Thorns and Grace and I won't move to Australia....

And you have a bad day. Like your world is literally crumbling all over. You just can't hold up anymore, ya know. Get it all done. All your work. Love as much as you long to. Communicate with friends and family as much as you deeply desire. Give. Learn to take. Be forgiving. Meet deadlines. Be still. Can't be still. Be positive. Too tired. Wake up earlier. Exercise? I hate my weight. New clothes? More money. The kids! What about the kids? I wanna give all.  I want them to enjoy reading. Why don't they remember to show instead of tell. I want to protect them from the pressures of the box. I want to read too. And oh, the pressure. Don't you dare complain. Don't you dare break. No one understands.

And you forget to breathe. You fall on your face trying to hold it all up. Gasping for air.  You finally sit down for the night. Thankful for a morsel of peace. A comfy couch. Warm apartment. A book called "Traveling Mercies" that is about a woman. And her faith. So raw. Comforting. And God's Grace is sufficient...

"Alone in my hotel room later that night, I felt stricken and lurky and dark, a wallflower at the vampire's ball. I cried a little then closed my eyes, bowed my head, and whispered, "Help."

Out of nowhere I remembered something one of my priest friends had said once, that grace is having a commitment to-or at least an acceptance of-being ineffective and foolish. That our bottled charm is the main roadblock  to drinking that cool glass of love.

I do not understand the mystery of grace-only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.

One of the things I've been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I could ride it. I felt ungainly, the way Marlon Brando looked on those ice skates, but at least I was on my feet. I had come through.

I don't know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things. I don't know why it's not more like the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging.

What I wanted was acclaim, and what I got was Grace."

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."




Raw testimonies are so powerful.-the Living Word.

"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives, even unto the death."

The definition of testimony...proof or evidence that something exists or is true

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."





I won't move to Australia...
(In reference to Alexander and Terrible, Horrible, No Good. Very Bad Day.)

Thoughts on the Body of Christ....

"Day and night you would wrestle on behalf of all the brotherhood, that in His mercy and compassion the whole number of His elect might be saved. In your single-minded innocence you harboured no resentments; any kind of faction or schism was an abomination to you. You mourned for a neighbor's faults, and regarded his failings as your own. Never did you grudge a kindly action; always you were ready for any deed of goodness."

-sigh- I feel like I need to just sit here for a moment and let that sink in. It's heavy...rich...substance.

When my mind is free to think, I think a lot about the Body of Christ. Of her beauty! Of how she is supposed to look and function. And I long for her. Ache for her, actually. I grieve sometimes seeing where she's at verses what she is called to be. I grieve because she is supposed to reflect Christ and His Love and His power, and sometimes the image that she bears is dreadful and lifeless.

I don't say this to merely point a finger or because I think I am at a place the Body is not. I am a part of the Body and wherever she is, that's where I am too. That's how it works. We are a WE. And THAT is what I love so much about how God intends that she function. That's what I want to shed light on. The absolute beauty of togetherness. Of ONENESS. There is no "I". Everything is "we" and "us". But it starts with surrender. 

That's why I chose to take the above quote out of a book I was reading. It's an Early Church book and one of the early churches was being addressed about how they were turning away from brotherly love. How the church once operated like that, but was beginning to fall away from it more and more.

I feel like we are so broken that it hinders our ability to Love. Because we feel like we constantly have to protect ourselves. We build these walls and these barriers. Probably because somewhere along the way, we have been hurt or have seen someone else get hurt. And we all just want Love and Safety and Acceptance. Deep down we want to be wanted. We want to be important. We want to be good at things. We want significance. The sad part is, life becomes a competition because of these things. Like we are all trying to climb to the top...struggling....and we'll push others out of the way, disregarding them, because we are so set on getting ourselves up there. That's not at all how God intended us to be.

Everything we NEED is in Christ. Everything. He has this power that we fail to believe in-myself included. To HEAL. To SET FREE. To MAKE WHOLE. We find ourselves in Him. We find the Love that we are looking are. We find our significance. And selfishness and pride and ego just start to perish. Because all those things become SO unimportant. And we are awakened to this deep love that makes us WIDE OPEN. Life and love become risks every day. To Love another hard....expecting nothing back. Possibly getting neglected or hurt. We take our walls completely down and our heart becomes uncovered and out there. We enter into this rest where we don't feel the need to defend ourselves. Our primary goal is to Love and serve. It's this level of freedom like never before. We aren't exhausting ourselves trying to keep walls up and walk on mine fields. We aren't afraid. We stop trying to climb to the top in a hurry. We become more like kites. We trust God, that He has the string at the bottom and His wind will blow us up into the sky, floating around, hands OFF. Not worrying.

Hands off freaks me out sometimes. Completely letting go. No control. Oh, God. But then I think about Abraham. And I admire him! For trusting God so much that he made his way up to Mount Moriyah with Isaac. That's really what it's all about. Taking our Isaac's up to that Mountain and trusting God. It wasn't about the sacrifice. It was about trust and obedience. Because sometimes we don't trust that if we obey, everything will be ok and it will ALL work out eventually for us. We are SO concerned about ourselves. Forgetting that there is this God that actually loves us. Is our concern love? We trick ourselves into believing that we know best. Or that we are alone so we have to take care of everything.

Guys, we don't have to have everything all figured out. We don't. Rest, my friends. In the now. And be that kite. Take Isaac. All your cares and your worries and your control about life and yourself. Take those things up to Mount Moriyah. Fear. Unbelief. God calls us to lay those things down and trust HIM. That everything WILL be ok. That we don't have to worry, we just have to LOVE. And HE promises to take care of the rest. HE PROMISED US! And maybe our promises don't come when we think they should or when we want them to, but if we trust and obey....they will come right on time.

My point is...in order to be this Body...we have to let Jesus in. We have to trust HIM alone. And let go of everything else. Then we can love others with an UN-conditional love. A love that starts to grow where we care about others like we know we are cared about by Christ. It's not a competition...we are ONE. We stop wanting where we are to succeed over others, but we want ALL to succeed. Not just us or our families or our town or the congregation we attend or our state or our country. But the WHOLE world. Everyone. We rise up and become Jesus' love and power. We become like hospitals. Where people go when they are sick. People see Christ resurrect in a people and they run to them when they're sick. To seek Love and Healing. Just like in the gospels. Sinners RAN to Jesus to be healed. They KNEW. They BELIEVED! Jesus said we would do greater! He called us to follow Him! It says when we SEE Him, we will be LIKE Him! Not that we take His place! Not to take His glory. But He calls us to lay ourselves down, so that He can live in us and move through us. Too often we block that from happening with our SELVES. And by SELVES I mean, our thoughts and feelings and control that we hold onto. We grasp them and hold on tight. But He needs us to JUST. LET. GO. Be the kite! Let's be the kite. FREE TO LOVE. Free to be a PART of a WHOLE Body. Where there IS a unique you and unique me, but we operate TOGETHER. You add to the body and I add to the body! And we celebrate each other and we celebrate togetherness. We celebrate the eyes and the hands and the legs and the feet. We recognize that we all play a part. We are all needed to be a part of this WHOLE. We need arms! And ears! Organs! Fingers! Necks! We need to fit together!

Satan wants us to be divided. He wants us to be bitter toward each other and hold onto offenses. He doesn't want unity. He finds holes and stretched them and makes them bigger. He clouds our eyesight. He provokes the hardening of our hearts. He wants us to be consumed in ourselves. Because then we can't function in unity. We can't defeat him. HELL should tremble when the Bride of Christ rises up. Satan has NO POWER over people that are united in LOVE and live to SERVE. So let us be careful when we make choices. Not to fall into his trap. But to FIGHT for the brotherhood! FIGHT for AGAPE Love! The Love that Christ functioned out of. NEVER about Him! But about His union with the Father and being Heaven on earth. SERVING. GOD ON EARTH WAS A SERVANT!!!!!!! That's what He calls us to be. LAID DOWN LOVERS.

Jesus needs a body to rest His head. That means that we need to take on the MIND of Christ.

Philippians 2 

1Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Let's take our place! I want to love you and be one with you! But I'm not perfect. We all NEED to be patient with each other....we need to be honest with each other....and we need to help and edify each other.

I pray that God strengthens us and by the power of His Grace on our lives....helps us to become this love. This Body.

Here's to US!!
MLB