Where to start? It's all so... BIG... and perfect

I kinda forgot about this whole blog thing. I was kinda outta touch all summer anyway, which lends itself to the problem. But there's been a lot going on in my head since then. Here's what I puked outta my brain a couple weeks ago.

Oh man, where to start... God' blowing my mind open.
Thinking back... I think I can trace the first inklings of this thought process to a certain conversation I had with my "mentor" at the time. I was telling him about how I could really see God through creation and I loved creation and it made me come alive and feel loved and so on and so forth. He sat there and let me go on for a bit, and then all he said in reply was, "You know, people are God's creation too." It made me think a lot. I think it got me thinking about salvation at that point. I realized that salvation wasn't just about me. In fact it was just merely about people as well. I realized that salvation is about God restoring ALL of creation back to him. All of creation is in bondage from our sin and God is in the process of rebuilding that.
It was neat to think about, but what do I do with that?
About year later I had a new thought. I was spending time struggling with dying to myself. I realized that who I am, my true human nature is so far from good. When I thought about it, that part of me was selfish and prideful and it disgusted me. I could think to my gut reaction in almost any given situation and realize that my first priority was myself. Blech! That was tough to admit. No matter how highly I thought of myself, I really wasn't good. Compounded on that, I read about how Jesus shot back when he was called good, "Only God is good" WHOA! After some tough times and thoughts and prayers I realized that in Jesus, it doesn't matter that we are gross. Jesus doesn't see us that way. WOOHOO!
But then I was looking at creation and when God makes Adam... he calls him "good." That's pretty big for God to declare Adam good. Adam was made in God's image and in so was bearing God's image to the created earth. Adam shared in God's glory!
Then Satan came along and here's what’s ironic: Satan talked Adam into trying to make himself like God, but Adam was already like God, apparently he didn't realize it. Solely by God's grace, Adam had shared in God's glory. Adam rejected God's grace and glory and thus, the fall.
At that point, it seems to me that humanity has obsessed itself with trying to regain that original glory that we were created with. And worse, with all of our apparent success at doing so, our pride grows and draws even further from God and that original glory we are striving for. Could it be that all my selfishness and pride comes from an innate quest for glory, something that I instinctively know I was intended to have but for rejection of grace, I don't?
So Adam, and us, had given up the charge to show God's image to the world. God then is not fully in the world anymore. Not one to give up though, while still fully God, he becomes fully human, able to enter into the broken world and once again bear his image to the earth. But it's different. Jesus doesn't glow with the full majesty and glory of God as described in creation, but rather comes with an image of humility, sacrifice, service and love.
But that's absolutely perfect. We are still promised to share in God's glory, but know for us to slay our pride, our own attempts, we must follow image of God revealed to us through Jesus. We must humble ourselves, sacrifice our human nature, and learn to love to even stand to get anywhere near that glory of God.
So through Jesus, and those who choose him, God is again revealing himself, the image God, to all the earth. To all of creation he is working himself back in.
Maybe that's what this talk of bringing the kingdom of heaven is all about. God and his followers are bringing heaven, are bringing the image of God, back to the world and the people who once shut it out. The kingdom of heaven is God's image in us?...
That got me thinking more about Jesus. Something that hit me hard a week or so ago is something I've read and heard for a loooooong time, but I don't think I've fully understood and processed it all until now. John talks about how in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God... For some reason I had kind of thought of Jesus as a God's contingency plan. That Jesus didn't come along until later in the story. But that's totally not true. John says, Jesus has always been, because Jesus is God. Of course!!!
With that in mind, I also, in the back of my mind, separated the old and new testament God and hard and soft, kinda bad cop good cop. But Jesus was the same God in the beginning as he was when he came to earth. The love, grace and mercy of Jesus has ALWAYS been a part of God. So why do the two testaments seem different? We know God doesn't change, so perhaps it's our understanding of God that has changed...?
Furthermore, if Jesus has always been God and was always with God, what better way to get to know him than through Jesus, someone who is much easier for is to relate to. It blows my mind because even though it may be easier for us to relate to Jesus, we still are relating directly to God, because he is! Whoa!
Furthermore, as kind of an afterthought, I was reading Jesus’ sermon on the mount. As Jesus talked, he kept building up this impossible picture that we are called to live up to. To essentially be perfect. This dread was overtaking me. Then a thought occurred. The reason Jesus was here in the first place is because we can’t be what he’s telling us to be in that sermon. So what’s going on? What Jesus was describing was what we were meant to be like, and he was also describing God. Jesus was showing us who our God is. The old testament very clearly portrays God’s power, wrath, majesty, and glory, but Jesus is showing us here God’s service, sacrifice and love… cool.

Holy Shint Batman!!

I wish someone would have just given it to me straight. Maybe someone has, but it just hasn't sunk in until now. I've felt like such a disappointment lately, mostly because I keep screwing up. I hear all the time:"Nobody's Perfect," "Broken World," "Spiritual Battle." Then on top of that I hear "Christ frees you from sin," "No longer a slave to sin," "Jesus gives you victory in sin." But it seems to me that if any of this stuff is brought up in a sermon, it should be followed by: "But shit happens." Or maybe more appropriately "Sin happens." Actually both happen... "shint" happens, a lot of times they're the same thing.

I've read in the word, and people tell me that Jesus promised trials, but that's not as encouraging as they mean it to be. It's only half the story. I think what would be better to hear (at least for me) is "Drew, Jesus promised trials and I'm telling you that a lot of the time, you will FAIL. You will fall flat on your face!" That's the kind of straight shooting I would rather hear.

For the last several months I've had this idea in my head that sin in a christian's life is moot. I know now that that idea is a virus, it makes me sick. I know now where this came from, and it's something equally as viral. When the body of christ masks its pains and struggles from each other, then sin becomes to each member a personal defect rather than a product of our world.

I used to think that because I belonged to christ and was "no longer a slave to sin," it meant that I wouldn't sin anymore. That was pretty stupid of me to think so while every day of my life was still filled with it. For whatever reason, it's taken this long for the real meaning to hit me, and it hit like a friggin freight train to the face.

In essence, I think Martin Luther reworded that with a bit more kick: "Sin boldly, but believe in Christ more boldly still." Shint is gonna happen and when it does, ya gotta own it. Not being a slave to sin is not so much about not doing it, but rather when it comes, own it, give it to God and say "I may be a screw up, but I'm a screw up in the death grip of God's unconditional love and neverending grace." Apologeticist Peter Kreeft says that there is no opposite of sinners in our world, just saved sinners and not saved sinners. Being free of sin is not letting your enemy's immediate victory blind you from our God's ultimate win.

The times I've felt free from sin were the times when I could sit with my fellow believers and without fear of judgement pour out my pain and struggles and to have them reply "me too, thank God for grace." I want more of that in church.

Driven

I've been working at a ski resort the past few months on their race crew. I've never really had anything to do with ski racing... ever, but it hasn't been to bad of a job. As much politics as I have to put up with, I least I get to work outside all day on my skis. There's only three of us that make up this race department, and as such I've been spending a lot of time with these two guys that I work with. I'm very different from both of these guys, most notably in my morals and ethics. While it's hard for me to be around them, it's been good for me as well. When I'm able to step back and look at my time with them, it enables me to see how intricately God has woven himself into the fabric of reality in this world. He's not just in "christian" circles, but low and behold, even within the lives of these "worldly" men that I work beside, God makes himself evident to me daily.
One of the guys I work with is by nature, a VERY passionate person. Super high energy and fully throws himself into whatever may be feeding him at the time. The other guy is much more laid back, more my speed, but equally as immersed in the things he loves. While I listen to these two talk (most of the time about subjects I wouldn't care to listen to them talk about) I realized the other day that we have something in common. We're driven by hope.
Here are these two guys against whom I've counted myself radically different, only to realize God's made us with the same operating system. Even better though, is that through these two men, far removed from my comfortable "christian" lifestyle, I feel like I've gained a more realistic understanding of hope than ever before.
It's not an emotion, or a sentiment, it's our friggin engines. When I look at my life, what keeps me going is the hope of heaven, the hope of God's glory.
So the difference between me and these guys now is where our hope placed. Proverbs says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick..." and when I hear the pain and shallow emotion the people around me, when I hear of their sick hearts, I feel like now I know why. All around me here, people put their hope in temprorary solutions, quick fixes that ultimately seizes their drive. God tells us time and again in his word that he alone can fulfill our hope, fulfill our longing.
Letting Christ's glory drive me doesn't free me from hurt, but allows me to faithfully plow through it. And ultimately that's what faith is, "being sure of what we hope for."
These two men have so much passion, but it is so fleeting and often followed by a sorrow that's just as consuming. Up and down, I see it every week. And it's rad to think that we're ALL created with a hope stash to do with what we please. Our differences don't stem necessarily from morals or lifestyles, but ultimately from where our hope lies.