Reminders.

[Some reminders and gems from the Conference I went to last weekend]

We often forget who we are. We often forget the men and women God has created us to be.

At the core of our being, we are sons and daughters of the King. We are heirs of His kingdom, which means we have rights to the Kingdom of God. God delights in us living in His Kingdom--as active participants. To live freely means to live knowing our identity and our inheritance. If we live out of a wounded identity, that means that we are experiencing a void of the Father--not experiencing covenant love in that area in our lives.

We need to have the right understanding of what it means for God to be Father. The Father does not withhold anything from His children. He is a loving Father who has called us into adoption--a relationship and a bond that can never be broken. He is approachable. Jesus came, gave His life, and was raised up from the grave, so that we could come boldly before the Father. May we experience more of what it's like to sit in Abba's lap--listening to His heart for us.

We are "kalein." Yay-uh!

In his book The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning says that, "The bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded bookkeeper."

How do we break from this idea that our relationship with Jesus is one of great freedom and deep affection rather than one that paints the picture of a business transaction: "Ok,, Jesus. I'm going to make myself perfect, and then we'll hang out. Cuz i'm pretty sure that you wouldn't want anything to do with me otherwise..."  

How do we break from religious bondage into spiritual freedom? We break from bondage by knowing who we are and Whose we are. It seems to always come back to those two truths.

The lies are that we have gone too far, waited too long, or not done enough to receive love. The lies then tell us that we have to make up for lost time, earn rights to or somehow work hard enough to be received and accepted. 

For all the lies that there are,they are countered by one truth: That's just it: we can't do anything. We can only be--be who He has invited us to be. We are His beloved children, honored guests at his banquet table, and heirs of the kingdom. Nothing we do creates distance between ourselves and Jesus. It's our flesh that tells us there's a rift. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us...always.

In the New Testament where Jesus was known to dine with sinners and tax collectors, the word kalein is used--the Greek word for invite. The craziest thing about this word is that it implies that these were guests of honor. Honor! Those considered outcasts and scum of their societies in that their time were invited as honored guests in the presence of Jesus.

Let's be honest here. Grasping the depths of this is freakin' hard. We can and will spend our whole lifetimes being blown away at the ginormousness (yes, I just used that) of His grace. 

We are not ostracized from the grace of love of God; we are guilty of ostracizing ourselves when we believe the lie over the truth. Not only does He pursue us, He takes joy in doing so.

"Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted."

-B. Manning

Grace.

Irrevocable: No Take-backs.

True love (and by this, I mean agape love) is unmerited. We do nothing to deserve it. It is beautifully bestowed upon us for no other reason than for the truth that we have been chosen. Agape love is a sacrificial love that demonstrates one's volition to pursue someone, accept someone, and serve someone even though there is nothing that is inherently worthy about the one who is being loved.

Though a beautiful and weighty truth, this is one of the hardest things for human beings to accept. How on earth is love freely given? We live so often by the concepts of earning, buying or having to work really hard for something before we can attain it. Simply put: This is yet another backdrop for the subversiveness of Jesus Christ: His love is just that--unconditional.

My flesh desires to strive, to earn and to make myself good enough to deserve something. The reality is that there is absolutely nothing I can do in the sight of Christ to make me more lovable, more acceptable, more whole, or more ready for His love. It is without condition. Truly, there are no strings attached. This is insanely counter to what we know as humans.

More often than not, our flesh experiences conditional love. We're loved until we do something wrong or don't meet expectations that others have put up for us. The idea that we can be loved less by someone because of our own fault is, in some ways, more believable and more of a reality than the fact that someone could love us despite everything we've done.

The image that paints the best picture for me is the that of adoption (as it is used in its original context). Adoption implies that the child is chosen--for good. Once that child is adopted, he or she cannot be returned (How harsh does that sound?), given over to someone else, or exchanged for someone who is better. He or she is chosen forever--no questions asked. In essence, the parent says, "I choose you--no if's and's or but's."
This choosing is done forever. The parent will always choose the child. It's not a one time thing. If that is true, then not only is it a continual process of being chosen, it's a continual process for the child to to receive that love and to claim his or her identify of being child.

This is what I continue to learn more deeply every day. I am in great need of His grace--the grace that enables me to receive His unmerited love and to claim my true identity in Him. I am a daughter of the King--fully loved, fully received, and given life to be experienced in the fullest.

May His grace abound in us, so that we can really live this out.

A different art...

Much of our culture succeeds too often in molding its inhabitants into masterful Artisans of Trying.

Trying/striving in this worldly sense only succeeds in allowing us to:
-hide what we perceive to be flaws
-mask our insecurities only to give ourselves a false sense of worth
-outdo others' perceptions of who we are
-outdo our perceptions of ourselves
-one up the people around us
-smack on band-aids over wounds that need the exposure to heal

The danger in this type of living isn't so much the desire to be something or someone else; rather, it's the lack of understanding and conviction in who we already are--who we are made in and through Christ's love and redemption: new creations, justified, adopted sons and daughters of the King, heirs. 

Trying and striving are incredibly tiresome and draining. I liken this to what I wrote many blogs back--it's that tension that you feel in your gut when you can't be yourself around people. It's debilitating. There's no freedom there, and everything seems to be done in vain.

The shocking thing in the midst of all of this is how this manifests itself in the subtleties of my life. It's not at all blatant, others don't always notice it, and it's deeply personal. In fact, I often don't see this junk until it starts oozing in other places of my life.

I hate how I feel when I'm in the trying/striving mode; it's the result of many things, I'm sure. I perhaps am feeling off, not good enough or undervalued. It's in the very moments when I take my eyes off of Love and onto myself. My eyes then look through a faulty filter rather than the filter of the Perfect Lamb given on my behalf. How quickly my eyes shift! Someone mentioned this the other day in a conversation--it's like taking your eyes off one of those Magic Eye pictures. If you look away for even a split second, you lose the ability to decipher or see the image you're supposed to see. It doesn't take long to lose focus. Staring and being still enough to look intently upon that image--upon Him--requires discipline. 

Sometimes I feel as though my life is lived out in a fog of ADD, and I just want to be sedated. Therein lies the danger--masking an issue rather than countering it with something far more potent. I want to continue to learn a very different art--the art of being still.

Being still lends itself to:
-an awareness of our surroundings (esp. the needs of those around us)
-an environment where we can fight the lies that come about in chaos and hurried lives
-an understanding of our present state (maybe even the ability to cry out, "I need You!")
-the ability to reverently come before Him in a posture of worship
-appropriate perception of the greatness of God as we're not walking before him, but waiting on Him
-feeling what we need to feel, so that healing can come into those places of pain
-feeling what we need to feel, so that thanksgiving can be offered unto Him who is worthy
-knowing that HE is GOD

It's when we know that He is God that we live in a greater, fuller understanding of who we are. There--we find freedom to be who we are. There--we can worship. There--we can see Him.

There are moments when being still seems second nature and other times I suck at it big time. God knows I can't do it by myself--I've tried and that's when I see that I suck at it :). In my need and in my acknowledgment of it, there His strength facilitates room in my heart to simply be.

May we be inclined to lives of steadfastness and stillness--in times of suffering, joy and everything else that's in between so that we can see Him because He's worthy of our attention.