Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’

Accept What Is

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Opposites. Either I judge others quickly, forgetting I am equally fallen; or, I wash over reality because I want everything to be smooth sailing. (Don’t rock the boat.) Both ways are problematic and reflect denial.

Romans 15:7
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

Paul writes that we must accept one another but the acceptance must be based on truth. It’s not about accepting someone as we “wish” he or she might be (eventually) but accepting what is really there. That’s not particularly easy if the person is difficult.

I confess, I withhold a lot of my acceptance of others based on their behaviors. I accept them “up to a point,” but not really. And yet, Christ accepted me right where I was 30 years ago: alcoholic, drug-dependent, crass, slovenly, and immoral. Jesus did not wait until I got my act together or became approachable. I was book smart but Bible naive. I didn’t know I needed a savior. I didn’t believe I needed anyone.

The stories of Jesus show his ability to accept others over and over again. It’s one of the reasons the Pharisees and “teachers of the law” chastised him: eating and drinking with sinners. Jesus allowed himself to touch, listen, and understand others who were immersed in sin but was confident in the Spirit of the Father within to keep him centered and whole. Jesus knew Himself.

Historically, I have been a bit of a chameleon and unconscious mimic. When I lived in the South for a few years, I developed a pretty strong southern accent, just by sheer exposure. When my kids bring home slang from school, I find myself incorporating it into my daily language without effort. I am too much like a sponge.

One of my favorite illustrations of this phenomenon was years ago when I had my first real “day job” in an advertising agency accounting pool back in Chicago. Thirty women sat in rows of desks with calculators and piles of paper. Initially, I was the oddball, the hippie in my colorful clothes and wire-rimmed glasses who mocked those girls for talking every day about their dinners the night before and what they watched on television. A year later, I had become one with them. I was talking recipes, husbands, television soaps, and vacations. I had acclimated and conformed to the daily norm. It was a type of acceptance, but not the one that Jesus proposes.

It’s not about fitting in. It’s about being strong in heart.

Accepting others comes from within. Accepting others, based on truth, requires an honest assessment of oneself first, then others. Accepting others is a kindness, a type of love. Accepting others is inclusive. Accepting others gives permission for that person to simply “be.” Accepting others allows for differences.

Today, I know, I will be challenged to accept others. Keep me centered in order to be fully present in the reality of others. Keep my heart open and yet fully infused with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God.

Read Full Post »

I Can Only Live My Story

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2010| 4 Comments »

Just live my story, that’s all I am asked to do. If I could keep it clear in my head that it’s my own journey that is mine to share, to correct, to adapt, to transform, and unfortunately, to also withhold, warp, or destroy, then I wouldn’t be so judgmental of others.

Romans 14:10, 12
Why do you criticize and pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you look down upon or despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. . . . And so each of us shall give an account of himself [give an answer in reference to judgment] to God. [Amplified]

God has the end of all the stories in hand. I cannot know what is in the heart of another person or their struggles or their understanding in this moment. Each person’s way carries its own challenges. Truly, who am I to say whether this one or that one is doing the best with what has been given to bear. We are all trying to figure it out. We are all trying to make the best of it.

These passages from Romans are actually an invitation to freedom. It is not for me to carry another’s journey. I can walk beside. I can live fully in my own understanding of a life in Christ and it is in that living that others might experience contact with love, hope, joy, etc. But it is not for me to drag the unwilling along my way. Nor is it for me to condemn their way (for the path could change in a moment).

To help another is simply to be present with that “sacred other.” To help another is to give access to my heart and soul. It is only my authentic self that can give life. It is only the Christ within who can touch a life.

Oh Lord God, may my account in that last day be a testimony of discovery: more of Christ and less of me.

Read Full Post »

Windows of Opportunity

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2010| 2 Comments »

The passage I read today from Romans is not a particular favorite. Talk of cutting off and God’s sternness and unbelief is always difficult. As I contemplated these unpleasant attributes of God, I considered the importance of timing.

Romans 11:23
And if they [Israelites] do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.

Each of us has windows of opportunity to experience or meet God. I can certainly look back and see some of those windows that opened and closed. They were crossroads I didn’t recognize at the time because I took the other way. As a child, I can remember going to Vacation Bible School and although I enjoyed the activities and “something to do” in the summer, I didn’t meet God there. And later in high school, one of my closest friends was a PK (preacher’s kid) and I adored her family but it never occurred to me to embrace their God. In college, I was in a sorority where many of the girls were active in Campus Crusade, but I didn’t even consider attending a meeting. There must have been more of these “close calls from Christ” in my young adult years, but I don’t remember them.

God reached out to me and for that season of time, I could have looked through and believed. Who would I have become? No telling.

I am grateful there were many windows.

If there were many windows for me, then there are many windows for others. Christians get so hung up thinking about someone who hasn’t “accepted Christ” and “oh, they will be lost forever.” But there is always another opportunity. There is always another moment in time. We just can’t see it now.

My mother was against all things religious for years and years. By the time she reached her nineties and was living with us, I assumed she would never experience God in any kind of real way. Then, as dementia set in, the likelihood seemed even more remote. But one night, while I was sitting by her bed, chatting quietly until she fell asleep, she said, “Oh, look, it’s Jesus,” and then, “Oh, he’s reaching out to me with an invitation (this was all in Latvian, so the word was specific to a card or written invitation),” and then, after some moments she said, “I think I’ll take it. Yes, I’m going to take it.” And then after some silence, she opened her eyes and told me how beautiful it all was. I was mesmerized. I thought she might die in that moment and just go on to be with the Christ. It was an amazing experience to watch her face, her countenance and to hear the quality of her voice. It was a different woman, totally coherent, and totally enraptured. She died a few weeks later.

My mother had missed ninety years of open windows, but there was still another window ready to open again.

God can be stern and even close windows for a season, but in the end, there is still that grace and mercy and kindness. God will reach in. Today or tomorrow. It doesn’t matter to God who exists outside of human time. Holy, holy, holy.

Read Full Post »

Predestination Quandaries

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 21, 2010| 3 Comments »

Back in the 80’s, I had several friends who were hardcore Calvinists and quite Reformed but they also attended the same “not-very-mainstream” charismatic Methodist church at the time. Somehow, even though Calvinism is counter to the Methodist Book of Discipline (doctrine), we all got along, more or less.

Romans 8:29
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Just when I think I’m getting things, when I feel as though clarity is right around the corner, I’m confronted with this scripture and all the memories of arguments and disagreements and frustrations about the ultimate meaning of this passage and it’s sister in Ephesians 1:11. This is the stuff that theologians love to dissect.

Honestly, this one is right up there with pre and post-tribulation controversies. Blech!

Here’s my opinion, for whatever it’s worth. Some people are predestined for a particular purpose. I don’t believe this necessarily means predestined for a salvation/relationship which is available to everyone [I Timothy 2:1-4]. Since I enjoy the mysterious aspects of Christ’s way and its paradoxes, I believe there are those people who have a powerful anointing from God. Their path is set, from being called, to being justified, to being glorified [Romans 8:30]. They are the ones who become translucent and the Spirit shines through them. Some will reach this state in a human lifetime, others in that Christ-time eternal.

Is God sovereign? Yes. But God operates outside of time and to discuss God’s view, who will do what and when, seems ludicrous. There is no “when.” Only we, humans, in 3-D time are operating linearly and therefore, trying to figure out what’s next or why things happened in our past the way they did.

I think some people can be anointed for a season and others for a lifetime: God time.

Some years ago, I wrote a note to a woman at a retreat out of an anointing. Several years later, she happened to be at a meeting where I was speaking and came up to me, still carrying that worn-out note which had been life-changing for her. Predestined? I don’t know, but certainly, a type of glory. Christ broke through me to her because it was needful. To this day, I have no idea what was even written in that note.

How I respond to Christ will not change because of someone’s interpretation of this scripture and its codification in either Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion or John Wesleys’ Book of Discipline.

Jesus is firstborn, elder brother. He is showing the way as the rest of us are adopted into the family.

Read Full Post »

A Groaning Spirit

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , on February 20, 2010| 3 Comments »

Sometimes, I don’t know how to pray, not for myself or for anyone else. But there is this promise that the Spirit within knows exactly how to intercede. That is a great comfort to me.

Romans 8:26b
. . . We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

I did not realize until I meditated on these verses (Romans 8:26-28) that the Spirit within is not just praying or interceding on my behalf, but praying in a particular way: according to God’s will.

Mike and I used to joke around a lot about a teaching we once heard by a Jamaican/English minister from Florida, Peter Lord, long since off the scene. This particular teaching was called “How to … ‘ah’ … hear … ‘ah’ … God’s voice.” The message was good, but his delivery always cracked us up. This was all the rage back then: trying to ‘ah’ hear God’s voice.

But now I understand that I don’t have to struggle to hear God’s voice in order to be led in the right direction. The Holy Spirit, always with me, is already lined up with God’s will and praying for me. I may not understand the words. I may not understand the sounds, the whispers, the groaning, but I can be confident in the intent.

I think the harsh voice of condemnation has tried to bend my Christian journey into something far more grueling than necessary. I keep forgetting the promised “lighter yoke” [Matthew 11:30].

Read Full Post »

Small Deaths

Posted in Christmas Through Epiphany, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

As a believer, I am promised a new life when I accept Christ’s sacrifice (his death) as the propitiation (satisfactory compensation) for my sin. Although the sacrifice is enough, my ability to embrace the truth of it in daily life is wanting.

Romans 6:3, 5
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? . . . If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.

I firmly believe the faith walk is a process. And although our beloved Messiah did everything necessary to repair the separation between God and us, I am still learning how to walk the new path (the Way). I struggle with the paradox: death = life. I tend to hold onto what is familiar instead of letting those parts of me die.

I understand in my head that I must be more like the seed that dies before the plant will grow. Instead, I keep trying to be the best seed I can be. I’m missing out on the real transformation.

But God is patient. My old nature, my old self, is in various partitions and states of renewal. Gradually, sections do die. And with each small death, new life finds root. This is sanctification, my rite of passage from death to life.

Read Full Post »

The Gift that Scales

Posted in Christmas Through Epiphany, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In telecommunications or engineering, scalability is a desirable property of a system, a network, or a process, which indicates its ability to either handle growing amounts of work in a graceful manner or to be readily enlarged. [wikipedia]

Romans 5:15
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

Grace is scalable. Forgiveness is scalable. The Christ [anointing] is scalable.

For me, this is the point that God is driving home into my soul. There is no sin that cannot be covered by Gift. There is no mistake that cannot be redeemed in some way by Christ. There is no heart that cannot be softened or broken open.

The silly part of me just watched a YouTube video from Annie Get Your Gun and the song, “Anything You Can Do.” The Gift is the same way, ready to step up and “do anything better” than sin. Grace abounds [Romans 5:20].

I struggle so much with “condemnation,” a voice that is constantly reminding me how I fall short, how I sin, how I judge others, how I fail. But today, the message of Romans 5, though layered in hundreds of words, is the lifeline: the gift scales and overcomes my sin. There is nothing I can do that grace can’t do better.

This is not given to encourage bad behavior but to build confidence in the grace of God. As I participate in the dance of grace, letting go of sin through confession, there is room for other things, other thoughts, other behaviors.

As long as I continue to covet the things and abilities of others, I cannot appreciate what I already have. As long as I judge another, I cannot see their sacred heart. As long as I gossip, I cannot hear the still small voice of God.

I open my hands to your gift this day.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »