The Deeper Journey

"Lord, here is a soul who exists only for you.  Show me your presence of heaven on earth"

I know I am weak.  I know I have little power or strength.  I know the power of evil and temptation and yet I rest in the safety of God's loving arms.  I have an unshakable hope in Christ.  God is taking me on a deeper journey into surrender.  God is turning my will to His will so that I want to will God's will.  God is taking me deeper into His heart.  God is leading me to still waters to restore my wayward soul.  God is my strong fortress deep within.

God is doing a deep cleansing and healing at subterranean levels.  Christ's will determines my actions.  I have been too easily distracted and divided and now God is making me constant and steadfast.  "My heart is stead fast O God and my eyes are fixed on You."  I am finally learning that to be cured means to be slain by God.  One can not truly happen without the other.  God wants us to learn to carry the heaviest cross in peace.

God is preparing us for a holy uprising where people are immersed in His grace.  Where we are so ruined and desperate while we hunger and thirst after God more than the food we crave.  We are either going deeper into God or we are retreating from God?  Even when I feel like I am way over my head, Daddy God will not let me drown.  He is there letting me struggle and when I am exhausted, I have no where else to go but to Him.

How often do we define ourselves by our catastrophes?  I am sick.  I am disabled.  I am an addict.  I am divorced.  I am unemployed.  I am a failure.  But God defines us by His favor.  God calls us, always keeps His promises, and grips our life with His grace.  We think life is all about happiness or dealing with suffering where the only thing that really counts is walking by God's Spirit every day.  In my sufferings I find both myself and God.  The more I die the more I find life in Christ.

So God is taking me deeper.  I am going deeper in prayer, deeper into God's love, deeper in community and deeper into Christ.  I am aiming at praying without ceasing, loving without ceasing, living the eucharist life every day in holy communion with other Christians as I put myself under the direction of a spiritual mentor.  I am like a dead person raised again yet unbound from the grave clothes.  The only way to go higher with God is to go deeper with God.  Go deeper!

God Goes to Work

"Every past experience is preparation for some future opportunity" - Mark Batterson

No matter what our past has been, God redeems our past and even uses it to help others going through similar things.  We look and judge things from the outside but God looks within and knows us from the inside.  God sets us free from our past but God also wants us to be free of our imperfections and insecurities.  Unless we die to ourselves daily and surrender everything to God, we will continue to be trapped in our past mistakes.

One of the greatest discoveries is how God helps us know who we are while freeing us from who we are not.  God knows our DNA and our destiny which is hidden in our history.  Our strengths are often hidden in our weaknesses and the challenges we have overcome are our opportunities for growth.  Every divine appointment God has for us is a another season of preparation.  Unless we stay close to God and understand what season we are in, we will not understand the outcome or place God is taking us.  God is doing all the work but it feels at times like we are exhausting ourselves to death.

Our lives are like big action movies with epic stories.  The best movies are not the ones with the most action necessarily but the ones with the best character development.  Usually the main character has to overcome some great obstacle or difficulty or face some grave fear or injustice.  What we discover not only in the movies but in life is the worst circumstances can sometimes produce the best character.  God is more concerned about our character than our failures.

What God is teaching me is my self-confidence has to be crucified and what he replaces it is with holy confidence from Him.  May God defend me from my own self-sufficiency, spiritual blindness, and hardness of heart.  May God deliver me from being so entangled in the world that I forget to be wrapped in the Holy Spirit.  I am coming to the place where I don't really think much of hell or heaven but simply ask God to so fill me with His love, enter into heavenly worship, seek union with Christ that is seems like paradise on earth. 

In spite of my illnesses and weakness, God is renewing my inner man and spirit day by day.  Sometimes I sing prayers out loud and sometimes I am simply silent and feel God's presence and peace wash over me like waves of the ocean hitting me continuously without end. 

All I know is I am wounded by God's love and that in itself is enough!

Soul What?

"What will a man give in exchange of his soul?" (Matthew16:26)

There is a crises of Christian character in the American Church and most Christians are more concerned about the health-care crises than they are about the soul-care crises.  We are discovering the importance of taking care of our physical bodies, exercise, and staying physically fit.  Why have we neglected the greater maintenance of taking care of our souls?

We are losing our souls as we get spiritually weaker, sick, and our souls become so damaged by how we are neglecting what God has entrusted us foremost----to take care of our own soul.  We think Matthew 16:26 is about lost souls whereas it is about the soul in heaven on earth but not yet fully developed.  Jesus comes and chooses us before we ever choose Him.  Jesus reveals Himself even in our failures because He gives us the ability to repent and be restored to Him.

So many of us are sick or sickly because our bodies are sick and our souls are malfunctioning.  It does no good to be physically well if our soul and emotions are damaged and sick.  God wants us to be whole and well which means a sound mind, sound body, and sound spirit all working together in perfect harmony and order.  To neglect one of these areas is to lead potentially to the neglect and breakdown of them all.

One of the major causes of soul sickness besides worry stress and burnout are the masks we wear and hide behind.  Masks hide our true selves and causes great damage to our souls.  Masks keep both God and others out.  We can never have a genuine relationship with God if we are not honest with ourselves which means we are not honest with God either.   We can not have meaningful relationships with others if we keep up superficial walls we hide behind and not let others really inside.

Masks keep our sins secrets and starves our soul of the true relationships it cries out for.  Heroes or saints in God's eyes do not need secret identities.  The false masks of our own making keep us living on the surface of life while never going deeper into life.  Masks block off both intimacy and keeps us from seeing the many ways we deceive ourselves.  We hear people say things like "that is the way I am or just who I am" where really it's the continual lies we have been telling ourselves that keep us from going underneath to the real issues of life.

What God is calling us all back to is the real true self.  The You that is a one of a kind original.  The You that God loves with an everlasting love.  The You that God delights in and wants to be with.  We need to stop listening to all the voices of the world and trust and believe what God says about You.  The real you shows up by what offends you or what bothers you in other people.  Rather than looking at others, we need to look inside in the mirror and see what God is trying to show us about ourselves.  God has also chosen us and calls us beloved and until we believe what God says about us, we will continue to believe all the lies we hear others telling us or the lies we keep telling ourselves.

The prophet Isaiah pours out new life whose hearts are so exhausted and tired.  We have run dry from sprinting through life and have enjoyed so very little along the way.  Isaiah says it like this,

"But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings of eagles;
They will run and not be faint" (40:31)

The cry of the human heart, my cry, your cry is we know there is more to life than this!  "We know there is more!"  God is speaking and saying,

"I did not make you to crawl through life on your belly like a snake. 
I did not make you to simply walk or limp your way through life half awake.
I created you to fly by My Spirit. 
I made you to know the depths of My life. 
I designed you to soar the heights of My glory!"