#pursuitseries

What a shame to feel trapped inside just skin and bones and organs. To know in your heart you are made up of stars. The best intentions. To be moved by this skull and framework that traverses me. Surrounds my veins and makes me.

What crushes me.

This love.

This tree of limbs and eyes and mouth. It swallows me whole in pain. Most days. No day is the same. A travesty of sorts I call the dark days. The remember when days. The not so great cry for six hour straight days.

And then there's one day. One day of freedom. Of limitlessness. Of raging love. Of passion and strength. It feels odd.

Off.

I was made for this one day.

In some weird way. As if you're not supposed to have it. As if the floor will fall right from under you. And then it's gone. Back to the dark abyss. It comes and it goes just like so. In waves.

It comes and it goes.

You see, this is physical pain. This is pain in the body from a not so right neck, a messed up spine, horrible knees, a non working digestive system, from failing eyesight, from allergies that wage war on the senses, from broken fingers to healed collar bones.

This skin I'm in has scaled time and wounds and hardships. This frame has broken apart into pieces that God gathered for me. This magnificent work of the grand Crafter has shown me glory. It has shown me a broken heart filled with a lost love. It has shown me the darkness of night in my human soul. This framework of me has show me, humanity.

Humanity in contrast with divinity. The flesh and the divine working, moving, living, breathing, dying. It has shown me grace when I least deserved it. Patience when I pushed past limitations.

There are three major lessons my twenties have shown me.

1. Pain is necessary.

2. You don’t know anything...and that’s ok.

3. God is faithful.

Pain has been my healer. My energy. My enemy. My pusher. My safe place. My agony. In all these things pain has taught me relentlessly. I have learned about my humanity. My strength. My limitations. And of course, my God. Jesus came into this world and lived a life marked my suffering. Not glory. And is now glorified to the highest place. At the right hand of the Father.

Let us never forget. The cross is painful. Jesus tells us to pick up our cross daily, be like Him. Mirror Him in life and in D. E. A. T. H.

All of the things I thought I knew these past 9 years. All of the certainty of many wrongs I believed were right. My oh my I thought I knew so much!! So much at 21. The world was easy to figure out. Unbeknownst to me, my vision was clouded. God protected me with the not knowing. I needed to learn to trust Him. To gather into His embrace and not my control (and lack of) knowledge about every single plan in my life.

That all leads to this point. The most central theme of the past decade of my life:

God. Is. So. Faithful.

My twenties were legitimately a WILD time. I was saved by grace and living under a blanket of fear. I was given mercy and withheld it from those closest to me. I was broken. And still very much am but I am healing. And this is the best part of turning 30. Knowing that healing exists and is for me. And possible. And happening. I love 30 for all of the possibilities. For all of its newness. For all of its uncertainty. It brings me joy and comfort and peace. Knowing my healer, my God, El Roi, the God of seeing... Sees me in this humanity and loves me still.

Join me.

From this time.

Wow am I behind.

My pursuit series took an indefinite break last year and I’m so sure of the reasons today because hind sight is twenty twenty amirite?!

Well here is to #Five because God still has me in the palm of His hand (Isaiah 43:13).

This series originally started when I received a word for 2016 in late 2015: Pursue. If you wanna scroll back to my first Pursuit post (Pursuit #1 good luck, maybe I’ll archive them shortly) (http://fromthistime.tumblr.com/post/136552410287) you can see why I began. Shortly after Pursuit #4 you’ll also see that I stopped. Oh woe to me, my fickleness even surprises me at times.

Why?… Because I stopped believing in the passion that was inside of me. I thought it too much too little too not for me too not the right time too undirected. For good measure God abundantly blew away my preconceived notions of what He placed inside of me. He had/has a plan unbeknownst to me to work out some very needed mental and spiritual repressed issues. Through the Word,God fearing people, and the book aptly titled, The Genesis Project 2016 was a whirlwind. I can’t even begin to tell you what God changed inside of me. But change is good right? Renewal,restoration, and confirmation are all essentially what we try to grasp daily even if we are unaware of what we are longing for. God knows.

Ezekiel 36:26 states, “I will give you a new heart AND a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone AND give you an OBEDIENT heart. (GNT) (Caps all mine tho). This is the faithfulness of the God I serve. He finishes what He starts and He is not finished with any. one. of. us. yet.

So I’ll try and wrap up my 2016 now that we are practically finished with one month into 2017. I’ll sum it up through Hebrews 10.

A reflection.

Hebrews 10 begins with this fact, “The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship.” (Verse 1,NLT).

This was me. Under my old stubborn disobedient heart I lived within a shadow of good things to come. Being good at certain things but not excellent. Having the right words to say and feeling them dry up in my throat before being released by God. Seeking God diligently for my friends and family and never for myself. Praying the prayers I prayed people were praying over me and for me. But it was not enough. Joshua asks the people coming out of the desert into their land allotments, their promised land, the question God ultimately asked me at the end of 2016 coming into 2017.

He asks in Joshua 18 verse 3, “How long are you going to wait before taking possession of the remaining land the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you?”.

How long friends? How long have you been waiting to take possession of what God has already given you. How long have you been hiding deep down in your heart the promises God gave you as a little girl? A little boy? He has already given you a full victory. He has already given you every single spiritual blessing needed (Eph1:3).

Hebrews 10 goes to talk about how God was not pleased. How these sacrifices actually reminded those/me of my sins and how I was not being perfected through grace through redemption. Although necessary these sacrifices were doing nothing to bring me into intimacy with God the Father. They. Were. Rituals. Not relationship. My belief fell flat.

So where is the hope in that? Flash back to my Pursuit #4 where I spoke on promises. I said “Jesus Christ is the hope of my existence here and for eternity. He is my promise, the covenant & the reason for my testimony; my verb and my noun.”

Ya know it’s very odd to have to quote yourself.

But I digress.

I was very much a noun believing Christian, not so much for verb. I wanted God to fit inside my box my comforts my hopes my dreams my plans my timeframes. But isn’t it funny how God is still able to do more than we can ever imagine or hope for? (Eph 3:20). Isn’t it crazy that we try and try and try to walk out this existence this eternal life we have that began when we accepted God as savior as if this life, this one season, as if it is all we have? As if we won’t exist forever with God, eternally. As if we haven’t been raised from the depths of death into life everlasting as did Jesus Christ when He rose from the dead? Do we forget He rose from the dead and went to be seated at the right hand of God? I have. I did. Now, I cannot. I have set my face like flint/like stone because I believe I will not be put to shame if I do (Isaiah 53). It’s impossible to know how much freedom obedience brings until you are actually obedient. A catch 22, but the good kind right?!

There was such a vast disconnect between me and my savior. I was far off from intimacy and yet God was so so so patient. His grace is what has pulled me in. Again. And again. Paul talks about boasting in his weakness that he is made strong because of Gods grace. Gods grace is His power. And is now our power too. His diligent pursuit of me turned me from a noun believer into a verb releasing martyr kid. It states further on in Hebrews 10 how Gods will is for us to be made HOLY by Jesus’s sacrifice.

Once.

For. All. Time.

For. All. Sins.

Not for rituals. Not for habits not for confessionals and then to keep on sinning. No let it not be so my friends. Jesus forever made perfect those(me,you, your brother, your aunty, your bff, your nail tech, your interior designer, that one mailman who kindly puts a rubber band around all your mail so it won’t fly away in a windstorm) who are being made holy by His sacrifice.

Tense is very important here. Being, as in continually working. As in not being finished as in work in progress. Not passive idling but work involving all aspects of life. Of sweat, of tears, laments, laughter but most importantly work. My word for this year is brave. I went into this year praying God would make me brave.

Brave enough to believe in His promises for me. Brave enough to speak the words the devil tried to dry up in me. Brave enough to do work in the areas of my life that I purposely neglect and just instead hope for things to come alive. But even in the valley of dry bones words were needed to bring life. God told Ezekiel to speak the words, life rested on work through Gods power and our words. God promised He would restore Israel. And He promises that to you and me too. Not what we see or what we saw which was death an eternity separated from our Creator, not of my circumstances which were dire and can be awful at times, not of my broken heart my scattered dreams but Gods power (grace) and my obedience. Obedience is a key that unlocks many doors.

It wasn’t until this year that I realized God has already made me and you,all of us brave. He tells us in Hebrews 10 we can boldly approach His throne with a sincere heart, we can confidently put our trust in His promises.

God is a covenant keeping God. He is not like man He does not lie and He does not change. He has made us brave.

The end of Hebrews 10 tells me we can be & are the faithful ones and our souls will be saved.

Let God remind you of who you are. Let God give you your testimony. Let Gods work exist through your hands. Let His thoughts be in your mind. And let Him bind His words on your hands and your old stubborn heart. Watch what happens when He makes you brave and you finally believe it.

Join me.

From this time.

Pursuit #4

Why is it that when a promise is broken it becomes a lie? We are all so wrapped up in that one small phrase. Even though it’s a small phrase its implications go far beyond its seven letters.

A promise is interesting as a word primarily because it can be defined as a noun or a verb. You know what that means for all my word nerds out there?

Yea me neither. But I thought that was a cool rhyming sentence to add so I did. I didn’t promise anyone that this blog series would be well anything more than a spot for my brain to leak out, but I digress.

When we think of the word promise we think of its implications. I don’t think there has ever truly been another word that has so much hope wrapped up inside of its dainty little shell of an existence. We promise ourselves we will stick to that new diet. We promise people we will love them, we promise people we will be there for them, we promise not to put our parents to shame and do well for ourselves, heck we even promise to take care of our pets so diligently so that we don’t end up in jail. I mean promises are kind of a big deal, just saying.

A promise is special in literary terms because it is both a noun and a verb with almost the exact same meanings. Similar in style but so very different in context.

Promise-(n): a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen

Promise-(v): assure someone that one will definitely do,give or arrange something; undertake or declare that something will happen

All semantics right? I mean those two definitions practically say the same thing in English sure but in each lies a different promise within a promise (#inception, Leo you’re the real MVP). Within these two meanings one gives hope in a future context and the other brings about that hope to fruition, to reality, to right now, to today. A promise is a hope that is for today and for later. Isn’t that rather odd? A word with past,present & future tense? How can one word be two separate things totally dependent on each other?

I have been pondering this all week because there are few other things than loss that make you think deeply about promises. Let me explain, we promise each other we will keep in touch, we promise each other we will have time, we promise ourselves we will move on and catch up remember to be more present tomorrow. Except until loss announces its presence we don’t realize how those promises are untrue for today in the now and for tomorrow when we don’t have a then.

And yet I am reminded there are other kinds of promises that stand outside the test time because they are outside of our human capabilities. Promise within a biblical context reminds me of the word covenant. Promise, covenant, & testimony are used close together in the beginning of the bible. And loss has made it more poignant for me, more than ever, that God has promised us a covenant He shows us through our testimony.

It’s Gods promises that keep us here, that give us breathe,that bring us peace,joy,truth,eternal life. If without the hope which remains in His promises we would be destitute. We are lost without the hope that springs forth from Gods promises. His words give us hope for now and for later. He is the most definitive promise we have. A promise is hope when we need it to come outside of ourselves. And our God does just that. He is our hope outside of ourselves.

Outside of my mind, my circumstance, my sorrow, my hiccups & hang ups. Jesus Christ is the hope of my existence here and for eternity. He is my promise, the covenant & the reason for my testimony; my verb and my noun. He is waiting to be yours too.

Join me.

From this time.

So realistically (and honestly I confess) I do not think I am a writer in the way that I personally view writers or novelists or bloggers or hipsters. Whatever us millennials call them these days. So when this week rolled around and I was thinking of writing a third #Pursuit I suddenly thought well that was a nice run.

Ha.

What makes us so easily give up on things that challenge us? I mean I know I may be speaking only for myself but if there were not more people in this world that loved to be challenged, New Year resolutions would not be so popular. But perhaps it’s a totally Western world mind set because the rest of the world is being challenged in mostly just trying to stay alive. But that’s not the point of this post so…I will continue on.

I day dream a lot. I mean a LOT. I mean used to day dream a lot? Most likely more than the average person whom you know is a space cadet but you would never mention that aloud, mostly like way more than that person. Somehow along the years I’ve managed to depend on the duality of being spaced out thinking about the next 400 steps of life and the conversation I’m having with a friend, a customer, a sibling, a friends pet which ever. Day dreaming has afforded me what I used to call a luxury but which was truly parading as a false reality in my head.

And you know what is in complete contrast to a false reality?…obedience.

Wait, what? How did I make that jump? Let me back track a tad so you can follow my train of thoughts. Along with almost surely giving up on this series of posts within two weeks I also came to the conclusion how disobedience was the language of my day dreamer self. Disobedience allowed me to waste hours upon hours thinking of my next steps in five years time. Disobedience allowed me to spend whole mornings engulfed in social media and not my actual real life that was waiting on me, quite patiently I might add.

I was being stubborn some might say. You see being stubborn is not a compliment a believer should want spoken over their personality. Being stubborn at the root of things can actually mean you’re being disobedient. Being stubborn means you’re just a short while ahead of being humbled. Something God calls us to do on the daily but something we let life tell us we can do occasionally. It’s a deliberate choice one makes every single day in every single situation, will I remain teachable or will I be stubborn? Can I be obedient in this moment or will I day dream instead?

You see God calls us to be obedient today, in this moment, with what ever it is that is before us. Obedience in the small things sets a natural precedence since we are creatures of habit to have obedience in larger areas of life. Although we are called to constantly be changing by God’s grace left to our own devices we don’t!…your obedience to God and His word are not ever changing or negotiable. This obedience is the very change agent that grows our closeness to God.

Can you take a moment to think about what if God our Almighty decided He was only going to be obedient to His words,actions and deeds only some of the time…what would our faith have to stand on? Absolutely nothing. We would have no reason to believe if God only proved Himself some of the time. We can have faith because of His promises and His deliverance on those promises. The beauty of this relationship with God is that He is whatever He said He was all the time. Back then, right now, and tomorrow; even for eternity. We can’t beat that offer.

Like ever.

We try. We fall short. The reasons why relationships rely on people’s word is because it fosters intimacy. God is so obedient because of who He is, His very nature stands true within Himself which in turn creates the space for intimacy. God Almighty creates the space for intimacy with us?! Us people. I believe this is why lying is so so so destructive for closeness. You can’t foster intimacy without the truth, that is the foundation. But I digress…not day dreaming tho…just digressing.

You know what happens when you’re obedient to God? Things no one ever thought could happen. Do you ever just sit around and think about your goals and dreams and desires and then stop for a second and think God is gonna do even more than that; what am I doing with my life right now? No?…just me? Ok cool but listen to this. Remember in #Pursuit2 when I spoke on Job understanding who God was and who he was in relation to that. Well fast forward towards the end of Job when God finally speaks and Job replies etc.

Even Job had to be humbled in his words that explained his grief because it had consumed him which humanly I thought rightfully so Job your life sucks at the moment. God spoke and reminded Job of who He was, of who could contend with Him and His powers & that Job should repent. Guess what Job did?…what God said. Then bam God makes Job’s life awesome again. But I mean way more awesome than his previous life. The point of highlighting that is to read past obedience equals what I want out of life, no. Not quite since we see Job was quite obedient prior to the calamity let loose from heaven but more so that we can see God restored Job.

Restoration. Obedience brings restoration. Restoration to a place we had never imagined we would be. Because we have to be restored from the sin that is within. God did this for Job and He can do it for you and me too. Restoring what was once lost in that garden all that time ago because Eve didn’t want to be obedient and dragged her husband into her daydream too.

Job got to live to see four generations of his family and had ten more kids after God restored His wealth and what so ever else he lacked/lost/didn’t know he needed. Family relationships, children, cattle, sheep etc God did all that because Job repented and was obedient in that repentance. The book of Job says he shut his mouth once God had spoken, there was no more day dreaming of his grievances.

And on a completely random side note. Perhaps it’ll show up in a future #Pursuit. God completely rebuked Job’s friends and I wanted to make a note of how God heard Job’s prayer and did not deal with his friends accordingly. For all those thinking prayer isn’t powerful these days look at this example or simply those not making time for prayer in your walk. That’s obedience on a completely different scale but a source of much needed intimacy and closeness is created and found there.

Last year while studying Deuteronomy I’ve learned one thing (half way thru studying not just reading it) is that prayer changes destinies. Yours, your family, your friends. Whose destiny or day dream can you help change that God would hear because you were obedient?

Our souls need that restoration. Our souls need that obedience to get closer to God. Quit day dreaming.

Join me.

From this time.

Guys we’re all confused. Okay, maybe not all of us but a majority of us for sure. As I type us (including myself) I mean believers. At some point in our lives our culture has swamped us and we have let it run rampant in confusing us.

So I’ll stop speaking in circles now and get down to the point. Friends we’ve confused what joy and pain look like in relation to the gospel. And we’ve also confused the American Dream with a gospel we were never supposed to preach, desire or aim for. Here’s where I’ve seen this ideology go astray in my own life and how God is leading me back to the duality of living with joy and with pain.

For all who read my blog and know me personally you know my love for mental health is most likely the window in which I see the world and aim to help people see themselves and see Jesus. Now that’s all fine and dandy in this day and age considering the mental health statistics for last year alone.

For instance, “Globally, the median number of mental health workers is 9 per 100,000 population, but there is extreme variation (from below 1 per 100,000 population in low-income countries to over 50 in high-income countries).” Taken from World Health Organization (WHO) mental health laws will be changing drastically over the next 4 years, steaming from world wide initiatives made by WHO & hopefully being implemented by various countries involved.

So I had one dream like many other kids growing up, young adults finding their way. A dream turned in to a calling,which turned into a burden, which turned into a life path or what I like to call things we force into our walk, a “life must”. Although our giftings are given for purpose and have echoes into eternity we try to package them up into our small short time here on earth. Oh vey. The problem with a life must is, it leaves no room for error.

No room for grace. And we believers know we need grace because we are full of errors. Grace to be kind to others, to be kind to ourselves, to be walking down the street or singing at a red light. Whatever were doing we need it & God so graciously provides. Ha, get it? Pun intended. (Nerdy-ness apparent.)

When our “life musts” do not go as we desired we have pain. We feel we have failed, anyone and anything that did not go according to our plans. But this isn’t the pain I’m speaking of. Because that is a topical pain to begin with. The real pain stems from the ideology behind it, a thought process which evolved into a mind set that gave birth to a life style in opposition to God & His word.

We speak of joy and pain in a believers’ life as if the two cannot exist simultaneously. But when you take a closer look Jesus has told us we will have both. At the same time. Which means simultaneously. Which means coexisting can happen.

Literally both.

Tears while laughing. Singing while weeping. Lament and dancing. Confusing? Sure if you want to remain at a surface level of understanding but if you seek wisdom to decipher this, it’s simple to see. Simple to see? Yes, difficult to believe? Yes again. But building of #Pursuit1 we know belief and dependence are required of our hearts.

Do we not take Jesus at His word when He tells us we will have troubles? Do we not take Jesus at His word when He promised us He will be with us to the very end of the age? Do we not believe and depend on the fact, the promise that God says we will be filled with joy when the Spirit is our portion?

This week this idea has become crystal clear to me and I will tell you why. Job. Job was a chill dude considering his life story. This is a story(all about how my life got twisted upside down…I digress) I am quite familiar with but for what reasons? I’m not sure until now, maybe it’s for this post only who knows how God works. But here is one thing Job conquered very well; the duality of joy and pain in a believer. Job understood his role and God’s role in every single situation that we read is brought on him. In the face of extreme loss, loss some of us will actually never know Job had all the wisdom to understand who God is even while his circumstances shifted from glorious to desolate.

Even when his dreams, dreams from a blameless man, a righteous man the bible calls Job are literally squashed. Smashed right to the ground, everything gone. I cannot think of 5 people right now in my life whom God has squashed everything they have ever known or matter of fact I can’t think of 5 blameless righteous people, perhaps because it’s late at night but I digress…Job was unique in the sense where he recognized his spirit & pointed to God as Almighty. How many of us can say we would bless and put our hope in God when our life must is squashed? That is what Job did. Job had the wisdom and understanding of who God was/is and that is how the duality of joy and pain existed in his life.

I for sure did not bless and hope in God when my dreams started to look different than what I had pictured them. For a short time I thought hmm must be a mishap, maybe God meant this instead, I'll wait on it. Woe to me! How many of us have thought God doesn't have it right? He knows me and knows all but maybe He meant this instead?... We all do it subtly and in other ways quite blatantly in our minds and in our actions. Whether it's from believing when we love and trust God our lives will be prosperous and awesome. Or simply believing God doesn't discipline those He loves. What rubbish we tell ourselves at times.

Of course, there is no absence of lamenting Job does throughout the chapters of the book but there is an underlying current of being with God in every situation. Knowing God is sovereign in the midst, not speaking an ill word against who God is. I mean do we have that kind of wisdom? Or do we believe in the American Dream more than the word of God?

Do we believe that we deserve that job at our family business? Or that scholarship to university? Or that new house with more than 2 acres of land? The point of this is that no one deserves more than dirt thrown in their face. We are all hopeless without God and our “hard work” and “good deeds” will get us no where without the wisdom and understanding of who God is. We know we need faith to get to God and to do good deeds. Faith, grace, love. We need them all.

No matter what your feelings have concocted, no matter what culture has slipped into your mindset, no matter what your experiences have shifted in your attitude towards life. Job figured out how to live in his pain with joy that is sustained by God. God. Alone.

When you look at the book of Job in this sense, we no longer see only the misery, complaining, and his sketchy friends (Eliphaz,Bildad,Zophar) banter. We see submission, we see God glorified, we see a witness that we so desperately need today. We see a disheartened man who is completely fulfilled. We see a miserable man asking for death but pleading his argument on life before God. How can this be?!

Job had unparalleled wisdom in knowing his role in relationship to trial,to loss, and most importantly to God. He never tried to grieve hard enough to get past losing his children, he didn’t curse God for what had happened although He knew God hand was upon his calamity. He just understood God was still God in all of his mess and kept going.

Can we keep going? Can we believe God’s hand is upon and in everything because He made everything and is in everything? Or should we cling to the American Dream and work just slightly harder than we already do to achieve greatness? Friends, let’s not be full of error and foolishness in that way. Let’s dance and cry and let God be the righteousness we so desire.

Join me.

From this time.