God moves towards our brokenness

I have noticed that we have a strong tendency to move away from brokenness and what the world deems ugly, unfavorable, and "un-glorious" (I don't think un-glorious is actually a word:). It struck me recently how unchecked this tendency goes in myself, even though I claim I want to become more like Jesus. Jesus did the opposite. He was drawn like a magnet to the sick, the unrighteous sinners, the people most detested in the culture like tax collectors and prostitutes, the poor, the lame, the ugly, the down and out. He crossed social boundaries and broke social rules so much so that he was delivered into the hands of the authorities to be crucified. He announced good news to these people: His Kingdom was for people like them. People who were in need of a Savior. People who had been forgiven much so that they would love much. People who were poor in spirit. People who would receive Him and His Kingdom like trusting, joyous little children.

It is sometimes easy for me to move away from brokenness in myself and others, especially in others when it rubs up against me and annoys me or negatively affects me. I want to be like Jesus in this area. I want to move towards brokenness and not be afraid of it or intimidated by it. I want to love people in their brokenness, especially the brokenness in others that I would be prone to judge, write off, or dislike. I have a glimpse in my heart of what that would be like and it is beautiful.

something that is moving from my head to my heart

Something that is moving from my head to my heart: That God is 100% in control of my life, of Elliana's life, of Trent's life, and of the lives of all the people I love the most. He is trustworthy. This earth is not our home. There is so much freedom in trusting Him completely and holding it all with an open hand. That is SO hard sometimes. He has been working on my heart on that this week. I am very far from where I want to be as evidenced by some of the deep fear and worry I have felt this week for relatively small things pertaining to Ellie.

This thought is nothing so profound on a head level, but ridiculously profound on a heart level.

Jesus the famous one looking at me

I think we all struggle with wanting to be special and important. We all have an innate desire to be something or someone special. To stand out. To be significant and important and valuable and lovely. We often hear and know on a head level that we are significant and important because we are God's child and He loves us, but that doesn't seem to really stop us from looking for significance and importance in other places. When you really observe our lives, we are frantically and desperately looking for significance in the ways we perform in sports or school or our job or whatever role we happen to find ourselves in. We love compliments way too much and often find that our mood and sense of well being is determined by how well we are performing, how well we are liked, and how important or significant others think we are.

two of the greatest disparities in the world

1. How insignificant we actually are but how significant and narcissistic we think we are. (We usually think and live like we are the center of the universe, and this could not be further from the truth.)

2. How much we deserved to be crucified for our sin and how much Jesus did NOT deserve to be crucified

I heard a quote months after I wrote this post the first time that captured this disparity:

Sin is man substituting himself to be God. Salvation is God substituting himself to be man.

Cool!

Learning to use our spiritual faculties and senses

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."-CS Lewis

Before I heard this quote today, I had titled this entry "learning to use our spiritual faculties and senses" because I wanted to talk about how we are so familiar and trusting of our physical senses, while we are often untrained and unaware of how to use our spiritual faculties to interact with God and the spiritual realm. I love this quote because it shows how backwards we think from reality. We live and act and think as if we are primarily physical bodies with a soul and that this physical reality is the ultimate, pre-eminent reality while the spiritual reality is less real and less important. We understand and use our bodies a lot more than our souls.

But the reality is that the heavenly, spiritual realm is way more REAL than this physical reality. Paul says to the Corinthians: "What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away," (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).

the narrow road depicted

I wish I could take credit for these incredible paintings:) But they were done by a child prodigy artist named Akiane who came to know God through dreams and visions at a very young age. She has some ridiculously prophetic and beautiful art that you should check out at www.artakiane.com/gallery.html

I had the idea one day that I wanted a picture to capture the things I wrote in my previous post about how we cannot come to God just any way that we want. We must align ourselves to the WAY that He tells us we must come to Him. I LOVE these pictures because they both depict a pathway into the heart of God and to the tree of life (the first painting is called "tree of life" and the second is called "firey heart of God") but there are other smaller or fractured pathways surrounding the main pathway. As Matthew 7:13-14 says, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." I want to be on the narrow road that is leading to God and eternal life (which is defined as knowing God in John).

upside down thinking

I have been talking to quite a few people recently about how we might truly come to know God more intimately and how we might seek and find Him. Several of these people have also been struggling with doubts and wondering how to get through these doubts. These conversations have revealed to me that we so easily fall into the trap of trying to find God and know God in our own wisdom and strength. It does not work. The key verse for this is 1 Corinthians 1:21: "God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom." The larger context of this verse is also telling and important: