in this space.  My series on abundant living and reigning in life has graduated to a theme.

I would also like to take this opportunity (or should I say risk) to invite you to share your thoughts here.  Maybe you have some examples to share or ideas about what it means to walk free in Christ, to live abundantly and to reign in life.  Maybe you even disagree with my ideas.  Adventures are so much more fun when we share them together.

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Play

chocolate bar milk shakes

chocolate bar milk shakes (Photo credit: twobobswerver)

Pressing the Play button after a Pause is a little daunting.

Just needed to sit on some thoughts and ideas for a bit to let them become more clear before spinning them back out in this space.

Picture making a chocolate milkshake.  You grab your blender, put in different ingredients – chocolate ice cream, milk, chocolate syrup – and then you blend them together.  If you don’t put the lid on the machine while it’s blending you’ll just be scraping a mess of ice cream, milk, and chocolate syrup off the ceiling, you and the floor instead of enjoying the end product.

Sometimes keeping the lid on things for a bit produces a more enjoyable, well-blended treat.  It might still be messy in the end and it will NEVER be perfect, but at least it will be poured out and presented in a more attractive manner instead of splattered everywhere.  🙂

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Pause

Just a quick post to say I am unplugging for a bit to get my bearings.  There’s a lot going on in this little noggin that’s needs some sortin’ out with the Father.

See you soon.  🙂

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It’s Being Vulnerable

As I was re-reading and editing my last post, Well, It’s A Little Bit About Us, the thought kept floating through my mind that for God to truly love us (versus controlling us like robots) there is an incredible amount of risk involved, our ability to choose.  He has exposed Himself and made Himself vulnerable.  He has, in some sense, given us the ability to actually hurt Him.

He could have created Adam and Eve without free will, but He didn’t.  Not only did He give them the ability to choose, He created the choice itself.  He created the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Not only did He create both trees, He pointed out both trees (as a parent I would have just camouflaged the tree I didn’t want them to eat from so they would never know it was there).  And might I add, by saying, “Don’t” there may have been some provoking involved.  He almost seems to have forced a choice early on in the relationship.

He made Himself vulnerable over and over throughout Israel’s history.  Even when He, God Himself, the One who had just rescued them from Egypt, tried to speak to the people at Mt. Sinai they threw their hands over their ears and told Him to speak through Moses.  They couldn’t handle it.

His people rejected Him over and over, but God kept loving, kept being Love, (See 1 Corinthians 13) kept extending Himself to us, reaching out to us.

God made Himself vulnerable by giving us the ability to choose, but He wasn’t afraid of our choices.  He wasn’t terrified we would choose poorly and forever wreck things.

Why?  Because Jesus was already part of the plan.  In fact, Jesus was The Plan from the beginning.

Jesus gave us a new commandment, to no longer just love our neighbor as ourselves (old covenant), but to love others as He has loved.

How did He love? By controlling our every move and giving us a sure-fire, mistake proof, how-to manual to achieve prosperity and pain-free living? (Some would argue that the Bible is that mistake proof, how-to manual, but I find it interesting how little detail the Bible actually gives us for day-to-day living and in fact guarantees us suffering and tribulation in this life).

He made Himself vulnerable to us.  He gave all of Himself to us.  He squeezed all of Himself into a tiny earth suit and arrived here on planet earth in the most vulnerable way possible, as an infant.  In the womb, in a manger, on the run from Herod, at home (His brothers weren’t always nice to Him), in ministry (one of His closest friends was the betrayer), at His trial and on the cross.  He made Himself vulnerable in every possible way.  He gave us not only the opportunity to hurt Him, but to kill Him.

But that’s how He loves.  He took the risk.  He allowed us the opportunity to embrace or reject, to love or inflict pain.

Jesus made Himself completely vulnerable to us.  He risked pain and suffering to love us.  He freely loved, and still does, while giving us the freedom to choose our response.

If we are to love as He loved, can we do that without making ourselves vulnerable to others?  Is there a safe way to love?  Can love possibly be pain-free?  And can we truly love anyone if we place expectations on how they are to respond to our love?

Jesus, I don’t understand it and I can’t muster it up on my own. Love others through me.  Tear down the walls of fear, self-protection and control.  As I abide in You, abide in me and bear much fruit. 

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Well, It’s A Little Bit About Us

In my last post, It’s All About Him, I talked about how abundant living is believing and trusting God is Who He says He is and will do what He says He will do.  And I also said, “…even though God includes us in the story and invites us to partner with Him in the story, IT’S NOT ABOUT US and the outcome does NOT depend on us.  It all depends on God, His infinite Love, amazing grace, and His Sovereign plan.”

I wanted to follow up on this a little bit because while all of that is true, I don’t want to create a sense of God being distant.

Have you ever asked yourself, “What’s the upside for God?”  Well I have.  My close friends know that for the last couple of years I have said this many, many times.  And while most of the time I was being sarcastic and funny (I know, you are shocked) I truly wanted an answer.  I truly wanted to find the purpose in all of this for God.

Back to my question…do you get my point?  I mean really, from the very beginning, Genesis chapter 3, our story is one of disobeying and rejecting God.  Even in a perfect world, the Garden of Eden, we rejected Him and His plan.

This is our story, Love reaches out to us and we reject Love.  So what does He get out of all of this?

If you back up further, I think there’s a question that comes before, “What’s the upside for God?”  I think the first question is, if God is Omniscient (and He is), “Why did He set all this in motion in the first place?”

I think Jesus told us the answer when He met Nicodemus…God so loved.  The God who is Love, the Triune God, who lived in perfect community with Himself (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) loved so much that He wanted to express that love and multiply it.  Love created us to love us and for us to be so loved that we would multiply that love in all the earth.

Love creates, Love expresses, Love needs an object.

We were created to be loved by Love Himself and to express that love.  And that is how it becomes about us.  We are the creation and object of His love.

But He knew we would reject Him.  He knew we would reject Love instead of receiving it and living it.

So again, why?  Because He is Love regardless of what we do, whether we love Him in return or not.  He continues to be Love and to Love.  He is the definition of unconditional Love.

As believers in Jesus Christ, reigning in life is allowing the Love of God in us, that Love that created us, saves us and transforms us from the inside out, to reach out to others.  It’s exactly what God said to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply.”  It’s the same thing Jesus said to His disciples, us, “Go make disciples.”  Jesus also said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

How did Jesus love us?  Unconditionally, fully and completely.  He gave all of Himself for us, knowing not all of us would receive it.  Knowing in fact that many would reject His expression of love and refuse to be the object of His love.

For those of us who receive Him reigning is receiving Love and then in turn loving.  It’s allowing Love, Jesus in us, to create through us, that same Love in us to express itself, and that same unconditional Love in us to love others, the objects of His love, even if they reject Love.

And that, I believe, is how it’s about us.

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It’s All About Him

Since I haven’t written much about Jeremiah for a while, I thought I would just post about him again this week.  Love this guy!

Towards the end of Jerusalem as they knew it, when it became very apparent that the city and the Temple of the Lord were on the verge of total destruction by the army of King Nebuchadnezzar, God gave Jeremiah a personal word.  In Chapter 32, He told him that his cousin, Hanamel, was going to come to him and ask him to buy his (Hanamel’s) field back in Anathoth, Jeremiah’s home town.  God told Jeremiah to buy the field from Hanamel.

There are a couple of pieces of background information helpful in making my point:  1)  Jeremiah was “…shut up in the court of the guard, which was in the house of the king of Judah (in other words, he was in jail) when God gave him this word; and 2) it was part of the Jewish law that if someone became poor enough that they needed to sell their land then their closest living relative had an obligation to buy it from them (very simplified explanation of this complicated law) in order to keep the land in the family.

So, just to be clear, Jeremiah was in jail; the entire country was getting ready to fall to the hands of the King of Babylon; Hanamel (Jeremiah’s cousin) had become poor; and God told Jeremiah to buy his land from him.

I don’t know about you, but in the natural, this makes absolutely no sense.  For us, this would be like buying a house in downtown Baghdad right after the United States declared war on Saddam Hussein.  Crazy, right?

Not only did God tell Jeremiah it was going to happen, it actually did.  And Jeremiah bought the field for seventeen shekels of silver.  According to Jeremiah 32:14, Jeremiah had two copies of the deed, “…put in an earthenware jar, that they may last a long time.”

Why?  It was a symbolic act meant to demonstrate the promise of God to His rebellious people that after their 70-year exile He would bring them home.  According to 32:15, “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’”

Getting around to my point about living an abundant life in Christ…even in the crummiest circumstances we ALWAYS have hope.  Even when our crummy circumstances are our own fault we can still have hope.  At this point in the book of Jeremiah, jail (Jeremiah was imprisoned), poverty (Hanamel had to sell his land), and defeat (the Babylonian’s destroying Jerusalem) were not the end of the story.  God is always the end of the story.  God alone is the Author and Finisher of our faith.

Why?  Because even though God includes us in the story and invites us to partner with Him in the story, IT’S NOT ABOUT US and the outcome does NOT depend on us.  It all depends on God, His infinite Love, amazing grace, and His Sovereign plan.  God is always the end of the story.  God alone is the Author and Finisher of our faith, not our enemies and not even us.

Even though the Jews had completely rebelled against God here was His promise to them:

Jeremiah 32: 36 – 44 (ESV) –  “Now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, ‘It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence’: Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.  “For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good that I promise them. Fields shall be bought in this land of which you are saying, ‘It is a desolation, without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans.’ Fields shall be bought for money, and deeds shall be signed and sealed and witnessed, in the land of Benjamin, in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, in the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the Shephelah, and in the cities of the Negeb; for I will restore their fortunes, declares the Lord.”

Notice how that entire passage is about what God is going to do.  It’s about what only He can do.  You know what our job is?  Believe Him and trust Him to be Who He says He is and to do what He says He will do even when it doesn’t make sense to us.  That’s it.

The gospel of John calls it abiding.  Paul calls it reigning in life.  I call it wonderful.

Stay tuned next time for:  “Well, It’s a Little Bit About Us”

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Jesus Is Reigning in Life

I haven’t written much about our study on Jeremiah recently.  The truth is that this study is hard.  The message is heavy and sad.  And the more I learn the more I realize just how difficult Jeremiah’s life was.  I’ve talked about it before, but even now after being in this study since January, I have tears in my eyes thinking about what he endured in this life in order to serve his God and serve His people.

Not only did he share virtually the same message for well over forty years (he probably not only sounded like a broken record, he probably felt like one, too), but he was hated and despised for it.  People tried to kill him.  His own family members (the men of Anathoth) plotted against him.  God told him not to marry or have children, so he was devoid of seemingly even the smallest human comforts (no wife to hug him or little Jeremiah’s or Jeremina’s to jump in his lap after a long day of prophesying).  He often had to hide.  He was held prisoner in a cistern and almost starved to death.  There are many parts of the book that indicate he wrestled with his emotions (anger, fear, grief, and intense loneliness) and suffered with doubt and confusion – just like us.

All he truly had was the Lord.  And while we might not like to think about it this way, Jeremiah the Prophet reigned in life.  He reigned in life because all he had, everything he hoped in was all wrapped up in El Shaddai, the All Sufficient One.  He needed no one and nothing else.

God hasn’t called many of us to the type of ministry that He called Jeremiah to.  But we all face challenges (if you don’t and your life is seamless and perfect, email me, we need to have coffee so I can find out what kind of meds you and/or your family are on):  difficult jobs, health crisis (what’s the plural of crisis?), financial challenges, marriage difficulties, rebellious teenagers and 10,000 other possibilities.  I have been in seasons of my life where I have experienced several of them at the same time.

The question for us is, if nothing about our circumstances improved or even if they actually got worse, is Jesus enough?  Is the All Sufficient God of the Universe, Maker of Heaven and Earth enough for us?  Or are we willing to say that anything (pick one or pick five above) has the power to undo us?

When we stop fighting our circumstances and start embracing our Savior, we have abundant life.  When Jesus is enough we are reigning.

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Abundant Life Remix

Since this series has gotten rather long I thought that taking a few minutes to re-cap might be helpful.  Well, I know it will be helpful for me anyway.  I don’t want the major ideas to be lost over time.

I began this series the day after Resurrection Sunday asking, from the perspective of believers in Christ, what it looks like to live abundant life and to reign in life.  I then started out with a few things that are what I have come to refer to as abundance-drainers and tiara-tilters:

  • TRYING HARDER  – my coping mechanism of choice (*one subsequent insight I have had about TRYING HARDER is that when we “try” something it is different from simply doing it.  Trying implies that we’re not sure of the outcome…that one’s free, so just chew on it for a while.)
  • Fear
  • Self-sufficiency (*another freebie – anything including the words “self” or “I” are probably going to work against you in terms of abundant living.  Abundant living is all about Jesus.)

Since there are so many abundance-drainers and tiara tilters I thought a very scientific assessment would be in order to help you if you were struggling to identify with any I had presented so far.

We then paused for a message of love from the heart of our Father, Love Himself:  there is NO condemnation for those who are in Christ (absolutely NONE); our identity is not in our flesh patterns (coping mechanisms); and our flesh was NEVER designed to work in the first place – it was in fact designed to fail us (isn’t that comforting?).

At that point I began talking about things that DO characterize abundant living and reigning in life:

This is where we are so far.  Any questions or thoughts, friends?  Maybe you have something to add or maybe you have a different perspective, would love to hear it.

Stay tuned, more to come…