Misunderstood Destiny

The following excerpt is from Mark Frost's Doorpost newsletter, I found it very enlightening.

"Many times, our desire to fulfill our calling or our destiny, or as some like to phrase it, “to be greatly used of God”, is motivated more out of a desire for personal significance or fulfillment, than out of pure love for God. If you feel trapped by circumstances, unable to fulfill what you feel is your destiny, you can continually long and look for a different station in life, or you can long and look for ways to turn your many daily routines into sweet smelling offerings of love to God, as you do them with a pure motive of love and surrender to the will of God that has you enclosed or shut up in a narrow place... Don’t waste the mundane waiting for significance! Turn the mundane into sweet smelling sacrifice to God. It is that very offering of love to God out of a pure heart that turns the prison into paradise, the desert into a garden, and the shack into a mansion. If you have within you the life of Christ, through a true work of God’s grace, then you already possess all that you need in order to become a well-pleasing sacrifice to Jesus."

I would add- That if you have within you the life of Christ then you already have all you need to find fulfillment/significance in the place you're in.

In my theology I believe this, but my reality does not always line up with my beliefs. I guess what I mean is that some of my daily routines do not smell like "sweet smelling offerings" to me.
What I've done in the past when my place in life left me feeling unsatisfied, was to look for a new place, but after going around that merry-go-round a few times I know the grass is not really greener it just looks that way from a distance.

So how does the mundane start to smell a little less like shit and more like a fragrant offering?

I think it must start with (and come back to) God's ridiculous love for us. If we don't really get This, then everything will come up short, leave us feeling unfulfilled. This Love can't really be explained by anyone. Especially when religion and religious terminology have become the equivelant of white noise, when words like grace, mercy, "the Cross", forgiveness, redemption no longer carry much meaning.

But every once in a while we catch a glimpse of this love, and if our cluttered minds can see it for what it truly is... well there are no words.

I've put a link to a you tube video of Kim Walker singing "How He Loves Us". She's caught a glimpse of His Love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoC1ec-lYps

talon

Cracked Pots

Here are a few excerpts from from an email I received from my Dad (which he gave me permission to share). I was moved and encouraged by his letter, and I hope that by only selecting parts of it, I have not taken away from its content.
Thanks Dad for your openess, honesty, and courage to share.

" As we open up and share with others our less than perfect stories, our troubled lives, our failures, our weaknesses, our true selves – sins and all, maybe that is what brings light into the world. Cracked pots - as Brennan Manning puts it. As we struggle to the top of the hill starting with a full pot of water, we leak all that life-giving water out and stand at the top of the hill wandering how useless the trip was. But as Manning puts it, the water that all leaked out brought life to the wild plants along the road, unknowing to us. As I become more and more open to revealing my cracks, as I stand in the middle of family and friends and show them my feet of clay, as I confess what a true sinner I am, is this not the abundance of my life overflowing (both good and bad). God knows me completely and still loves me. We have this attitude that we must be this perfect example so we won’t make someone stumble. Well, the reality of that is we are more concerned what other people in the church would think of us. We hide our ‘abundant’ lives deep in our soul – especially evangelical Christians. We think giving a testimony about witnessing to someone at work is sharing the abundant life. We are so good at covering the cracks because we think the cracks are bad. Sin and deceit run deep in he hearts of most of us and until we “prosper in the soul” as it says in3 John 2, we are likely to be a time bomb and true prosperity and health will elude us.
You’re either going to get this or think I’m crazy. It’s only then will we become the light to the sinners not saved by grace. Self righteousness is not a fruit of the Spirit. Jesus told the church of Ephesus in Rev. 2 that they were doing good things but they forgot where they had come from, they had lost their first love. We say to non-Christians that God loves you just as you are and sent Jesus to die for you. He rose again for your forgiveness. I’ve faced the fact that I’m probably no better at sinning less 35 years later – and God still loves me. And realizing that has kept me in that “first love” relationship. One of the things I love about Brennan Manning and how he has ministered to me is that his books are written out of personal failure. Through Manning’s failures as a monk, a divorced husband (I think), an alcoholic, failed ministry, etc. he writes from the depths of failure. Yet he realizes the unfathomable love of Jesus to the down trodden – of which he openly admits to be.
As I walk through my life journey, I’ve tried to look inward, trying to pay attention to what God is doing in my soul. I’m beginning to understand that before I can effectively minister to anyone, I must understand at a deep emotional level what that person feels...

I am haunted and sad at my brother’s death as an alcoholic . I miss him! At that time of my Christian walk I tried to hold a standard of conduct up to him – hoping that he would want to have what I had. I was stupid; I was arrogant; I was unloving and I think I was wrong. Because he died alone, drunk, in a shabby, roach filled room with his empty bottles. Maybe if I had gone to the bar with him a few times, drank with him, and really listened to his heart and his pain – maybe I could have reached him. I repent of my Pharisee attitude. I loved him so much...

As I am showing my cracks, my shocking sins, I find my love for Jesus is deeper, as is my love for non-Christians who cuss like sailors, who get drunk, who have been married numerous times and are now living with someone – my love reaches to the mercy and grace that God gives me – a real bonnified sinner."- Mike

As I read this I hear the wisdom and revelation that came to Paul as he said " I am the greatest of sinners". What? Wasn't he just saying that for effect? Why would he say that? Unless his understanding of sin was not what we think. Maybe he understood that by creating a righteousness of his own he was making a mockery of the cross and misrepresenting the Father of grace.- talon

The Canyon

Lisa and I got away for a few days in January to visit my grandparents in Phoenix. We also did a little overnight jaunt to the Grand Canyon. (I would highly recommend visiting mid-week in January, we almost had the place to ourselves.) I don't think "grand" is a big enough word to describe it. How do you describe something of such vast relief and immense size? It's 10 miles from the south rim to the north rim, and over 5000 feet deep.

Words are wasted and pictures might as well be fuzzy- it can not be described or captured. And I felt like such a tourist/cheater as I looked in from above, not willing to plunge in and experience it up close. Sure, I got off the paved trail a few times to venture out on a rock ledge to try and take it in, but it wasn't enough. I felt as if I couldn't really experience it's fullness without a trek to the river at the bottom- oh how I wanted to swim in that river.

But one thing I'm sure of is that if I had wandered up river and happened to find myself in the bottom of the enormous canyon, I would have felt the same feeling about reaching the top. "How can I ever appreciate its vast expanse from below? I must reach the top!" - I would have said.

Draw your own conclusions.

talon

No agenda?

The following is an email from my sister Ashley who lives in Colorado:

Just been thinking about some ideas about the church over the past few years and wanted to share some thoughts.
My dad once wrote, “The church of Jesus does not need money to run, a denomination, building, directors, an agenda, or a marketing plan, but rather the spirit of God, power of his word, love of brethren & authority of scripture.” I believe this is the way the church was meant to be. Being a part of an institutional church program, where a man claims to be able to hear the voice of God for your life and tells you that without his vision for the church, or someone’s vision, we would become lost in the wilderness, is not what Jesus called us to do as the church of Christ. I'll admit that I don’t like institutions. I feel that people seem to have always have an agenda. But does God's church need an agenda to run? I once heard a preacher refer to Judges 17:6, “No king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” And the sermon was based on the idea that if you are not in a church you will fall into sin. You will live your life only according to what is right in your own eyes. But Judges 18:5 says, “Ask counsel of God that we may know direction.” 20:28, “And the Lord said, Go up; for tomorrow I will deliver them into thine hand.” Is there hope for freedom in God outside of the institutional church, without the fear that you are all the while falling into sin unbeknownst? Matt. 7:18 says, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” Is your foundation made of rock or sand? Does God only speak to you through other people or does he also use creation and his word? Matt. 23:8,9 says “We are to call no man leader, teacher, or Father.”

I desire to live my life without trying to prove to others that my church attendance is directly related to my relationship with God. I often hear the voice of God most clearly alone on a mountain top, worshipping in my garage, or when going for a long run but it is also in the communion of friends that I am stretched and challenged to see God in a different ways. It is then that God will use others in my life to teach me about him. I believe accountability is important in relationships. Because without trust and openness, how can you expect to grow? Close relationships are sharing your life’s journey together, not as an island. Through sharing your life with others, you find renewal and preservation of spirit.

I believe that as the church we are a colony from heaven, loving one another, living & sharing life, devoted to prayer, filled with the Holy Spirit, and speaking the truth in love. What this means to me is, that as a child of God, I choose to open up my heart, listening to others and contributing joy to those relationships.

Ashley

Soul Search

Comments from Mike:

I appreciated Larry's comments. It's a New Year and new and renewed hope arises. Here's a thought about those of us who remain away from organized church. Is that causing us to grow closer to Jesus? Is our love for one another and for Jesus growing? Are we spending more or less time with studying, meditating, and seeking His truth? Are we less or more aware of His presence and His revealing of who we really are? Are we digging deeper and deeper into His Word and trying to understand His Love for us? These are questions I've asked myself. If being away from the community of church life is disconnecting us with inner work and spiritual growth; if we are becoming cold; if love, joy, peace are illusive and replaced by anger, irritability, conflict, judging and fear; then maybe we might need to reconnect with institutional church or a house church at some level. Dad