Dare I Say, We May Be Slightly Confused

I have often wondered why God breathed life into vessels that were certain to wear with the passing of time, bodies that were destined to decay.  We toil under this burning sun knowing that we will certainly weather with time.  Could He not have determined to breathe life into bodies that will not sag and droop with the years and the babies and the work and the worry?  It has almost felt cruel at times, run your race as you run out of your youth.  Was there not a better way?

But now I see, if the bodies never wore, if the temples were never tarnished, we would be all too tempted to worship the creation rather then the Creator.

And yet, even with His infinite wisdom I see that we who are so prone to selfish ways have worshiped the temple instead of the God.  You do not believe me?  Have you looked at a magazine lately?  Television?  Movies?  Your local college campus?  Have you walked into a restaurant and not witnessed the worshiping of body?  The sacrifices of God-given time and money that is laid at the altar of your local bar?  Your convenience store that is lined with all that our bodies crave, yet God has warned us are not good?  Take one moment to observe our society and tell me that we do not worship the creation instead of the Creator?

We have listened to a lie and traded that which will satisfy for that which will only create more of an insatiable appetite.  We have been fooled, knowingly and unknowingly.

We chase hard after physical perfection that can never be attained, we lie and manipulate to feed cravings that destroy and distort.  We fill up our bodies and our bellies and crowd out the One who knit that body together in our mother's womb.  We adorn and delicately decorate this temple with clothes, jewels, paint and a variety of other earthly pursuits and we lay layer upon layer of boundary between us and our God.

I will say this ~ physical perfection can not be attained; I know this because surely I have tried.  I have run hard miles and pounded the waves chasing a dream of a perfect me; entirely forgetting that a perfect me will undoubtedly come, just not this side of heaven. And certainly she will not be based on mile splits or size of jeans.  I hurt family and I squandered money and time that I can never regain and far more important then any of that, I hurt my God.

As stewards to our Heavenly Father we are called to care for this one temple we have been given for it rightly houses the Spirit of the Living God; nurture it with whole food, exercise and fresh air, sleep when it demands some rest but beyond that DO NOT worship it and we MUST subdue it.

I fully recognize that no one asked for my opinion on this topic and you have every right to hit delete, close this page and never return.  But, before you do that please hear one word of caution before you erase these words from your screen and your mind ~ if you do not subdue your flesh or you engage in idol worship and bow before the altar of the creation; then be forewarned that this master you choose to serve is a harsh task master.  This flesh that encases your spirit and soul will certainly drive you harder then you can tolerate, it will break your heart and betray you at every turn, your man-self will destroy lives and rip apart families.  This fleshy idol was never intended to rule and will only drive to destruction.  There is only one rightful Master in this universe and I promise you it is neither I nor you.

You do not believe?  Ask her, next time you see her in the grocery store at or at the gym.  Ask the woman whose body has betrayed her, whose skin hangs and eyes are lined with wrinkles, you know who I am talking about ~ the one covered in skin spots that brazenly tries to hide all that she is behind makeup, creams and surgeries.  Go ahead and ask her whether or not her her task master has been cruel and betrayed her?

Still not so sure?  Then try him.  The one who has bloodshot eyes because his body is sleep deprived after hours pouring over the pictures that distort the beautiful truth that God wrote into the bodies of women.  Ask him, is his fleshy idol loving him into a better man or tearing him apart at the seams.  Or maybe you should ask his wife, his daughters, his sons.

Maybe you do not engage in either of those practices, then let's speak with one that awakens in the dark and devours food only to lay back down with pain in her gut and a pain in her heart.  You know who I am talking about, your friend that moves from one meal to the next, always secretly planning her next fix.  Maybe you don't know her, but I do, I was her and I beat back pain and fear and I indulged the flesh and justified it every step of the way.  Ask me, was my sinful master kind?  Did he fulfill the promises he always toted, eat this and all will be well?  Yes, for about 3 minutes all was well and then life returned, just now with an extra helping of guilt and shame.  A cruel master indeed.

Who else?  The pill popper?  The one with an oxygen mask as a permanent appendage after years and thousands of dollars burned, literally, by cigarettes?  Oh, I am sure they are all terribly happy and filled with life more abundant.

Why do I type these words today ~ because I love you, deeply and profoundly, and I know that He has so much more for us, for you and for me, for our children and marriages, so much more. And in our society the more will only come with less.

There is more, so much more as we choose so much less.

Your body will drive you for more, and the enemy of your soul will tempt, push, coax, and conjole your sinful man into this more, that will only suffocate out the breathe of God.

Our bodies will become angry, cruel masters ~ that is why the Word instructed us to crucify our flesh, the Word spoke out of love for us all ~

Galatians 5:24 ~
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.

And we must not be deceived by the deceiver that these created bodies are worthy of our worship, whether our bodies or another.  We are the creature, He is the Creator, end of story.

^{Exodus 20 ~}

³ “You shall have no other gods before me.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

It is an arduous task, this race set before us, this call to crucify self as modeled by our Master; so let us slay flesh and run hard, but let us do it together.  Will you race with me?

I Will Not Be Moved

It draws to an end, and I am saddened.  But, He reminds that nothing invested into Him will ever really come to an end, for He is eternal, entirely eternal.  Every prayer offered, every head bowed in praise, the hand that raises in adoration, the gift offered to the Giver, and every morsel that we go without will truly stand the test of time.

And tomorrow we break fast and we break bread but we will NEVER have to break communion, for He is eternal.

As we lay aside the first fruits of the year as a sacrifice and an offering to Him we look ahead to the new three that have been sorely wounded, we wonder and pray of the challenges that lay ahead on our and their path as we move toward healing and restoration.  I chuckle at the daunting task of educating nine, three who are without language; I chuckle aloud for there is nothing else to do.  We gawk at the momentous challenge of raising $50,000 to bring them home, to call them our own.  We take time to look at the year past and remember all that He has done and all that He still will do in our sweet girls' lives.  And with all of this He speaks, but not of this.

No, He speaks of something new, He weaves it through this time set apart to fast and pray and He takes my breath away.  He steals my breath with the severity and the gentle simplicity of this new thing that He stirs.

He winds it tight through teachings, prayers, messages and scriptures and He wraps this thread of simplicity, this thread of longing through my soul and deep into my spirit.  He winds and He woos and the deep calls unto the deep and He invites me to dive deeper, to live deeper.  And I dive again and again into the living waters and under the weight of the world and the deathly sin, Something calls me deeper and I drive stroke after stroke hard into the waters and I gasp and grasp for this Something.

I call to Him in these waters of life and I cry out for more, more and all of Your Something and His whisper finds me and He simply says ~

Simplify.

And I see her face, my nameless missionary and she and I are tangled in the waters and we both cry out for this Something, this Life of more.  And I know, she and I are one, one body of Christ and our eternities are intertwined by this God that we serve.

I have cried for more of this Something and He has simply answered with ~ simplify and He binds her and I together in the answer to my prayer that can and will be become the answer to her prayer.

He is teaching, He is speaking and I will not be moved until I find all of this Something and I will gladly lay aside all of this world that is entirely nothing.

Simplify.

I race on and yet somehow, I will not be moved.

Why?

Revelation 21:5 ~
           "Then He Who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new ... Write, for these words are faithful and true."

I read the verse again, yes, surely He makes all things new.  He made me new ~ a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).  He quickens a spirit and breathes life where there was none.  And He continually brings new life in areas yet deadened by sin, the places that I knowingly and unknowingly allow to stay hidden for sometimes entirely too long.

Yes, He makes all things new, I know and I believe ~ my life and my family stand as testament to that.  But, there was something more.  I pause again and read again and then He shines a beam of light on a single word.  Write ~ Yes, or course, how could I have missed that before?

Write, for these words are faithful and true ~ He is the Word and He is always faithful and true so I write and my words stand as testament too.  He is faithful and true.  Regardless of all that surrounds, regardless of the lies of this world, regardless of unfaithful hearts that often beat in our own chests; He is faithful and true.

Romans 3:3-4
"What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness?  Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar ..."

So, I too, pick up pen and paper and write His truth into my days and I join with the ancients who laid down lines of truth with quill and scroll and I stand with my contemporaries who pound out His faithfulness on keyboard and screen.  But, regardless of pen or quill, screen or scroll, we use the time honored tools and we put word to paper to bring glory to God.

How do you write His faithfulness and truth into your life?  Do you sing, dance, paint, run, teach, or preach?  Maybe you give honor and praise with the click of a lens or with fingers that grace the black and white keys; there is something that you do unique to you.  Something that when He made all things new in you ~ He gifted to you in the intent that you would gift it back to the Giver. 

That is His desire ~ that you would write about His truth and faithfulness in whatever means He has gifted you to "write." 

The only catch.  It is was not given to bring glory to you, nor fame or wealth or status.  It was gifted only to  glorify the Giver.

Two questions ~
    First, do you know your unique way to "write" of all that He is?  And second, if you do know how you were created to "write," who is it bringing glory to?  You or the Giver?

These are questions that deserve some time in prayer for our sole purpose on this spinning globe is to "write" of His faithfulness and truth and to bring honor and glory to Him in all that we do.

So, if you have ever wondered why I bother to take the time to put fingers to keyboard; here is your answer.  As much as I love you ~ it is not for you or for me.  It is for Him.  For He made all things new in me and He stands eternally faithful and true. And this is His unique gift to me and it is my honor and privilege to attempt to gift it back to my Giver.

You are faithful and true in all that You do and I am racing home to You.

Flip Flops

The photograph was old and grainy, varying shades of grey made it difficult to see detail; it appeared simple, yet I continued to stare.  What is this I am looking at?  Why am I so interested in two native missionaries traipsing through the mountains of Nepal?  Sometimes I get stuck.  And sometimes that stuck is just a me stuck and sometimes it is a God stuck, the photograph was the latter.

And then I saw it, I saw what He wanted me to see ~ she was hiking through the treacherous, snow packed mountains in a pair of flip flops.  Sandals.  A thin layer of rubber stood as the only barrier between the soles of her feet and the freezing cold.  And the rest of her foot?  Completely exposed.  She is a native missionary who has made a choice to hike the Gospel into unreached, lost people groups in her homeland, she was not forced or coerced, she chose.

This morning I made my slow trudge through the streets of our island, I passed waterways as the sun broke over the water.  And I prayed.  Prayed for this nameless missionary and prayed for myself.  Who was she that she would do such a thing?  And who am I that I would not?  I asked God this question, the same question that has rattled around my brain for the last few weeks in varying forms.  Different words yet the same meaning ~ what am I missing?  How do I receive more of You?  Where is the disconnect?  How do I live fully surrendered and entirely filled, constantly?

One lesson I have learned over the years ~ when there is a disconnect, the unplugged is on my end, not His, never His.

I prayed for her and I prayed for me and then He asked me a question ~ "What are you wearing on your feet?"  I glanced down and felt His question, I felt it deep in my soul.  You see, for my sad, slow treks around base, I run in a pair of $100 running shoes that will get replaced once I layer a few hundred miles on them.  Who is she?  She is a sister in Christ who lives a life of simple devotion to her Savior, an existence that does not rest on things, at least not things of this world.  Who am I?  I too, am a sister in Christ who is still cutting away layers of this world; a world that tells me on a constant, continual basis that I need that and I must have and certainly I deserve it. 

I wonder ~ is it possible that we live in a society that is so consumed by consuming that we have little understanding as to how much God created us to consume?  As a human being created amongst billions of others what is my intended share?  When God knit me together in my mother's womb, how many calories did He design me to function on?  The clothes on my back, piled in my closets, how much is enough?  What did God say about wardrobe?  Something of lilies of the field clothed in splendor by their Creator so not to worry. (Matthew 6:28, Luke 12:27)  And I/we stockpile clothes as if we were facing a clothing famine of unprecedented proportions.  We could dive into every area of the western lifestyle and the same question arises ~ do SO MANY have so little because we take SO MUCH? 

So my frostbitten sister, how does she answer my questions of how to get more God?  Simple.  You can not fill what is already full.  And we surely live lives full here in our pursuit of the American dream ~ full of things that fill our mini-mansions that house our too full bodies.  We have not because we make room not.

We need more of God and He can not be bought ~ He already paid that price.

Isaiah 55:1-2 ~
 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
  Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare."

So, I race on to shed pounds, no not of fleshy mass, but of dead, earthly weight that crowds out His voice, His presence.  I race on to run simple and light, just as my Master ran His race.

Luke 9:58 ~
         "Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."