Do you ever feel like all the idols of your heart are dancing in front of you reminding you that the world is hard so you should pick one up and dance with it today? It is like a hit of cocaine that gives you a temporary high and mask for the pain inside. Oh, how false and fleeting is this world. What a whore our hearts and minds are! We build our own kingdoms of the flesh consciously and unconsciously and pick up the strongholds and dance with them.
Yet my flesh cries for comfort, for a kind soul to let my head rest on their shoulder and weep. My soul, mind and body are tired.
We so often look at our world through a place of lack or scarcity. We lose our awe, wonder and creativity over our situation when we tap into the empire system of our world. Everything we hear today tells us we won’t win unless we are in competition with each other, yet we have created a falsehood of connection through social media, gossip or competition.
The false connection and fleshly competition is so fleeting, but it trains our minds and hearts to only look (through our physical eyes) to find truth. We lose the other senses in that pursuit (hearing, touch, smell, and even tasting). We perceive through a broken and one-dimensional reality. We have trained ourselves to only listen to what we see which is so broken and one sided. It shuts down creativity. It shuts out God’s Voice which operates in whimsy and the miraculous. To put it simply, if we don’t see it, we don’t believe it. It is impossible and we forget that the Holy Spirit convicts, illuminates, teaches, guides, assures, intercedes, directs and warns. You lack nothing in God’s kingdom. NOTHING IS SCARCE OR IMPOSSIBLE!
Look at the Lord’s prayer. It speaks to this beautifully.
Hallowed: set apart for sacred use; holy
Kingdom: sovereign rule of God manifested in Christ to defeat His enemies creating a people over whom He reigns and issuing in a realm in which His power is experienced.
Will: the supreme rule of duty entrusted in God’s servants
Daily bread: what you need to live
Forgive: a divine pardon of our debt from sin
Trespasses: a request for forgiveness and help in forgiving others
Temptation: any attempt to be enticed into evil
Deliver: show us the way of escape
Evil: the devil; arch enemy of God and mankind
This prayer goes from intimacy (our Lord and father; Abba), worship (His holy name), surrender (asking for His will to be complete and revealed in our lives), trust (for His provision daily), grace (forgiveness and our ability to forgive our offenders), deliverance (He fights our battles on righteous scales) and again to worship (praise for His glory). We pray this to remind our spirit to stay connected to God, to abide in His will not ours and stay connected to each other at all costs. Forgiveness of ourselves, others, and our expectations is the only way God continues to move in our lives. When we break connection, we grieve the Spirit and lose sight of God. We become fueled by a lustful heart. . .a heart that longs for revenge, power, control, comfort and the list goes on and on. In this heart posture, we can no longer see His kingdom on display or call it down to earth. Instead, we are filled with and only see betrayal, hurt, isolation, and anger. We begin a path of separation from others, a view on our own perverse and idol-filled hearts and divine separation from Him.
We often have a false view of God and incomplete understanding of the forgiveness we were given as believers. Therefore, we do not walk in the forgiveness He gave us by showing ourselves or others mercy when they wrong us. Instead, we weigh the hurt on human scales of justice and offense starts taking root in our hearts leading us to ghost, cancel and condemn others. This unforgiveness is a clear sign that we have yet to fully grasp the weight of our overwhelming debt to God.
To begin to understand His forgiveness, we have to read His word and question God as we seek to understand and internalize His sovereignty over all things. We have learned that questioning God is unacceptable and it is not modeled in today’s culture. So how do we do this?
Look at Sarah when God spoke and said she would have a child in her old age.
9 “Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he said.
10 Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” 13 Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” 15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.” Genesis 18:9-15
Now look at Mary when the angel appeared and prophesied to her that she would indeed bear the coming Christ.
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relativeis going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her. Luke 1:26-38 NIV emphasis added
Sarah responded from a place of unbelief, lack of awe and understanding of God’s sovereignty. Mary responded from a desire to understand God’s will. Both questioned. One looked at her own worldly knowledge and understanding for answers while the other looked to God. In both cases, God still saw His will come to pass.
The idols of our heart are temporary distractions to assuage our lack of faith, awe and wonder in who God really is. He created us with dominion in our heart, to create, and name all of creation, but we separated from our roles and started believing in our fleshly abilities to understand all (logical thinking) and make life happen without Him. We push for our own will to come to pass instead of co-creating with Him.
This is part of the fall of man. We can try to cultivate our own fruit and get weed-filled gardens, or we can stay connected to the Lord, seek His infinite knowledge, constantly renewing our mind to His ways and word, and produce fruit that is grafted into His Spirit.
So, I ask again, “how do I get out of the trap of the world?”
I am coming to understand the answer is in the second part of our salvation, the 2nd graft of His spirit – trulywalking in the forgiveness that He gave to us on the cross.
As believers, we understand who Jesus is, what He did on the cross, and that there is no other way to the Father but through Him. But we do not believe in our hearts that He has a book written just for us, with our story, before we were ever born. We truly are engraved in the palm of His hand (Isaiah 49:16) and chosen, accepted and loved. He died for us to have His kingdom here on earth. He wants us to stay connected and walk with humility while constantly acknowledging the source of our true freedom, forgiveness and salvation. We must acknowledge all of Him, not just the parts that make us feel good.
In this corrupt bag of bones, we look at our actions through a lens of pass and fail. We check our “godly” boxes, judging ourselves and others as we compare every action to man instead of God. We put our view of our circumstances on to Jesus Christ and believe his character is like our own. We think God’s love is conditional, and He shames us for our sins. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look at how He addresses this through Paul in Romans 8:5-8 MSG
5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignoresGod, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
Even when we pick up the idols and make choices in line with the world, Romans 8:1 is still true…
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
He works everything out through His perfect willregardless of our poor choices.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28 NIV
Our life is not always what we expect because of our flawed perspective and endless expectations of others to fill our desires when God can fill the emptiness the world provides day in and day out.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
[37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:31-39 NIV
Yes, we are all so broken and ill motivated at times. Yet, when we humble ourselves, His will unleashes freedom in our mind, body and spirit. He gives us creative solutions that unleash the miraculous in our lives and others. This is the kingdom of God coming down and His will being done on earth as it is in Heaven.
This can only happen with the saving knowledge of Christ and our wisdom of who He is.
So, I look for Him today in scripture, in nature, in others, in all things. All is from Him and to Him. He is infinite, infallible, perfect, just, and all knowing. He is holy and kind. He is Jesus.
Romans 5:1-5 MSG
[1-2] By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide-openspaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise. [3-5] There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
My body and mind are so flawed and broken, but I am running after God. He is meeting me here in ridiculously awesome ways. Sending me to passages I would never think have something for me, yet, there He is, in every scripture, every word. Thank God we live in this time where His word is in front of us and so accessible to find.
I pray we can lay down the idols that turn our thoughts from Him, and find the praise while understanding that our hope and will for the future we want, and covet, must die for His will to come to pass. May no trouble, sickness, pain or circumstance take our eyes off Him.
May our minds and spirit align with His word. May every teaching of truth find lodging in our heart and produce fruit that is grafted into His word. May nothing take our eyes from Him. May we walk in His forgiveness and love today and all days.
