Holding Nothing Back

I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!

 - Mark 9:24b

God desires relationship with us so much that He sacrificed everything to make that happen. He pursues us with a passion, but He also wants us to pursue Him. At times He seems so elusive, so hidden. Sometimes it feels like He wants us to hunt for Him without immediate success, to weary ourselves with the pursuit, miss the signs and come away empty handed at times, but to somehow in the seemingly unsuccessful times come to know the nature of God a little better. Belief and unbelief mix together to drive us to search even greater, remembering, even in the midst of doubt sparked in feeling unsuccessful in our search for God, that we are promised to find when we seek.

In the story that the opening quote from Mark comes from, a man brought his possessed son to some of Jesus' disciples and asked them to heal the boy. They couldn't. Jesus learned of the situation and told them to bring the boy to Him. The father begged Jesus to help his son.

I have sometimes wondered what that man must have been thinking and feeling. The Bible doesn't tell us. We know from the text that He had enough hope and faith to take the boy to the disciples. All around the area people were being healed and restored. He may not have known what to think of it, but He believed the stories enough to see if they could be true for Him as well. He himself confessed that He believed in Jesus, but in the same breath he admitted fears, doubts and unbelief. We aren't told exactly what the unbelief consisted of, but maybe it was something along the lines of: Is this healing really possible? Is this Jesus really all they say He is? His disciples couldn't help, can He really do this? What am I going to do if this doesn't work? 

In response to the plea Jesus told the father that He could heal the boy if the father believed because anything is possible with belief. The father immediately cried out to Jesus, I do believe but help me overcome my unbelief! (NLT)

Even as he proclaimed his faith, the father humbly recognized his vulnerability, his weakness and doesn't try to hide the truth of his fear and doubt from Jesus. Jesus told him that he needed to believe and instead of trying to hide what might cause failure in his search for a solution, for an encounter with God, the father brought his belief and his unbelief to Jesus. 

The father's desperation and doubt became the vehicle of his most potent act of faith, thrusting everything he had and lacked onto the hope in the power and mercy of Jesus. With his act, the father raised the question are faith and doubt mutually exclusive? Does one always give way to the other? Or do they coexist to create a fertile field of humility, risk and defenselessness? Can it be that even our doubts, our questions and confusion are actually tools to spur on our faith, inspiring us to greater risks, deeper diving into the depths of Jesus? Could it be that our doubts are the fuel to drive our pursuit to seek out and reveal what is hidden?

When we hold nothing back, even our doubts and questions and fear, from the Son of Compassion, He responds to us. We, like the father in Mark, do not need to control or overcome our unbelief as much as we need to make ourselves vulnerable by honestly trusting all of us, even what seems lacking, to the care of Jesus. And as we do this time and time again, we will discover that Jesus will never betray our vulnerability and will never fail us. 

Perfect Acceptance

God loves you as you are,

not as you should be.

- Brennan Manning, author of The Ragamuffin Gospel

Those who have read and listened to the Unshackled Life Ministries messages over the past month and a half will recognize the above quote from Brennan Manning. I use it quite often. There is so much life changing, freeing power in that short sentence. Once we realize it's true, we could spend a lifetime exploring the implications. There's nothing that we have to do, need to do, or can do to attain or increase the love of God for us.

But I had someone ask me, "If God is so accepting and loving, and never changes, then why was only the high priest allowed into the Holy of Holies in the temple and why did everything have to be perfect, and why do we have to do it His way or be cast away forever? If God is so accepting, then why can't we just hang out with Him without having to change?"

Well, the answer to the last part is we can. And we can't. But let's look first at the question of how we can call God accepting when He allows only perfect holiness to enter His presence, when He won't tolerate anything unrighteous? I mean really, you have to be perfect to come into My presence or you die doesn't sound very compassionate or accepting does it?

Let's look at it from a different perspective. The light of God's love is perfect and holy. I John 1:5 says, This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you; God is light and there is no darkness in him at all. God is light and there is no darkness in Him or around Him. It's not about acceptance or tolerance. It's about light.

I'm a photographer, and playing with light is part of what I do in that vocation. The contrast between light and shadow and the way light is used can make all the difference in the story that a photograph tells. But if you're really trying to show off an object for advertising or something along those lines, you want the whole object to be in the light where it can be seen. You don't want shadows obscuring the view. And to eliminate the shadows, or darkness, you need the light to be perfect.

When a room is set up with perfect lighting, a photograph can be taken anywhere in the room without capturing a shadow with the subject. That's because there is no shadow. Light, by it's very nature, destroys darkness. If the light is perfect then there can be nothing of shadow or darkness in the area, not because light doesn't like darkness, but simply because it is impossible for the two things to exist in the same place at the same time. Light eliminates dark just by being.

God is perfect light, and when the imperfections of anyone or anything are brought into the presence of that light, what is not light also, what is not of the same nature, is destroyed. Perfection can not coexist in the same time and place as imperfection.

But God loves His creation! He wants to have relationship with us. He desires to have us come into His presence and enjoy His company. And He went to great lengths to make that possible. It's quite a feat actually. He made a way to make the unholy holy, to make imperfection perfect, without destroying the object of His affection, which is us.

Since we, in our darkness, couldn't go into His presence, He came into our presence. Perfection took on imperfection. God wrapped Himself in flesh and walked among us. And when He did, he hung out with the imperfect, the broken and the outcast. He lived an earthly life spending time with those that even the imperfect of humanity considered too imperfect to associate with. People no relatively healthy person would go near Jesus actually touched. He ate with those no one would eat with. He talked to those no one would speak to. He accepted the rejected into His presence and had compassion on the wounded and broken in such a way that makes even the most accepting and tolerant of us all look uncaring by comparison. 

Because He is God, He lived that life of compassion and acceptance in such a way that the law of cause and effect never caused darkness. And then He extended His victory over darkness to the rest of us. He loved and accepted us so much that He suffered a brutal and horrible death for us to make it possible for us to come into His presence in His realm. He came to us and made the cross a tool of transformation so that imperfection could become perfect and exist in the presence of perfect light. 

In His wonderful acceptance, He made that transformation available to each and every person. No one is too anything to be included. The worst of the worst, the ones none of us would even want to give a chance to, are permitted to come. No one is excluded for any reason. No one is turned away. Everyone is free to come into relationship with Him. But it remains true that darkness and light can not dwell together, and the process of changing darkness into light is faith in Christ.

The love of God does not exclude anyone, for any reason. The grace of God extends to us all. There is not a single person that God did not provide a way for. That is total acceptance. That goes way beyond tolerance. That is love.

Self Esteem

This weeks message is entitled "Self Esteem" and is about and is about 47 minutes in length. All around us we see the message of the importance of self esteem, but what is a Godly perspective on the issue and what are we as believers to base our value on? Today's message answers those questions and shows how we are to treat others based on the understanding of our own value. I pray that this message blesses all who listen, and if you are blessed by what you hear, please share this message with others. God bless you.

Doubt

I cried out with no reply

And I can't feel You by my side

So I'll hold tight to what I know

You're here and I'm never alone

- Never Alone by Barlow Girl

We see through a glass darkly. Sometimes we feel God's tug on our hearts and lives and respond only to encounter soon after a dryness where we can no longer feel much of God in anything or we fall short and question our calling. Sometimes we face a crisis as it feels our life is being blown apart and God is not doing things the way that we want, hope or pray for. That relationship we were praying for healing and restoration in remains strained or completely falls apart despite all our efforts and prayer. That loved one we prayed for remained sick or died. The job we prayed for didn't happen or while trusting God to meet our needs we got laid off and felt the needs pressing in even greater than before. The peace we pursued continued to feel more elusive than grabbing a rainbow. Doubt can, at least temporarily, pin faith to the mat of our inner struggle.

And then with our faith looking weak we begin to be beaten up by condemnation. Our problems are all because we doubted. If we loved God the way we should, we'd never have even a moment of doubt of God's love, care and provision for us. If we had strong enough faith we'd never experience a single setback or disappointment. Bogus statements one and all. 

Jesus said we'd face hardships and setbacks. While there is no indication that doubt ever entered into His being and no one could have ever had stronger faith than Jesus, Christ still went from a triumph entry into Jerusalem with everyone shouting His praise to alone in a garden, sweating drops of blood in agony and fear, about to be betrayed and forsaken by those closest to Him facing a horrible and painful death separated from the presence of the Father for the first time ever in less than a week. Never doubting doesn't mean we won't face things that make us feel like God isn't there or that we won't like or understand. And moments of doubt and questions don't mean that we don't believe or that we have failed God.

David was called a man after God's own heart. And yet, many of His psalms have questions about when would God finally step in and help Him. When would God make things right? God didn't strike David down or forsake Him for his doubts and questions but instead showed him that no matter what it may feel like, no matter what it may look like, despite what the world says and our senses tell us, He is there, we are not forsaken, God does love us and care for us and we are indeed safe in His care.

Until we see Him and know Him without any barriers there will be struggles with understanding and with doubt. And that doesn't mean that even as we question, God isn't calling us to serve despite everything. That's why Jesus said we needed faith the size of tiny mustard seed and not a mountain. That's why faith is stepping out when we don't see how God can do things because everything around us says it can't happen. If all our senses said God was there and it was all going to be OK and everything is fine, it wouldn't be faith, it would be trust in our senses and experience. When the disciples gathered before the risen Lord in Matthew 28 verses 16 & 17 tell us, When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted. Even in worship, even at the foot of the risen Savior, even as the calling is being given, even surrounded by believers, we might doubt. But a believer is not someone who never doubts. A believer is someone who pursues relationship with God and determines to believe that what God says is true even when doubt and emotions and situations say it isn't. A believer is one who cries Son of David have mercy on me!, even as the voices in our head and around us say shut up, doesn't everything happening show you that He has more important things to do, that He doesn't care about you? Yet we cry all the louder. 

Doubt makes the act of continuing in faith all the more powerful, just as fear is what makes acts of courage great. If there were not great fear to overcome then it would not seem courageous to do what needs to be done in spite of that fear. And if there were no reason to question or doubt then stepping out in faith would not give much glory to the One who is faithful when He does what He has promised to do, love and care for us. Don't allow doubt to be a doorway for condemnation. We can pray the prayer of the father with the ill child, Lord, I believe, but help me with my unbelief. Don't beat yourself up over doubt, but determine to stay fixed on Christ regardless, so that when the winds of doubt blow we soar like a kite because we're attached and not scattered as though we have no anchor. Let us use our doubts and questions to bring glory to the One who answers them when we continue to follow after Him, regardless of the doubt rather than have them be a weapon that the enemy can use to separate us from our Father. 

Stuck

I remember a time when my father and I got stuck. I don't remember the exact situation, but I think we were leaving the area after rabbit hunting. Driving across a low spot in the farmer's field we were in, the truck became stuck. My father tried rocking back and forth in forward then reverse and all the other tricks I'd seen him use to get a vehicle out of the mud. They'd never failed before, but that night they did. We were stuck.

Then my father shocked me. He walked to a nearby barn and borrowed a shovel. He shoveled sand into the bed of the truck. I kept thinking, Now we'll never get out of here. He's making it sink down more! It was one of the few times in my life I doubted my father's wisdom and sanity. Much to my surprise, after he finished putting sand in the bed of the truck, he drove right out of the hole, across the rest of the field and to the safety of the road. We were moving again! The added weight caused the tires to press into the earth and have enough traction to move forward instead of spinning on the surface.

It's easy when the weight of life is on us to want to moan and ask God why He's letting that happen. Perhaps God, seeing what we can not, know, that the ground we're moving across or will be moving across soon is slick and wet and easy to become stuck in. Perhaps He's adding weight so we can maintain traction of focus on Him. Or maybe we've driven our lives into an area we shouldn't have and the results of our own will and actions have caused the added weight. Either way, the answer is the same. Instead of cursing the weight and being discouraged, let us be thankful that we aren't needlessly spinning our wheels and that we can we can let the burden focus our attention on Jesus and give us the traction to seek the safety of His solid rock. There, in the way of His will, we can give Him the weight that we're too tired to carry.

Great Expectations

"Put your expectations on God, not on people."

~ Joyce Meyer

We all have expectations. We expect a certain amount of common courtesy. We expect our spouses to honor and value us, our children to respect  and obey us, our bosses to appreciate our work, our friends to be loyal, our cars to crank when we turn the key, our bodies to function in a relatively healthy manner, and so many other things. But what do we do when life flips the script and what we expect, what we feel should happen, is not what happens? We learn the answer to that in Philippians 1 through the example of Paul who experienced broken expectations in the area of plans, people and places but stayed joyful and full of hope.

Paul was an evangelist called to go to the world and share the good news of Jesus. He started churches all over and went from place to place ministering. Now he was stuck in prison. When we are stuck in a place or situation that is uncomfortable, unfulfilling, or unsafe, it's easy to get discouraged and lose hope, But Paul became encouraged rather than discouraged. He said in Philippians 1:12 that his suffering lead to the advance of the gospel.

People will fail our expectations. It hurts, especially when it is someone we love dearly and who is supposed to love us, like a spouse, child, parent or grandparent. Maybe it's more life itself that let us down instead of a person. A loss of financial security, the death of someone close to us, a health crisis, and other situations similar to these can throw our lives into a tailspin as our expectations go up in flames.

Paul could have naturally expected to receive encouragement and help from fellow believers. After all, he was in prison for taking the gospel to them. But instead of encouragement, some were glad he was in prison. Hurt and anger would be the natural response, and would've left him miserable. Paul knew that death loomed over him, that at any minute his execution could be ordered. But instead of being paralyzed by fear Paul responded by saying that Christ is preached and in this he rejoiced (1:15) and that for him to live is relationship with Christ, and to die or lose himself and his expectations was to gain (1:21).

Paul's only expectation that mattered was for Christ to be honored and for God to be glorified through his life and reactions to his life. We can let go of our expectations. That doesn't mean to slip into hopelessness that says what's the point? No matter what I do misery is all I will find. No, we can release them in a better way, by remembering that what matters is relationship with God and what will be eternal. People and situations here are fleeting, even if fleeting is 90 years or so. The eternal is what matters. If we use our despair and failed expectations to inspire us to run to God, to find our comfort and solace in Him and our purpose in His will, then not only will we find peace and comfort for ourselves, but our peace when there should naturally be no peace, when everyone's expectations would be for us to be miserable and full of despair, will advance the gospel and show the love and power of Christ to a hurting world around us.

Being Motivated By Love

If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

- I Corinthians 13:2

It is easy to slip into the place where we feel the need to flaunt our accomplishments. For some of us who, like the prodigal son, have messed up many times it feels good to finally be doing something right, and we'd love for as many or more people to see our goo an accomplishments as saw the mistakes we made. For others who are more like the prodigal's older brother and have tried to find their value in their works only to find it unfulfilling, the temptation is often to work even harder and make sure people see it.

In Philippians Paul warned those who were proud that they were keeping the law and religious customs. Their works gave them the idea that they were the top of the line, star Christians, but their self-righteousness and better than everyone else attitude caused division in the church. Paul told them to stop rejoicing in their own accomplishments and start rejoicing in the Lord.

Paul encouraged the Philippians and us to stop focusing on things to make us look good and instead live in such a way that people see the love and compassion of Jesus in our lives. He then listed his own accomplishments, which were many, and told how they amounted to nothing compared to the value of knowing Jesus.

There are no star Christians, no class system within followers of Christ. There is only one star, and that is Jesus. Whenever we feel the need to brag about over something we have or have done, the message is clear, don't. As Jesus said, those who do good works for the praise of others have their reward, and it's not enough to fill the empty and give us a true sense of value. Jeremiah put it this way, Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, (Jeremiah 9:24).

God looks at our hearts. He looks at the motivations behind our actions. God says obedience to His law of love is worth much more to Him than the sacrifice of following the law of religion. The law and all its do's and don't's put the focus on sin and us rather than on Jesus. God wants us to live love. This is why we are told that if we don't have love we are nothing. If we have everything that religion has to offer and don't have love of relationship then we have nothing. We show our faith not by works of holy acts and doing this or not doing that but by putting the love of God in our lives into action. Showing faith by works flows from love and is a condition of being in relationship with Christ, not by legalistic works or actions where the motivation is only to prove our faith or look good in the eyes of other Christians and religious people.