Adopted

10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us
19We love because he first loved us.
1 John 4:10, 19

I struggle to write what is on my heart for words fail to express the picture I wish to paint. However, I will write what I can and pray that God will take the words and speak to your heart that which He has been speaking to mine.

I want you for a moment to imagine that you have decided to adopt a child. You know something of this child’s experiences thus far in life; you know that the home you brought him out of was a place of turmoil. His father was an angry man; he was verbally and physically abusive. His mother was emotionally disconnected and unable to provide the love and care the child so deeply needed. The only constant in his life was pain and fear. He had never felt loved or protected.

As you bring this hurting child into your home are you going to expect him to love you? Will you demand that he respects you? Will you be angry when he struggles to trust you? Would you not rather understand that this little boy will need to experience your goodness before he is able to start to trust? Would you not understand that he needs to know your love before he is capable of giving you love in return? Before I move on to my point I want us to remember that our goodness is but a rain drop to the ocean in comparison to God’s goodness.

Whether or not your home was as extreme as the child’s home I described above, we have all been broken and are in need of healing. God has adopted us and brought us into his home, and we like the little boy do our best to try and fit in, to follow the rules and act as if we are part of the family. Yet, deep down we fear we will be discovered and forced to leave this new found place of peace. Others tell us that if we love this Father who has rescued us then we will obey him. Here starts our belief that we must perform to remain in His family. We have moments of tasting the goodness of this new home and we long to love the Father who brought us here, yet the fear that it will all end the moment our true self is discovered tempers our joy.

However, when I read the proclamation in scripture that says we love God because He first loved us, I am captivated by the picture of Father God taking us in just like the damaged little child. As we are being brought out of our brokenness and taken into His loving, healing home He knows we are not capable of love. Yet, the Father with a zealous love runs to us, fully aware that we cannot give love in return. He pleads with us to drop the charade and our efforts to prove that we belong in His family. He wants to show us that he loves us even where we feel most unlovable. He wants us to live in the freedom that comes from knowing we are not going to one day be found out. He wants us to hear the good news that we have already been found out! Our secrets are revealed, our brokenness is exposed and we are still LOVED, cherished, and adored. We have been welcomed home! We have been invited to dine with the King and there is nothing we can say or do to be cast away from His presence!

What a powerful truth! God himself is willing to bend low and teach me how to love, to help me learn to trust. He is not demanding my affection or obedience, nor is He concerned about my performance, He just wants me! He is asking to walk with me through my darkness so I don’t have to face my pain alone. He is offering us the healing that comes when we cease pretending that we love God and honestly admit to Him that we feel unlovable and we do not know how to love. From this place of vulnerability we can allow an infinitely loving God to touch us at our deepest core. As His love begins to show us that we are safe in His presence and that we belong in His family, we can stand and take our seat at the King’s table in the unshakable assurance that we are passionately loved, completely safe and eternally secure. We have been loved and we will find that an authentic love for the One who loved us has been born.

Blindness

6He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and they did so. 7They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. 8The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. Mark 8:6-8


14The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15"Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod." 16They discussed this with one another and said, "It is because we have no bread." 17Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18Do you have eyes but fail to see and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? 19When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?" "Twelve," they replied. 20"And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?" They answered, "Seven."
21He said to them, "Do you still not understand?" Mark 8:14-21

Imagine the surge of faith that must have come from watching 5,000 hungry souls be feed with 7 loaves of bread in the middle of nowhere! What a moment! What a powerful display of the unlimited resources of God... And what was the response from these men of faith at such a sight? “Oh no, we are out of bread, now what are we going to do for food!” As much as I wish I could stand and throw stones at the disciples for their blindness to the wonder of God, I must confess my close kinship to their pattern of thinking!

Jesus responded to his followers doubt with these soul piercing questions, “Do you have eyes, but still fail to see? Do you have ears, yet fail to hear? Do you still not understand?” As I read these words I hear my heart resound with a deafening YES! No matter how good God showed himself to me yesterday, I still doubt today! I long to stand boldly in unwavering knowledge of God like Jesus! I ache to respond when I stand in need as he did and confidently say “thank you Dad for these 7 loaves which are obviously not enough to feed this crowd, yet I know you! I know you can not only feed them with these small loaves, but I know you are so good, so extravagant , that there will probably be an abundance left over!”

I don’t know why my eyes fail or my ears go deaf when I am faced with what seems to be not enough. Yet, He remains faithful whether I believe it or not. So, all I can do is reach for Him in the darkness of my failing eyes and admit my blindness. I stand afraid crying out to the one who opens the eyes of the blind… Have mercy on me, I want to see!

Mustard Seeds and Mountians

19Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, "Why couldn't we drive it out?"
20He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:19-20

Were Jesus words to His disciples simply a reprimand of their lack of belief that the demons would leave the boy? I have always imagined this passage in the following tone: “you weak minded disciples! If you had faith as small as a little mustard seed you could cast a mountain into the see, yet you don’t even have enough to cast out a demon!” However, as God has been rewriting my definition of faith, I am finding that faith is not about my power to believe in a desired result; rather it is about my knowledge of the nature of Him in whom I have placed my trust. With that perspective on faith this verse takes a much different tone for me.

I do not believe Jesus is simply using hyperbole, I believe the vivid image he paints of a mountain being cast to the sea was meant to capture the imagination of his audience. He meant to enthrall them with the majesty of His dad! What I hear Jesus saying is “dear child, if you only had a mustard seed sized glimpse of the glory of my Father, you would know His heart for this little child that has been tormented. And more than that, you could say to that mountain over there, cast yourself into the sea and it would be done! I was there when the voice of my Dad called forth that mountain from the sea; I have heard His powerfully tender word bring peace out of chaos. I have seen the author of all life and He is good! My friends, you have not yet begun to discover the greatness of this God who loves you!”

I no longer believe that the answer to the struggle and pain of my life is in the amount of my ‘faith’. If I am sick, do I need to have more faith in healing? If I am poor, do I just need more belief in prosperity? No! I believe the answer to all our pain, fear, and anxiety is God himself. I believe real faith begins when we remove our masks and our attempts to care for ourselves. When we take our raw unfiltered brokenness into the throne room of our Father and allow Him to tenderly replace our distorted views of Him with the healing revelation of His goodness. No matter what the circumstance the need is the same, we need God to show us more of Himself!

Though my life is often a roller coaster ride of up and down emotions, I am fully convinced that the answer to my turmoil is summed up in this thought… If a mustard seed sized revelation of God can send a mountain into the sea, what must He be like…?

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20

If it is true that God can be clearly seen and be understood by looking at what He has made, I think we would be wise to stop and listen to what creation is saying! I do not wish to engage in a debate around the politics (and there are a lot of politics!) of the climate change movement, rather I want to listen to what the planet is revealing about God and to take a moment to stand in awe of He who creates.

I believe we have been called to steward this planet well, however the key to being a good steward is an understanding of ownership. The moment a steward takes ownership of that which has been entrusted to him, he is no longer acting in the best interest of the owner. It is my belief that mankind has taken ownership of creation. We have banded together to proclaimed our reign as the gods of the universe. In order to maintain our role as the center of all, we have had to deafen our ears to the loud cries of the planet as it proclaims God the rightful ruler. Rather than teaching our children to awe at the beauty, order, and artistry of the masterwork of God, we instead fill them with the fear that the planet is on a tight rope and that we are to save the world. These tactics are filling our children with fear and anxiety while ignoring the fact that God is the one who holds the universe in the palm of His hand. We buy into the lie that this place is a fortunate accident just waiting to undo itself. We point to the fact that the balance needed to sustain life is so complex and fragile and therefore we must be the ones to control it. However, the complexity of earths design should begin to open our ears to the voice of creation pointing to the infinite unfathomable creator.

Think of the course of human history and the foresight of our God as He spoke and continues to speak the world into order. If you take the view that the earth appeared from some primordial soup, how do we account for the resilience of this rock we all occupy! How does this happy accident continue to sustain a massive population of nearly 7 billion? How do you explain the built in sustainability of this planet? We have forested nearly 83% of the worlds forest (a fact that is used to insight fear in our children) yet we currently have more forest than we did 100 years ago (a fact not told to our children). The forest can be reborn, why? Consider our carbon output, this is a source of much fear and controversy, yet to me this is another sign pointing to the amazing design of this planet! Our carbon output has increased dramatically since the dawn of the industrial age; however the ocean still continues to be able to process the increased output with no sign of reaching capacity. What a testament to the foreknowledge and grace of God, before the industrial age was even a thought, He had already built the perfect system to handle man’s advancements as well as our gross mismanagement. Are we to believe it’s just a 1 in a trillion shot that this planet came with a built in system to process man’s future endeavors? What a fortunate turn of events that every part of this place is designed for sustainability! What luck that the seasons change, the crops bloom, the rains replenish, and that the seas cleanse. God designed this planet to work! Don’t you think it is time to stand up and give all the glory and praise to the Creator and cease to bow down to His creation?

Consider our arrogance as humans for a moment; we have determined we know how to maintain this delicate balance! Take China for an example, with a soaring population and fear of not being able to sustain the growth, they enact strict population controls and tragically end the life of innumerable voiceless babies. What is the result of our own management? China now faces a population in sharp decline and the reality of not enough new life to sustain the country. How about our constant attempts to be Lord of the animal kingdom, we do not want an animal to go extinct because we determine it is not supposed to be. However, how many times have our efforts to re-introduce a species only done more damage to the delicate balance of the eco system? We never stop to seek the voice of the author of life; perhaps He truly meant that there was a time and season for everything under the sun. Perhaps each aspect of life is part of His perfect plan, and He knows when the purpose of each of His creations has been fulfilled.

I am not saying we should not care for our planet! I am only saying we should remove ourselves from the center of the universe and bow our knee to the God who made life to work. We should stop pretending to know best and thank God for His grace as He repairs and restores this home which we are unable to hold together. The greatest tragedy to me is that we have completely sold ourselves to a cause that we have very little control over, yet so many of us are not consumed with the real brokenness of this planet! The fact that as I sit to type these words thousands of children are dying of hunger is WRONG! Let’s cash in our carbon credits and spend them on orphans and widows! I can’t help but dream of what could be done if we all banded together and proclaimed Him ruler of the planet and spent our days consumed with bringing His healing to the broken! Isn’t it time to set our children free from the fear that the earth is on the brink and allow them the peace and confidence that comes from being in the masterfully care of the God who created them? Maybe then we could raise up a generation full of love for their fellowman and a passion to right the wrongs of injustice…

Blessed Defeat

Below is a prayer from my journal. It was in the moment of this prayer that I was confronted with the truth that much of my current struggle comes from my desire to be on the throne. I believe the lie that I am safest in my own care. In my desire for safety, I am fighting against Him who can alone keep me safe. I am beginning to know the freedom of being defeated! This prayer is now my reminder to quickly surrender to the safety of blessed defeat…

God,
I let go of the idea of control. I have longed to take the reins of my life for I do not trust you. I do not believe that you can provide the safety for which my control attempts to obtain. However, I have nowhere else to turn, I am fully and painfully aware that my sense of control is but an illusion and that my kingdom is but a pretense. So, here I am, trembling in fear for I must surrender my command. I confess my desire is to flee from you and return to a place of my own rule, yet I choose to stay here trembling at your feet fully aware of my defeat. In this moment I let my kingdom fall in surrender to you the only true King. As I stand in the rubble of my shattered reign, I am overcome by your Majesty and I proclaim you my King! You have overthrown my kingdom and what a joyous relief! No longer do I bear the weight of my kingship; I have been defeated by the King of Love. In your kindness you have removed me from my throne for I was enslaved by my own rule. However, what I had been deeply longing for was the freedom that comes from being in the care of the one true King. I am finally safe in the tender embrace of the all powerful, never changing, King! What a blessed defeat!

Purpose in Pain

In my last post I spoke of the time of darkness and pain I have been walking through. Although I must confess the journey continues and there are still moments of pain, for the most part I am simply overcome by the grace of God! He has opened my eyes to the purpose in my pain. I wrote the prayer below when I was 18 years old. Going into this season of trial I had no idea that it was the beginning of God answering this prayer from so many years ago:

“My heart feels so empty! It’s been broken to many times, parents that disappoint, friends that let you down. All my lost hopes and shattered dreams. I’ve built so many walls around my heart, walls that keep me from the joy and peace you died to give me and that keep me from your gentle and healing hands. So, Lord I give my heart to you, in your loving kindness tear down these walls. Though it may be painful I know your healing hand is at work, mending the broken pieces together with caring precision. With every thread your love becomes more real; with every piece you’re drawing me closer to you, until my heart beats with yours.”

God is at work! He is mending my brokenness. He is restoring me to the man He created me to be. In the midst of the pain, I feel hope dawning! I am confident that He who started this work is bringing it to completion. At times on this journey my flesh would scream for me to run from the pain! My instincts would tell me to protect myself and not to feel pain. Yet, God in His grace first started me on this path of healing by showing me more of Him. As the image of my creator gained clarity I found Him safer than the false shelters to which I used to run. He opened my eyes to the truth of who He is. Though I did not know how to trust Him, I began to believe Him trustworthy. As my heart dared to believe the truth of His grace, I began to find Him to be more than I had ever hoped.

Words fail to express the tenderness of God as He mends our wounds. When we began to know Him we find the courage to face our pain, and it is there we see its holy purpose. When we stop running from the hurt we will find the hand of God working for our highest good. In this place we discover a God who is so much more than we could have hoped for. We find Majesty Himself bending low to dress our wounds! We will find Him unashamed of our disease and skillfully working to remove our infection. Healing starts with knowing Him - this leads to knowing ourselves in relationship to him – which leads to the courage to face our brokenness and pain – this then allows us to find true healing and freedom! That is the journey I have been walking. Though I have felt much pain in this season, as I look back I can truly say this has been such a blessed time of my life! God is so trustworthy and good!!!

Darkness and Doubt

It has been a long time since I have sat down to write! I haven’t had the energy to put my fingers to the keys, nor had the clarity to express what has been on my heart. These past weeks and months have been a time of darkness and doubt in my life. I have been faced head on with the question of whether I will trust God with my life. But how do I trust Him when my past and my experiences in this world are shouting to me that I will be let down?

My faith and my reality seem to be at odds! If God has a plan and purpose for my life, why does everything seems to be failing? If the joy of the Lord is my strength, why am I so full of sadness? If He is my loving Father, why does he feel miles away in the midst of my pain? In the past, whenever I was confronted with these doubts, in an attempt to run from the pain, I would simply try to confess the ‘right’ answers to these questions. I would deny the doubt and stand on what I thought was faith. However, for the first time in my life I am allowing God to take me past the surface to the darkest parts of my life. Though this journey is one of pain, it is at this place I am beginning to truly see God. I am finding that His light is brighter than my deepest darkness and that he is neither afraid of nor offended by my doubts. I admit at times I want to leave this path and simply numb the pain. Yet, God in his infinite goodness is calling me to keep going, to honestly admit my doubts, face my fears, and confess all that dwells deep within my being. In this place of discovering who I really am I am actually discovering who He really is! Here I am finding the joy of knowing that though I am often unlovable, I am infinitely loved, that though I am covered in filth, I am eternally cleansed. I am discovering the bliss of being fully known and yet still fully loved, fully adored, and fully His.

This is the journey of the freedom of Christ! Christ has not only set us free from the punishment for our sin, he has also brought cleansing from its stain and healing from the pain of the sins committed against us. He will make us whole in spite of the brokenness of the world around us. When we honestly open our lives to him and allow him into the depth of our depravity, we will meet the God who heals us. We will find the confidence that comes from knowing we are fully known and still loved, cherished, and adored. We will find strength to walk in the healing of the cross of Christ and live in the fullness of joy that He died to give us…