Tombstone

I ain't playin' the role of some defeated worn out anymore.
Cause that makes it about me and what I do.
It's time to get up, strap up, get back to war.

Who can stop us?
I ask you this:
if God is the ultimate. The source of power.
if He created everything, life, power, love, air, function, music, buildings, mountains
and has the power to take any of them away.
I laugh that you think the creation can overtake the creator.
My God cannot be stopped. He cannot be ceased.
So then I ask you if this GOD is with us. Who can be against us?!
I'm nothing big. I'll name drop. the God of the universe is on my side.
The God of all time. The God who ruled before he invented the time.
The God who didn't even spare his own Son, but gave him for us.
How will he not give us all things. Who will challenge this?
Who will challenge the judge who has never been wrong?
Who will dare to attempt to separate us from His love and power?
Even death runs and hides. Even time itself, the present and the future submits.
Angels and demons worship and shutter at his presence.
So I ask you who could separate us?
We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (Romans 8:31-39)

So why I say this is because I'm tired of this habitual load of crap sin.
Tired of this continual temptation that seems to make sense at the time.
It seems to be overwhelming that I can't walk away from.
But you forget what the Word says?!
That no temptation comes that I cannot stand,
if not then he's given me a way out and I don't have to deal with it. (1 Corinth 10:13)

Tired of Satan telling me that I'll never over come this.
That it's something I have to deal with my whole life.
Thats crap. Thats a load of lies.
My sword reads this that the One before me
has disarmed the powers and authorities of darkness.
Not only that but made a public spectacle of them
Standing in triumph over them with the cross. His whooping stick. (Col 2:15)

To say, I'll always deal with it is making a mockery of his power.
I believe, and I know he has the power to overcome everything.
If he can split a sea like a paperback book, he can do this.
If he can kill a fig tree and bring to life a dead man by speaking to it.
Why can he not speak to the one he has already defeated and stop it.

To say, I'll always deal with it isn't putting death to sin (Col 3:15)
It's subduing it, leaving it on life support.
Waiting and allowing it to flare up again.
I'm pulling the plug, starving it from any energy or life.
I wanna watch it die, suffocate, wither away, every last piece of sin.
Cause my Savior has power,
That means here and now I claim Christ's power.
I claim the same Jesus that conquered sin once and for all.
That this temptation has no hold on me.
Today, there is a tombstone where so much pain has made it's home.
There's a tombstone where God came and Satan was defeated.

From now on, every-time Satan comes near and starts poking temptation my way.
I'll turn and point to the tombstone.
Reminding him, that I have been freed from Sin.
Because my Jesus has freed me from this continual rule of sin. (Romans 8:2)
I cannot claim anything I've done,
because what I've done is what caused the pain.
But what He's done, is what has freed the captives,
what has healed the broken, what has killed the deadly.
It's only by his power will this die,
so I pray that he slaughters my desire for sin.
That it would not be left withering,
the only remnants would left is the tombstone.
It's amazing the shape of this tombstone.
That every-time I turn to point at it.
To see the only thing that stops Satan in his tracks. That catches him up.
To see what I can always turn and look at.
To see the sight thats never grows old.
To see where pain once was and now freedom flows.
The only thing I want to look at.
The cross.

Bold

The people in the bible lived so boldly. I don't want to say bible characters because that seems like their made up and fictional characters. But the people who lived radically enough that they made it into the Bible. I've noticed really no one in there is moderate, and just an average living person. There were lots of average people who stepped out and followed something bold, did something bold, but no one lived average. Either they went big and did good, or they went big and fought against good. No one just got by and made it into the Bible.

So I begin to wonder, would how I live make it into the Bible?

I know it's not something to shoot for, but am I sold out enough and being bold enough that I might be considered even that something God did in my life might teach other's his character and how he works? I would hope so, but I doubt it.

Something that caught my attention today was premeditated murder. It happened a lot in the Bible. Specifically, looking at the New Testament. I was reading in Acts 14 v5 and it read that there was a plot to mistreat and stone Paul and Barnabas. They wanted to kill them! Just because they were talking about Jesus (I just say just because but this man was splitting their culture, their religion, their city, their families, their life in two.) So anyways they found out about it and fled somewhere else... "where they continued to preach the good news." v7 These guys wouldn't shut up! I mean this was pretty much a common weekly thing is getting threatened to be killed. Peter was thrown in jail, not killed... yet. In the same chapter (acts 9) that Paul accepts who Jesus really is and stops killing Christians himself, he turns around and is almost killed twice by two different places. He gets lowered out of a basket from a city wall, then goes down the road a bit and keeps talking about Jesus and almost gets killed there too. I mean shoot the last 8 chapters of Acts are a chase scene with people trying to hunt down and kill Paul, while God keeps Paul's butt clean and keeps taking him to more and more places, and Paul just keeps talking about Jesus with everyone he runs into making more believers and more enemies.

I mean what did you expect? Jesus said, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first." John 15:18. Jesus pretty much is like, Yeah, welcome to the party. It's nothing new, he gave them a heads up in John 16 "All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. (be warned) They will put you out of the synagogue,; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. (Pretty much Paul here to a T.) They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this , so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you this at first because I was with you." I mean they can't be too surprised. He tells him this at the last supper, right before the plot thats been brewing to kill him gets carried out. Obviously, the events that follow this probably overshadowed and overwhelmed their memories to remember this. But sometimes I forget that this wasn't the only time they tried to kill him.

Earlier in John 5:16 the Jews persecute him for breaking the sabbath and healing on it. Then in verse 18, after he says that God is his father they tried even harder to kill him. In John 7:30 they tried to seize him after he was teaching and explaining he's from God, but they couldn't touch him. Then John 8: 59 They try to stone him when he tells them he's older than Abraham and he's eternal but "Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple ground" Again in John 10: 31 & 39, they tried to stone him and seize him but "he escaped their grasp." So we often get caught in they planned on killing him once and then finally did, but really they tried many times but had to come up with a large scheme to do it. Premeditated definitely. Plus, it also shows that Jesus gave his life for us, that no one took it. I mean two different times they bent down to pick up stones to kill him and when they looked up he was gone. They tried to kill Jesus many times, so it makes since if we should share in his sufferings as to why they would go onto try and kill his disciples later for it.

SIDE NOTE: They also tried to kill Lazarus, which I just think is funny. John 12: 10 "So the chief of priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well." Isn't that kinda self defeating. I mean, yeah, it might work for a bit, but think about it. "Hey, lets kill the guy that Jesus brought back from the dead. That way he's dead...again. But this time he'll be dead dead. We'll show him!" Good call Einstein. He's brought him back to life once, what will stop him from doing it again? Matt Kelly suggested Lazarus trash talking the religious folk. I can see that, "Yeah, Yeah. What you gonna do? Kill me? Pssh. Been there, done that, got a t-shirt... ur. well, grave clothes." But you get the picture of their extreme acts towards anything that would promote Christ.

So back to living boldly. I wonder what our excuse is? What's our reasoning not to? I mean these guys who God changed the world with were sold out. Do we not want to have an impact for Christ? These guys were willing and some did give their lives for it. Shoot, they thought they killed Paul by stoning him and left him there, but he ended up living and the first thing he did was go back into the city that just tried to kill him.

Nobody's every tried to kill me because I talk about Jesus. No body has even ever hit me because of it. No kick and no punch. They may have given me a weird look, or ignored me. They may have refused to invite me to places, or they've said something bad about me. That is what's stopping me. I've never had a loaded gun pointed at me like they did. Yet they still talked more about God than I do. I just wonder what's stopping us. Do we desire to just live in mediocrity? Desire to just fit in with everyone? Is our goal in life to just get by? Or do we want to have an impact? I thank God no one has tried to kill me yet. But I want to be bold like they were bold. Letting nothing stop me from telling the truth. ha. Isn't that what we're taught, always tell the truth. Even in elementary school they were telling us to be missionaries. I want to be bold. I want people to see You in me. I want it to be all about you and never about me. So help me be what it is that brings you glory.

In the Image

So Genesis 9, Noah just gets off the boat and God's giving them the rundown of how things are going to happen. Chapter 9 Verses 4-6 Say:

"But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.

"Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man."


He specifies that it's wrong to kill humans because we're made in God's image.

My footnote adds that "all people possess the qualities that distinguish them from animals: morality, reason, creativity, and self-worth."

Self-worth... It seems to be one of the biggest things that Christians struggle with is our self-worth. I wonder if it's because we define what it is by other things. Essentially, we define many things by the way "the world" does.


(side note: we talk alot about "the world" and how they do things, but really what I think it is that we're saying is that we're using the same reasoning as if we didn't believe there is a God. We're taking the same basic human-powered logic that they are. We're taking ultimately the hopelessness approach. If there were no God, then we would only have at best 100 years to our existence. We would have to try to push ahead to just be happy here and now. If things weren't perfect in our job, family, education we would have to push ahead. When things looked down, something goes wrong, someone is terminally ill, where would you turn? You would just have to hope that human effort would be enough. That somehow either you or I, or some random person could do something that would cause something to change enough to free us from our situation.

But we do believe there is a God. We do believe that God is in control and all powerful. We believe that he is not defined by human logic or constrained by it. We believe that ultimately he is good and that he is Holy, and nothing he does would go against this/His character. So in saying all of this we have hope in every situation, when houses burn down, when dad's are abusive, when we caught in depression, when we're caught in a foreign country in jail, when the cancer has come back and doctors don't know what to do, when our bad habits get us caught in the same place over and over again, when there's too much to do in a day, when nothing we do seems to be good enough, when the harder we try the less things seem to go right, - it's things like this that we know human strength and logic fails. That we know there is a God because we've seen him do the impossible. When human ability gave out and gave up, then suddenly the situation turns around, we know that there's a God.

So pretty much as a result of this side note rant: when we do things the way the world does, we're taking the hopeless approach. We're taking the results based off of human strength, logic, and ability, and forgetting that there is someone much bigger than us controlling things. )

After that really long side note, (which is probably the point of why God lead me down this side tangent road), I kept thinking about how we define our self-worth. I mean God says he created us in his image, and we best not be killing any body because we're killing the image of Him. I mean we were meant to be His, His children, His people, His loved ones, His bride. I've obviously never been a bride, but in the relationships I have been, how sweet has it been to be taken care of and loved by someone. I mean not even romantic relationships but just friendship relationships. When you know someone's got your back no matter what. I know how I've wanted to be able to treat some people like they were a princess (I usually fail at that, or get yelled at for it), but to know that passion and care that you have for someone that God has that for us, for me, for you. And that he has the ability to fulfill it. And he gets yelled at all the time for taking care of people because he won't let them do what they want or his love is too much for him, but he doesn't stop. He won't relent.

I just wonder how much lack of self-worth comes from us trying to find it in every other place. I mean the very fact that we're made in the image of God and because of that God has set up rules how to treat each other puts us pretty high up there.

I think part of the issue is when we get down or start believing lies or just focus on us more than him, then I start comparing myself to others. "Yeah, well we're all made in the image of Christ, but how does that make me any more special. I'm just like everyone else." I wonder "What I have to contribute? What could I do that someone else can't. What's my purpose in this situation? What is it that I can do that someone else can't, what's my impact and why am I in this situation?" But again, I guess this focuses on me and what I can do. It's not focusing on God and what He's doing. It makes me think that I'm doing it by my power. I don't realize that whenever something happens using me, that's it's all God doing the work and not me. So in that facet I guess the struggle with self worth comes from the over focus on SELF rather than the self we we're created after.

I think in other ways, we're just still comparing the two separate works of art. What people know or understand is one thing, so we push forward to gain what someone who has power has said is good/or pretty. Someone who has temporary power (pop star, politician, musician, news reporter) but miss the flow of absolute power and what He says. When he says, "I created you with perfect looks, perfect talents, the perfect abilities, the perfect strengths and weaknesses for what your life's purpose is." and we probably come back with "Yeah, well, I won't want to have to wait that long to see. I'm not patient enough. I want to feel better, know why, be better now." I mean, ultimately, that's what we're saying.

So in the end. Well, the end for today, I think it kinda comes down to the fact we get caught looking at us rather than Him. That we're made in the image of God. That means he comes first, and when we get done gazing at him we can look at ourself (if that ever happens). Also, I think we focus too much on what we're doing and not what God is doing in the situation or in our lives or in our "abilities." These are two actions I see, I think the problem/heart behind it is the fact that we just don't understand what God thinks about us. We don't understand how much he loves us. That he is obsessively, overly passionate about us. I could go on a long time about how much he loves us, but I think I've written enough or too much already, so I'll just end this with two songs.

"Sea of Faces" by Kutless - (from the bridge)

"If only my one heart
Was all you'd gain from all it cost
Well I know you would have still been a man
With a reason
To willingly offer your life"

"How He Loves" - David Crowder Band (from the bridge)

"And Heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us!"

"Christians" - United

This started out good, then maybe when into a slight rant at the end with some of my frustrations, but I still think all true. Maybe I just needed to remind myself of how things should be in my life more of.

Acts 11:26b
"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."

This was after the Jews had only been preaching to Jews. Then some of those who had been with Stephen went from the cities of Cyprus and Cyrene to a city called Antioch and started telling Greeks. WOAH!

Before the Jews were God's chosen people. In fact, in the chapter before Peter gets busted for going into the place with the gentiles because they were "unclean" and uncircumcised. That's kinda like a catholic going into the home of a baptist, but it was definitely not allowed because the baptist hadn't done all the ritual things that the catholic did. Peter tells them about God had orchestrated it and about the dream and about how God had poured out the Holy Spirit on these non-Jews. So suddenly it's not just a Jewish thing.

They send Barnabas to Antoich to check everything out and he see's the grace of God and encouraging them. He goes and gets Paul and they come back and spend a year there teaching, and it's here they're first called Christians.

Now, I've heard it before said that they're called "Christians" because they were "Christ-like," thats what others saw in them. In other place, I found it says that it's because its all they had in common - not race, culture, or even language. This is the part I started looking at. All they had in common was Christ and it was way more than enough.

That would be like taking a Muslim who knows Jesus (culturally muslim, Christian by choice) from North Africa, a American Christian, a Chinese follower of Christ, a Russian whose been born again and you stick them all in a room and what do you have? Christians. That's it. Culture was way off, language wasn't even the same, they all looked different, but the only thing they had in common was the fact they all knew Jesus was real and had forgiven them of sins and they were cool with it. In fact, they embraced that fact.

I felt this when we were in Botswana, Africa. We did have a small advantage as we both spoke some form of English. But our cultures were different, and we definitely looked different. But these people opened up their homes to us, they invited a group of 20 white American strangers over to their house and said "let me cook for you." Why? "Because you are here for Jesus." Talk about entertaining angels, I think we were entertained by an angel. In a world of differences, they looked directly to the only thing that mattered and said "You are forgiven, I am forgiven, we know Jesus we love Jesus. Here is my home."

I kinda wonder why we close off from each other. I mean even within our denominations we're almost against each other. We segregate and separate. Why? How is this unified? By focusing on our differences, we make it about us. If we really just focused on Jesus, then we would all have the same vision in sight. But apparently too many times we find that our own dress code, politics, what I did, is more important than Jesus.

Why do we search for what divides us rather than what unites us? Because it's what Satan does. It's what sin does. We're afraid of what we don't know. There's lots of ignorance in the world, and rather than holding on to what we do know and that is Jesus, we look at everything else to try to protect ourselves. Which takes the focus off of him and onto us, or onto them.

Maybe it's oversimplifying things, but I just want to know this: Do we love Jesus? Have we both been equally forgiven? Are we trying to follow him? Then what's the issue? They have tattoos and piercing, you don't. They don't wear shoes, you do. They talk really fast and always have to be busy, you work at a culture works at a slower pace. Awesome. I'm not trying to convert anyone to my culture or my way of life. I'm trying to show them a Love greater than anything that has ever been known. We're telling the story and opportunity how everything we've ever done wrong can be wiped away and completely unhumanly, supernaturally forgiven for good. That ridiculous thought should still captivate us, why because it's God poured himself into a human form and got the crap beat out of himself for us. THAT is what we have in common. That my actions just like your actions slammed my King against a tree. I spit on his face. My thoughts laid lashes on his back, across his stomach, onto his legs. That our self-exhaultedness brought him heartbreak and mental pain. Yeah, if you wanna look at what we did, THIS is what we did. Now applaud YOUrself. But this is where we are found. This is where we stand. This is where we are united is this act of sacrificial love. This life that this death brought. This is all we have, so why should we look anywhere else. How can we not open our arms, our lives, our homes, to people because they look different, act different, speak different when they know Jesus just like you do.
Let us come together and celebrate. Let us open our arms.
Let us party with music and dancing, with food and friends.
For we are united together, red and yellow, black and white.
We are not our own.
We are not our actions.
We are not of this world.
We are His.
We are loved.
We are forgiven.
We are Christians.