make me prove it / hosea

I was just challenge by a friends blog post - which inspired this blog post.

she said: “I don’t want following you to be easy, challenge me. I want to prove that my love for you is real, deep, enduring and unshakable.

i echo that.

see, the paradox is that we try our very best in life to avoid challenging things and are constantly looking for an easy road. but on the other hand, it is through the challenges and the hardships that we feel the most alive. it's also in the challenges and hardships that you find out whether or not you actually have the faith you claim to posses. not some pre-trial, naive, idealistic, emotional high feeling about God, but an honest wrestling, questioning, doubting, conquering and enduring faith that is not shaken. if you've ever had a situation that you thought was absolute hell and then later when it was all said and done looked back and had nothing but gratitude for the whole wretched thing - you know what i mean. we want to be saved from the storms, but sometimes the storms save us.

jesus never promises it will be easy. as a matter of fact he says the exact opposite.

the other part that hit me was Hosea 2:14- “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her…” - Just think about God enticing and coaxing a prostitute whom he is madly in love with into the desert to whisper sweet nothings in her ear. It doesn't matter that she has had so many other lovers - God is sold on her.

it's kind of scandalous.

here be dragons / the god who wastes nothing

at the edges of many medieval maps was penciled in the phrase "here be dragons." this was unexplored territory and no one knew what was there so they wrote in that warning. basically the message was "stay away - we don't know what is here, it's not safe here." it may even hurt. one author i'm reading says that we need to go to the edges of our medieval maps and confront our dragons more often. if you think about - some one at some point decided to go deal with those dragons on the edge of the known map and found out that it wasn't so bad after all - maybe they learned something about themselves on the journey to dragon land and maybe they learned something about the un-explored world when they got to dragon land and found there were no dragons - (or defeated them) we need to go to the places in our lives that are marked "here be dragons." the idea is that when we sit in our darkness and brokenness - sort of like the concept of the lenten season - that is when we experience God, and when we grow the most. when we face the fringes of our metaphorical maps we are pushed out of our comfort zones into what some have called liminal space. this is the space of God. this space is where God meets us where we are and moves us along. liminal space is that place where everything you know has been turned upside down and you have no frame of reference for anything. some have compared it to the birth of a child or the death of a loved one.

so my first year of "official" ministry has been a crazy one. (I used quotes around official because everybody is in ministry whether you get paid or not) if you don't know what I am talking about - I work for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Rhode Island. It is a campus ministry organization. my supervisor and many others have said that your first year of ministry is more for you and your own development than it is for anyone else...I affirm that now. this year has stretched me in ways that I did not know were possible, and looking back i would say the defining word for the year is "growth."

visiting the fringes of ourselves often seems scary and lonely. when we confront our own unknown it is frightening. we often find things there (situations, people, places, memories, events etc) that we don't want to deal with - and they often seem like a waste. there is a phrase in hebrew that translates to "the God who wastes nothing." Nothing in our lives is wasted by God, He is not afraid of our dragons and if we just need to be still and let God take care of the dragons for us. There is a verse in Exodus (14:14) that says "The Lord will fight for you, you only need to be still." The Israelites had just gotten out of Egypt and already they are complaining and being fearful of the desert. (maybe they are afraid there are dragons there) Moses says to them essentially "God will fight for you, just shut up."

this is the summation of the lessons i learned this year:
it's not up to me,
God will use me in my junk regardless and i just need to be still and let God fight the dragons.
God uses my brokenness and fear of dragons in His reconciliation of all things.
I am not God.
the answer is often "yes." (to many different questions.)

genesis 1 and skin garments

so i'm preparing my first real "talk" for when intervarsity takes college students down to new orleans over spring break. i am doing two talks - one on why God would allow so much suffering and how the world was not always how we see it and will not always be this way. I'm also doing the last talk on how Jesus invites us to be a part of God's redemption in the world. And I'm giving the invitation to follow Jesus at the end!

So - Genesis 1-3 is amazing. There is so much there, and there is ALWAYS more to learn in re-reading it. Without listing my entire talk...the thing that made me write this post was Genesis 3:21 "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them." Seemingly trivial right?

IMMEDIATELY after humanity turns their back on God and his plan, they choose outside of His love and are cast out of the garden. And the FIRST thing God does is make them clothes! Adam and Eve felt shame because they were naked and the first thing God does after basically being stabbed in the back is....clothe them so they don't feel shame!?

Amazing.

This is something I'm re-learning (or maybe actually learning for the first time) that God stinkin loves us - no matter how many times we turn our backs on Him - he still clothes our nakedness and covers our shame.

Could clothes be the first post fall example of God meeting humans where they are at?

jesus at your table

"If Jesus appeared at your dining room table tonight with knowledge of everything you are and are not, total comprehension of your life story and every skeleton hidden in your closet; if he had laid out the real state of your present discipleship with the hidden agenda, the mixed motives, and the dark desires buried in your psyche you would feel his acceptance and forgiveness." - Brennan Manning

one of those "ok God I get it" moments

lately - it appears that i have been able to relate to a number of people in my life in a very real way because of specific events that have happened in my life, that are now happening in theirs. (its a confusing sentence, read it again, slowly)

today that happened again.

without going into specifics, i was talking with someone today who upon listening to this person the thought in my head was "oh man, you sound exactly like me"

i say the phrase "i know exactly what you mean / i know exactly how you feel" a lot lately, and as cliche as it is and for as much as people throw it around as a futile attempt at comforting friends - I can actually mean it.

I've also heard a lot lately that I am really good at pulling things out of people. (not objects or body parts...feelings, emotions, whats bothering them, the truth etc, in case you were wondering)

maybe i have a future as a counselor...