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News from April 2009

Love That Overpowers Mountains

April 28, 2009

Isaiah 54:10

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD who has compassion on you.

Have you ever wondered what it would take to bring down a mountain? I have seen footage of people blowing up skyscrapers. It takes so much explosive, and planning and preparation. The resulting cloud of dust and debris is ridiculous, and all the men stand around after and talk about how cool that looked. Men like me watching from home wish that we were there to see it in real life because lets be honest, when you can create that much force, that much power…you can pretty much do anything.

What is interesting is when we remember that buildings, essentially are hollow inside. They are a frame of metal and bolts covered with a glorified paper mache…and now we read of God shaking mountains and leveling hills.

Which…in case you skipped that class….are solid rock. Sometimes kilometers thick.

So there you have it. God is better than people. You can turn off your computer now, there is nothing more to see.

Ok well here is the truth that I have been struck with today. Bombs and explosives are one of the single most feared forces on the planet. Yet with all the power that they have, we know that would take several of even the most powerful bombs we have ever invented to bring down Mount Everest.

Because mountains are really, really big.

And yet to God bringing down an entire mountain, or destroying hills so that it is as if they were never there is nothing. It is such a flippant discussion to him that he uses it in an ANALOGY!

To us the idea is grandiose, and the only place it could occur would be in some sort of love song or a Bruce Willis movie…but to God it is NOTHING…..

ESPECIALLY when it is compared to an even greater force….His love and compassion for His children.

God says the power required to destroy a MOUNTAIN is NOTHING compared to His love for you and me.

Is anyone like me? Do you simply have a hard time believing that? I have a HARD TIME with this truth…and yet it is the truth of God. It is the truth of life. It is the truth of relationship with a compassionate and loving father.

It is simply true.

I feel like for many of us who read a statement like this we have this visceral withdrawal…this feeling in the core of who we are that just sort of….recoils or pushes back at the statement that GOD LOVES YOU NO MATTER WHAT….why is that? Why do we recoil and revolt and resist the love of God.

Shouldn’t we want the God of the Universe to love us? I sometimes feel like I just push back on this so hard….because I don’t feel like its real. I don’t feel like it should be, or that I deserve it, or that I want it for free….I want to earn it. I want to prove myself deserving.

So today….if you are at all like me….join me at the feet of Jesus. Join me in TRYING TO SIMPLY BASK IN GOD‘S LOVE. To simply sit at the feet of the God who says that mountains will collapse before He stops loving us…..

Lets sit in the middle of our imperfection….and receive love simply because its there…

Thats my journey today.

Brian <><

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I Don't Believe in Grace

April 21, 2009

Romans 3:24… ”[We] are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Ok it’s honesty time. I don’t believe that passage. I mean…I WANT to…I REALLY want to….and if I was asked I would say that it is ABSOLUTELY true, beyond a shadow of a doubt…so don’t get me wrong, I’m not in the middle of some sort of faith crisis.

However if I were to just get honest for a moment, and evaluate the actions and patterns by which I live my life, I would have no choice but to come to the simple and somewhat chilling conclusion that I simply don’t believe in grace.

I have no choice in stating this because I see how hard I work to win favor. I see how important it is to me that I am viewed as perfect. I strive to hide mistakes. I strategically block from sight all my imperfections. I play a life-sized chess game, always thinking a couple of moves ahead so that my reputation, my image, my EGO will not be tarnished.

I live under the conviction that I MUST WORK AS HARD AS I CAN…to perfect myself.

I have done this work under many different disguises, I have done it under the banner of “Christian Service,” I have done it in the name of “Love,” “Servanthood,” and even “ministry.”

Yet all of it betrays the same hidden inner motivation that drives me….pride.

Tim Keller observes that “people who find themselves working and striving for God’s approval don’t do it because they ARE SO COMMITTED TO THE GOSPEL…they do it because they aren’t committed enough.”

We work and strive, and push…...because we aren’t committed enough to the gospel of GRACE.

We aren’t committed enough to the Gospel of Jesus which spoke wholeness to broken people IN THEIR BROKENNESS…not in their superficial perfection.

The truth of the matter is that in EVERY person who knows Jesus is a broken heart that has been made perfect by redeeming love…and yet we hide it with a shroud of superficiality.

Now for that one person who actually reads this blog….if your starting to feel like Brian is such a downer let me say this….

This realization is one of the greatest and most joyfully freeing realization I have ever had.

Because THIS DAY….April 21, 2009 I will get on my knees before the GOD OF GRACE, and bask in my imperfection, because in that place I allow the blood of Jesus to fill every crack, patch every break, and make me truly perfect.

And then I will understand a little bit better the REDEEMING LOVE of Jesus.

If you’re ready, I encourage you to stop right now and do the same….I talked to the guys over at the internet and they said they would keep it open until you’re done.

Journeying,

Brian <><

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God's Thoughts

April 14, 2009

Psalm 92:5 – “How great are your works , O Lord, how profound Your thoughts!”

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hear the “thoughts” of God? You think about all the incredibly deep, intellectual thinkers that this world has ever known, and then realize that God gave them their intellect out of his own. The mind of God completely dwarfs anything that we could ever appreciate or comprehend.

I guess when you think about it, every time we even try to, in our own minds, understand the nature of God, we are forced by our own limited mental capacity to reduce God down something we can understand, something we can process. We call Him “Father,” yet we only understand the “Father nature” of God to a certain point…when the truth is God is infinitely more the perfect father than we could ever imagine. We call Him “Saviour” without ever knowing the depth of what His sacrifice really did for us….

Truly we cannot actually even begin to fathom the reality of who God is….

I think that C.S. Lewis said it best when he wrote this little paragraph, and titled it “A footnote to all Prayers”

Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

I think that the Psalmist made an understatement when he called the thoughts of God “profound.”

Yet today Lord, my simple prayer is that you would give me some sort of insight into your thoughts…your thoughts which are so much higher than mine…would you grant me even a sliver of your wisdom this day.

On the Journey,

Brian <><

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