On weeping for Jesus' Cross

In our remembrance of the Passion of Christ, what do we mourn? What brings us sadness? I wonder if it is the same thing Jesus would have us mourn and be sad over. Do we still get sad for Jesus; do we do as Christ tells the Daughters of Jerusalem in Luke 23 on his way up the hill to Golgotha? "But Jesus turning to them said, 'Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." (vs 28)

Do we weep for Christ at Easter or our remembrance of the cross throughout the year? Or... Do we weep for ourselves and the condition of the world? Do we weep for CHrist when we remember the cross (which he did conquer), or do we weep for the condition our own hearts are still in?

Prone to wander

Our hearts are truly and terribly wicked. THey need to ALWAYS be focused and disciplined to obey, follow, and love God above all else. But because of the fact that our hearts just really are so so wicked (depraved) there simply is no room for comfortable apathy in this life. Every day my heart is drawn toward its own wickedness, and I have to intentionally focus my heart each and every day on Jesus Christ and the God who demands that I follow Him and obey Him.

My heart is so easily turned away; like terribly easy to be turned away. This depravity and wickedness angers me. I hate that my heart is aligned toward sin and terrible choices, but over and over again I see this in my life.

O God, my heart is so wicked and prone to wander, I am truly prone to leave the God I love and turn from you.

Here is my heart, LORD, take and seal it for thy courts above. Seal and cap my heart for you and your alone. O God, my heart is prone to wander. It is so easily turned from you. Seal my heart. I hate my wickedness. I hate that I am always turning from you if I am not remembering the grace you have given me in Christ. I desire to follow you and lead your people with a fear of you, but heart pulls me.

My heart is depraved and wicked. While I have been redeemed in the blood of Christ on the cross, I still feel prone to wander and leave the path of the God I love. I hate and despise that feeling.

I also realize if I am not intentionally focusing my wandering heart, I will be too easily turned. So seal my heart. Draw me close to you and I will obey you. I will follow you and honor you.

With Psalm 80 I pray, "O God, restore me, and cause your face to shine upon me and I will be saved."

My heat is truly wicked and prone to wander from you. When I do wander, I find brokenness at every turn. So I pray for restoration, and I pray this on a consistent repeat.

Restoration is a return to an original condition before wear and tear and brokenness began to set in.

Severed parts

All who are in Christ are in Christ together. We truly are connected in all the greatest ways because of the gospel.

The Body of Christ has been preached for centuries, but something I do not recall hearing about the body and its parts, which we are, is what happens when they are severed from the body.

The Body of Christ only grows when it is held together. When it is disconnected parts, those parts die and cannot continue forward. Stay close and connected to the gospel and to the Body of Christ.

Over and over again I watch people disconnect themselves from the Body of Christ and attempt to go it alone. With the fervor of Hebrews 10, I say, "DO NOT give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing. " I have told people more times than I care to count: if you attempt to grow and move on your own, you will fail. If we play out the realities of a Body, not only will you fail, your will likely die.

Ends and Means

Matthew Henry writes, "All who are chosen to happiness in the end, are chosen to holiness as the means." 

I have had this quote in my head for a couple weeks now. There is a great reminder to us in a culture obsessed with happiness. Over and over again we see people come through our doors prepared to end commitments and covenants because someone has told them, "Don't you deserve to be happy?" This very thing has lead to the breakdown of our lives, and it has lead us also to our addictiveness. 

This is the very nature of addiction. Things are addicting because they always leave you wanting more, and they destroy you all along the way. They cannot fulfill you. Whether it is sex or substances. Whether it is more stuff in our closets, driveways, or pockets. We are addicted to these things when we think the only important thing is our happiness, and we start to believe these things will make us happy. And they do…for only a moment. That is the very point of these things; to only make you feel good and happy for a short time so that you want it again. Do you have something you desire and crave more than Jesus and a connection with Jesus? Do you see how CRAZY and absolutely LUDICROUS it is for me to desire and crave anything more than I crave a loving real connection with Jesus Christ?

Bask: a prayer

Abba, May your spirit connect directly with mine!  May my spirit truly worship yours!  Today I am striving to bask in your love.  Not to think about your love and try to feel your love, but to sit and bask in your love.  I sit here right now drinking in your love.  Your love that calls me your child and sees me as blameless.  A love that relates to me in my spirit and not my flesh.  I praise you and deeply thank you for loving me in my spirit instead of my flesh.

I swim in the love of my heavenly Father who has loved me despite my flesh and the mistakes and struggles it trips on.  You love me because you see through my flesh, my feelings and my facade into my spirit which truly does remain blameless due to the outrageous price you paid for me so long ago.

Today, Abba, I rest in your love that I could NEVER receive from anyone else.  I am skinny-dipping in the waters of your love that lavishes me in acceptance, mercy, grace and spiritual pleasure.  I am truly drinking in a love I could never return.  I long for you to be pleased, and I trip and stumble to make you happy and you still tell me not to compare and measure your love for me in terms of my love for you! I try not to compare my lazy, passive, conditional, emotional, and often theoretical love with your love.

I rest in your love today with the realization that no matter how amazing my wife or daughters' love for me is, it will fail in comparison to yours.  That no matter how much my mother loves me, it will tremble at yours.  That I CANNOT depend solely on Tonya, Bryleigh, Haddisen, mom, friends, books, or my writing to feel special, loved or valid, but to depend only on your love.

I am taking this moment to really trust in your love for me at my deepest core, to spend a moment claiming my identity as your beloved child, and TRUSTING that enough to believe...BECAUSE of that I am special, loved and valid.  I am your child and I am drinking that love in right now.  Thank you for loving me, Daddy.  I love you and desire you to be happy, and I trust that I truly am special, loved and valid BECAUSE of your love for me.

On "Not the Jesus I believe in"

There is common reminder that Jesus was not the messiah they expected to see, but not much has changed in history. So many people have an idea of what they think a king, a god, a messiah should look like and do.

Even while Jesus hung on the cross in Matthew 27, people passed by "hurling abuse at HIm, wagging their heads and saying, 'You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross." So when Jesus is doing all those things in a different way than they think He should, they deny Him as king and true God.

IT is still the same today. They mock and ridicule Jesus for not being what they assume He should be. We do not get to define what Jesus should be or do. Yet, this is what believers and non-believers alike will consistently do. We need only accept Christ as He has presented himself to us in Scripture.

Affective Passion

The word passion means "to be affected by" [Tweet That] Think of the things you are passionate about.

You are passionate about those things you are most affected by, and that may be just about anything. When I think of the picture of my life and its passions, I want to create a picture of how ridiculous it is to be more passionate about anything other than Jesus Christ and his presence, his love, his grace, and his Spirit.

Does prayer affect me? When I pray, do I come from a place where my heart is affected and affectionate, or are they words without thoughts?

Does my time in God's word affect me? Do I read the things I read wanting to allow myself to actually be affected by what I read, or am I just reading words without thoughts?

Is my life affected by the love of God today? Not effected, but affected. The former I do not control, the latter I do. Do I allow my heart and life to be affected by the gospel? Am I truly passionate about my life with Christ? Does it affect me today? Do I allow his grace to affect my emotion, my choices, and my thirst for MORE?

These are the true questions of passion.

Open-minded

Why limit yourself to only the things you can fully understand and define? We are cheating our human capacity and innate desire to search and seek.

We are capable of searching out greater things than ourselves, but we are content to limit that only to things we can quantify or too easily define.

Who is the real open-minded one?

Random Friday thoughts fo'ya

What about this?  Maybe we need to read the story of Zacchaeus with the realization that this is a, man who desperately wants to see Jesus.  This is a desperate sinner who longs to see Jesus but can't.  The reason he can't see Jesus is because in the way are all the crowds of Jesus-followers.  These are a lot of people who already see Jesus and perhaps they are blocking out the sinner and despised tax collector.  They don't even notice the incredibly needy sinner just behind them who wants desperately to come to Jesus.  These people likely already knew Jesus was the Messiah.  That's why they followed him, but in the midst of it they left Zacchaeus to the side....the one who desperately needed and even WANTED to see and know Jesus. Isn't it interesting that one thing changed since the time of Jesus in that it used to be the sinners, whores, and drunks that came running to the compassion of Jesus and the Christian elite who hated Christ?  So what has changed now that it is the lost who hate Christ and even the mention of Christ?  What changed?  The compassion of Christ?  I'm leaning on no.

Christians - by Carol Wimmer

Christians - By Carol Wimmer

When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'." I'm whispering "I was lost, Now I'm found and forgiven."

When I say... "I am a Christian" I don't speak of this with pride. I'm confessing that I stumble and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not trying to be strong. I'm professing that I'm weak And need His strength to carry on.

When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not bragging of success. I'm admitting I have failed And need God to clean my mess.

When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not claiming to be perfect, My flaws are far too visible But, God believes I am worth it.

When I say... "I am a Christian" I still feel the sting of pain. I have my share of heartaches So I call upon His name.

When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not holier than thou, I'm just a simple sinner Who received God's good grace, somehow!

I Am Not A Preacher of the Gospel [of]

This quote has been wrecking me the last week: "I believe in justice: but I am not a preacher of the gospel of justice, but the Gospel of Christ who calls us to justice. I believe in love, but I am not a preacher of the gospel of love, but the Gospel of Christ who calls us to love. I am committed to peace, but I am not a preacher of the gospel of peace, but the Gospel of Christ who calls us to peace. I believe in the value of the simple life, but I am not the preacher of  the simple life, but of the Gospel of Christ who calls us to the simple life.

Let us beware of the ultimate plagiarism of borrowing some great concepts from Jesus then running off proclaiming these concepts and not sharing the Christ who embodies and empowers these concepts."

- Myron Augsburger