How can I minister to you, what can I say, what can I do, that would honor you. That would bring you praise…above just lip service and religious obligation. When I grow tired of the pursuit…let me find my rest in the pursuit. Allow me the grace to vacation from pressing forward toward your upward call, by pressing forward to your upward call. Let my weariness from worship produce passion to praise…When I have done everything to stand and can no longer stand…let me stand therefore. In my moments of weakness when I long to partake of pretense, please provide your presence. Turn my need for entertainment, into a need to entertain your company and enter in to your fellowship. If I burn out…I know your fire will burn on. When I withdraw from you…give me withdrawals for you. When my flesh looks for a door to escape, give me escape to adore you much more. Hide me in your secret place where complacency cannot find me. I know I can run and not grow weary, but teach me to walk and not faint. When I excuse myself from you, give me another excuse to draw near. Why would we long to leave the oasis for the desert, to leave the castle of the king to beg for scraps in the street. Torch the bridges that bring backsliding, and remove the nets that make the fall from grace so painless. I long to pay the toll on the highway of holiness, to buy a one way ticket to the high call. To make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts, If I look back I will find opportunity to return. If I leave a trail of bread crumbs I will find my way again to a life of crumbs. I never want to forget where you have brought me from, but I never want to remember the way back.
- John 3:30
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
A Successfull Failure
If you gain the whole world...every dollar, every possession, every ounce of power, and status. If strong men fear you and beautiful women desire you, and if you dominate all contests and win every competition most would say you have arrived.....hmmm.....arrived where?
You have achieved everything, more then mere men could ever dream, but yet death plays the role of the great equalizer. Money cannot bribe it, lust cannot manipulate it, and power cannot apply force to it. It is blind to rank or status, deaf to reason or argument, and mute in it's warnings. Everyone will travel it's journey, and eventually fall to it's gravity.
Our success seems trivial when filtered through this perspective. Our accomplishments appear fleeting when weighed In this scale. Death either robs life of it's meaning, or it provides life with it's meaning. If our lives don't matter in eternity, then I must ask the question, why do they matter at all?
I have spent the last two weeks staring into the hustle, investigating the bustle, and "in keeping up with the Jones' " I forgot to stop and ask where the Jones' were headed to? In running the "rat race" I forgot to ask what the winner got? And even more so why I'm content with the " consolation price". I'm realizing in winning I lose, and in success I fail. Because the sad thing about a finish line is....your finished.
The treasures and trophies we've amassed in the meantime offer no ransom against the end. Our very pride and joy, the apples of our eyes, leave us stranded and naked in death's embrace. In being betrayed by our belongings, who do we " belong" to? In this moment our things...won't mean a thing, because our possessions possessed us, and empty handed we successfully fail. We fail to achieve the only accolade that eternity awards....to be known by the master of all. We made it our aim, to hit the mark of human perfection, but fall short of being pleasing to Him.
We fail in expecting our temporary prestige to be valued in forevers permanent perfection. We played the game of life with monopoly money, and scratch our heads when our "hard hearts" aren't considered "legal tender" in the final accounting. In being consumed with this current world we buried the divine currency entrusted to us, and all our potential is charged to us as debt. All of our earthly accomplishments only add to the kindling fueling the final fire. Our everything evaporates into nothing, exposing our emptiness. If all our worth dwindles into worthlessness what is left to define ourselves by? Our finite fades to infinite inadequacy separating us from freedom forever.
We succeed at our own failure, because we failed to secede from momentary meaning into timeless truth. We neglected to secure salvation over status, and fortune over faith. The vapor of existence is dissipating, and time itself is running out of time. At the edge of eternity we must decide where our riches will reside buried in a broken world or invested in "unbroken" fellowship with God Almighty.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
You have achieved everything, more then mere men could ever dream, but yet death plays the role of the great equalizer. Money cannot bribe it, lust cannot manipulate it, and power cannot apply force to it. It is blind to rank or status, deaf to reason or argument, and mute in it's warnings. Everyone will travel it's journey, and eventually fall to it's gravity.
Our success seems trivial when filtered through this perspective. Our accomplishments appear fleeting when weighed In this scale. Death either robs life of it's meaning, or it provides life with it's meaning. If our lives don't matter in eternity, then I must ask the question, why do they matter at all?
I have spent the last two weeks staring into the hustle, investigating the bustle, and "in keeping up with the Jones' " I forgot to stop and ask where the Jones' were headed to? In running the "rat race" I forgot to ask what the winner got? And even more so why I'm content with the " consolation price". I'm realizing in winning I lose, and in success I fail. Because the sad thing about a finish line is....your finished.
The treasures and trophies we've amassed in the meantime offer no ransom against the end. Our very pride and joy, the apples of our eyes, leave us stranded and naked in death's embrace. In being betrayed by our belongings, who do we " belong" to? In this moment our things...won't mean a thing, because our possessions possessed us, and empty handed we successfully fail. We fail to achieve the only accolade that eternity awards....to be known by the master of all. We made it our aim, to hit the mark of human perfection, but fall short of being pleasing to Him.
We fail in expecting our temporary prestige to be valued in forevers permanent perfection. We played the game of life with monopoly money, and scratch our heads when our "hard hearts" aren't considered "legal tender" in the final accounting. In being consumed with this current world we buried the divine currency entrusted to us, and all our potential is charged to us as debt. All of our earthly accomplishments only add to the kindling fueling the final fire. Our everything evaporates into nothing, exposing our emptiness. If all our worth dwindles into worthlessness what is left to define ourselves by? Our finite fades to infinite inadequacy separating us from freedom forever.
We succeed at our own failure, because we failed to secede from momentary meaning into timeless truth. We neglected to secure salvation over status, and fortune over faith. The vapor of existence is dissipating, and time itself is running out of time. At the edge of eternity we must decide where our riches will reside buried in a broken world or invested in "unbroken" fellowship with God Almighty.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Gavels Down
I've constructed a world where everything fits nicely into carefully compartmentalized criticisms. I know what's wrong with you sometimes before I even know your name. I see your faults before I see your pain, and I draw conclusions with a permanent marker, while writing the hope of Christ in disappearing ink.
But, the sad truth is I'm right....my impressions usually are as bad as they appear, and my track record for spotting sin is flawless. I've got a knack for identifying evil, and a reputation for recognizing rebellion. In the past I have taken great pride in my ability to sift through the sands of someones sorrow just to find the skeletons hanging in their closet. Like a skilled archeologist I follow the trail of past mistakes, I sweep away the sentimental sediment that "covers up" our situations; just so I can find the lifeless bones that lay buried underneath surface-level semblance. But for all that archeology has ever taught us about who we are...it has never unearthed who we could be. For all the death that is has discovered it has never produced a single life....nor does it care to. It is not concerned with life outside of exposing the dry bones of yesterday.
I am that archeologist, digging up dirt on all that I encounter. I am that juryman handing down verdict, and that judge wielding a gavel with the precision of a master marksman. In all my cases closed....have I ever left a heart opened. Has anyone found life in my delivering of "life" sentences. In being correct in my stereotypes has any change come to the corrupt? Even in calling sin what it is, it still IS.
So I say gavels down, and crosses up. Just like a physician cannot treat a disease he has not diagnosed....he also fails if he diagnoses a disease he refuses to treat. In my youth G.I. Joe taught me that "knowing is half the battle", but I missed that acting on that knowledge was the other. Because to see sin just takes eyes, but to "see to" someones freedom takes heart. Describing the dead is for coroners, describing the life is for Christians. Pronouncing death is not our calling, but speaking resurrection is....gavels down....gavels down.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
But, the sad truth is I'm right....my impressions usually are as bad as they appear, and my track record for spotting sin is flawless. I've got a knack for identifying evil, and a reputation for recognizing rebellion. In the past I have taken great pride in my ability to sift through the sands of someones sorrow just to find the skeletons hanging in their closet. Like a skilled archeologist I follow the trail of past mistakes, I sweep away the sentimental sediment that "covers up" our situations; just so I can find the lifeless bones that lay buried underneath surface-level semblance. But for all that archeology has ever taught us about who we are...it has never unearthed who we could be. For all the death that is has discovered it has never produced a single life....nor does it care to. It is not concerned with life outside of exposing the dry bones of yesterday.
I am that archeologist, digging up dirt on all that I encounter. I am that juryman handing down verdict, and that judge wielding a gavel with the precision of a master marksman. In all my cases closed....have I ever left a heart opened. Has anyone found life in my delivering of "life" sentences. In being correct in my stereotypes has any change come to the corrupt? Even in calling sin what it is, it still IS.
So I say gavels down, and crosses up. Just like a physician cannot treat a disease he has not diagnosed....he also fails if he diagnoses a disease he refuses to treat. In my youth G.I. Joe taught me that "knowing is half the battle", but I missed that acting on that knowledge was the other. Because to see sin just takes eyes, but to "see to" someones freedom takes heart. Describing the dead is for coroners, describing the life is for Christians. Pronouncing death is not our calling, but speaking resurrection is....gavels down....gavels down.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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