Fire and Ice

Somewhere around the middle of February I was hit with the idea for this blog. It wasn’t until the end of February that it really came to full realization of what I wanted to write on. I have been hemming and hawing about doing a series, which I will still do, but I felt God calling me to get these words off my chest and out into the open.

Fire and ice, or rather, fire and snow are two very beautiful and wonderful things in the right context. There just isn’t much better than cozying up next to a warm fire on a cold night (next to a special someone makes it even better). When the beautiful white snow is covering rooftops and the ground the landscape, well there is just something peaceful and serene about that. Through some recent experiences I’ve been able to see firsthand the effects of fire and snow and what they can mean.

In the middle of February Dallas was hit with twelve inches of snow which, in some parts of Dallas, was the record single day snowfall amount. As I drove to work the day after the snow fell I looked around at the beauty I saw. My normal drive to work was different. As I passed by businesses and houses and all sorts of places that were familiar to me I realized just how different it all looked as it was blanketed in snow. The brown grass that the hard winter had all but killed was now covered in pure, clean, white snow. Brown rooftops glistened with a white glow. It was beautiful and peaceful. At the same moment I saw the beauty I also started noticing that the dark spots and certain things were more noticeable surrounded by the snow. In fact I realized that there were abandoned buildings and houses and unsightful things I had never noticed before because they had always blended in with everything else. It dawned on me that against the white snow, things that did not look good, things that did not belong became all too obvious. As I saw this I heard God speaking to me that this was indeed how it is when the Holy Spirit enters into our lives. In fact, not just that, but when we are constantly being filled with the Holy Spirit and the things of Heaven it is easy to the objects in our life that we need to be rid of. Against the white, pure “snow” of the Holy Spirit God shows us the things in our life that we need to work pushing out. The sin and darkness of the world become all too obvious. Sometimes it is painful to see and many days as we just go along we miss out on seeing those things, those hindrances that keep us from really living the life God has called us to live.

Isaiah 1:18
“Come now, let us reason together,"
says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.

1 Corinthians 6:11 “And that is what some of you were (referring to us as sinners). But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Being washed in the blood of Christ has made us believers clean. Although our sins are/were dark, they have been washed and made like snow. Sure, we still fall short of God’s glory. Romans 3:22-24 “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We DO all fall short, but as Christians, as those redeemed by the blood of Christ we must realize that we’ve been made pure and blameless. We’ve been washed “white as snow” and in this we need to be aware that there are still areas in our lives that we need to work on. We are not perfect and sometimes we truly need God to fill us up and remind us that we still have a long way to go. We must be aware of the dark spots in our lives if we are to truly live the life God intends for us. So, don’t fear it, but embrace it. Pray for God to “snow” in your life so that you (and me too) can see the things in our lives that we need to clean up.

Now onto the subject of fires. The “fire” part of this comes from a recent event where my favorite restaurant burned down to the ground. I went out to the sight of the fire just a few days after for a fundraiser and what I saw was total devastation. For me, Terilli’s is a special place that I only take special people to. The atmosphere is unparalleled. It’s just that good. On top of that, Terilli’s in Dallas is an incredible place to eat. I say “is” because although it has burnt to the ground, they will rise from the ashes. You see, in life sometimes we just can’t escape the hardships or “fires” in our lives. Just reading the words of Christ on this matter bring me to tears. John 16:22 “So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” We cannot and will not escape hardships. People will disappoint us, stuff won’t fulfill us, there will be times of stress and great trial, and sometimes we will just feel like giving in. The “fire” will be too much and we will just throw in the towel saying “it isn’t worth it anymore” or “I’m tired of fighting…tired of trying.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said those words or felt that same way, but I’ve also seen the fruits of staying the course. This life isn’t a short sprint, but rather it’s a marathon. Do we hit the wall and give up? Why would we train, work hard, and run part of the way only to give up? To me that just doesn’t make sense. Paul has this to say: 1 Corinthians 9:23-27 “I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” He also says this: 2 Timothy 4:7-8 “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

You see, God put us here; He put me here for a purpose. If we press on, run the race, and not lose hope we will receive the prize that awaits us. There have been many hardships in my life and there will be many more. Do I believe that because I’ve been through a divorce that my suffering is through? No, I don’t believe that at all. I know that I am an alien to this world. My prize awaits me in Heaven. Sure, God will prosper me here too, but it won’t be without trials. We have an enemy, Satan, who wants to kill our hope. The enemy wants to destroy our lives. The enemy wants nothing more than to “burn us down and see us give up. While this sounds very disheartening, I also want you to know that my lot and your lot in life is not to suffer, but rather to have a hope and a future.

Jeremiah 29:11-14 “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."

We must embrace this hope that we have, embrace the Lord, hold onto His promise and not let the trials of life cause us to throw in the towel. The greatest and most beautiful diamonds are formed from the most intense heat and pressure and so be encouraged that if the enemy is attacking you it means that there’s something worthy in you to be attacked. Take heart in that. God truly wants to use you for greatness and we aren’t called to lead a complacent Christian life. Rise from the ashes and achieve the extraordinary.

We are blameless since we’ve been washed clean by the blood of Christ. While we still sin and fall short, we are made clean because Jesus conquered the grave. Take an introspective look at you life and look at the things that you need to clean out. And don’t lose heart when trials and tribulations hit you, but rather fall on your knees before God and ask Him for guidance and lean on Him. I don’t know about you, but when my life is over, I want my diamond to shine. If that means I need to clean out the crud in my life and also endure hardships, then I will gladly do so. I shine for Christ will be my crowning achievement. My prayer is that it will be yours as well.

I Always Feel Like…Somebody’s Watchin’ Me…

My family and I were on a vacation to San Antonio. I was probably about eleven years old. I remember it well. We were close to the Alamo in front of Ripley’s Believe it or Not and the Wax Museum. As a family we chose to head into Ripley’s instead of the Wax Museum. Somewhere close to the beginning of the exhibit there was this mirror. Next to the mirror were instructions on how to roll your tongue. The trick was to see how many folds you could get your tongue to make. Well, me being ever so daring, I sat in front of that mirror just trying and trying to get my tongue to make at least three folds. After about ten minutes and some incredible determination I realized I just didn’t have what it took to get the tri-fold tongue like the picture and instructions showed. Oh well… We went through the rest of the exhibit and I didn’t give my tongue fold failure another thought. That was until I got to the end of the exhibit and discovered that what I thought was a mirror was not. Instead I realized that it was a two way mirror and I probably gave the crowd on the other side a very good ten minute show.

I bring this up because I desire to be transparent. I have realized that the older I get the less transparent I get. The older I get the less likely I am to put myself out there and try a stunt in front of a two way mirror. After doing some inward reflection I realized that the older I got the less likely I was to try new things, refusing to let myself look like a fool. I’ve never been a fan of self preservation. In fact I’ve always tried to put myself out there. I’ve always tried to be transparent, but it seems that the more that “life happens” the closer to the vest I hold my cards. I sat in traffic on a random Wednesday night just marinating on this thought of “how can I be more transparent” when on the radio I heard one of my favorite pastors. On this particular station, Chuck Swindoll talked about the supremacy of love. In his introduction, however, he spoke about reading through a book called “Letters to God.” The letters were, in my opinion, some of the neatest things I’ve ever heard read aloud on radio. How transparent these children are. One child wrote, “Dear God if we come back as something, please don’t let me be Jennifer Horton because I hate Jennifer Horton.” Another writes, “Did you really mean do unto others as they do unto you? Cause if you did I’m gonna fix my brother.” I laughed aloud as Chuck read these, but then he got serious about it and called to attention the fact that while we as adults find it funny, if these letters were read to children, they wouldn’t laugh. They would “get it.” The fact is that these children haven’t been jaded by the world. They are very black and white when it comes to God. In fact, you might say they are incredibly transparent.

I started to wonder why it is so very hard for me, for us, the older we get to be transparent. It is that we’ve allowed the world to come in on us. We’ve allowed hurt and all sorts of other emotions turn to fear. Sure, we can act tough, like we’ve got it all together, but what it really boils down to is fear. I’ve heard it said that the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. I will ask again, why are we not transparent? It’s because we fear being judged, because we fear what others will think of us. We fear that being transparent will allow all others to see us. They will see us, that they will see everything we’ve so desperately tried to hide or stuff down deep inside. I say this because its true of myself. I’ve also come to realize that better it is to look like a fool and be transparent than to prove your foolishness to God by pretending that you’ve got it all together. I like how the New Living Translation puts it in Matthew 16:26 “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” Well, when put that way, no, not to me.

I am often inspired by the great C.S. Lewis. In fact one of my favorite quotes of brother Lewis deals with vulnerability. I believe that another reason we don’t allow ourselves to be transparent is that it makes us vulnerable. Being transparent will allow us to be on display. We will be vulnerable, and being vulnerable means we can be hurt. Here is what C.S. Lewis has to say on that, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” Ouch. I’ll say it again…ouch. Isn’t that what we do? Rather than allow ourselves to truly be transparent, we busy ourselves. Sure, on the surface, it can give appearances that we are out there, people see us, know us, will judges us according to our hobbies, but what are we really doing? We are defining ourselves by the works of our hands rather than letting ourselves be defined by our hearts and by who God says we are. To be transparent we have to be, I have to be real. I have to sit down and be real with myself and with my God.

Being real consists of being honest, being true to God and being true to yourself/myself, and truly understanding that the call of a Christian isn’t the call to live a safe life, it is a call to live a life for God. There isn’t anything “safe” about that. Again, I will quote C.S. Lewis when referencing Aslan (an allegory of Christ) “He’s not safe, but he’s good.” Following Jesus isn’t safe. Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” That is upside down thinking and it isn’t safe, but it is what we are called to do. We must choose the road less traveled and be transparent. Before God can do a work in us we must fall before the Lord, completely exposed before Him. David did this when the ark of the Lord was brought into the city. He danced and rejoiced and his own wife despised him for it. His response to her criticism was “I will become even more undignified than this…” That needs to be our response to the critics as well. Don’t be afraid to be transparent and vulnerable. God needs us to be that way and the only way we can be used by Him is if we pursue a life like that.

You see, life is a lot like living with a two way mirror. We can try to act like we’ve got it all together, and give a great act for our entire lives, but no matter who we think is watching, God is always watching. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we cannot hide ourselves from the Lord. He knows our deeds and knows who we are. We cannot hide ourselves from Him. We can try, but it will be a battle that we will not win. We will just limp trough life, from failure to failure, wondering “why me?” God’s desire is to richly bless our lives and for that to happen we have to be able to be used by Him. If I choose self preservation, God cannot use me. It’s when I choose to lay down my life before the throne of grace that God can collect the pieces and put together something more magnificent than I could have ever imagined. The same goes for you.

So don’t be afraid of who is on the other side of the mirror. Laugh, curl your tongue, make a face, be bold and be transparent. Don’t let the fear of judgment or of being “found out” keep you from reaching your potential. God has a plan for your life and let me tell you, it is a plan to prosper you. I’d rather face hurt and ridicule from time to time than to miss out on the Lord’s great plan for my life. I desire to be transparent. So even though “I always feel like, somebody’s watchin’ me…and I get no privacy” that’s just fine with me.

Fall on His Righteousness

"There is no one righteous, not even one..” Romans 3:10. Did I just hear you say “ouch?” I know I said it…and say it every time I read this. Ouch indeed. I thought the subject of righteousness would be pertinent in talking about the life of Saul. I’ve been spending a good deal of time in the book of 1 Samuel. In reading about the life of Saul, I can say without a doubt that you and I have a lot more in common with Saul than we’d care to admit. Did I hear you say “ouch” again? Well, I said it again too. Now I am not saying we are identical to Saul, but if we don’t watch our step we very well could find ourselves walking down a dark road of self-righteousness.

Saul was hand picked by God to fill the role of king for the Israelites. The entire story of how Saul happened upon Samuel to be anointed as king could only have been authored by the only perfect Author. A lost donkey of his father’s led Saul to Samuel and rather than finding the donkey, Saul found his role as king. Early on in Saul’s reign as king he did great things. He led the Israelites to defeats and appeared, at least on the surface, to be a strong man of God. Soon, though, Saul’s true colors shined through.
1 Samuel 13:8-13
He (Saul) waited seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul's men began to scatter. So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.” And Saul offered up the burnt offering. Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.

“What have you done?” asked Samuel.
Saul replied, “When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD's favor.” So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering."

"You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time.

Saul began to rely on his on intuition, on his own righteousness. Rather than wait the full appointed time God had given him through Samuel, Saul decided to jump on it…and possibly just a few moments too soon. Had he trusted the Lord to come through, had he trusted in God’s righteousness, he would have waited just a few more moments to see Samuel approach. This happens so often in our lives. I know it happens in mine. We get to a place where we see God moving and yet we don’t like the speed at which He is moving, so rather than relying on His righteousness, we lean on our own. Inevitably we fall because as was said in Romans, none of us is righteous. Later on in 1 Samuel, Saul doesn’t fully keep the Lord’s command when defeating Amalekites. As Samuel rebukes him he begs and pleads for forgiveness, but at this moment it is too late. Once again Saul leaned on his own righteousness and didn’t trust in the Lord’s.

I wish I could say it got better for Saul, but it didn’t. His living in self righteousness continued for the rest of his life. He grew angry, bitter, untrusting, and unredeemable because by embracing his own righteousness, he rejected the Lord’s. Isaiah 64:6 says this about self-righteousness:
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

We must fall on the Lord’s righteousness if we are to fully live the life God has intended for us. Jesus said it best when he said “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33. We must seek first the Lord and His righteousness if we are to live a life fully alive. God’s desire is for us to be fully alive. In the end Saul fell on his own righteousness, which ultimately was the end of his own sword. Saul took his own life and so ended the reign of Saul. What had begun with such potential ended in somewhat of a mess. God’s desire for us is to pursue Him with reckless abandon. When we pursue him like this we are made fully alive and the Lord is glorified. St. Irenaeus said it this way: "The glory of God is man fully alive." I too believe this to be true, but the only way to fully be alive is to embrace the fact that we are not righteous, our righteousness is found in the Lord, and that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead for us. Death’s sting has been removed and we can now be made fully alive. Lean on God’s righteousness and live the life He’s created for you.