A Wonderful Life

 

 

One word completely changed my view of God and Christianity; Wonder.

 

 

I’ve been the dreamer, thinker, quiet-observer type for as long as I can remember.
I would much rather be silent and learning than speaking and telling.
My world is always more colorful and abundant when I give myself the time to reflect, meditate, or discover. And when spontaneous opportunities of awe and wonder come my way, those are the moments that make me feel most alive.

What is so great about living this way is that these moments of ecstasy and enlightenment can occur every day. It’s only a matter of my awareness.

Which brings me to 1 Timothy 6. This chapter is the summary of the Christian’s life.
(NIV) V11: “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”
(MSG) V11: “pursue a righteous life—a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy.”

I think the order of these characteristics are fascinating!

• 1st – The righteous life. Freely given to believers as a pure gift from God Himself!
• Then Godliness. Godliness can be defined as being God-aware. The MSG translation uses, “a life of wonder”.
• Faith – trust+love for God. “Lord, I give you all”
• Love
• Endurance/Steadiness/faithful -consistent perseverance
• Gentleness/courtesy – care +concern for people. Serving others like Jesus.

How appropriate that the Christian life starts with, “WoW!”

I think awe/wonder/godliness are easily the most neglected marks of a Christian life.
We focus so much on serving, loving, and being disciplined that we forget to awe. And in doing so, we often get drained, bored, tired, or unamused along the way. I honestly think this is one major reason why some Christians are mean, grouchy, annoying, irritable, and miserable.

Applying this concept of godliness to my life has revolutionized my faith.
Although wonder and reflection tend to come naturally for me, applying it to my faith has been a shift. I’ve found that the more in awe of God I am, the more I trust and love Him. Likewise, the more God-aware I am, the more perseverance I express. And the more I wonder of the “bigger picture” that I have, the easier it is to have concern and care for those around me.

 

I’m dedicated to using my days to awe. How?
Look around. Go outside. Interact with others. Don’t neglect sciences. Read articles. Listen to music. Make music. Go to an art gallery. See a film. Play with children. Focus your attention. Sit, breath, and pray.
Use these moments to make yourself more God-aware.
Friends, you don’t have to be in the pages of your Bible or favorite devotional to practice godliness. In fact, leave your Bible at home and go take a walk. It might transform your faith.
You and I have a responsibility to wonder.

 

[My favorite resources on awe/wonder]

• “Indescribable” -Louie Giglio
• TED lectures http://www.ted.com
• Jason Silva – Shots of Awe
• http://www.mikemchargue.com
• The Imaginary Foundation
• Hubble/NASA

Jesus is Turning Around

Mark 5:21
Jesus is on His way to heal, along with his disciples.
A crowd has gathered along the way.
In the midst of the crowd is a lawbreaker.
According to the Mosaic law, she is unclean.
She is meant to be isolated.
Away from all others in society.
This is what is demanded of the law.

She has been bleeding for 12 years.
She “spent all she had” to find healing elsewhere.

She comes behind Jesus
reaches for the hem of his garment
and she encounters glory, in the form of divine healing.

“But, Jesus turned around.”

He wants to find the woman!
Yet, the woman hesitates to reveal herself.
What if Jesus rejects her?
What if there is judgement and condemnation?

How many of us are unwilling to reach for Jesus or return to him because we have convinced ourselves that there will be judgement and condemnation?

But the opposite is true!
Because of his grace and your small measure of faith, God is passionate about revealing his acceptance and approval to you and me!

The best way to “make disciples” is to lead the to the hem of his garment and after they have spent all other hopes, their faith will make them whole.

It only takes one touch
And one Man who turns around.

Renewal Across the Table

The last year has been full of life’s highs and lows.
Isaiah 61: 3 adjusted my focus:

bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy 
instead of mourning,
a garment of praise 
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
the display of his splendor.

There have been days that I have been in mourning due to my own sin.
There have been days of mourning from the sins of others.
I spent nights on the floor, weeping, broken & desperate to be held by Jesus.
Other nights anxiety made me physically sick.

I would read promises like Isaiah 61 & wonder when they would come true.
Or think maybe they were simply ancient poetry.
Or perhaps I wasn’t “favored” enough by God to be given these things.

Only when I stopped looking for Jesus in a rushing wind from heaven did I see the reality of these promises in my life.

My crown of beauty was given to me in the shared experiences of beautiful godly women leaking the grace of Jesus.
My oil of gladness came through the tears & long embraces of sisters who cling faithfully to the victory & justice of the cross.
My garment of praise came as the ability to laugh & awe. Listen & empathize.
The strength of an oak tree was countless friends like, Paige, Lissy, Angie, Hannah & Brandon who rooted me in the Father with love & compassion so I could get off the floor and display the Lord’s splendor.

I’ve learned, sometimes we’re so focused on renewal from the sky that we forget God is working on the ground. 
Jesus is in the embraces. The moments where words fall short. The everyday struggle to get up and go to the store. The very people sitting beside you. The doctor’s diagnosis/prescriptions. The gut-wrenching conversations & tearful stares from across a table.

And when you finally realize the blessings of Isaiah 61 all around you, you’ll see Jesus all around you too. It’s one of the most beautifully real things you’ll experience this side of heaven!

Take hold of the renewal right in front of you, and stand in the daily victories!

Look around, what has God given you?…it might be just across a table.

A Sacred Spectacle.

Every once and awhile I hear a Christian say, “Church shouldn’t be a spectacle.” It’s usually in the context of calling out some other church as having too many “hip” songs or “flashy” lights. Or putting down another preacher for the way they “entertain” their congregation. And while I’ll leave those “topics” to your own bias or interpretation, I’d like you to consider with me for a moment how spectacles can look like God’s ideal for the Church.

This weekend I went to downtown San José to la Catedral Metropolitana (Costa Rica’s national cathedral) to watch the national symphony perform with a choir and several opera soloists for FREE. Yes, it was as cool as sounds.

I got chills as I sat in the hard, wooden, church pew. Closing my eyes, I tried to escape into another reality for any moment of time as the cathedral filled with the sounds of the symphony and the breeze from the cool night air.

But, as the sounds of car alarms, babies crying and a nearby protest seeped into the room, I found myself back in reality. Yet, I’m thankful for those elements because they allowed me to see something unexpected. Opening my eyes, I looked around a saw a beautiful thing. Inside one of the most controversial institutions on the planet were hundreds of people.

Businessmen and women, mothers, children, grandparents, the homeless, the foreigners, the students, the beggar, the religious and the rebels. Those who planned to be there and those who walked in from the street. All in one grand room. Peering over the person in front of them to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. Kids wrapped themselves around the pillars of the cathedral hoping to see the source of the sounds that enamored them. Everyone. Standing. Sitting. Eyes forward. Focused on the same thing.

It was beautiful. It was the ideal Church.

Not a denomination. Not a theology. Not an obligation.

People were amazed.
Entertained.
Full of awe and wonder.
Rich and poor. Young and old. Women and men.
One spectacle. One focus. One purpose.

When spectacles are free, everyone shows up.
The invitation has no standard. No limit. No dress code.

What if we stopped trying to avoid making Jesus a spectacle and allow him to be exactly that:
“Something that can be seen, especially something of a remarkable or impressive nature….unusual and notable” [Webster Dictionary]

What if people couldn’t help but gather, astonished as they hear about the most dramatic and remarkable Person in history?….last time I checked, hope, freedom and resurrection from the dead are still alarmingly spectacular.

Perhaps we’re scarred. Because maybe that’s exactly what would happen.
All peoples would be intrigued. Amazed. Awestruck. Curious.
And worst of all, all people would enter into our “sacred” spaces.
Our community groups. Our sanctuaries. Our homes. All packed with people with nothing in common. Nothing but the hope of encountering something spectacular.

Who are we kidding?
Jesus is a spectacle.
And he freely invites all people to come and awe.

[Luke 5:26] “They were all struck with astonishment and began glorifying God; and they were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

[Matthew 9:8] “When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God”

[Matthew 7:28] “After he had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed…when he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him.”

[Luke 4:32] “He (Jesus) was teaching them on the Sabbath; and they were amazed at His teaching, for His message was with authority.”

[Luke 1:65] “All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things.”

[Rev. 22:17] “Come! Whoever is thirsty; let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the FREE gift of the water of life.”

Jesus in the Dirt.

Hola todos!
I just returned from a 3-day visa renewal trip to Panamá yesterday. After living in a jungle cabin on the island of Bocas del Toro, I’m back in San José, C.R safe and sound. I’d love to share with you some of the highlights of this month thus far and fill you in on the ways I see the Lord moving around me.

First, I’ve been blessed beyond measure with a community of believers in Costa Rica. You and I prayed when I first arrived that the Lord would grant me genuine relationships and deep friendships…and he has done just that! Praise Him! The friends I’ve made during this time have been nothing short of God’s timing and perfection. I’m excited to see how God continues to work in their lives & the new friendships I’ll encounter in Bolivia soon!

Moreover, I’ve learned how holy and freeing moments of pure honesty & authenticity can be. The friends I’ve made here have enabled me to experience the sharing of scars more than just the sharing of similarities, and for that I am being continually blessed. I’m also learning to be more like Jesus in the sitting and listening rather than the standing and preaching. I’ve felt the presence of the Lord in the moments where words fail and silence prevails & it feels right. 

Secondly, I’d recently been challenged by a mentor in my life to pursue a deeper intimacy with Holy Spirit. So, I fervently prayed during my time in Panamá for the Lord to make that step practical yet supernatural. I wasn’t sure what that meant, until I met Emiliano. While walking around the markets in Bocas we stopped in a little street shop with handicrafts owned by Emiliano. After seeing the hebrew tattoo, “Elohim”  on my shoulder, Emiliano began to talk about God with me (who knew I’d encounter a Panamanian who just happens to read Hebrew?). I did my best to keep up with his Spanish and ask questions about his beliefs. After some time, I looked to one of my friends and said, “I think we should lay hands on Emilano and pray over him”. We told him we were Christians who believed Jesus is God and that we wanted to pray to Him for whatever he needed. Emiliano responded by saying he needed clarity in his faith and growth in spiritual aspects. Just as we were about to start, Hannah, walked into the shop (how convenient, eh?). Hannah is by far the best at speaking Spanish among us, and after praying in English over Emiliano, she was able to translate it into Spanish.

There, amid the sweaty, humid, salty, hot, dirty, stifling street tienda we laid our hearts and hands on a soul that Jesus loves deeply. I couldn’t stop smiling not because of what we had said or done, but because of where Jesus shows up. He’s in the dusty car exhaust-filled rooms in the middle of Bocas. He’s among the body odors, misfits, open sewage ditches & burning trash, in addition to the grandest of cathedrals and most scenic vistas.

Better still, He is using the hands and tongues of young women with limited Spanish, broken pasts and average knowledge to proclaim the Truth…and it’s working.

I think I’m beginning to glimpse the practicality that is weaved into the supernatural when I acknowledge His Spirit in the everyday. Pray with me as I pursue a deeper connection with the Spirit who moves in common places in the most uncommon ways. I desire to simply live as a witness to the greatest news in human history, act on His promptings wherever I am, & rejoice in the dirt with Jesus.

“We have moments of transcendence, as if the thin veil between heaven and earth is fluttering in the most normal and ordinary moments of our lives, and then we can’t breathe for the loveliness of the world and each other, and just like that, our souls remember something; we recognize him here.” -Sarah Bessey

-Betañia

Dead or Alive

We aren’t good or bad.
We are dead or alive.
God, in his grace, is awakening the lives of his creation so they can glorify him.

We are renewed.
We are made into new creations.
We have been given a responsive heart.
We move & obey with a new spirit.
We are made alive, in Christ.

He replaces meaningless idols with the Author of Life.
He allows us to trade the temporary for the eternal.
He joyfully adopts us as His own.

My Father doesn’t sell band-aids for “bad” people.
He’s performing heart transplants so the dead may truly live.

Come Alive. Be Renewed.

Quote Day

“QUOTE DAY”
Here are some of my favorite quotes I’ve encountered this week:

“The stale religiosity of legalists, trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, obscures the face of the God of Jesus.” [Brennan Manning]

“You’ve got enough insights to last you three hundred years. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.” [B. Manning]

“Craving clarity we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike faith trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.” [B. Manning]

“Mystery is an embarrassment to the modern mind. All that is elusive, enigmatic, hard to grasp will eventually yield to our intellectual investigation, then to our conclusive categorization or so we would like to think. But to avoid mystery is to avoid the only God worthy of worship, honor, and praise.”  [B. Manning]

“We would never judge any of God’s other children with the savage condemnation with which we crush ourselves.” [B. Manning]

“Conflicts has not raised the question how can God tolerate so much evil, but rather how the more tangible reality of evil still allows the possibility of God’s existence.” [B. Manning]

“When we protect ourselves from what we fear, we also undermine our capacity for wonder.” [Jonathan Martin]

“It’s not exactly an icebreaker for a party, but if we really wanted to get to know each other, we would ask to see each other’s scars.” [J. Martin]

“We ask a lot of questions about what is going to happen in the future. But the question the Gospels ultimately pose is this: What are we going to do now that God’s future is crashing into the present?” [J. Martin]

“You must believe in the yes that comes back when you ask, “Do you love me?” You must choose this yes even when you do not experience it.” [Henri Nouwen]

“I would argue that immersion is primarily a quality of consciousness that has to do with the capture and control of attention, a necessary condition for any interpersonal persuasion, education, or entertainment to occur.”
[Diana Slattery]

“One of the surest ways to avoid being happy is to insist on being happy at all costs.” [Simon Tugwell]

What do you think, any good ones? What quotes did you encounter this week?